As you know, I'm stuck with a 3-year-old Lenovo Ideapad P500 touch and obviously it can't run the new DOOM. I don't want to miss out on the beta and I'm thinking of getting a proper gaming laptop to play it. The problem is that the system requirements and prices for such hardware are astronomical and according to Game Debate's GPU/CPU List for laptops almost nothing can run DOOM on minimum settings.
Spoiler: My current PC:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3230M
6 GB RAM
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
OS: Windows 7
These requirements are actually for the desktop.
Spoiler: Minimum system requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i5-6300HQ or better / AMD FX-8320 or better
8 GB RAM
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB) or better
OS:
Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
Store: Up to 22GB HDD space
Network: Broadband internet connection
Spoiler: Recommended system requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 or better / AMD FX-8350 or better
RAM:
8 GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (4GB) or better / AMD Radeon R9 290 (4GB) or better
OS:
Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)
Store: Up to 22GB HDD space
Network: Broadband internet connection
After some research, I pinpointed some minimum requirements for a laptop to try and run DOOM:
NVidia GTX 965 4GB SLI or better/ Radeon 7/8970M Crossfire
i5-6300HQ 2.3 Ghz or better/ no AMD equivalent
At least 8GB RAM
The closest laptop I can find to meet those requirements is a Lenovo Y700 for $799.99 but even that is seriously underpowered for Doom.
Spoiler:
CPU: AMD FX-8800
8 GB RAM
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 M380
The good laptops happen to be way over $1K which makes them off-limits for me, and given that I pre-ordered the PC version, forget about the consoles.
If you happen to be able to play the beta at any capacity, please post your specs here or recommend some options so I can figure out which PC should I get. Hell, even suggest that I should wait till the full game comes out or something, I'm getting restless here.
leileilol wrote:reconsider the prospect of playing a fps game on a laptop and how comfortable it could not be
Well, there's that, and then there's the fact that you're unlikely to get a game released in the last couple of years working smoothly - if at all - on a laptop that costs less than $1,000. I mean, sometimes you'd be surprised (the HD 4000 series tends to surprise even me; Killing Floor with all details at ~40-50 FPS?), but New Doom - like all id Software games before it - is obviously intended to push the envelope. My current gaming rig is extremely unlikely to run it, because I'm an entire video card class below the minimum requirements, and I'm not sure my CPU will be beefy enough for it either.
Killing Floor shares the same engine as Unreal Tournament 2004 and having played both games I can tell you they run smoothly with HD 4000, without any external graphics cards.
I guess the proportions of hardware required for the new Doom are like RetroAhoy in his video saying that the original Doom back then required a 386 with 4 megabytes, and even then only a 486 would suffice just to give the game good performance. And I just happened to be stuck with a modern equivalent of a 286.
I had a similar scenario with Wolfenstein, but I was just lucky that it would eventually run even though my specs are below the minimum requirement.
BTW what are your specs exactly?
Last edited by Jeimuzu73 on Fri Apr 08, 2016 9:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
I'll just quote my post from the "Post your computer specs thread" from a page or so ago:
wildweasel wrote:The Gaming Powerhouse from 2010, "ARNGRIM":
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition @3.2 GHz
16 GB of DDR3-1600 RAM (Corsair Vengeance)
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 560 GTX 1GB
On-board sound
Storage: 1 Samsung 850 EVO solid-state drive (250 GB), 1 Western Digital hard drive (160 GB), 1 Samsung hard drive (1 TB), two Western Digital external drives (750 GB and 1 TB respectively), 1 DVD+R DL w/LightScribe
Where I suppose the biggest hiccups are going to come from is the CPU (it's about five years old by now) and the video card (because "only" 1 GB of VRAM has already run me into some stumbling blocks with stuff like Rainbow Six Siege and GTA5).
leileilol wrote:reconsider the prospect of playing a fps game on a laptop and how comfortable it could not be
Personally if I weren't scared of throwing money at the Titan I'd counter with that, but it's at least two pay grades above anything I could afford. Yes it needs a desk all to itself, a power cord, and a mouse but it's still more portable than my current aging system, half as upgradable as the desktop I own now, and mechanical keyboard.
"Radeon 7/8970M Crossfire " Do you really want a toaster? That gpu is old and uses 200 Watts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For doom, I can only recomend an Nvidia GPU, it's going to be bug free, since the main GPU from Graf is an Nvidia gpu (so.... you may see less bugs on it)
EDIT:
If you really want a badass GPU for a notebook: https://www.msi.com/Notebook/GS30-2M-Shadow.html
Here, cheap and support Desktop like GPU.
Building your own PC with a GTX 960 or 970 for the GPU and any quad-core Intel will be plenty to run Doom. Considering the 970 is only $300 (and the 960 is only $200), and you can get a good i5 for under $200, you could build a much better PC for $700 than you could buy a new laptop.
I use a GTX 980, 24 GB of RAM, and an i5-3450. I am able to run the closed beta at greater than 60FPS at above 1920x1080.
My notebook can only play the Doom 4 with everything on minimun, and still lags (15 - 28fps)
And the creepy part is that almost all the system were at fully usage:
Intel Core I7 3635QM 2,4GHz (80 - 100% of all cores) - The alpha version could only reach 50% of usage from all cores
8GB of RAM (near 100% of usage) - The first alpha was only using 50% of the avaliable RAM
FPS: (15-28) and on the alpha it was 28 - 40 fps
AMD HD8870m : 60 - 70% of usage, for some reason, on the alpha version almost all the time it was running at 100% (maybe because the processor had some extra power free)
vRAM: 2GB GDDR5 (100% used) - The alpha version never passed from 1,5GB of vram used.
This is my log comparing the new beta to the first alpha version
Out of curiosity, how much processor/ram/vram is Doom 4 using on that system?
Unfortunately I can't go back and actually benchmark in-game because the beta is now closed, but from what I can remember, CPU usage tended towards the 80-90% range and I seem to remember the game preferring to use between 7 and 8 gigs of RAM. My GPU never reached its full clock rate running the beta for some reason; I only ever observed it hitting 1000MHz give-or-take (it should be hitting 1450MHz), but usage was very high anyway.
Open beta has already started and I'm still hunting for a compatible rig. I actually found an Alienware laptop with 970M for around $1499, which is probably the low end of the price tier for 970M systems. Maybe I'm probably aiming too high with this one, but I'll keep looking.
you're probably better off going for a gaming desktop if you want something prebuilt, or go to a store where they assemble the components for you. it'll probably take some years before you get a laptop that can run Doom at a not absurdly high price.