Upgrade for ME2 & NMS advice.

General discussion (space-sim gaming, astronomy, and sci-fi entertainment in general, etc.).
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matchbox2022
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Joined: Fri Nov 13, 2015 3:21 pm

Upgrade for ME2 & NMS advice.

Post by matchbox2022 »

I'd love some advice for gaming...

No Man's Sky is coming out, and I'm trying to find something that will give me a fairly decent experience playing it.

Seeing as my budget is 600$, I doubt seriously that I'd find a laptop with a good enough video card, MAYBE...a used desktop...MAYBE.

I was looking into external GPUs, but would like to find a cheap laptop that can support it, any ideas?

Also, if I went the desktop route, has anyone here converted their laptops screens into a desktop screen? (gasp) I've yet to do that, but seeing as I'll have a worthless laptop sitting around, it does have a perfectly good 1080p LCD screen. (Which I've basically fallen in love with).

PS. It'd be nice if the onboard laptop route GPU could support Mass Effect 2 in all its glory

My current laptop "can" do mass effect 2, but not in picture perfect mode, still hella fun though, just bought it!

Worst case scenario, I'd likely pick up a precision with a quadro fx 3800m in it, that'd at least kick ME2's @$$...however it wouldn't be nearly enough for NMS

Current setup

E1705 Inspiron
675/750DDR3 7950 go gtx DX9 only 256bit memory bus
PCI-Express 1.1
32 bit Northbridge Intel ICH7 666Mhz
Memory 4GB 666 Mhz
2.83Ghz C2D


[Edited on 5-7-2016 by matchbox2022]
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Misunderstood Wookie
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Location: Australia

Upgrade for ME2 & NMS advice.

Post by Misunderstood Wookie »

My advice, if you really want to move away from this old laptop thing and play modern games.. put aside $550 go on computing forums you trust in your country and post an ad see who is selling.

Look for anything with AMD R7, R9 200 series or Nvidia 780 GTX or higher on the forums as complete systems with at least 8GB DDR3 and 550Watt PSU.

Laptops forget it mate sorry bro I know you love your lappy but you simply cannot just go hmm this needs a gpu and go get one second hand for $150 which will be 100x better you need physical replacement of the entire device and laptops are NOT cheap you would get a better desktop for the money you would likely want to spend than a better laptop.

Basically just put your feelers out on trusted forums you know for second hand systems and gear and build yourself something under $600, you could even buy the mobo and ram and SSD and look for second hand GPU and PSU can easily be done for under $600.

Your ONLY alternative would be home made external GPU adaptors really this is all I have for you, you NEED one of the cards from the range above preferably the higher tier the better for NMS and ME2 Is great I finished it a long time ago but lets face it my Wii U can play ME3 and its a console... :P

Get my point you need a new pc bro, If looking at cards my advice is start with the Nvidia 700 series those are cheapest options probably can get the 780 which is the top end of that series for under $100, moving up you got the mid range AMD R7 series then finally the low end of the R9 Series so a R9 28x from AMD at the most expensive end.

Forget about Nvidia 970's 980's and AMD R9 39X's those are the cream of the crop range the top tier cards.

You might be able to get hold of an R9 370 or something though which would be pretty damn good at about everything today on medium. Just work out what you want to spend and take the advice with some salt just look around.
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