Laptop. what do i need ?

stever1

stever1

Elderly n deluded I’m told.
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I was at a pals house last week, and whilst playing with his laptop i found out i still have all my old shoot em up games in a steam account.
They are all old games, Half-Life series. F.E.A.R series etc
I can't access them using my MacBook, so what do i need by way of a windows laptop to play them ?.
I looked in Curry's and the prices nearly made me cry. The chap immediately showed me to the £1200 end of the machines on display. I did tell him I'm 'yorkshire' but i think it went over his head.
So, what spec and what brand would be a good start
TIA for all help.
 
Not really thought about that. Don’t want to spend loads if I can avoid it.
 
How old is your MacBook? and, what size hard drive? I'm thinking dual boot. using Bootcamp. You could also do this with an external hard drive.
 
GSian said:
How old is your MacBook? and, what size hard drive? I'm thinking dual boot. using Bootcamp. You could also do this with an external hard drive.
Click to expand...
It’s about 2 years old, with a 512 gb SSD. I thought about bootcamp but don’t want to risk messing up my Mac . Didn’t know you could boot from an external drive.
 
Oh it's quite new. Have you looked at upgrading to 1tb SSD? I use 1tb MacBook that's dual boot. It may be complex booting from external, you'd have to instal Mac OS on the external and have windows on the internal.
 
Looking online the specs for those games is not major high - as they are older games. Ideally you'd want something to be able to play them at a good frame rate, and good visuals.

The main thing i'd look for is a Laptop with a dedicated video card.

Some options here; (change listing to price Low>high) some good options at circa £500-£600

 
From https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/half-life-system-requirements

Can I Run Half-Life?​

Half-Life system requirements state that you will need at least 4 GB of RAM. An Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU is required at a minimum to run Half-Life. The cheapest graphics card you can play it on is an NVIDIA GeForce 510.
Click to expand...


The above is a 16 year old Intel spec!

Even the cheapest Core i5 laptop at Argos should be adequate

I bought the Asus one listed on that page last year when it was discounted under the "student" promo after my previous Lenovo was no longer serviceable. I was in a hurry so paid High Street prices. I'm sure you can find a similar spec for less cash elsewhere.
 
I'm no techno geek, but I've had a couple of Dell laptops which go into a black boot screen and don't start properly (I had to set the battery idle at 5 minutes to put it back to sleep but even that was guarantee of waking up correctly)

I would NOT recommend anything by Dell.

I have a Lenovo for work stuff, but I've not tried it with games.

 
I’m getting a bit confused.
Wessie, are you saying any modern laptop will do ?
Don’t I need a dedicated graphics card ?
 
Get a console if the same titles are available there.
You’ll spend less, including re-buying the games.
 
stever1 said:
I’m getting a bit confused.
Wessie, are you saying any modern laptop will do ?
Don’t I need a dedicated graphics card ?
Click to expand...

I'm no gaming expert but they are old games - see https://9meters.com/technology/grap...ext=So the bottom line is,will be a good idea. which comments on the onboard GPU fitted to the cheapest laptop there

As the Scan link shows, you don't need to spend much more to get a dedicated graphics card. A lot depends on the requirement of the other games you want to play. Argos would want another £200 to get their entry level "gaming laptop"
 
er-minio said:
Get a console if the same titles are available there.
You’ll spend less, including re-buying the games.
Click to expand...
I’ve already got the games. They’re in my library on the steam app. That’s why I’m thinking about a laptop
 
GSian said:
How old is your MacBook? and, what size hard drive? I'm thinking dual boot. using Bootcamp. You could also do this with an external hard drive.
Click to expand...
Best of luck booting from an external drive with an apple silicone Mac.
 
cookie said:
Best of luck booting from an external drive with an apple silicone Mac.
Click to expand...
Yeah, realise after saying that, that it wouldn't boot to windows. But you could chose the external drive for the Mac OS to boot, With windows on the internal drive. and select the drive by holding down option key.

But, I'm not familiar with Apple Silicone, and what difference that would make.
 
Later Macs are very fussy about booting from any external drive. I found this out the hard way when my Super Duper clone no longer booted when my iMac's internal drive shat itself.
 
GSian said:
Yeah, realise after saying that, that it wouldn't boot to windows. But you could chose the external drive for the Mac OS to boot, With windows on the internal drive. and select the drive by holding down option key.

But, I'm not familiar with Apple Silicone, and what difference that would make.
Click to expand...
I don’t really want to mess around with my Mac. Don’t want to risk anything going wrong.
 
stever1 said:
I’ve already got the games. They’re in my library on the steam app. That’s why I’m thinking about a laptop
Click to expand...

Yep I understand that.

Apple Silicon is a different architecture than Intel, so booting into Windows as some people did using the previous Intel-based Macs doesn't work.
If one need, you could do emulation. It's fairly fast (I use it a couple of times a yesr for one data analysis software) but forget games.
With the T2 security chips I think it's impossible to boot from an external drive (I never tried).

I understand you already have old-ish games on Steam.

My suggestion is: before spending a significant amount of money (>1k on a gaming computer) maybe double check the availability of those games on other platforms (ie: Playstation, or Xbox) because you might end up spending less buying a gaming console for ~500 quid and the re-purchase of said games IF those are available. If they are older they normally cost fairly little. ;)
 
er-minio said:
Yep I understand that.

Apple Silicon is a different architecture than Intel, so booting into Windows as some people did using the previous Intel-based Macs doesn't work.
If one need, you could do emulation. It's fairly fast (I use it a couple of times a yesr for one data analysis software) but forget games.
With the T2 security chips I think it's impossible to boot from an external drive (I never tried).

I understand you already have old-ish games on Steam.

My suggestion is: before spending a significant amount of money (>1k on a gaming computer) maybe double check the availability of those games on other platforms (ie: Playstation, or Xbox) because you might end up spending less buying a gaming console for ~500 quid and the re-purchase of said games IF those are available. If they are older they normally cost fairly little. ;)
Click to expand...
Understand all that.
However, I’m used to playing them on a laptop so I’m inclined to go down that route.
Also I can take a laptop into the conservatory
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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