Topic: PC Gaming

Would an Acer Aspire 5 work for gaming?Nothing to big, just Minecraft and the occasional indie game.

@blindsquarel

The Acer Aspire 5 is a middling laptop for gaming. Our model has a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce MX350 GPU, but it isn't enough to get playable framerates in most modern AAA games at "High" settings.

I’m not sure what you mean, but it’s going to be something I use for school so that is also a factor.

@Owl1
I don’t even know how to take the whole frame rate thing. Some Reddit threads I found mentioned 50 fps as unplayable, which is nowhere near accurate.

@Professor_Plumber
It says it’s an 11th gen on the Amazon page.

@Professor_Plumber
I’ll definitely put in more research, but it seems better than dropping a fortune on a MacBook.( not that a mac would be good for games, but they seem to be the most popular laptop.)

@Link-Hero
That’s what I figured. My sisters each have one and they don’t seem anywhere worth the price.

Is it a bad idea to by a used or refurbished laptop. I’m thinking the Acer Nitro 5 might be the way to go, but it is a bit out of my price range if I buy a new one.

Also any suggestions for laptops are welcome, with a price range of 400$ - 600$.

@blindsquarel it's a pretty good gamble with both. But it is an option.

Lenovo Gaming Laptop IdeaPad 3i is the only other one I can think of but that might even be a bit out of the question.

@Owl1
I’ll add the Lenovo to the list. Would it be able to run Minecraft with good shaders? That’s probably the most graphics intensive I would go on it.

@blindsquarel Hopefully this video can go some way to helping you make a final decision. It's a pretty all encompassing look at the things to look out for, as well as the potential pitfalls people fall into when buying a new gaming laptop.

Jarrod's Tech has been around for some time now, with his specialism being gaming laptops. He's good friends with Hardware Unboxed, another channel I highly recommend for all things desktop and has built up quite a following, so a pretty reliable source, all things considered.

@blindsquarel just watch that video @Jalex__64 sent.

@Jalex__64 @Owl1
Alright, thanks for the help!

Looks like it finally happened. There is now a GPU on the market that is (almost) twice as fast as my 1660Ti at a price that's (more or less) the same as what I paid for my 1660Ti pre-COVID. And without the massive * on that statement like there was with the Arc GPUs. RX 7600, not bad. Although it is, unfortunately, only able to do that by consuming almost twice as much power. Which is a bit of a pain given I would be putting this in a SFF case with a 550W PSU. It would probably be fine but still, probably not enough for me to upgrade yet I don't think....

Now there is the 4060Ti which has power consumption sitting at around the same as my 1660Ti with the ability to perform a fair chunk more than 2X. Also with DLSS being substantially better than what the competition is doing. Different story there. Despite the whine about it, as a product? The 4060Ti looks pretty good. But only if you ignore the price and, well, the 4060Ti is still living in COVID era land and is absurdly overpriced. The RX 7600 is ~$460AU, the 4060Ti is ~$730AU.... absolutely ridiculous....

I usually go with around a 5 year upgrade cycle so, we're not that far off that now. But in some ways we're still a ways off that. The market is certainly looking nicer than it did a year or so ago but even so, it should be looking more compelling than this 4 years into my "5 year upgrade cycle"

Well, I’m finally upgrading my PC from a GTX 1050 and a Ryzen 3 2200g to a Ryzen 5 3600 and an RTX 4060 in June and July. I’m so excited!

Anyone here hyped about D4 Launch in 10 hours ?

After weeks of contemplating getting a Steam Deck, I got to try out my friend's for a bit this weekend.

And...I'm entirely put off by the form factor. It's not necessarily that it's too big overall (I was surprised by how light it felt, tbh), but moreso the ergonomics. Analog sticks are way too far in (and even too large for a handheld device, I'd argue). I can see this not been too bad for someone with larger hands, but it's definitely not for me. I also personally have no use for the touch pads, so they're a massive waste of space in my eyes.

My eye's on the ROG Ally but tbh I'm a little put off by it essentially running vanilla Windows. One of the things that impressed me the most about the Steam Deck was how well Steam OS captured the console experience. At £700 it'd also way too much money for something that (i) is only gonna be an alternative to my existing gaming laptop, and (ii) will probably only get a fraction of the action my Switch is getting anyway.

I honestly don't know what the internals of these things look like, but I think it's a shame that they're missing out on one of the Switch's coolest features: the modularity. I would love to have a Steam Deck-like tablet device that I could plug my joy-cons (or similar equivalents) into.

100% agree.

I am looking forward to The Talos Principle 2 to be honest. Love an intellectual challenge from time to time. Road to Gehenna fried my brain a tiny bit.