Laptop Baseline Requirement Reasonability

[algorithm_guy]

Traditionally, when I have been buying hardware my question was always what the best I could get was, or what the best I could get was, with my money.

But now, I'm in a position to buy my daughter a laptop and I just want to make sure it is "good enough". So I made 4 baselines.

1. Has to render 3d games "reasonably" (still trying to figure out what that means)
2. Has to be 1920x1080 resolution
3. Has to have HDD fast enough to spool 1920x1080 video with FLAC audio
4. Preferably has touchscreen (her requirement, not mine)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm treating #2 and #4 as just yes/no questions to filter by.

I'm having trouble finding a massive list of every mobile HDD for throughput, and I'm sure a list like that exists for GPUs, but I don't know how to define "reasonability" for performance.

Are you my baselines reasonable/misguided? Is touchscreen a yes / no thing, or do I need to look at other factors?

 

[jaguarskx]

Can't help you with a list for HDD throughput. SSDs have high throughput, but also high price per GB as well; i think it ranges between $0.80 - $1.10 per GB depending on the capacity of the SSD.

Here's a link to laptop graphic cores/chips/card:

http/www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

I would say "reasonable" at 1920x1080 resolution would be medium quality with at least 40 FPS. However, different games have different requirements so just because graphics chip ABC game X with reasonable performance that doesn't necessarily mean you will also get reasonable in game Y. Some games are just terrible ports of a console game. Probably the most infamous poorly ported console game to the PC is GTA 4. Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag is another example of a bad optimized console ported game for the PC. From my provided definition of "reasonable" performance, you should consider buying a laptop with either the GTX 760m or Radeon HD 8870m.

Additionally, just because the screen resolution is 1920x1080, that does not mean you have to play games at that resolution. It can be dropped down to 1600x900 or 1366x768 for games. However, the graphics will not look as sharp compared with the native (max) resolution. This is a limitation of LCD screens. The fixed number of pixels means image scale is not a good as an old CRT monitor. The bigger the difference between the native resolution of the screen and the resolution to play games at, the worse (fuzzier) the graphics will look.

 

[jaguarskx]

A touchscreen is a personal choice. At this point in time, the next laptop I am going to buy will not have a touchscreen. For my purposes I do not see the need and I do not like cleaning finger prints/marks off my screen. The only exception is a table because it is a tablet not a desktop or laptop.

One thing you need to factor is price. How much are you willing to spend for a laptop that meets all the criterias? $1,000? $2,500? $5,000?

Weight is something else to consider as well and don't forget the screen size as well.

A backlight keyboard is good for typing the the dark or low light conditions.

Is battery life important (when not playing games)?