Any Computer Gamers here? I have a question . . .

[DolphinDynasty]

http://computers.woot.com/offers/hp-17-amd-a9-dual-core-1tb-laptop-8?ref=w_cnt_sc_is_1_tl

If you click the ink it should show you the computer I'm looking to get in a coupe days. My question is: can you game on it? And if so, little games like from Steam? Or bigger stuff like Until Dawn, or Left for Dead stuff?

I wanna start gaming again but on computer so I don't need 4 systems to play what I want cuz if it needed an emulator in the case it has no computer version I could always download one but the specs are what have e curious. They're a major update to what I have now in tech but I'm not sure if it's high enough for computer gaming yet.

Thoughts?

 

[Underseer]

You can game on any laptop, the question is, which games at which settings.

I have no idea how good or bad the R5 is for gaming, but personally, I don't care much for gaming on a laptop if I can help it. If I do anything that really taxes the GPU, the fans on my laptop wheeze like a geriatric asthmatic trying to run a marathon. Diablo 3 runs decent at lower graphics setting without too much fan noise or heat, but anything else is asking for trouble.

In general, I just find laptops a bad platform for gaming. I don't like it.

Whether you get a laptop or a desktop, you might want to wait a bit. There's a new generation of GPUs that are about to drop, so you can either get a laptop with a more powerful GPU, or get a laptop with an older GPU for less.

Or if you go the desktop route, you can wait for the next gen of graphics cards and get an AMD 2700 or 2700x, which are currently the only CPUs out there that are protected against both Spectre and Meltdown. The other second generation AMD CPUs are all vulnerable to one or more variants of at least one of the two.

Either way, I would wait if you can.

 

[DolphinDynasty]

You can game on any laptop, the question is, which games at which settings.

I have no idea how good or bad the R5 is for gaming, but personally, I don't care much for gaming on a laptop if I can help it. If I do anything that really taxes the GPU, the fans on my laptop wheeze like a geriatric asthmatic trying to run a marathon. Diablo 3 runs decent at lower graphics setting without too much fan noise or heat, but anything else is asking for trouble.

In general, I just find laptops a bad platform for gaming. I don't like it.

Whether you get a laptop or a desktop, you might want to wait a bit. There's a new generation of GPUs that are about to drop, so you can either get a laptop with a more powerful GPU, or get a laptop with an older GPU for less.

Or if you go the desktop route, you can wait for the next gen of graphics cards and get an AMD 2700 or 2700x, which are currently the only CPUs out there that are protected against both Spectre and Meltdown. The other second generation AMD CPUs are all vulnerable to one or more variants of at least one of the two.

Either way, I would wait if you can.

Yeah that makes sense. I forgot about the bugs. I hate desktops though, too much clunk and space eaten up so it's gotta be a laptop, but I'll give it a couple months and see what's in them then.

 

[Underseer]

Spectre and Meltdown are not bugs, but security vulnerabilities.

Other CPUs have that stuff fixed in software, although I have no idea how good the fixes are given that the exploits exploit say flaw in the hardware.

The Ryzen 2700 and 2700x are currently the only CPUs that fix all of the vulnerabilities at the hardware level.

The other comment was about GPU prices coming down, which is a consequence of the virtual currency markets tanking. With fewer people mining virtual currency, the cost of graphics cards are finally coming down, right at the same time a new generation of graphics cards is about to come out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Radeon R5 graphics--that's going to be way below the specs of most games.