Looking for a low budget laptop, that is good (for its price at least) for gaming

[maxgbruce]

So my laptop is running slower and slower and it's battery dying, etc. So with my new part-time summer job I've been interested in buying a new laptop. However as I'm a student I'm already in my overdraft and paying for things like festivals and holidays over the summer term too, so I'm looking for something as cheap as possible while still doing the job. Something around £500 or less would be good.

I enjoy pc gaming, however at the moment my laptop isn't as good for it as I would like. I generally have low fps lag on most games. For example, a few games which I play at the moment include League of legends, Minecraft and Skyrim. I generally play these all on the lowest quality/graphics possible and still have fps dropping down to less than 10 fairly often (which can be quite frustrating)(my ping is generally fine).

At the moment I have:
Toshiba Satellite L955D- 104
8gb Ram
AMD A8-4555M APU Processor with Radeon(tm) HD 7600G Graphics card 1.60GHz
64-bit os, x64-based processor
687gb hard drive

I don't really know anything about computers, hence why I've come to the forum (I've simply just copied this from my system info). So it would also be interesting to know what parts of my laptop will be letting be down in terms of gaming performance? As far as I know I thought 8gb ram and an Amd radeon graphics card was decent? Is the processor not so good? Or is it simply just because I've not looked after it very well over the years?

I was looking at another Toshiba Satellite, which is only £329!! Which would be fantastic for me, however I'm guessing this won't be much different from my current laptop and still not perform well while gaming?

It is the:
Toshiba Satellite L50-B-1P1
8gb Ram
Intel Core i5 Processor with AMD Radeon R7 M260 graphics card 1.70GHz
1000gb hard drive

Will this be any better than my current laptop? The processor speed seems hardly any better? the graphics card sounds very similar? Is the i5 intel processor going to be much better than my AMD one? And I'm guessing the hard drive space doesn't make any difference with performance?

Any other suggestions for cheap, while still decent gaming laptops out there? By decent even if I have to have the graphics of a game on low quality but have decent FPS/smoothness/no lag (I don't know the term) I'd be happy. Unfortunately as I move around a lot I kind of need a laptop rather than PC. Feel free to be blunt with me, I'm kind of expecting an answer along the lines of 'at a price like that how can you expect any better performance' and 'you're going to have to pay a lot more for a better experience on a laptop'

Sorry this has been such a long post with many different questions, I have very little knowledge with how the technology works and what makes a computer good for gaming. Many thanks in advance for any replies!!!

 

[hang-the-9]

For the budget you will not find anything faster than your A8 that is worth swapping to.

If you include your 500 budget and then sell your current system you should be able to get a laptop with a 960m or even a 1050 video card http/www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/inspiron-15-5577-gaming-laptop/dncwpi401s

If you can't get to that budget I would just stick with your laptop till you can get a normal gaming laptop instead of buying something slow now that will be even slower in a few years.

 

[Peter_131]

I have an ASUS ROG GL550VX. I can recommend it to you, it is a good looking and decently performing gaming laptop, you can get it used for a fair price. It comes with 8 gigs of ddr4 ram, an i5 6300hq and a gtx 950m most of the time, but you may be able to find one that's equipped with an i7 6700, 16 gigs of ram and a gtx 960m.