A good laptop for Trainz 2010 under $1000

[diesel9]

Any suggestions? I'm on a budget for Christmas. As long as it's Windows 7 and what is the best brand for Trainz? I'm looking at HP currently.

 

[RRSignal]

Since nobody has answered this, I'll take a crack at it. Opinions about laptops vary, but any machine running TS2010 (or most modern games) should have a separate video card, not integrated graphics. I noticed just tonight that the Lenovo Ideapad Y560 series claims to have "discrete" graphics, which *should* mean a separate graphics card that is not part of the chipset. There's an i7 model out of Tigerdirect for $999 and an i5 version for $100 less according to the Tigerdirect catalog. It has full driver support for XP-32 should you need it so you're not up the creek if Win7 doesn't work out. I'm not as sure about XP-64 support.

http://www.ideapadtoday.com/the-len...-all-been-waiting-for-it-and-now-its-here.htm

 

[woodbrdge]

I currently use trainz 2010 on my laptop. A Dell 1525 running Vista Home Basic. It runs the game reasonably well. The one thing I will warn you is that heat is the major obstacle on a laptop to performance. When my laptop is cool the integrated video chip handles the game with silky smooth animation. When things heat up the animation has slow periods where the frame rate gets choppy, but when the chips cool it returns to the silky smooth animation. Since I prefer to run Trainz on my laptop, I simply choose to accept this level of performance since it really doesn't take from my enjoyment of the game. When I'm in Surveyor, the animation is smooth and I'm able to spend hours building my routes. I realize the hard core gamers are probably going to disagree, but in my opinion, you really don't need to waste your money on an expensive PC to get enjoyment from this product. I paid about $800 for my laptop and have been running Trainz (2004, then 2010) on it for about two years.

When you purchase your laptop just make sure you get enough memory. Mine has 3 GB. Get a good cooling pad. This will extend your ability to run Trainz without burning your lap! Believe me, your laptop will get very hot running this game, so keep it as well ventilated as you can. I usually will stop my driver session when the choppy frame rates become agonzingly slow. After a brief cool down I can pick up where I left off. I usually can run trainz driver in 3 hour session segments. I save the session and then put the laptop in sleep mode to turn it off for cooling. When I start back up, Trainz is right where I left it, and I continue my journey. I also use a mouse and sometimes a separate keyboard so that I don't have to touch the hot laptop.

Since nobody has answered this, I'll take a crack at it. Opinions about laptops vary, but any machine running TS2010 (or most modern games) should have a separate video card, not integrated graphics. I noticed just tonight that the Lenovo Ideapad Y560 series claims to have "discrete" graphics, which *should* mean a separate graphics card that is not part of the chipset. There's an i7 model out of Tigerdirect for $999 and an i5 version for $100 less according to the Tigerdirect catalog. It has full driver support for XP-32 should you need it so you're not up the creek if Win7 doesn't work out. I'm not as sure about XP-64 support.

http://www.ideapadtoday.com/the-len...-all-been-waiting-for-it-and-now-its-here.htm

 

[schweitzerdude]

Laptop for Trainz

One precaution. Do not (solely) rely on the Windows 7 experience rating for gaming (control panel/performance information and tools). I bought a fairly high-end laptop with a Windows gaming experience of 6.1 with the thought of running Trainz on it instead of a fairly low-end HP desktop that I had with a Window gaming experience rating of 3.0. Neither have a dedicated graphics card. Both have 4GB RAM. Desktop running Vista 64-bit, laptop running Windows 7 64-bit.

I put both PCs side by side and ran the same Trainz route on both, and amazingly the low-end HP had less stuttering than the high-end laptop, even though the laptop had a much higher gaming rating. Maybe it was hard drive speed - I can't explain it.

My next PC will have a dedicated graphics card for sure.

 

[JCitron]

One precaution. Do not (solely) rely on the Windows 7 experience rating for gaming (control panel/performance information and tools). I bought a fairly high-end laptop with a Windows gaming experience of 6.1 with the thought of running Trainz on it instead of a fairly low-end HP desktop that I had with a Window gaming experience rating of 3.0. Neither have a dedicated graphics card. Both have 4GB RAM. Desktop running Vista 64-bit, laptop running Windows 7 64-bit.

I put both PCs side by side and ran the same Trainz route on both, and amazingly the low-end HP had less stuttering than the high-end laptop, even though the laptop had a much higher gaming rating. Maybe it was hard drive speed - I can't explain it.

My next PC will have a dedicated graphics card for sure.

A lot of this has to do with mobile cpu chips. The mobile chips tend to slow down under load to conserve heat and battery life. There are usually setting for this in the control panel under power settings. Check, I think, the advanced tab for this.

John

 

[TorenHynes]

That is one advantage of desktops over laptops. Desktops have more air space inside so they stay cool for longer.