How do I check if my laptop can cope with a certain game on steam? Thanks!

murphyebass

So I got my new laptop yesterday and I'm rather happy with it.
I'm used to a 15.6'' screen so this one looks HUGE at 17''.
I played a couple of chapters of Mission Impossible on dvd on it and I thought it looked great and sounded pretty damn good too out of what I'm sure are pretty poor speakers.

Anyway heres the spec..

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/inspiron-17...17-5748-laptop

• 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4510U processor (4M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)
• 8GB Single Channel DDR3L 1600MHz (8GBx1)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 840M 2GB DDR3
• 1TB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive
• 17.3 inch LED Backlit Display with Truelife and HD+ resolution (1600 x 900)

I know its not the highest spec out there but I reckon it'll still play some games from steam.

So I signed up for steam last night and downloaded my first game which is one I've been meaning to try for some time. €1.19 for Castle Crashers. They may as well give it away for free! :pac:

Now I chose this one as I knew it'd be ok to run on my laptop without looking at specs etc... I was right. It ran fine other than no sound which I'll have to check all my settings etc before asking for advice. I'm sure its something stupid I'm doing. Sound worked fine on the desktop and the dvd and I have it up full blast I think but maybe I'm missing a setting in Steam. It was up full on the game settings too.

Anyway the sound is a small issue I'm sure I'll work out. I'm more concerned about what games will actually run on my machine.

Skyrim was on sale for example but I didnt know whether my laptop could cope with it.

Is there a website that I can use or a way of telling would a game run on my machine. Maybe theres a section on Steam that I didnt see showing minimum specs needed.

I just dont want to buy a game and then it doesnt work due to not having a good enough graphics card or whatever.

Thanks a mil.

ps .. Steam is a seriously cool site. If I had the room for a desktop which I dont unfortunately I'd be seriously tempted to get a proper gaming rig.

sweetie

www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

you should be fine for lots of games. my 6 series laptop card runs BioShock infinite arkham origins etc

Have fun and bear in mind steam is only good value generally during the sales. greenmangaming, amazon.com, humblebundle do good deals too

Cravez

Use this website: www.systemrequirementslab.com/

Here's a breakdown of your GPU's power and how much FPS you should get across certain games as a benchmark: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-840M.105681.0.html

murphyebass

Thanks a mil for those lads. Will check them out when I get home. I'm in work at the minute.

SherlockWatson

You'll run most games at the very least on low.

Skyrim will work fine, canyourunit.com is a good tool for getting a general idea of what the game requires, but I wouldn't take it as gospel, sometimes it'll say you can't run something even if you can.

murphyebass

SherlockWatson wrote: »

You'll run most games at the very least on low.

Skyrim will work fine, canyourunit.com is a good tool for getting a general idea of what the game requires, but I wouldn't take it as gospel, sometimes it'll say you can't run something even if you can.

Thanks for that.

When you say on "low setting" does it look terrible? or is it akin to say 360 graphics ?

Sorry I'm very much a newb in the pc / laptop gaming space.

SherlockWatson

murphyebass wrote: »

Thanks for that.

When you say on "low setting" does it look terrible? or is it akin to say 360 graphics ?

Sorry I'm very much a newb in the pc / laptop gaming space.

Depends on the game really, I wouldn't be surprised to see you running some games on mediumish settings going by your specs and the specs of my laptop.


If you have any friends with Steam you can set up steam family sharing so you can download games off of their account and play them, good way of testing certain games on your machine before you commit to buying them.

Cravez

Low settings usually imply low graphics quality and/or low resolution. The outcome is the textures become more pixaleted, more lagged looking and less defined.

Given from the benchmarks on the site I provided, your card will run most games at ok FPS on Medium. Don't take it 100% as gospel, there may be other games you can run high, or even the games that are referenced as medium you might be able to run at high.

Id suggest running games on medium settings but at 1920x1080 resolution and see how that goes. You'll have more jagged and less defined textures but your screen won't look as pixelated if you run it at a higher resolution.

In terms of Skyrim, you should be fine as it's actually not heavy requirements wise. There are tons of mods out that that can most likely improve graphics without impacting performance through configuring the config files.

Get the free version of Fraps or try Shadowplay on nvidia and run the games with either of these with the FPS enabled on the overlay and it will tell you how much FPS you are getting.

SherlockWatson

Cravez wrote: »

Low settings usually imply low graphics quality and/or low resolution. The outcome is the textures become more pixaleted, more lagged looking and less defined.

Given from the benchmarks on the site I provided, your card will run most games at ok FPS on Medium. Don't take it 100% as gospel, there may be other games you can run high, or even the games that are referenced as medium you might be able to run at high.

Id suggest running games on medium settings but at 1920x1080 resolution and see how that goes. You'll have more jagged and less defined textures but your screen won't look as pixelated if you run it at a higher resolution.

In terms of Skyrim, you should be fine as it's actually not heavy requirements wise. There are tons of mods out that that can most likely improve graphics without impacting performance through configuring the config files.

Get the free version of Fraps or try Shadowplay on nvidia and run the games with either of these with the FPS enabled on the overlay and it will tell you how much FPS you are getting.

For FPS monitoring I recommend the Razer Game Booster, shuts down everything that isn't essential and has an fps counter, handy for laptop's to get that little extra % of power!

dreamers75

These websites are fine as a guideline but if you thinks you can run it, it will offer you a suggestion as to what you need to buy.

murphyebass

Thanks a mil. Theres a wealth of knowledge in all of that. Much appreciated.

I'll look at all of that and get tinkering and if I have more questions I'll ask ye.

I only got it late last night so I've really only had a small go with it.
As I said it wasnt meant really as a "gaming" laptop, more of a family laptop for photos and internet, only €597.

That said I knew when I bought it that it would have a capability to do a small bit of gaming.
I have a PS4 for the newer titles in fairness.

I managed to hook up a wired 360 pad last night to the laptop with the Windows 7 64 bit driver. I thought it'd be a pain but it worked fine thankfully.

So really its about checking what games will work at what speed/resolution and fixing that annoying sound issue I'm having.

Its all looking pretty positive though.

SherlockWatson

murphyebass wrote: »

Thanks a mil. Theres a wealth of knowledge in all of that. Much appreciated.

I'll look at all of that and get tinkering and if I have more questions I'll ask ye.

I only got it late last night so I've really only had a small go with it.
As I said it wasnt meant really as a "gaming" laptop, more of a family laptop for photos and internet, only €597.

That said I knew when I bought it that it would have a capability to do a small bit of gaming.
I have a PS4 for the newer titles in fairness.

I managed to hook up a wired 360 pad last night to the laptop with the Windows 7 64 bit driver. I thought it'd be a pain but it worked fine thankfully.

So really its about checking what games will work at what speed/resolution and fixing that annoying sound issue I'm having.

Its all looking pretty positive though.

You're better off learning to use KB/M instead of the controller for most games, as a console convert I rarely use the controller anymore as KB/M is so much more responsive!

murphyebass

SherlockWatson wrote: »

You're better off learning to use KB/M instead of the controller for most games, as a console convert I rarely use the controller anymore as KB/M is so much more responsive!

Laptop will be on my lap 90% of the time I'd say so it mightnt be that easy to use kb/m which is why I hooked up the controller last night plus to be fair I'm a console gamer so I went with what I know.

I'm not ruling it out but just for the time being I'll probably stick to the controller.

Plus I wont be doing much FPS gaming on the laptop. In particular online. I have the PS4 for that end of things. So twitch shooting responsiveness maybe not as much an issue for me.

SherlockWatson

murphyebass wrote: »

Laptop will be on my lap 90% of the time I'd say so it mightnt be that easy to use kb/m which is why I hooked up the controller last night plus to be fair I'm a console gamer so I went with what I know.

I'm not ruling it out but just for the time being I'll probably stick to the controller.

Plus I wont be doing much FPS gaming on the laptop. In particular online. I have the PS4 for that end of things. So twitch shooting responsiveness maybe not as much an issue for me.

I'm the same and play with laptop on my lap and use kb/m for 90% of gaming, the extra buttons are extremely convenient for most games, definitely worth giving it a bash! I was primarily a console gamer as well but once you get used to kb/m you won't look back!

murphyebass

SherlockWatson wrote: »

I'm the same and play with laptop on my lap and use kb/m for 90% of gaming, the extra buttons are extremely convenient for most games, definitely worth giving it a bash! I was primarily a console gamer as well but once you get used to kb/m you won't look back!

I'm not ruling it out. Sure back in the early 2000's in college I did a small bit of PC gaming and I definately agree it's a world of difference.

I suppose it depends on the games I get.

So far I only have Castle Crashers which is fine with a controller but it I do go on to get a few FPS games or action games that I think will benifit for the extra control I certainly could be swayed back to kb/m combo.

Skerries

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