Budget gaming laptop around $500 (give or take $100)

My son (10) is looking to get a gaming laptop in the near future. Any recommendations for one that can play games moderately well around the $500 price point? He is willing to save up a little while longer, so the price could go up a bit (or if there is one cheaper than that, great) if that is needed.

He plays Minecraft of course, but is also starting to get into FIFA and other sports titles. The occasional action/adventure game as well.

Thanks in advance!

Most $500 laptops have Intel HD 4400 graphics in them. It's not a powerful card but if you pair it with an i5 processor it would be more than able to play minecraft, FIFA and other lower requirement games. Pick up any laptop with an i5 and a 4400 and your son should be more then happy for now.

This ^

Don't forget to upgrade RAM to 8Gb though as it's min req in modern games

@ferrari2001: Thanks for the feedback. Just the type of specifics that I needed. Happy holidays!

You won't play much with a 500$ gaming laptop aside from some mobile/flash games and older games. My buddy has an Acer(forgot the model) with an Intel HD 4000 and he can barely play BL2 at 30fps, lowest settings and 720p. Try to find a laptop with Intel Iris.

If you want to get a laptop capable of gaming for 500USD then you have to do some bid sniping on ebay for used laptops.

I recently won a bid of 315USD for a laptop with an i5 3230m and Nvidia 650m.

@agrippi: There's no such thing as a "budget gaming laptop" unless you're buying a used laptop that's a few years old. Decent gaming laptops start at around $1,500. You can get one slightly cheaper (maybe $1,000-$1,200ish) but it will be pretty crappy and you'll be playing new games on low-med settings and if you're okay with that you're missing one of the major points of PC gaming. You're better off buying a console for sports games and Minecraft.

You are over exaggerating.

For 1500USD you can get a laptop with a 970m which is the second most powerful laptop gpu and is close to a desktop gtx 770.

I will say around 700USD is the starting point if you want to be playing most games above medium settings if you use a resolution higher than 1366x768.

If you play games at 1366x768 you can get away with a cheaper price but not by much.

@saintsatan:

I have a Aspire 4830th -6808 (timelinex)

Its a i5-2450m with 4 gb of ram, windows 7, GT 540m + intel chip, and slow 500gb green WD 1366x768

Games currently playing:

• Jamestown
• Astebreed
• Ether Vapor Remaster
• Gas Guzzlers Extreme
• Distance
• Endless Legend
• Joe Danger 1 & 2
• Rung Runner
• Risk of Rain
• Dungeon Defenders 1 & 2
• Space Run
• Black Mesa
• Dirt 2
• Ultimate Street Fighter 4
• Sonic Generations
• Metal Gear Rising Revengeance
• Dust: An Eleysian Tail
• Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing 1 $ 2
• Lara Croft and the guardings of Light
• Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
• Need for Speed Hot Pursuit
• torchlight 2
• Path of Exile
• Hard Reset
• The Last Remnant
• Space Priates and Zombies

Pretty much a Mix of games from 2010-2014. Have had no problems.Play on a mix of medium and high settings thru-out

@agrippi:

I think many people underestimate what you can do on laptops in the 500-600 dollar range.

Now sadly I do have bad news. Its getting really hard to find laptops that have lower resolution + a ok integrated video card chip in the price range.

Here is whaat I found:

Aspire V3-572g

You should be looking for computer similiar to specs like this.

Here is another that I think could handle some middle of the row gaming as well

Lenovo Z50

Both of these fit your price point.

@jedikevin2: @RyviusARC: Okay maybe I was exaggerating a little bit. I was really drunk last night lol.

You can build a better desktop for that price that will outperform any laptop at that price point.

I had a laptop with the same exact specs, which I got for $600 back in 2012, played games pretty well, considering the price.

you cannot get a laptop that can competently play games for 500 dollars. spend your money elsewhere.

/thread

@cyloninside:

What are you talking about? A decent laptop with a modest dedicated video card + low resolution screen + modest cpu..= no prob with gaming. I already posted 2 that would work perfectly including 1 under 500 dollars on sale.

(/thread) <-- LOL.. jokes.

@saintsatan

No prob.

any laptop can play games on low, 640x480 resolution at 5 FPS. zero laptops that can competently play games for 500 dollars.

again /thread

@cyloninside:

No idea what your talking about. I'm literally sitting here on my laptop playing shadow of Mordor at medium on 1366x768mb rocking 30-60 fps thru out. I feel you can adequately play PC games with laptops in the 500 dollar range. Offcourse not on ultra maxxed out but fairly easily as long as you look and understands hardware specs. People buying intel only integrated low budget laptops are the ones suffering.

Acer Aspire V3 review

again (/thread) <--- LOl what?

@agrippi:

There is also a 20 dollar discount with the Coupon EMCWHHD77 on newegg.

$529 dollar for what looks to be a great laptop.

@Juub1990: I do not agree with you . I have a Acer F5-573G-56CG. Can't say all of games play well. But the laptop is enough for a 10 years old boy to play games.

Don't resurrect old threads.

Locked.