What lap top ?

[Cuchilo]

Ive tried to get zwift working on my home pc but the graphics are not up to it so i'm thinking about getting a lap top to do the job . I know nothing about computers so was hoping someone could point me towards something that would be up to the job without costing me a fortune .
Any pointers for me please ?

 

[Paul99]

Ive tried to get zwift working on my home pc but the graphics are not up to it so i'm thinking about getting a lap top to do the job . I know nothing about computers so was hoping someone could point me towards something that would be up to the job without costing me a fortune .
Any pointers for me please ?

Buying a new graphics card for your PC would be the most cost effective solution I imagine.

 

[LetMeEatCake]

^ What he said - providing it's a fairly modern PC.

If getting a laptop, then bear in mind that graphical grunt in a laptop costs more than the equivalent in a PC, and that you can't upgrade it in the future. Anyway, the starting place is Zwift's specs - see here: http://zwift.com/what-is-it/supported-platforms/

I think you could probably get something to meet the min-specs fairly cheaply (eg this Acer for £360 - linky) - in fact pretty much any new laptop with discrete graphics should meet the min-spec. Ideally though, you're after something that meets or exceeds their recommended specs and decent specced laptops aren't cheap. A quick scout around Dell's site suggests that their cheapest offering that suits is a 15 inch Inspiron for £750 - linky.

Do look around though - all the major manufacturers will have something in their lineup that suits - just check the specs against Zwift's recommendations. Meeting the processor and disk space requirements is easy, and the memory is easy to check (ie 8GB or more). Comparing the graphics card is the tricky bit - luckily notebookcheck.net has a list of graphics cards in order of prowess - linky - just make sure the one you're getting is as good as / better than the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - eg the Dell above has a GTX 960M which is higher up the list (better).

 

[Cuchilo]

Thanks . I didn't realize laptops where so expensive
I have looked into getting a graphics card upgrade but that's going to cost between £100 -£300 and i will still have to try and send everything to where the turbo is . That's why i thought i may as well get a lap top .
Maybe the second hand route would be a better option ?

 

[LetMeEatCake]

I didn't realize laptops where so expensive

I feel your pain! Good luck with the search!

 

[Paul99]

Thanks . I didn't realize laptops where so expensive
I have looked into getting a graphics card upgrade but that's going to cost between £100 -£300 and i will still have to try and send everything to where the turbo is . That's why i thought i may as well get a lap top .
Maybe the second hand route would be a better option ?

I just bought a laptop from the Dell outlet last month. You have to keep an eye on their stock as the decent stuff goes pretty quickly but you can get a significant saving on a new model. The one I bought was £300 cheaper than if I had ordered it new.

Might be an option for you if you are not in a massive rush.

 

[Cuchilo]

I did have a look at refurbished ones at pc world ( online ) The main problem is unless the graphics are the same as Zwift sates then i don't know if it is the right thing .

 

[Paul99]

I did have a look at refurbished ones at pc world ( online ) The main problem is unless the graphics are the same as Zwift sates then i don't know if it is the right thing .

See if it's on this chart for a rough and ready guide. The nearer the top it is, the better it is.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/common_gpus.html

That website has a search and compare function too so you can put in the specs for the one Zwift state and then compare the one in the lappy you are thinking about.

 

[Crackle]

Zwift are not exactly forthcoming with information on Graphics requirements. They mention a 1GB card but in the the next breath say it must be a new one and then in another area hint at why by actually mentioning the version of open GL it must run, i.e. 3 or above.

If it were me I'd do some digging around about what version of Direct X it needs and OpenGl and what speed of Graphics card is the minimum and then look 2nd hand. I suspect you might get a perfectly adequate 2nd hand one for £50 depending on what kind of graphics card your motherboard will support and whether your PSU has enough power, i.e above 400w normally as the Graphics card will need it's own power supply.

 

[fossyant]

You should be able to pick up a second hand graphics card cheaply off ebay. Managed to give our old 'photo storage' PC a nice graphics ugrade.

Laptops with specific graphics cards are pricey. We have two HP's a top end Envy 17" with on chip and an Nvidia graphics chip and a higher end Pavilion with on CPU graphics. The Pavilion would run Zwift just - it run's a modded Minecraft games, but won't run modern games like Battlefront, Grid, etc, etc which is where a dedicated card is needed.

 

[Cuchilo]

Just had a quick look at the local cash converters shop and although i am trying to understand this stuff when i looked at the spec of this one http://webshop.hounslow.cashconverters.co.uk/auction-item/1143215/toshiba-laptop I realized i had no idea what any of it means

 

[fossyant]

The celeron is quite low end. Ideally you want an I5. The processors are also numbered 3xxx 4xxx 5xxx which is the 'generation' and then there is the GHZ speed.

Do you know what's in your current PC. If you go to Control Panel, System and Security, System - this gives you ram and CPU. If you right click on your desktop, up will come graphics options - click on settings and you'll get an idea of the graphics card. If you can let us now what your 'base' unit is and it's model number is we could check. If it's a computer shop built machine, then it will be tricky, but it's more likely you can upgrade those.

 

[Cuchilo]

The celeron is quite low end. Ideally you want an I5. The processors are also numbered 3xxx 4xxx 5xxx which is the 'generation' and then there is the GHZ speed.

Do you know what's in your current PC. If you go to Control Panel, System and Security, System - this gives you ram and CPU. If you right click on your desktop, up will come graphics options - click on settings and you'll get an idea of the graphics card. If you can let us now what your 'base' unit is and it's model number is we could check. If it's a computer shop built machine, then it will be tricky, but it's more likely you can upgrade those.

RAM is 4.00GB and CPU is Intel Celeron E3400 @2.60GHz 2.60 GHz
Its a Packard bell imedia S1800
The right click on desktop didnt give me a settings option .

 

[LetMeEatCake]

The right click on desktop didnt give me a settings option

Assuming Windows 7 - right click on desktop, choose "Screen resolution" then click the blue "Advanced settings" link. That should bring up the settings window. You're looking for something that tells you what display adapter you're using. Here's an example - in this case it's a Radeon HD 5450...

Also - is there any other identifier or model number on your PC - something along the lines of iMedia ??.U??

 

[Crackle]

Well it's a dual core and Windows 7, 4Gb of memory, so that's fine for Zwift. It has integrated graphics which is probably where it fails and as far as I can tell it has one PCI-E slot for a graphics card but you'd need to confirm that by opening it up and looking at the free slots format.

You'd also need to check the rating of the power supply and make sure you have a spare power cable and then basically buy a graphics card to go in the free slot which will run on the power supply you have, run OpenGl 3.1 and the highest version of Direct X you can get and have a core graphics speed of at least 650Mhz and 1Gb of memory. That's all best guess from what I could Google.