Out of Pod Experience

Hi

I am slowly looking into the Laptop market to find something to replace my Netbook, mainly to work on (Programming and university-usage). But I want to make sure it also has the capability to run EVE in case I need that. But it will have to be one that is small, light and has long battery-cycles.

So to all the LapTop users here, what is the minimum requirement for EVE? I know all laptop GPUs suck, but there have to be some that are good enough without beeing a game-laptop.

thanks New Eden!

Care to share your FPS next time you are on? (ctrl+f in case you didn't know) Ideally in various situatuions. Thanks!

i got a Lenovo laptop for around like, $900 and it plays EVE great. I think its called like v850 or something.
The settings are turned down to medium, however it can be upgraded (vid card) I never lag, typically never go below 40 fps on any game.
Can also play 2 clients of EVE on this machine (will need a fan as it starts to get warm at this point)

About anything new/off the shelf I would think. I bought a $400 bargain laptop from bestbuy this year, a satellite (intel), it runs EVE flawlessly ...not counting CQ at mid settings, but in space max settings over 30fps. I could have gotten better but 1. didn't need better 2. I spent much more than that on accessories (real digi camera, portable scanner etc etc..). The current bargain laptops are now faster than this as well since I got this earlier this year. I didn't get it for games though, but for field work, but just nice that it runs EVE, Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas etc, for the price.

12 inch? I'd have no clue. Had one, hated it, but years ago (not counting my Nintendo DS). I don't even look at sub-notebooks, so wouldn't know; I work in multimedia development (graphics/sound/coding) and even 15 inch (@5.3 lbs) is a bit small for some things. btw it's a regular pentium not a celeron that I previously mentioned. Had a celeron laptop before, nasty thing heh. AMD is sub-par too now, which is sad. But yeah, different question sub-notebook rather than laptop. "What kind of subnotebook does EVE need?"


Serious geek talk time heh. apart from mentioned above, for compiling you want something with a good/stable cpu (duh) and nice amount of memory. Best memory to really get for that is ecc of course. Laptops... and certainly sub-notebooks have non-ecc memory. ECC generally corrects 4000 errors a year (meh, multicore systems are error monsters), which is why I have an ecc box/server set-up apart from my laptops and main desktop. You can't just shove ecc into a system, it needs to know what to do with it. One thing for sure, you don't want errors when compiling. Sure, something to code on, but you will want to network into something else for compiling imo.

I didn't say you said graphics, just stating my preference, though my programming revolves around graphics, and you really didn't give much info. You said programming, and the cpu and memory was textbook recommendation (my major was computer science). I recommended intel, pentium chip (good reasons for) as it doesn't matter the size of the compiling job, it churns out less errors. But that's your choice to take my recommendation or not. Still, ECC for final compiler jobs, highly recommended, you can always ask your instructor if ecc is a good idea.

The standard for subnotebook is under 14 inch. I'm no fan of lenovo btw. I'd worry less about a game and find what is best for the class I'm taking. Good luck.

As a general rule of thumb, for the same "generation" of CPU+GPU combos, AMD integrated graphics is slightly better than Intel integrated graphics, but the CPU parts are weaker. The Intel HD 4000 family can occasionally be an exception to that rule (depends on frequency), but I doubt you'll find a fast one in a small form factor netbook.
For EVE, this would generally mean noticeably better FPS with AMD whenever you do just "casual" gameplay or small-to-medium scale PvP or missions, but slightly worse FPS (on already low FPS to begin with) when things start to get really crowded (fleet combat), but it also depends on graphics settings (what effects you turn off and such).

On the E-350 AMD Fusion chip in the latest machine you selected (a chip which came out 20 months ago, so it's basically as good as two generations old, give or take), the integrated Radeon HD 6310 is kind of "meh", but still enough for EVE. At the maximum resolution the machine's screen is capable of, I suppose it might even go close to or even over 30 FPS in full graphic detail (sans AA) while station-spinning, but a safer number to expect might be around 20 FPS instead. That's quite playable IMO, even if not very pleasant.

It would be nicer if you could find a machine with a A6-3400M CPU (quad@1.4) + integrated Radeon HD 6520G (about twice as fast as the 6310), which still only has a rather modest TDP (35W vs the 18W of the E-350), or if it's still barely affordable, even an A8-3500M... they're a slightly newer generation (about 15 months ago).
The E2-3000M (1.8 dual core, Radeon HD 6380G, 35W TDP) is the netbook APU that's in the same generation, but it's not much faster graphics-wise compared to the E-350 (about 30% faster, but still nothing impressive).

The latest generation would be those containing chips like the A8-4500M and the A10-4600M, and they came out about 4 months ago.
The smallest laptops you can find A8-4500M in so far are 15.6" and start at around 400$ : http://shop.amd.com/us/All/Search?NamedQuery=visiona8&SearchFacets=category%3ANotebook%3Bnotebook_cpumodelnum%3AAMD%20A8-4500M%20APU%20with%20AMD%20Radeon%20HD%207640G
The E2-1800 (1.7 dual core, Radeon HD 7340, 18W TDP) chip is from that generation, and netbook 11.6" models start at around 432$ : http://shop.amd.com/us/All/Search?NamedQuery=netbooksys&SearchFacets=category%3ANotebook%3Bnotebook_cpuprocessor%3AAMD%20Dual-Core%20E2-Series%20APU%20for%20Notebooks
Performance of the E1-1800 is actually a tad bit slower than the E2-3000 (not by much, and still noticeably better than the E-350), but at a much lower TDP, so you can expect a better battery life, in theory anyway.

P.S. Take a look at http://www.anandtech.com/show/5831/amd-trinity-review-a10-4600m-a-new-hope/6 too a bit.

P.P.S. Or just upgrade from the planned Lenovo ThinkPad X121e to the Lenovo ThinkPad X131e 33722FU : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834310590
That's an alleged 8.5 hours of battery life (probably brand new and with light use only), for 520$ (a bit much, but still affordable). The rugged design I suppose is a nice plus when you're underway.

The OP seems to want a cheap, (probably) durable, small/light (~12") machine with very good battery life that can run EVE (not necessarily all that smoothly nor in max detail)... or at least that's how I read what the OP said so far.

You understand me! Wanna be my shrink? ;)

One clarification: I would probably only do stuff like mining, hauling stuff from a to b (like in "Bring some salvage from my ratting system to my home base") or trading. I probably won't be doing PVE with it and definetely no PVP.

Also, thanks for the detailed post! You seem to have the knowledge and the new info I am lacking :)



Really not a fan of tablets.... I thought about that for some time, but I really hate the IPad and I really need more than Android. Maybe there are decent Linux-tablet out there, but I'm not really considering them as tools anymore... For me they are at beast little entertainment stations (which they are doing well!).

I thought so, thats why I said I wouldn`t go below the performance that my machine has, as if u take a even weaker machine, it will probably not be able to run 1 client decently. long battery live, cheap and a small notebook is probably the opposite of what games need. I think people underestimate the requiremnts that eve has, just becuase its not a 3d FPS.

it would be a lot cheaper for you to get a bigger gaming notebook and a netbook for uni than finding something that
that combines both. If there things havent changed dramaticly in the last 6 month, any onbaord solution will be to weak for eve.