Request thoughts on buying a laptop

pcas1986

Well-known member
In a couple of months I'll be moving house (downsizing) and my PC is likely to be in storage for a while. So I thought I might buy a laptop as a Christmas/birthday present to replace my aging iPad that I only use when travelling. Not that I've done much of that recently! But I want this new laptop to run Trainz (TS19/22) and some of my dev stuff.

I bought my wife a HP Envy laptop a year or so ago and its a nice PC although I have some reservations about the keyboard. I see some of the new laptops are using the Iris X or Xe graphics card/chip. Does anyone have any experience running Trainz on this graphics hardware? From what I've read it's kind of OK for games but not a true gaming machine.

Apart from HP I also looked at Dell but many of their machines are AMD based and I've heard rumours that Trainz doesn't like AMD. Is that true?
 
Here is one link for you to check out........

https://www.pcgamer.com/best-gaming-laptop/

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-laptops,4828.html

My thoughts, I started out with Trainz Driver 2 about 2014, and that was about 32 Gig setup.

I used HP Envy's for a few years, learned that GPU integrated on MOB was a bad idea, shared resources when it comes to Graphics is not the way to go.....Dedicated GPU, NVIDIA, or something like it, much better way...

Nothing less than 2 TB Drive, and should be SSD drives not Spindle type, they are to slow for Files Operations, if you have seen how big Assets are now, they eat up your Storage rather quick....

32 Gigs of Ram, nothing less, Windows like always likes a lot of RAM, and then there is Trainz and File Operations......

I run with Asus Rog Strix, and does well for me......But there are other models out there equally strong.....

GPU not over 6 Gig of Ram for Laptop, else you run into Battery issues and Overheat by amount that 8 Gigs of GPU Ram. There is not enough cooling power of Physical space in a Laptop to handle the exorbitant amount of heat and drain on your Laptop Battery......:hehe:

I have to Run, its getting late and tomorrow starts early, hope this helps you a bit.....There are plenty of others here well versed on Gaming Laptop Strategies.........

Night now......:wave:
 
In a couple of months I'll be moving house (downsizing) and my PC is likely to be in storage for a while. So I thought I might buy a laptop as a Christmas/birthday present to replace my aging iPad that I only use when travelling. Not that I've done much of that recently! But I want this new laptop to run Trainz (TS19/22) and some of my dev stuff.

I bought my wife a HP Envy laptop a year or so ago and its a nice PC although I have some reservations about the keyboard. I see some of the new laptops are using the Iris X or Xe graphics card/chip. Does anyone have any experience running Trainz on this graphics hardware? From what I've read it's kind of OK for games but not a true gaming machine.

Apart from HP I also looked at Dell but many of their machines are AMD based and I've heard rumours that Trainz doesn't like AMD. Is that true?

I have an iris laptop on order from Dell so I can tell you how it runs in a day or two. https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php score is 2800 so not impossible. Generally speaking 10,000 is nice for Trainz

https://deals.dell.com/en-au/category/popular-laptop-deals

It looks as if Dell have Intel processors and a range of machines.

Cheerio John
 
In a couple of months I'll be moving house (downsizing) and my PC is likely to be in storage for a while. So I thought I might buy a laptop as a Christmas/birthday present to replace my aging iPad that I only use when travelling. Not that I've done much of that recently! But I want this new laptop to run Trainz (TS19/22) and some of my dev stuff.

I bought my wife a HP Envy laptop a year or so ago and its a nice PC although I have some reservations about the keyboard. I see some of the new laptops are using the Iris X or Xe graphics card/chip. Does anyone have any experience running Trainz on this graphics hardware? From what I've read it's kind of OK for games but not a true gaming machine.

Apart from HP I also looked at Dell but many of their machines are AMD based and I've heard rumours that Trainz doesn't like AMD. Is that true?

Nothing wrong with AMD and Trainz so long as you have a discreet GPU, the Ryzen CPUs are giving Intel serious competition, avoid older pre Ryzen CPUs though

AMD Ryzen7 3800X here completely blows my i7 6000K rig out of the water on Benchmarks and it works very well with TRS19 and TANE, obviously need a decent GPU as well though the Ryzen 5000 series are even better. AMD GPUs though are generally not a match for Nvidia with the exception a couple of extremely expensive high end cards and Trainz generally seems to be optimised for Nvidia.

Iris XE is an integrated GPU in a slim notebook it will not run the AAA games at 60 FPS but has no problem with popular games that aren't as graphics-intensive. ... From the gaming side of things, Intel states that the Iris Xe graphics can feature up to 1080p 60FPS.

With Laptops IMO you need something with a reasonable CPU, usable discreet graphics such as RTX3060 / 3070 16GB of ram has cooling that actually works and that is upgradable as in you can upgrade or change the ram SSD or even add a second SSD, which is basically Dell XPS series, Alienware, Acer Nitro, ASus Rog Strix, HP Omen, of course they are not cheap! Careful with the lower end models as they may have shared graphics.

Basically a mobile 10th or 11th gen i7 or i5 or a Ryzen 5 or 7 5xxxx would be good for the CPU and probably a minimum GPU of a mobile RTX 2060, a lot come with GTX 1650s not sure they would cut it for TRS19 though.

Dell have Alienware Ryzen laptops over here as well as Intel.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the responses. The link by John to Dell was interesting and there are a couple there that interest me. The relatively small SSDs are a concern since my current PC has used about half of the 512Gb C: drive and I really only use that drive for the O/S and apps that insist on installing on C:. The 1TB drives add quite a premium to the price and I will have to consult the Minister of Finance for that. :)
 
Thanks for the responses. The link by John to Dell was interesting and there are a couple there that interest me. The relatively small SSDs are a concern since my current PC has used about half of the 512Gb C: drive and I really only use that drive for the O/S and apps that insist on installing on C:. The 1TB drives add quite a premium to the price and I will have to consult the Minister of Finance for that. :)

Get a small SSD and buy a larger one to upgrade might be a cheaper option which you can do on the Dells or most of them and some do actually have the connector for a second m.2 SSD these days.

Suggest having a look at Refurbished from Dell Outlet? Which would be a cheaper option, UK have a load of 11th Gen laptops, Inspirons and XPS both New Unused and refurbished.
 
I use Asus Expert Book 16 GB - very happy with the performance. Also a great screen, my eyes do not get tired, I like to play GGBet - everything is fine.
Pleasant to the touch materials and no smell (was a problem in the last leptop)
 
Back
Top