Looking for a laptop that can handle minetest

[OrangeSoda]

A little backstory: on july 31st, I was backing my laptop up, when I finished doing that, I went to place the flash drive somewhere, when I suddenly tripped and my laptop fell down my desk and its hard drive broke. I asked a guy but he couldn't fix it because it needed a new hard drive which would cost about 70 - 100 euros, I couldn't afford that, so I just scrapped the laptop.

In september my cousin gave me his old laptop, which was very glitchy and could barely run minetest (19 - 35 fps with 40 block viewing range!). I'm still using that one and quite frankly I'm getting really sick of minetest's choppy framerates.

I'm now looking for a laptop that fits these requirements:
- Can run minetest at 50 - 60 fps with 70 - 100 block viewing range
- 4 - 5 GB RAM
- Costs 360 euros or below
- Can run XFCE

Thanks in advance!

[Krock]

What I would do is to check the local websites for used laptops in a good condition. Don't forget the battery, that's usually one of the first things that stop working well.
The specs might be a bit old but with a good deal you'll save some money.
Definitely check the processor performance and compare it on the big mega page of CPUs. With your requirements you'll need a regular dual core processor with a score of rougly 2000 or higher on that page.
2nd important is the graphics card that should support at least OpenGL 2.1 to use all of Minetest's features.

I assume you already tried tuning the settings for the laptop you're currently using. Turning off shaders, fancy leaves and using a low-resolution (16px, default) texture pack give you some additional frames per second.

[OrangeSoda]

What I would do is to check the local websites for used laptops in a good condition. Don't forget the battery, that's usually one of the first things that stop working well.
The specs might be a bit old but with a good deal you'll save some money.
Definitely check the processor performance and compare it on the big mega page of CPUs. With your requirements you'll need a regular dual core processor with a score of rougly 2000 or higher on that page.
2nd important is the graphics card that should support at least OpenGL 2.1 to use all of Minetest's features.

I assume you already tried tuning the settings for the laptop you're currently using. Turning off shaders, fancy leaves and using a low-resolution (16px, default) texture pack give you some additional frames per second.

Thanks, my current CPU is P6100 2.00GHz 1.99GHz, 2,30 GB RAM, is that bad?

[Krock]

Thanks, my current CPU is P6100 2.00GHz 1.99GHz, 2,30 GB RAM, is that bad?

It's already better than the one I had in my last PC (tower).
What I did there to get a slightly better performance:

• maximal FPS limited to 20, so it does not make a big difference when it drops down to 18 or 16
• disable the clouds entirely -> less objects to draw
• leaves draw style: simple or opaque -> less faces to draw
• mipmap filter on
• mesh cache on (if you have some free RAM)
• disable the Minimap entirely
• avoiding VanessaE's dreambuilder and all other heavy servers

All these settings (except for the last one) above can be found in the file minetest.conf.example or in the advanced settings GUI.
However, even with these tweaks you won't be able to play with 60 frames per second. It would be helpful if you could find a newer graphics driver if it does not support OpenGL 2.1 because that might be what slows Minetest down.

[OrangeSoda]

Thanks, my current CPU is P6100 2.00GHz 1.99GHz, 2,30 GB RAM, is that bad?

It's already better than the one I had in my last PC (tower).
What I did there to get a slightly better performance:

• maximal FPS limited to 20, so it does not make a big difference when it drops down to 18 or 16
• disable the clouds entirely -> less objects to draw
• leaves draw style: simple or opaque -> less faces to draw
• mipmap filter on
• mesh cache on (if you have some free RAM)
• disable the Minimap entirely
• avoiding VanessaE's dreambuilder and all other heavy servers

All these settings (except for the last one) above can be found in the file minetest.conf.example or in the advanced settings GUI.
However, even with these tweaks you won't be able to play with 60 frames per second. It would be helpful if you could find a newer graphics driver if it does not support OpenGL 2.1 because that might be what slows Minetest down.

It does support OpenGL 2.1, but it can barely reach 23 fps even with all the tweaks you've mentioned above, I've had them that way since September!

I may need to buy a new computer altogether anyway, this one's keyboard layout isn't very user friendly. My old one was an Aspire ES1-512 and ran minetest at 45-60 fps with a 2.16Ghz processor, but sadly they don't sell them in my area anymore.

[Worldblender]

Aww man! You didn't have to scrap all of your old laptop just because you couldn't replace its hard drive. You could keep it around for something else and save some stuff from going into landfills, instead of having shortened the life of your old laptop. Next time, you might consider checking out iFixit so that you can teach yourself some repair skills so that you can save yourself some money.
Anyways, I do have an older laptop that's not in use by any of my other family members, but it's from around 2006. It's a Gateway brand laptop with a 32-bit only Intel CPU, and has 1.5 GB of memory, and a 250 GB hard drive (I can swap this with a 500 GB drive if you want). There will be Intel graphics, but not HD ones. Model number is MX6920.
I will be testing it to see if it can run well with most of the software specs you specify.
I am living in the United States, so if you agree to have me ship the laptop to you, I will have to find some way of solving the shipping. I may be able to list this on eBay so that the service will take care of international shipping for us.

[sofar]

I'm now looking for a laptop that fits these requirements:
- Can run minetest at 50 - 60 fps with 70 - 100 block viewing range
- 4 - 5 GB RAM
- Costs 360 euros or below
- Can run XFCE

Thanks in advance!

DISCLAIMER: I work for Intel. The recommendation below is strongly biased, and not my employers:

Get any Intel-based laptop with Intel HD graphics that is new. Amazon lists e.g. Acer Asipre for 300USD, so that should be close to 300 EUR with taxes. Try to get a CPU model that is released in 2016 if you can, but absolutely not CPU models that are released before 2014 (those are old, basically). You can look up the CPU model on ark.intel.com, and it will show "year released" when it was first released.

e.g. a great entry model is the Celeron N3050. Models start at 200USD, released 2016.

More Celeron models are listed here: https://ark.intel.com/products/family/4 ... or#@Mobile

Googling gives crazy offers, take a look at this $249 Lenovo laptop: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-15-6 ... :212,loc:2

[Kosmos]

IDK, but you can look here: https://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/lang/en/f/602/
https://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/834/lang/en/kw/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T530-Serie/

That are great notebooks.(I have a Lenovo ThinkPad t520 4242-A25, and Minetest doesn't bug or lag.)

So there you can say how much RAM you would have etc.


-Kosmos