KSP Supporting laptop

[amr426]

Hello all,

I love this game and I would like to upgrade my system so that I can actually enjoy the experience. Currently I have an HP pavilion g6, crappy amd 1.9GHZ CPU and a crappier integrated graphics card, It lags an unbelievable amount. I would prefer not to spend to far upwards of $600 on this upgrade. So first my big question.

1. How important is it to have a dedicated GPU for kerbal? Can I get away with a powerful i5 or i7 and an Intel hd 4000 integrated chip?

These are the computers I am currently looking at.

-Lenovo IdeaPad P500: 15.6", 6GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 3rd Gen i5 2.6GHz and boost up to 3.2GHz, Intel hd 4000 ($500)

-Acer Aspire V3-571-9401: 15.6", 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, i7 2.2GHz boost up to 3.2GHZ, Intel hd 4000 ($569)

-Lenovo G505s: 15.6", 6GM RAM, 500GBHDD, A8-5550M 2.1 GHz, AMD Radeon HD 8570M 2gb video card ($529)

If anyone has an idea on a budget gaming laptop, your addition is much appreciated. I also want this to be able to do basic every day task and some light video editing.

Thank you!

-

[Stranded]

Bump. Anyone? I am using an old T61 Lenovo, and while it's bearable to a point I am also thinking of upgrading. I am currently searching through the forum for the best laptop so any laptop suggestions or some real world experience with the hardware would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Found one that I am searching through now - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/39956-Laptop-recommendation

Edited December 15, 2013 by Stranded
added link

[sal_vager]

KSP needs a fair bit of CPU power now, and you'd really want either an Nvidia or an AMD graphics card in there, Intel is okay but may not work for KSP.

You'd be looking for a "Desktop replacement" type of laptop

[TechnicalK3rbal]

KSP needs a fair bit of CPU power now, and you'd really want either an Nvidia or an AMD graphics card in there, Intel is okay but may not work for KSP.

You'd be looking for a "Desktop replacement" type of laptop

Which from my experiences doesn't exist.

[Awaras]

I have a i5 laptop (2 ghz) with 8 gigs of ram, with both a gforce gt 630m and the intel hd 4000 and the performance difference between running KSP on the two is extreme. with the intel hd I get lag on the launchpad even with a 3 part rocket, while with the gforce I have smooth fps even with craft made of 3-500 parts. The difference is less noticeable in space, tho. The terrain seems to be a bit hard on the GPU...

Edited December 15, 2013 by Awaras

[sal_vager]

Which from my experiences doesn't exist.

Oh I dunno

[TechnicalK3rbal]

My experience, meaning my using a laptop. Which may have had 1gb of ram...

[Dispatcher]

If anyone has an idea on a budget gaming laptop, your addition is much appreciated. I also want this to be able to do basic every day task and some light video editing. Thank you!

That's somewhat contradictory, given that you want a budget laptop for gaming and video editing. Sure, a budget machine can play the game. But the questions are, how well and what will it look like? The Intel integrated GPUs cannot perform as well as a graphics card. You should also consider that you may want to play other games besides KSP. Please bear with me here:

Whatever you decide on, below is the closest thing to a gaming laptop that Apple offers. If you got KSP via Steam, there would be no need to repurchase the game. The machine is over 5 times your budget, so its given only for reference, so that you will feel better about the Windows laptop that you decide on (in terms of cost):

OSX Mavericks (inc. iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Safari), 15.4 inch MacBook Pro, LED backlit Retina display (2880 x 1800 pixels), 2.6 GHz Quad core Intel i7 CPU (boosts to 3.8), 512 GB PCIe flash (SSD) storage, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM, full size backlit keyboard, Intel Iris Pro graphics and Nvidia Ge Force GT 750M with 2 GB GDDR5 memory, integrated lithium-polymer 95 watt hr battery (up to 8 hours wireless web), 85 watt power adapter, 2 USB 3 ports, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, HD camera, 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports (can use adapters for other connectivity), 0.71 inches thick, 4.46 pounds. Note that Mavericks uses memory compression, so 16 GB RAM would behave more like 24 GB RAM. It would set you back about $3,000 after taxes; $3,500 if you want a 1 TB SSD instead of the 512 GB SSD. I suppose that if you are unsure of your mentioned laptop choices above, remember that a $600 risk is obviously less costly than choosing Apple's pricey laptop or other gaming laptop (edit:) with the exception of sal_vager's recommendation being nearer your budget).

Edited December 15, 2013 by Dispatcher

[Stranded]

Thanks for the replies guys. At this point for me my current laptop is so slow I think I switch from FPS (frames per second) to SPF (seconds per frame) around the 400 part mark on a craft. I built one yesterday that has around 600 parts, and it was miserable. I have a faster desktop, but some scripts are running on it currently so it will be a couple more days before I can move the save files over and test this on a faster machine. While having a super custom built desktop is the ideal situation, I like the ability to pick up my laptop and drag it to the couch if I want to play around, or even have others watch some gameplay. We all get the convenience of a laptop.. Between this thread and the other I think it will at least help me find something other than this Etch A Sketch (with full apologies to Ohio Art) that I am currently playing on.

Oh, and sal_vager, that Novatech Elite N1725 is drool worthy! I don't even want to convert it to american dollars...

[amr426]

Thanks for the discussion guys. I updated the game (finally) and it's running better now, on lowest graphics settings, but I still think I'll do the upgrade. Does anyone have input on a specific machine?

[ZedNova]

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-G505s-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00CRXZUD0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387301145&sr=8-1&keywords=Lenovo+G505s

This should work nicely. It's not as pretty, but it's got the power you want.

[astropapi1]

...And a crappier integrated graphics card...

That's my main problem now.

-"Oh, so you're looking for a gaming computer?"

-"yep"

-"Look, we've got this great HP Paviilion g4 blah blah blah."

Well, my computer arrived and now it turns out I can't play games because it has an intel integrated graphics card. Yeah, blame it on my stupidity. I thought a gaming laptop would be great and didn't mind checking the laptop's graphics card. I can't even upgrade it.

Even though, I've done some launches with 300+ ships and my game didn't crash. It's a matter of changing the water rendering settings on the configuration file, and having almost all the settings to the lowest. I love ground scatter and smooth lines.

[Daid]

Running on a HP EliteBook 8560p, runs nice with medium to low settings, but some mods drag it to a crawl.

A good laptop to game on is quite a difficult task, my desktop (not sure on the specs) runs KSP better, just because it has a better video card, the rest in my desktop is all worse compared to the laptop.