Laptop Recomedations

I am looking to play TS again, I last played in TS 2020 but my laptop got really laggy and stopped using it. I have 2 questions, would I get TS Classic for free because I had TS 2020 or will I jave to but it. 2. What is the best laptop to run the game smoothly and on good graphics. Also needs to be affordable, No more than 300 pounds if possible,

 

I'm from New Zealand and converted your 300 pounds to NZ dollars which come to 574 NZ dollars. I'm afraid that you really wouldn't get anything suitable for that price to run TSC on maybe at the lowest settings but it would still be quite laggy.

 

As for the first question - if you still have access to your Steam account you will have Train Simulator still on it and therefore the game will be updated engine-wise to the latest version. The content included will be identical to what was included in the version you bought originally as this never changes. If you want the content included in TS Classic you will need to buy TS Classic. I have seen a thread by you which said you had bought TS2018 but now you want to 'upgrade' TS2020 - some more clarification would be useful. Do you still use the account that started with TS2018? Did you re-buy TS to get the TS2020 content or are you solely referring to the time in which you were playing it?

As for the second question, absolutely no PC that costs £300 will run TS in a playable state. Based on my experience with low power PCs you will still suffer from low framerates (well under 15fps) even at the lowest possible settings. To have a playable experience (let's say medium settings and 30fps) you will need to pay at least double what you want to pay. Not something you will want to hear but it's the truth unless you want to look at the used market which is a mixed bag to say the least.

 

You won't get a new system suitable for £300 that's much use for TS but if you're willing to buy second hand you should be able to find something. I bought a Windows 7 vintage 6GB i5 17" laptop with a basic but adequate GPU for £200 that I used for TS quite happily and still would if it hadn't died on me- which is a risk you take buying second hand of course.

 

What sort of settings were you running it on? What framerates were you getting?

 

It was still necessary to dial down most of the graphics settings but it ran smoothly enough to be perfectly playable most of the time even with newer more detailed and busier routes. It was an HP system with Beats audio and the GPU was an AMD Radeon of some description but I can't remember more than that now.

 

I'm afraid for £300, you'll not get anything that will run TS well. If you turn all in game settings down... a lot, it may technically "run", but it will be a miserable experience. I don't advise it.

 

You could probably pick up a refurbished laptop with a gtx 970 or equivalent.

 

That would be better. Laptops depreciate really badly, so you would get more bang for your buck second hand. £300 new wouldn't get you much.

 

Here's two I'm thinking of getting for the sim...basically trying to decide which one I should get.
One is an Acer Swift with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U and a NVIDIA RTX 3050Ti GPU with 512GB SSD. Cost is $770.71
The other one is a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 with an AMD Ryzen 5 6600H with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Graphics with 258GB SSD. Cost is $649.99
I don't know how much those would be in GBP but I hope the info I provided could help with making a decision.

 

I'd go for the Acer. The CPUs are roughly the same, but the slightly better graphics card and extra storage (this especially) will help you out a lot. How much RAM do both have? I presume 16 but I might be wrong.

 

If you're buying the laptop mostly for gaming, you'll want to start with a better GPU than the 3050ti. That, like AMD's simultaneous 6500 XT, is a bottom-tier GPU put out as a reasonably priced option during the GPU price boom. It benchmarks even slower than the 1660ti from two years earlier. (AMD's 6500 XT is even worse.)

If the only game you're playing on it is TSC, they do at least meet the recommended specs. In that case, Doomotron is right; go for the better GPU and storage.

 

Generally speaking you have to spend more on a laptop to get a similar spec to a PC.

 

I'd hold out a bit longer to see what sort of prices laptops are with a 40 series gpu.

Ment to be some big performance gains over the 30 series.

 

Just had a l

Just had a look and it's only the Acer Swift that is 16gb...the Lenovo is 8gb.

 

Nothing wrong with an RTX 3050 GPU which can run DLSS. I'm running one on my Desktop PC with an Intel i5 10600K CPU and 16GB of ram. I bet you couldn't tell the speed difference between the 2 cards playing the same game. I run TSC on max settings and also Microsoft Flight Simulator on Highend settings with no problems.