Toaster or Potato, when running StarMade off your economy laptop

    MossyStone48

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    A warning. This IS ranty. You like that sorta thing or want to glean useful data; Please continue. Not into ranty stuff? Bake a pie. Or homemade doritos. Idc.

    First, I want to be very specific about three things:

    one: no one cares what you are running starmade on. if it works, use it. don't list your specs here. try another thread.
    two: when talking about economic laptops we're talking about 3-4 year old hardware vs brand new stuff thats built on the cheap. got a really boss MSI at a garage sale for 15 bucks and a wad of abc gum? good for you. it's not what we're talking about here.
    three: reserved for later. because reasons. after you've earned it.

    Let's jump in. See where the rift takes us.

    Intel just pooped out a series of fanless celerons which HP has scooped up, given a nice coating of shellac and then encased that in lies which is in turn stuffed into a colorful case. First rule of figuring out if the thing you are about to buy is cheap crap: it comes in colors. Like those 30 dollar tablets you see being sold in pharmacies for 80 bucks. If it comes in different colored cases there's a good chance it's a waste of time. A good example would also be those chromebooks that came out in multiple colors. Asus made those. I opted for a Samsung chromebook. It came in one color. I lent it to a friend who was down on their luck. They pawned it (with my permission). :RAINBOWS: The point is I knew the Asus units were trouble. And I like chrome OS. But it dun play well with the javas and displays even in ubuntu. Moving on.

    AMD has been producing low cost SoC solutions for a while. Even their aging chips still perform well considering their limitations. And by well I mean by comparison to a hamster on a wheel being threatened with what is obviously and airsoft pistol. The hamster is no where near the wheel and is in the process of gnawing his house in half. A better use of time for anyone if the only other option is trying to play a game on a budget laptop.

    Intel: Celeron
    If it's not and i3-7 you may as well pack it up and ship it to goodwill. Because they won't have the money to pay return shipping after they signed for it. But you might be stuck with one of these 'Celeron' processors with no other option. Maybe it was your older siblings old laptop. Maybe you found it at a thrift store. Or maybe Santa stopped believing in you. Whatever your misfortune: Dude, you're getting a DUD! There's some good news. If it has it's own dedicated GPU you might be in for some pleasant surprises. But most of them will happen at 800x600 resolution and only if intel's website doesn't screw you with the wrong driver pack. If it's using a ''''built in'''' """"video card"""" then you, my friend, are in for an exciting night of solitaire and ski-free. If you're lucky enough to have an ivy bridge based machine (or better) then you've escaped the need for those advanced yetis dodging videos on youtube. But again, don't expect anything playable over 800x600. So you can put your parent or legal guardian's copy of CoD: Ghosts back into their stash. Cuz it's not gonna work. In fact anything...

    ok something just came up. I'll finish this later

    well the forum just ate my edit, so there goes that.

    I can ballpark it for ya. Save up just one more paycheck. Wait for Xmas or that next birthday. Spend the money right and get a Mid to Performance level A series APU refurb. Better yet a decent Intel CPU with a dedicated Nvidia 610m or better will let you get away with a lot. And you won't be locked to 800x600 with the settings set to maximum derp. But only if you have to use a laptop. If budgets are really tight upgrading your desktop is a better option 90% of the time. A quick trip to newegg or tigerdirect can get you a decent bit of updated hardware on the cheap.

    Remember to not skimp on the GPU or CPU. Starmade needs both to run or you'll find yourself more frustrated than an orange juice taste tester with a mouthful of toothpaste.
     
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    Keptick

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    Potatoes are better than toasters, so if you have that option I'd strongly recommend it. Mine is working great: I get about 4 frames per second while looking at a core, which is just quality gaming! Here's an image of my beast rig:
     

    Ithirahad

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    Someone really needs to create a mobile-device-like computer with a potato for a case.
     

    jayman38

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    I haven't had the nerve to try to run StarMade on my laptop. I use it on my desktop, which is slightly superior, and I still have to be careful not to crash the game. I might run it on my laptop as a 125-sector micro-universe in creative mode for trying out different designs in 3D (I currently use my laptop to draw 2D designs in LibreOffice, but that's not the same as seeing how the design actually works in 3D), but I don't think the game has those options (microuniverse, dedicated creative mode) yet.
     

    MossyStone48

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    27 sectors is enough.. otherwise you might need to consult a psychiatrist. if your ships are larger than three 2.6 km sectors your meds need adjusting.
    and he runs on pure war-lovin.
    technically never leaving 2 2 2 will leave you a mostly unknown universe. the sectors won't even be generated until you start flying around.
     

    MossyStone48

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    Some new info on a new system I got in today. With up to date intel gpu drivers and the starmade DEV release I was able to run a single player game at 40fps on an intel atom z3735D. The D version like several of its cousins uses TWO gigs of memory with 1.5gb available to the system. Using all four cores at near full speed and the memory at 90% on stock settings. Big ships will not be a doable thing on the atom z3700 series but small stations and utility craft, maybe some heavier fighters should be possible without inglorious SP lag.

    more testing later.

    After further testing I can confirm that asteroid fields are lag farms in SP mode. Planets are inapproachable. This is on a mid range tablet too so only something as beefy as a Surface Pro would match up the needed CPU, GPU and RAM mix for SP Planet Survival. Multiplayer mode still needs some testing but my hypothesis is battle mode with small to medium-small ships is the best we can hope for on these 2gb tablets. I suspect the 1gb RAM models won't even load a pirate base without coughing up several diodes.
     
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