Laptop Performance Inquiry & Advice

Let me start by saying that I am well aware that a desktop is far superior for one's gaming experience and generally widely preferred by gamers. I am also more than aware that I can get a much more powerful PC for far less than I would end up paying for a laptop of lesser quality. All that said, I still prefer playing my games on a laptop {{shock face}}. Now, take your hand off of your head sir, and you....yeah you... stop banging it against the wall....and hey, you over there with the socks, quit laughing, and all of you give me a hand.

Unfortunately, my poor little laptop is feeling the sting of old age (I believe it's about 5 years old). I'm sure I've done more than my fair share to wonk it up over the years, and it only have 5 gigs of free space atm, so really, I do not blame my little laptop for not being able to handle Starbound very well. The FPS really isn't great on Starbound. I can play vanilla Minecraft fairly well on it still, but my FPS drops in the nether, and it's virtually impossible for me to play on servers loaded with plugins. I've played Don't Starve and Terraria with no issues, along with a handful of other steam games I own. Below is a pic of my system information.



I'm hoping you guys can help me out. I was wondering a few things.

1. Is anyone using a laptop with similar specs, and how is it running for you?
2. Is there anything I can do to my current laptop to help increase the performance?
3. Is anyone using a laptop that is running the game really well, and what are the specs?

Basically, I've been thinking about getting a new laptop now for a long while. I agree that it would be silly to buy a laptop purely for Starbound since I already have a desktop that plays it rather well, but my laptop has a slew of other annoying quirks and qualities that I can do without. My laptop, to put it bluntly, is a BEAST! It is a 17in menacing hunk of a machine. It also gets insanely hot even with a cooling pad, but I digress. I am in the market for a new laptop. I obviously don't want to break the bank. I think 800 is probably my max, but I would love to get one for around 500. I obviously am looking for something that will handle my video games well. I also want something light and way more portable than this beast. I would also love to do light photo editing. So now that you have an idea of what I'm looking for, my final question is this...

4. What is your recommendation for a laptop that meets the needs that I mentioned above?

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this thread, so feel free to move it if need be. I just figured this thread may help other beta players who are playing on laptops since I've asked about performance vs. specs and tips to increase the FPS. Anyhoo, any and all help is very much appreciated, so thank you in advance!

 

No advice?

 

I tried it with my paps laptop, and even if its pretty decent it need more ram for less fps drops so i guess thats your problem to?

 

Wow really? SoStarbound needs more than 4 gigs ram to run properly? I suppose that shouldn't be too hard to get fora reasonable price now a days, though that will rack up the price fast in a laptop. Thanks for replying too. I've been using my PC for Starbound lately, and I imagine I won't be getting a decent laptop until after Christmas.

 

You may have 4 gigs of ram, but it appears 2.23 gigs of it is being used somewhere already (1.30~ or so is going to be tooken by vista, try to figure out what's using the other gig.)

 

Hmm..your Laptop is really on the loosing end.

I too have a laptop but a rather good current gen and i can play even the most powerfull and demanding games up to date.

Starbound is really nothing for my Laptop. Just to answer your question about someone having a Laptop that can run this game with no problems.

I doubt my specs would help you but they are.

Intel Core i7-4900MQ CPU
16GB DDR3-RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX780M with 4GB GDDR5 RAM
OS: Windows 8

Because Starbound is still at an early stage with alot of additions and changes i would advice you to not spend your money on Ram and save up to buy a better Laptop.

Even Ram are not Ram. My Ram easily outclass yours in performance even if i had only 4 GB in my system. Same goes for the mainboard, GPU and CPU. I honestly wouldn't waste money for additional Ram on such an old system while a good Laptop doesn't have to be much more costly than a desktop system.

 

It runs at around 30-40 fps in 1366x768 on my core i3, 6 GB RAM, Intel HD 4000 laptop. Your GPU doesn't seem to show in the list you provided, but if it's an integrated chip rather than an Nvidia or AMD, it's obviously going to be slower than my system.

Running the game on the Geforce 720m in my laptop instead of the much slower Intel 4000, I get... 20-30 fps . Unless I run the OpenGL client instead (which I do) and get close to a steady 60 fps.

 

I've got the same problem. It's only a three-year old laptop, though I'm unsure of the processor or graphics specs. Still, it runs Minecraft smoothly, Terraria, Don't Starve, all run perfectly well. I can only assume that Starbound hasn't been properly optimized yet. There's really no reason that a 2d side-scroller should operate at a much slower pace than Minecraft.

 

I have a dell with similar specs(same cpu series and no standalone gpu) the only thing that I can see that might be causing you performance issues are;
The fact that you running vista! Seriously insulting vista aside starbound has an issue on older systems, I would advice switching to Win 7/8 64 BIT As soon as possible
The other thing being format your hard drive I can just imagine all the crap you might have eating your cpu power in the background that you are not aware of.

 

Hmm yes i think its the intergrated graphic part that makes my laptop lagg like hell when trying to play. Other then that i usually can play newer games and so on. I would also save money to a newer laptop if i were you op, i think the devs now are focusing on balance and content and optimatsion will come later. cheers

 

Hey thanks for the replies everyone. I don't think I will putany more money into my laptop. I did consider replacing the battery at one point because it barely holds onto a charge anymore, but even that seems wasteful on that system. I honestly don't remember what graphics card I have on my laptop, butI thought it was decent. I'm sure things will improve after they optimize the game properly, but I'd rather they spend time on more pressing things.

@Holylifestar what do you mean? Do you mean I'm essentially operating with less than 4 GB of RAM, and how do I find out what's using so much?

@EaglePryde that does sound like a nice system, but probably out of my price range. I can't imagine getting something like that for under 800.

 

Your "Available Physical Memory", AKA: RAM, is 1.77GB. Your whole system, not counting what's being ran, is 4GB. Vista is a pretty heavy OS (Trust me, I use it.) no matter what you try to do, you can always assume it's taking anywhere .5GB-1GB of RAM from you. That leaves at the least, 3GB. Counting other background programs you may be running (Antiviruses, steam, skype, etc.) you can take another .5GB off that. Leaving you with 2.5GB. Essentially, you're missing a whole GB of RAM. Best way to tell what your computer/processes are doing, what resources they're taking, and managing them, is a program called "Process Explorer." It's essentially an upgraded and overhauled task manager.

My suggestion to you is to use it to find out where all your memory is going. Then do a quick few google searches of the process if you don't know what it is, if it's something you don't need just end it, and your problem will be mostly solved~. If it's something you DO need however, there are many other options you can use to get your computer to go a bit faster and more efficiently.

1.) Clean out temp files, use disk cleaner, delete all unused games/programs, then do a disk defragment. (All of this can be found under "Accessories> System Accessories" in the start menu.

2.) Make sure you close all background applications such as Chrome/IE/Firefox (etc.), Skype/Steam (If not in use), and anything else you may have running.

3.) Your computer is fairly slow, so this probably wouldn't help at all, possibly even worsen the problem, but if your computer has a NVIDIA graphics card (Can easilly be checked, control panel> Additional Options, if there isn't a "NVIDIA control panel" listed there, you don't have one.) you can change the settings for THIS GAME to disable multi-core support. This has helped other people, and worsened it for others. If it does make it worse you can always try switching back.

4.) If you have no other applications running, nothing else online, and your anti-virus is taking a sizable chunk of memory (They usually do.) you can disable it while you play.