Gaming notebook on a budget

[Mike Hunt]

Tbh, I'm a bit intimidated by the prospect of building my own rig primarily because of how sensitive a lot of the components are. I might go for a premade one depending on how easily upgradable it is. Don't need anything too fancy right now; my only criteria is that if it can run Doom 2016, Witcher 3, and Duke Nukem 3D without shitting itself then I'm good.

How efficient is a mini-ITX case? It sounds like a good idea for a dormroom, though my concern is cooling and how easy it is to upgrade the components. If it's between that and a regular desktop, I want to know which is a better option.

It's plenty efficient on my end, but that's more because I have no plans to overclock, so I don't need the extra space needed to install liquid cooling. Stock CPU fans and case fans work fine for my purposes. That said, not all ITX cases are made equal, so depending on what dimensions you're gonna place your rig in, you can actually get ITX cases that have support for cooling, or full-size video cards, etc.

The thing I learned when building my ITX rig is the importance of decent cable management. You can get lazy with that, but you'll find it hard to upgrade components down the line because some cables needed to be temporarily removed to access a slot and the like when with proper management, you don't need to remove said cables.

If you're buying premade, though, you won't encounter these problems. Also, premades can be upgraded like other rigs that are self-built, so no need to worry about that.

Also, where can I find the premade PCs?

I'm not sure where you're located, and I haven't really bought a prebuilt PC before, but here's a company that has a prebuilt with an ITX case and seems to ship all over the world: Origin

If it's between that and a regular desktop, I want to know which is a better option.

If you have the space for a full tower, I'd still recommend that, simply because it's more flexible, in general. More drive bays to use, being able to use dual video cards down the line if you want it, etc.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Gotta be honest, this is all pretty illuminating for me. I've always wanted to get into PC gaming but the issue is I often feel overwhelmed in trying to figure out what's the right way to build a PC and if it can run the games I want.

Last year, I got a new laptop for school after my old one died. The graphics and core are by AMD; specifically it's got a Radeon graphics card and Ryzen 5 processors. It sounded impressive, more advanced than my 10 year old desktop and my old tiny-ass laptop. Since it was modern I figured that it could probably run Doom 2016, but sadly it chugged along at 30 fps even at the lowest settings. And that's when I found out AMD doesn't work well with the old games I like, especially the ones that run with OpenGL, which constitutes something like 90-95% of what I play on my computer (partially out of necessity and partially because I love older PC games). It can some modern-ish games pretty well, but the problem is, as most people mentioned, the laptop gets disturbingly hot. I dunno, I can understand it when it's playing an intensive game like Mass Effect, but I don't think a computer should start burning my hands when it's playing something graphically simplistic like Dusk.

What I want is a computer that can fill that happy medium for me; something that can play the handful of modern games I want to play while also not stuttering playing old games. At first I thought about getting a laptop specifically for gaming because as a college student I don't quite have the luxury of space to build a PC in the dormroom, but after careful consideration from the comments in this thread, I think building is the better way to go.

Is it a Ryzen with Vega cores for graphics? Those aren't spectacular, not having any dedicated graphics memory it uses the normal RAM and shares the bandwidth with the CPU, not ideal, it's also affected by the speed/type of RAM in the system. Lowering the resolution or display scaling should help out.

If older games(post-DOS, pre-multicore) are hitching/jerking, something that happens on Intel systems as well, it probably runs on several cores which it was never meant to do and uses a clock cycle count to keep "time" between frames. Different cores have different cycle counts so the game misinterprets how many milliseconds have passed, everything from animation to displaying rendered frames uses that counter and if time skips around it will be real jerky.

An easy way to solve this is to start the game ten open task manager(ctrl-shift-esc) and go to the details tab(running processes), find and right click the game process and click "set affinity", then restrict it to a single core.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Is it a Ryzen with Vega cores for graphics? Those aren't spectacular, not having any dedicated graphics memory it uses the normal RAM and shares the bandwidth with the CPU, not ideal, it's also affected by the speed/type of RAM in the system. Lowering the resolution or display scaling should help out.

To answer your question, yes. I don't know much about graphics memory but this makes sense. I wonder how many modern games will perform better but on the other hand I'm still a little miffed that Dusk and Blood make my computer sound like a damn plane engine despite the fact those games aren't intensive. Blood especially since that game is 20 years old.

If older games(post-DOS, pre-multicore) are hitching/jerking, something that happens on Intel systems as well, it probably runs on several cores which it was never meant to do and uses a clock cycle count to keep "time" between frames. Different cores have different cycle counts so the game misinterprets how many milliseconds have passed, everything from animation to displaying rendered frames uses that counter and if time skips around it will be real jerky.

An easy way to solve this is to start the game ten open task manager(ctrl-shift-esc) and go to the details tab(running processes), find and right click the game process and click "set affinity", then restrict it to a single core.

DOS games aren't so much the issue I find. It's usually games that run in OpenGL that give me trouble. I've learned that AMD in particular doesn't run OpenGL too well compared to Nvidia. When I said Duke Nukem 3D, I was more talking about its source port, eDuke, which runs on OpenGL.

I tried the core processor thing with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and it didn't help at all with the stuttering. I've found that using OpenGL triple buffering helps out tremendously with maintaining a more stable framerate, especially with early 3D games. Unfortunately, because of how the AMD graphics options are set up, I can't do that with certain games such as source ports and some old games I got off GOG.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

To answer your question, yes. I don't know much about graphics memory but this makes sense. I wonder how many modern games will perform better but on the other hand I'm still a little miffed that Dusk and Blood make my computer sound like a damn plane engine despite the fact those games aren't intensive. Blood especially since that game is 20 years old.



DOS games aren't so much the issue I find. It's usually games that run in OpenGL that give me trouble. I've learned that AMD in particular doesn't run OpenGL too well compared to Nvidia. When I said Duke Nukem 3D, I was more talking about its source port, eDuke, which runs on OpenGL.

I tried the core processor thing with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and it didn't help at all with the stuttering. I've found that using OpenGL triple buffering helps out tremendously with maintaining a more stable framerate, especially with early 3D games. Unfortunately, because of how the AMD graphics options are set up, I can't do that with certain games such as source ports and some old games I got off GOG.

Huh. It might be that Dusk and Blood are running at a billion frames per second but only displaying 60 of them(per second). I think I heard that Dusk had a bug like that, turn on V-Sync if that is off and see what happens.

Triple-buffering helps with performance at the cost of latency but it's weird that your computer have trouble running something as old as KOTOR, that game could be played at 1080p with all kinds of anti-aliasing 10 years ago. Have you tried putting it in compatibility mode for Windows 2000/XP? (right click .exe, go to compatibility)

AMD shouldn't have trouble with OpenGL, especially Vulkan, unless you're talking about Linux drivers. Way back when the graphics card division was still a separate company named ATI they had OpenGL troubles. Oh, remember to update the graphics drivers, that's especially important on laptops in my experience.

And take a look at this video captured from a laptop running a Ryzen 2500U with Vega, expand the description and there's time codes for different games, how does that compare to your games running?

Gaming on AMD Ryzen 5 2500U Vega 8 Part 1. 20 Games Test. Ryzen Mobile Review

Part 2: https://youtu.be/IqGnYR_bNIg A Share or a Like helps a lot with that youtube algorithm and getting the word out. Thank you! Ryzen 5 2500U all Tests: ...

www.youtube.com

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Huh. It might be that Dusk and Blood are running at a billion frames per second but only displaying 60 of them(per second). I think I heard that Dusk had a bug like that, turn on V-Sync if that is off and see what happens.

Would that cause occasional stuttering too? Because I get that sometimes. Blood already had VSync on so that might be because I had it at a high resolution. I should note that I'm talking about the remaster that came out this year, but even with source ports I experienced these issues.

Triple-buffering helps with performance at the cost of latency but it's weird that your computer have trouble running something as old as KOTOR, that game could be played at 1080p with all kinds of anti-aliasing 10 years ago. Have you tried putting it in compatibility mode for Windows 2000/XP? (right click .exe, go to compatibility)

KOTOR ran like total shit until I turned on triple-buffering. I tried damn near everything before that. Compatability mode, adjusting the core processors, lowering the graphics options, and I was still hit with horrendous stuttering. I still get the occasional hiccup with triple buffering on, but it's been mitigated.

AMD shouldn't have trouble with OpenGL, especially Vulkan, unless you're talking about Linux drivers

I dunno, whenever I looked up that my computer was running an old game poorly, people would say that AMD can't process it as well. And since it was such a recurring issue I came to believe that was the problem. At the same time, those people would be recommending Nvidia so I have to wonder if they were actually shills.

Oh, remember to update the graphics drivers, that's especially important on laptops in my experience.

Ohhh fuck, trying to update the drivers was like pulling teeth. No one tells you how to do it with a laptop and there are no clear instructions on AMD's website on how to do so. I still can't remember how I did it the first time and the thought of doing it again makes me sweat.

And take a look at this video captured from a laptop running a Ryzen 2500U with Vega, expand the description and there's time codes for different games, how does that compare to your games running?

I don't own any of the games in the video, at least not on PC, so I don't know how accurate they're going to represent my laptop. I find that my laptop does best with games from the late 2000s-early 2010s. Games like BioShock and Mass Effect run pretty well, which is also the latest date I buy games (indie games like Dusk don't count).

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Would that cause occasional stuttering too? Because I get that sometimes. Blood already had VSync on so that might be because I had it at a high resolution. I should note that I'm talking about the remaster that came out this year, but even with source ports I experienced these issues.

Ohhh fuck, trying to update the drivers was like pulling teeth. No one tells you how to do it with a laptop and there are no clear instructions on AMD's website on how to do so. I still can't remember how I did it the first time and the thought of doing it again makes me sweat.

It sounds like it could be driver related. It's figuring out drivers that makes PC gaming so fantastic, there's that sense of mystery you don't get with consoles where games just work.

Here's the latest drivers for the Ryzen 5 mobile with Vega, it should just be downloading and installing them, the old ones should ideally be uninstalled first but it's usually not necessary.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/apu/amd-ryzen-processors/amd-ryzen-5-mobile-processors-radeon-vega-graphics/amd-ryzen-5

 

[huckbeine]

If the OP is still lurking on this thread, I would recommend this laptop. Cause I have it.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-tuf-gaming-fx505dy-15-6-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-5-8gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-560x-256gb-solid-state-drive-black/6333487.p?skuId=6333487

The price is basically 700. I bought mine for 600 bucks, but it was configured with 1 TB hard drive instead of SSD. The CPU is basically a 4c/8t HQ processor, and the graphics card is equivalent to GTX 1050. It plays every new game on medium-high, lightweight, lighter than my 2-in-1 laptop (then again it uses a aluminum body). I play RE2 and some other games on medium-high settings, with 60 fps comfortably, and the fans are not too noisy.
It is the best laptop for price/performance ratio in terms of gaming on a budget.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

Ohhh fuck, trying to update the drivers was like pulling teeth. No one tells you how to do it with a laptop and there are no clear instructions on AMD's website on how to do so. I still can't remember how I did it the first time and the thought of doing it again makes me sweat.

Download the driver auto detect tool from AMD's support site. If you Google 'amd laptop drivers' it takes you right there. Once you have them installed, just open the AMD control panel (it'll be called different things depending on your GPU, but there should be an icon in your task bar for it) periodically and click 'check for updates'.