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<p style="font-weight: 400;">Daughter’s Christmas list appears to be an extremely expensive gaming laptop/pc. She appears to want me to spend more than I have ever spent on any electronic device for her to play games on. There are obviously all the knock on benefits of her being overtired irritable and ratty, but I guess she is already like that when playing on her modest laptop…</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Anyway, I am not a gamer. My limited experience on Spectrums, Arcades and early 90s games consoles does not provide me with much knowledge or experience to ensure I don’t buy a lemon. Obviously I could play it safe and shell out the price of a guided biking holiday in the Alps on a leading brand gaming computer from Dell etc, but I have an expensive cycling habit to feed and limited resources. This means I need something more at the bargain end of the cost range, but this poses a lot more risk to getting it wrong.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Recommendations, advice, pitfalls, putting me, telling me not to be such a tight wad and most other things would be welcome.</p>
<p style="font-weight: 400;">Amazon brings up some AMD Ryzen desktop PC thing with what appears to be a reasonable sounding spec and a Radeon Veg 8 graphics processor for £411.</p>
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Try this thread for a starter for 10 and some advice: 'cheap' gaming laptop on hotukdeals
That link is probably about your minimum if you need it to be a laptop. For a desktop you could maybe get something around 550-600 if she already has a monitor etc.
It does depend what she wants to play but it's unlikely anything for £400 on Amazon will be much good. Still a lot of money for a Christmas present.
How old is she, what games does she want to play and why does she want a laptop instead of a desktop?
A "gaming" laptop is going to be either hideously expensive or crap, and in any case will probably be obsolete in a couple of years. A desktop is almost certainly a better choice unless she's got a specific need for portability (and she's already got a general purpose laptop for that).
Depending on what she actually wants to play, a PS4 / Xbox One might be a better choice.
What does she actually want to play? It will be at least twice as much compared with a console to get her laptop with sufficient clout to run the latest releases well.
Plus laptop keyboards are rubbish for gaming.
Cheers for the replies.
Sims seems to be the main thing at the moment and her current laptop lags terribly.
As for desktop or laptop, a desktop does seem to be easier to alter in the future
I think I <span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">have an old 23 inch monitor in the garage...</span>
Goes to have a nose on hotdeals while cooking dinner and trying to get ready for a Wednesday night northern chapter ride out of Hartsop.
Sims is available on console. If there's no PC specific games shes playing currently. Console will by far be your best option. Xbox One X is comparable graphically to £600 PC I reckon. Then there's the cheaper S version which wont do 4k.
This is how green I am. I never even thought of a console. That is a lot cash cheaper 😎 - many thanks!
Her saved game might be a problem though, if it's on PC (Unless I am equally green and all this is on the 'cloud' now.)
A console makes sense unless there is another reason she might need a PC.
As has been said a good gaming laptop is very expensive (well over £1000), you don't need one for The Sims though. Desktop would be better and if a console has all the games she wants then not a bad shout either (although with both options you do lose the freedom of not being attached to a monitor/TV). There's mobile versions of The Sims to so iPad etc might be an option but really depends on what other games she plays/may want to play in future
The sims recommended system requirements are as follows (from their page):
- CPU: Intel Core i5-750 or AMD Athlon X4
- CPU SPEED: Info
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: 64 Bit Windows 7,8, or 8.1
- VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 or better
- PIXEL SHADER: 5.0
- VERTEX SHADER: 5.0
- SOUND CARD: Yes
- FREE DISK SPACE: 10 GB
- DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 1024 MB
Almost any reasonable laptop will be able to play this game with ease.
However with cheap laptops, comes cheap builds. As people have mentioned above, a console or a desktop might be a cheaper option. The added benefit of the console is consistent performance.
Do you have the specs of the current laptop?
What’s up with Sims4 laptops this year! I’ve had at least 3 requests from clients for their kids this year.
Its a pretty old game so will run on most things with a GPU, it’ll probably play on onboard graphics with a modern CPUs (even the base model i3 can handle 4K video now) but I wouldn’t gamble on it.
The danger is that there’s a million upgrade packs for it, hence it’s longevity and they might be more resource hungry, but it still doesn’t need anything fancy.
As above Laptop gaming is expensive and ultimatley a dead end if she wants to move onto bigger games down the road.
Consoles are great and will run it fine, but if her mates are on PC she might as well not play (I assume it’s multiplayer).
She has an Asus X54HY with I3 processor and I did upgrade the RAM to possibly 4, 6 or 8gb but can't remember. It does have a dedicated GPU but it is quite a basic Radeon 6470M so 512mb. Not sure of the other bits other than it has onboard sound and not dedicated card.
Not sure she hooks up with others on Sims.
The danger is that there’s a million upgrade packs for it
... some of which may not be available on a console, and all of which will need buying again if she already has them on PC.