Considering what I've read, I see no way to stay below 500. SSD and Intel CPUs on a 500 USD budget? Are you real dudes?
Best Laptop for Game Development
I'm going to have to side with Subtle_Wonders on this one.
All we have to go on is a recommendation to buy the "best laptop", a price of sub-$500, and a desire to start "messing around" with 3D graphics development eventually.
The $500 limit is the key feature here. For a "best game programmer laptop" you could add a zero to the price and also expect it to be thrown out in five years. Most professional game developer machines are $3000-$5000 desktop machines, and people with laptops (mostly producers and designers and executives and people who travel) have laptops in the $1000-$2000 range. It doesn't make sense in a professional environment to spend many thousand dollars every month on salary only to scrimp on their core tool for productivity just to "save" one or two weeks of salary.
A $500 laptop, based only on its cost, is already obsolete in terms of advanced programming and always has been. Advanced development requires advanced tools, and if you have the ability to develop advanced code you also have the money for an advanced machine, even for your personal equipment.
With those requirements we can eliminate most of the posts on the thread. You don't need a late-model high end graphics card to start "messing around" in graphics. Processing power is nice but you clearly aren't asking for a workhorse. SSD is speedy, but you aren't in the price range for much of that. When it comes to the processors, sure an i7-4900MQ (today's rather upscale quad-core mobile processor) would be nice to have but the processor itself retails for more than the $500 limit. Very large screens and touch screen are fun, but they also add significantly to the cost.
If his software development work was such that it can be satisfied by a $500 laptop (rather than a $3000 workstation) then it should be obvious that he doesn't need a high end video card, a high end processor, a touch screen, a dual-monitor setup, or a high end anything. Even a large number of business-oriented laptops are far beyond that cost.
A $500 machine can be perfectly adequate for most beginners and students. Just don't expect your friends to be envious.
For "best $500 programmer laptop", the only major variables you can afford to change are the screen size and the operating system.
If you want the best hardware then don't spend money on the software. Save yourself $100+ on software and go with a Linux or BSD operating system of your choice. There are compatibility lists (Google) to help verify that all the parts work well on the OS.
After that, I'd focus on screen size. Larger laptops tend to come with full-size keyboards (which are recommended) so that becomes less of a concern.
With that in mind, just about any commodity processor and graphics card will satisfy the needs of a $500 budget, take the largest screen you can find for that cost. Be careful to avoid junk hardware, but a little time on Google can help there, too.
Since money is a factor, you can even ignore the keyboard size and pointer type on the device, and pick up a $20 keyboard+optical mouse kit (which you may want to consider anyway) that can help you get by with a so-called chicklet keyboard or a nub pointer. Those are cheaper than the cost of getting them as part of the laptop and give you more money to allocate to parts you prefer.
All we have to go on is a recommendation to buy the "best laptop", a price of sub-$500, and a desire to start "messing around" with 3D graphics development eventually.
The $500 limit is the key feature here. For a "best game programmer laptop" you could add a zero to the price and also expect it to be thrown out in five years. Most professional game developer machines are $3000-$5000 desktop machines, and people with laptops (mostly producers and designers and executives and people who travel) have laptops in the $1000-$2000 range. It doesn't make sense in a professional environment to spend many thousand dollars every month on salary only to scrimp on their core tool for productivity just to "save" one or two weeks of salary.
A $500 laptop, based only on its cost, is already obsolete in terms of advanced programming and always has been. Advanced development requires advanced tools, and if you have the ability to develop advanced code you also have the money for an advanced machine, even for your personal equipment.
With those requirements we can eliminate most of the posts on the thread. You don't need a late-model high end graphics card to start "messing around" in graphics. Processing power is nice but you clearly aren't asking for a workhorse. SSD is speedy, but you aren't in the price range for much of that. When it comes to the processors, sure an i7-4900MQ (today's rather upscale quad-core mobile processor) would be nice to have but the processor itself retails for more than the $500 limit. Very large screens and touch screen are fun, but they also add significantly to the cost.
If his software development work was such that it can be satisfied by a $500 laptop (rather than a $3000 workstation) then it should be obvious that he doesn't need a high end video card, a high end processor, a touch screen, a dual-monitor setup, or a high end anything. Even a large number of business-oriented laptops are far beyond that cost.
A $500 machine can be perfectly adequate for most beginners and students. Just don't expect your friends to be envious.
For "best $500 programmer laptop", the only major variables you can afford to change are the screen size and the operating system.
If you want the best hardware then don't spend money on the software. Save yourself $100+ on software and go with a Linux or BSD operating system of your choice. There are compatibility lists (Google) to help verify that all the parts work well on the OS.
After that, I'd focus on screen size. Larger laptops tend to come with full-size keyboards (which are recommended) so that becomes less of a concern.
With that in mind, just about any commodity processor and graphics card will satisfy the needs of a $500 budget, take the largest screen you can find for that cost. Be careful to avoid junk hardware, but a little time on Google can help there, too.
Since money is a factor, you can even ignore the keyboard size and pointer type on the device, and pick up a $20 keyboard+optical mouse kit (which you may want to consider anyway) that can help you get by with a so-called chicklet keyboard or a nub pointer. Those are cheaper than the cost of getting them as part of the laptop and give you more money to allocate to parts you prefer.
I put myself firmly in the "must spend more than $500" faction: for example, on Newegg a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro costs about $420.
But a cheap laptop can meet lower performance targets, particularly for development of lightweight and simple games:
- low memory and processor use, allowing peaceful coexistence between game and IDE/debugger (even with little RAM)
- undemanding graphics (not necessarily 2D), allowing use of cheap graphics adapters.
- small assets, allowing small disks, preventing music, image, 3d editing programs from running out of memory or doing long operations, and allowing I/O times to be acceptable without a SSD
- no demanding setups like testing network play across three virtual machines.
Screen size remains a limiting factor for any kind of development, so I'd try to get monitors on your desk and attach them to the laptop. Two HDMI ports, rather than the more usual 1 HDMI and 1 VGA or DVI, would be convenient.
Will you like to play table tennis with a tree branch (laptop under $500) or a table tennis bat (laptop above $1000).
Try looking at the Lenovo y510p. The model I am about to talk about is $1000 on Amazon.com but more along the lines of $1200 elsewhere. It has dual nvida geforce gtx 750ms thanks to ultra bay, 1920 x 1080 15.6" screen, 8gb ddr3 ram, 1tb hdd, 2gb gddr5 per 750m, intel core i7 haswell, and is relatively new to the market (late 2013 release). It has 4 hours battery life, and many of the features needed for heavy gaming and easy game creation. I have seen my friend use it and is a great low cost system. i will provide a link below.
Does developing games really require a high-end laptop with a the latest GPU and 16-core CPU?
I wholly disagree with this.
In my opinion, the choice of laptop should be weighed in favour of the following:
- Battery life - This includes power saving features, small power saving GPU, small power saving CPU.
- Large screen resolution - Coding needs a lot of space.
- Comfortable keyboard and mouse
My Acer laptop (1.5 years old) has an i5 processor, an optimus enabled nVidia GT520M card, runs Kubuntu, and provides me with about 8 hours of coding time. I'd rather be coding for 8 hours on a not-so-good-laptop than coding for 2 hours on a fast laptop.
The GPU and CPU should be just enough to support the latest features, but primarily made sure to use little power.
Does developing games really require a high-end laptop with a the latest GPU and 16-core CPU?
I wholly disagree with this.
In my opinion, the choice of laptop should be weighed in favour of the following:
- Battery life - This includes power saving features, small power saving GPU, small power saving CPU.
- Large screen resolution - Coding needs a lot of space.
- Comfortable keyboard and mouse
My Acer laptop (1.5 years old) has an i5 processor, an optimus enabled nVidia GT520M card, runs Kubuntu, and provides me with about 8 hours of coding time. I'd rather be coding for 8 hours on a not-so-good-laptop than coding for 2 hours on a fast laptop.
The GPU and CPU should be just enough to support the latest features, but primarily made sure to use little power.
this.
a good screen (with a decent resolution), comfortable keyboard and touchpad and a endurable weight should be consider as first.
If discrete GPUs and good CPU are needed, there are a lot of laptops with them without the weight of a truck.
Closing because of the date the thread was started and for the length of time it has been dormant.
Please remember to check the dates on discussions like this. "What computer should I buy" is usually decided within a week or two of asking, not two months. The thread had been quiet for several weeks.
I'm pretty sure whatever choice he made, his laptop has already arrived in the post and he using it to the best of his ability.
Please remember to check the dates on discussions like this. "What computer should I buy" is usually decided within a week or two of asking, not two months. The thread had been quiet for several weeks.
I'm pretty sure whatever choice he made, his laptop has already arrived in the post and he using it to the best of his ability.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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