Looking for a new computer

[SETXRailfan]

So since I will be leaving for college soon, I figured I might as well look for laptops. Here is the one I am looking at:

Asus 15.6" Touch NB
-Touchscreen (Will get a wireless mouse)
-8GB Memory
-1TB Hard drive
-Intel Core I5-3317U.
-Windows 8

Would this computer be good with running Trainz? I figured it might, with the 1TB hard drive.

 

[cascaderailroad]

What is the Video card model with and 1-2Gb dedicated Graphics memory ?

What is the CPU speed in GHz ?

These 2 things are most important, over that of HD size & RAM

Necessary RAM needed is @ 4Gb or greater

 

[SETXRailfan]

Oh, and my current computer, a Vista Desktop, has 288GB hard drive. Huge improvement.

 

[SETXRailfan]

What is the Video card model with and 1-2Gb dedicated Graphics memory ?

What is the CPU speed in GHz ?

These 2 things are most important, over that of HD size & RAM

Necessary RAM needed is @ 4Gb or greater

I checked, and the one I specifically looked at has 8GB RAM.

As for the GHz, I can not give an answer to that. All I know is that my current computer runs on 2.20 GHz and runs TS12 like a potato.

 

[slabay]

So since I will be leaving for college soon, I figured I might as well look for laptops. Here is the one I am looking at:

Asus 15.6" Touch NB
-Touchscreen (Will get a wireless mouse)
-8GB Memory
-1TB Hard drive
-Intel Core I5-3317U.
-Windows 8

Would this computer be good with running Trainz? I figured it might, with the 1TB hard drive.

That's like saying that a Lincoln Town Car would be great for winning at Daytona because it has a huge trunk. The CPU and GPU are what are really important, and from what you've given us, it looks like it is integrated graphics. But at least you'll be able to download A LOT of stuff with that terabyte drive.

 

[JCitron]

These devices have Intel Graphics which is a no-no for Trainz. In this case, having the big hard drive is a bit useless for anything but downloaded videos, music and your own documents.

John

 

[SETXRailfan]

I have not committed to it yet. As far as I know John, they do sell some with nvidia too.

 

[malikrthr]

From what I understand and have seen before, if an OEM computer has Nvidia graphics, it will most likely come with the GT graphics card. 620-640 I assume.

 

[slabay]

The big question is how much are you willing to spend?

 

[JCitron]

I have not committed to it yet. As far as I know John, they do sell some with nvidia too.

You are right, but you'll want to spend a lot more for one of their gaming-quality machines which have the NVidia 7xx-series graphics processor in it.

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/G750JH#specifications

These machines are not inexpensive either. You are going to pay for the faster components, such as a faster hard drive which is highly recommended, almost mandatory for Trainz use.

John

 

[SETXRailfan]

You are right, but you'll want to spend a lot more for one of their gaming-quality machines which have the NVidia 7xx-series graphics processor in it.

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/G750JH#specifications

These machines are not inexpensive either. You are going to pay for the faster components, such as a faster hard drive which is highly recommended, almost mandatory for Trainz use.

John

I will be splitting the costs with someone else, so I do have a high budget. Thank you lots for this recommendation, I will look into it.

 

[SETXRailfan]

I guess I didn't look close enough at the price. No way I will get a $2,500 computer.

 

[cascaderailroad]

There are alot of "mail order" $1200 laptops, with 2Gb dedicated graphics memory video cards, with a raw speed of 3.1GHz CPU's (not taking into account Turdo Boost) ... Not in "Big Box" stores though !

I am buying Powerball lottery tickets with reckless abandon ... I won two $4 tickets ... I'm going out to buy 4 more Powerball tickets !

 

[lewisner]

I bought one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Insp...-AMD-A6-1-5-GHz-4-GB-Laptop-Red-/221275088570 on ebay recently "parts or not working" for £107 which had a "hard drive not recognised". The reason I got it cheap was that Dell have placed the HDD INSIDE UNDERNEATH the mobo and to change it you have to strip the laptop right down to the mobo! I replaced the 500GB Scorpio Blue 5400RPM HDD (totally dead as expected) with a 320GB Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM drive and she booted up a treat. Then I added another 4GB of RAM to bring it up to 8GB and I have to say I was well impressed by the graphics.I installed TRS2004 and ran it for a while (just the basic routes) and the UP Big Boy was very well rendered with nice smooth FPS.
You don't have to spend a fortune to get a powerful laptop.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Interesting ... Has anyone ever retrofitted a laptop ... by stripping its case, replacing the bottom with a home made fabricated bottom base, put in a super big video card and HD, and fitted this retrofitted laptop into a briefcase, that has vent holes in the bottom, with a chiller pad in the briefcase ?

https://www.google.com/search?q=por...sktop&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch