laptop help

[Techmum]

My son is a big fan of ksp and wants to run it on a laptop. The more research I do the more confused I become. Any suggestions for laptops up to about £500 please?

[LABHOUSE]

Wrong section.

[Commander Jebidiah]

This should be in the off duty sub-forum and welcome to the forums.

chanses are you wont be able to run ksp amazinly on a laptop for under £500.

My laptop can run ships with the real time till i have a 60 part ship but above that it starts to lag

Also my laptop cost £320 plus an extra 8GB of RAM at £89.99

so thats £409.99 for my s**t laptop im currently saving up to buy partsfor a desktop.

Bottom line is for a laptop to run KSP Decently you'll have to spend between £800 and £1200

whereas you can run it decently with a £500 Desktop PC or build one with the same specs for about £350 to £500

[Ival70]

What OS are you thinking of getting? I believe macs still currently have a few small issues, but these will all probably be sorted out in time. Also here is a thread that might be useful:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/42877-CPU-Performance-Database

And here is the KSP system specs wiki page:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/System_Specs

[Technical Ben]

It is going to be hard for that spec. KSP will need a dedicated graphics card in most instances, a mid to high range (not entry range), and it's generally only something only more expensive Laptops will do.

CPU is also going to need to be up to spec too.

Look for a laptop with an i5 Dual core (1.8GHz normal, which will "boost" to 2.7GHz when it can), with 4GB to 8gb of ram. A good graphics card. The Asus X550CC-XO108H seems close. It has a NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 720M - 2GB DDR3.

Does anyone know if the above would play the game at a reasonable frame rate?

[astropapi1]

Don't get a laptop for playing KSP. Trust me, I'm on a laptop and can't wait to build myself a desktop PC.

Desktops are cheaper and more capable than most high-end laptops, and their only disadvantage is that you can't travel with them.

[Ival70]

It is going to be hard for that spec. KSP will need a dedicated graphics card in most instances, a mid to high range (not entry range), and it's generally only something only more expensive Laptops will do.

CPU is also going to need to be up to spec too.

Look for a laptop with an i5 Dual core (1.8GHz normal, which will "boost" to 2.7GHz when it can), with 4GB to 8gb of ram. A good graphics card. The Asus X550CC-XO108H seems close. It has a NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 720M - 2GB DDR3.

Does anyone know if the above would play the game at a reasonable frame rate?

A desktop is definitely the way to go, though I know some people need to have a laptop for other things.

A decent laptop can run KSP with 15+fps as long as the part count stays low. (Though I'm certainly no expert on the matter).

I was always under the impression that KSP didn't really utilize graphics cards that well, and that the real bottleneck is the CPU due to the huge amount of physics calculations.

Also, this thread may be useful. (It's different from the first I posted):

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25004-KSP-Unofficial-Official-Computer-Building-Megathread-%28All-Questions-Acceptable-%29

Edited November 3, 2014 by Ival70

[jfx]

Pretty meagre, only one Offer with i5 and dedicated GPU geforce 825M - still craptastic 1366p display and plastic case:

http://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&bpmax=0-500&v=e&filter=update&bl1_id=30&sort=p&xf=28_2500~29_Core+i5-4#xf_top

> Avoid notebooks for gaming if possible.

> KSP will run OK on a Intel HD4600, don't expect wonders and add a second RAM module for dual channel operation. Part Mods will crush it pretty fast though.

I run KSP on a lenovo z510 (i5, decent 1080p display) I got for 350 pounds, they don't seem to be on sale in the UK though.

[SpaceMouse]

I run KSP on a desktop like everything else but, stock KSP never looked too hardware intensive to me. I can test it on the integrated card in my laptop if you like to see how it runs on a Intel HD4000 ( i think).... That they put in pretty much everything that isn't expensive.

I bought my laptop (Lenovo Y570) about 3 years ago for about $800 that converts to about 500 pounds, i can't imagine that would have any issue running KSP. It will run X-Plane-10 pretty well...

Edited November 3, 2014 by SpaceMouse

[Majorjim!]

Yup go for a desktop PC.

My friend bought a Rock gaming laptop for around £3000.

It was, at the time, the worlds fastest.

My £1500 PC was faster.

MJ

[andrew123]

I just built myself a desktop almost a year ago. Here's the full specs: (I'd recommend going the intel route, though. I just got the vishera cpu due to my AMD fanboysim. 'slowly hides NVIDIA GPU').

FX 6300 - CM TX3 - EVGA ACX SC GTX 760 - CX500 - Gigabyte 970a-d3p - 256 GB SSD + 32 GB SSD - 750 GB HDD + 1 TB HDD - ASUS PB278Q 1440p IPS monitor - Lite On DVD drive - WinTV-HVR-1250 - ASUS Xonar DX - Rosewill Challenger - 2 module 8 GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 RAM - Sennheiser HD 280

Note that various parts of my current PC were scavenged from two laptops, an old oem dell desktop, and a Playstation 3 (long story).

I do have some extra hdd's and monitors laying around.

I also have a hexa-core i7 CPU without a motherboard. Never found a need to buy an expensive mobo for a better proc.

Some pics of the 'clean' 'cable management'.

The Franken Desktop.

I admit the picture is terrible. I blame it on the terrible lighting.

Edited November 4, 2014 by andrew123

[SpaceMouse]

'gaming' capable laptops are indeed expensive. Desktops are always the better deal. I can however confirm it will run in a technically playable state at (very) low settings on a HD3000 around 10-15fps... So i suppose it depends how you define 'playable'.

My desktop is also built and fairly recent, although it recycled several parts and was mostly intended for X-plane 10. I haz 3 monitors.

Edited November 4, 2014 by SpaceMouse

[Giggleplex777]

You can build a pretty decent desktop for that much. I'm not sure about laptops, but as long as it has a good graphics card it should be fine (preferably an Nvidia one; they feature Physx acceleration, which will dramatically improve performance).

[Starman4308]

Desktop is definitely the way to go for gaming. It's much easier to get components and custom-build, the selection for pre-built is better, and the equipment is cheaper, courtesy of not having to be stuffed into a tiny case (this also helps enormously with cooling). The only reason I use a laptop is because I got it as an undergrad, when I kept on shuttling between home and college, and this thing is a monster: 17.3", 7 pounds, and cost me the equivalent of £750. I will be replacing this thing with a desktop now that I've settled into grad school. That was with the advantage of being in the States, where Sager does most of its business: most other gaming laptop outfits will charge you more, or do the usual stupid stuff* to pad the price.

*Sell you a giant processor with no GPU or SSD, etc.

Gaming laptops also make terrible everyday laptops: they are usually big, heavy, and power-hungry beasts. There are things you can do to increase the range of power consumption, but at the end of the day, a gaming CPU is going to take more power at minimum draw than a more conservative chip, and either you have to fiddle with switchable graphics* or deal with having a power-hungry gaming GPU running 24/7.

*If you do go this route, the best technology I've seen is NVIDIA's Optimus technology, which can dynamically switch from the processor-onboard chip to the gaming GPU when you need it. It accomplishes this by having the screen always read from the onboard chip, and when the GPU is on, it simply dumps the screen output into the onboard chip. It isn't terribly compatible with Linux; the Bumblebee package tries its best, but it is problematic.

EDIT: Sorry about giving no specific recommendations for desktops, but as mentioned, I live in the States, and I'm not sure what the good outlets are for shopping in Great Britain.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Starman4308

[SpaceMouse]

That's what my laptop uses, mines only a 15" and really not that bulky. Battery life is actually also very good too, or it was until it decided it didn't want to work cuz it was more than a year and a half old. I took good care of that battery too....

[zekes]

My son is a big fan of ksp and wants to run it on a laptop. The more research I do the more confused I become. Any suggestions for laptops up to about £500 please?

I'm no expert on computers, but here's my experience...

More than one person can confirm this: the ASUS G74sx is the BEST LAPTOP You can buy. The price may be a bit high (typically $1500 USD) but I bought mine from a friend for 800, so you can probably get a good deal on one. It's wicked performance; i can run 1000 part ships in KSP with ease, and on max settings no less If you want to be a beast, get this thing. I've had mine for 8 months and i'm in love.

[andrew123]

I'm no expert on computers, but here's my experience...

More than one person can confirm this: the ASUS G74sx is the BEST LAPTOP You can buy. The price may be a bit high (typically $1500 USD) but I bought mine from a friend for 800, so you can probably get a good deal on one. It's wicked performance; i can run 1000 part ships in KSP with ease, and on max settings no less If you want to be a beast, get this thing. I've had mine for 8 months and i'm in love.

http://gentechpcforums.com/system-images/Asus/G74SX/Asus_G74SX_6.jpg

Yo, that laptop's not the 'best laptop one can buy'. It's completely subjective and use-case specific.

For example, my previous laptop had an i7 2670qm and a 6770m gpu, but was quite heavy. That forced me to replace it, for mobile use, with a 13 inch retina macbook pro (which cost 1500 dollars. )

Also, it's worth noting that the laptop Zekes mentioned is using a weaker cpu and a similar gpu to my old laptop. That ASUS laptop is 3 generations outdated in both the cpu and gpu.

If you're getting a new gaming laptop, I recommend this: http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GE60-Apache--033-15-6-Inch/dp/B00IMTQ44W/ref=sr_1_12?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1415144941&sr=1-12&keywords=gtx+870m

Yes, it uses a gtx 850m, but unless you're willing to spend north of 1500 dollars, this is quite a good deal. It still crushes the gtx 560m in the ASUS gaming laptop, which is even more impressive considering the sub 1200 dollar cost of the msi laptop.

Don't forget the msi apache also has a much newer, powerful, power efficient, and feature rich Intel processor.

But seriously, just build your own desktop.

Just my 2 cents.

Edited November 4, 2014 by andrew123

[Astronut]

I bought my Asus G75 back in 2012. It has been an outstanding laptop for me. KSP is silky smooth.

Gaming laptops are certainly expensive, but for some people it is the only solution. I spend a lot of time on the road for my job, so a desktop is not a good option for me.