Jon Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 I'm trying to get away with bare-bones minimum here. First, I live in South Australia if that changes anything. (I do most of my computer shopping at MSY a.k.a. DIY computers.) This is for a 10 year old kid who's started learning Lua in a basic Lua compiler in the hopes of getting a Linux laptop with Leadwerks for Christmas. The laptop catalogue I was looking through was this one. http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/notebook.pdf If I were to buy a $300 laptop, would that be powerful enough to engage him until he's ready to run it on something massive? Or would even performing the most basic and simplest of tasks take a week? Not looking for something super fast, but I don't want features to fail to run at all because of hardware failure. Could someone give me a sense of how much bang for my buck each amount of bucks will get me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 Are you hoping the $300 laptop would run Leadwerks? I would be shocked if a $300 laptop would run Leadwerks. I think you'd be better off getting a tower PC so that you can upgrade it later and put in new gfx cards over time, which is what really matters with any game/game engine. Laptop gfx cards seem to be hit and miss and just bad in general. I guess for me the ability to upgrade components is far greater than portability for my game dev machine. Something to note, right now Leadwerks doesn't need a high end gfx cards, but I still see people with laptops (maybe older) complaining it won't run Leadwerks. However, when the deferred renderer in introduced to Leadwerks it'll need good gfx card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YouGroove Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 Laptop gfx cards seem to be hit and miss and just bad in general. I guess for me the ability to upgrade components is far greater than portability for my game dev machine. Nope , even myl old lap Top with radeon HD 7670, can still run not so old games iwth shaders or Leadwerks 3. It depends if you plan mobile little games , a lap top will be enought. Even if LE3 grow or have deferred, i hope in project menu the choice to make a deferred or non deferred game ! LE 3 i hope will keep running on low platforms, caus if you develeop simple mobile platforming game wihtout special shader and little games you should not need a big PC. You won't travel and have your tower PC with you every where, if your work makes you travel. Indeed i prefer to dvelop in my PC tower, more power, more fluid, but when i travel, the laptop is super usefull. Quote Stop toying and make games Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 It's for a 10 year old kid. I'm thinking his travel time is light:) Also most of these cheap laptops come with intel gfx cards which generally seem fairly crappy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YouGroove Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 I agree, for a kid not good and avoid intel a lot Quote Stop toying and make games Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted July 14, 2013 Author Share Posted July 14, 2013 Yes, "hit and miss" is exactly why I posted. One more detail... It will be running the kickstarter version of leadwerks on Linux. So, dual booting. However, the using that version should be able to milk a bit more power out of it. So yeah, running "at all" is prioraty here. If it runs slowly, that's hardly an issue for now. I fully agree that tower beats laptop in every way imaginable more than most people can even imagine. However, without going into too much detail, it needs to be a laptop. It's just one of those situations. Also, not buying the laptop yet. Just getting a sense of the market. The purchase will be made before Christmas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 Generally, I find that laptops are overpriced and not very good when it comes to 3D graphics. However, if you are looking for a cheap laptop to do basic 3D graphics I would just make sure the CPU has an Intel HD 4000 graphics chip. If you can find anything with an AMD A-Series APU, that's even better. An A6 or better would provide decent performance. Mind you, these may only run the OpenGL 2 fallback, and might not be capable of OpenGL 4 graphics, which is the new fancy renderer we're working on. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Posted July 14, 2013 Author Share Posted July 14, 2013 I generally find laptops are over-priced junk when it comes to EVERYTHING. If a laptop has Intel HD 4000 graphics chip, is it safe to assume it has everything else it needs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 Lenovo builds decent and affordable Laptops. Quote LINUX: Viagra for the PC. running Slackware GNU/Linux since 1996 Linux Developer Windows is a 32 bit shell for a 16 bit extension to an 8 bit Operating System designed for a 4 bit microchip by a 2 bit company which can't stand one bit of competition You can protect yourself from the 12/21/12 thing by not using the US short hand date format 21/12/12 ... Nope, that doesn't work 12/12/21 ... Doesn't work either Crisis averted... EVE-Online exclusive 21-day trial Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Posted July 14, 2013 Share Posted July 14, 2013 I generally find laptops are over-priced junk when it comes to EVERYTHING. If a laptop has Intel HD 4000 graphics chip, is it safe to assume it has everything else it needs? Yes, but it may not run our high-end graphics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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