Wow we've really come a long way, a high school student low end budget laptop, with HDMI, UBC, M.2 slot, micro SD slot that can run most retro consoles at 1080p 60fps is just amazing.
I took a look at cheap laptop prices from a few years ago and the machines have indeed improved more than most of us remember, but imagine how much better they might be if the shortages weren't happening. If RAM prices hadn't went through the roof, machines at this price would now come with 16GB of RAM and at least a 250GB SSD. New CPU's are still great, but no one in the productivity market has needed better CPU's for a decade; heck, I'm writing this on a 2012 laptop that does just fine with anything that a student might need, though obviously not everything they'd want ;). This machine came with 4GB of dual-slot expandable RAM, which I upgraded to 16GB many years ago. Today, 4GB of RAM soldered to the board with no expansion slots is a crime that quickly dooms the machine to the trash heap. What a waste.
For sure. Not only have CPUs improved dramatically but also iGPUs. You can have so much fun with these machines! (LowSpecGamer represent.) But I do think 4GB will make Windows super duper sluggish and unpleasant. Without a doubt a lightweight Linux-based OS is the way to go.
@@antibrevity In a decade? I think that is pushing it. A decade ago laptops were slow and your 2012 laptop is also pretty slow I would imagine. The 2012 laptops which were good are 2620QM laptops which are quite large and eat a ton of power. I write this from a 2021 Surface Laptop 4 AMD with 8C 16T and unfortunately soldered memory. However the reason so much memory is soldered these days is due to LPDDR4X which is part of how there is such good GPU performance. I think that DDR5 might eliminate some soldered memory as DDR5 is alot like LPDDR4X from what I have seen thus far. Higher speeds with much worse timings and lower voltage. Also the amount of power used for the same amount of performance has shrunk significantly; my 140W 6C Phenom II gets utterly destroyed by the 15W 4890U in this Surface... the 3900x in my workstation sends the Phenom II to another dimension. The same can be said even about Haswell parts which are from 8 years ago now... 4770k can't hold its own to 1/3 of my 3900x despite using more power than the 3900x and that CPU is already 2 years old now. The amount of performance available today is literally astounding and the average person can get away with something with low specs like this laptop. 11th Gen in a basic laptop is pretty incredible, it is funny to see that Intel has now taken the budget market as AMD has pulled back from that market due to extreme demand for its higher end chips. The budget market only gets Zen / Zen+ 14/12nm silicon because they cannot spare wafers to make budget chips like this i3 when they have limited capacity. Since Intel is selling nothing in the high end because of poor performance and power characteristics; these cheap laptops can now have actually modern CPU's that are quite fast even if they are not so power efficient.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too
That post-processing in NFS Pro Street made me laugh. Back in the 2000s, game devs were so concerned with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should...
Great video as always ETA. I just picked up a new laptop as my on-the-go laptop. I have a 10lb gaming laptop but use it more as a desktop setup. the new one is a 2lb thing and light 13'' LG 13U70P-G.AAW7U1 Ryzen 7 4700u 16 GB ram. I really like it. going to get the Kinhank 2T HDD Portable External Game Hard Drive. At the time I bought it on Amazon it was 5 payments of $159 for the laptop. I saw your video on the 5500u you did and it helped me to make this setup thanks a lot for all the great videos. Hope you and your family are well. take care.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
The same effort to solder ram slots on the board is applied to solder the memory modules themselves. The laptop is going to be assembled by a person at some point anyway. Cost does not seems to be an excuse here. Also, there are laptops thiner than this that does have ethernet port on it. Cut costs on ethernet port is really a dumb (smart for them) thing.
Very cool little unit and video. In no world however would I recommend a brand new device in 2021 with only 4GB RAM. IMO I'd suggest spending a tad more for 8 GB minimum or for the same price (or less) get something a few months older with 8GB. Just putting that out there for anyone that may be less into tech as we are but still hunting for a cheap lappy.
@@rustyshackleford4514 Even considering how little RAM (a wisely crafted) desktop Arch linux installation uses (500MB on my cheapo laptop btw) an extra hundred goes to the iGPU and the rest is only enough for 7 Firefox/Chrome browser tabs. 4GB is not enough.
Yet again maybe it's still not as bad for what it is. All it takes to compete against a more premium laptop is if it had a higher core cpu and an option to make it 16 gb of RAM. What makes this thing an amazing beast is what Intel finally did. a college student on a budget can totally benefit from this laptop.
@@danieldougan269 yes! That is a great point. Even Linux although it's base ram usage is minimal, apps and websites with multiple tabs can run high fast so 8 gigs should be the new minimum.
@@swinoob616 due to the pandemic and silicone shortage, manufacturing cost are coming to an all-time high even raw materials got pricier these 2 years by a mile so unfortunately, you can't see this a norm anytime soon
It's a shame that because of manufacturing constrains AMD hasn't been able to address the cheaper SKUs for either desktops or laptops since I can totally see an equivalent Zen 3 chip being able to pack 4 actual cores and not just threads and 3 vega cores which would run around in circles vs this chip for about the same power constrains.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
@@ETAPRIME Actually, is not bad because their target is people like an old uncle/aunt that just need to get their email and do some web browsing or play some retro games :)
4 gb of ram is not terrible with Linux but with windows, it is much worse. I don’t think in anything more than this price of laptop though that a system should have less than 8 gb of ram and less than a quad core cpu
@@charliemaybe Especially now with Micro$oft and Windows 11 just using more overall system resources, for the time being. Its might get better but that's a big might.
Nice review, like always. Please test Burnout Revenge when testing PS2 emulators (android/pc). It´s a great game but it seems it´s harder to run! Thanks!
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
For its intended use - a cheapo machine to videoconference/do generic office stuff, the significantly (28w envelope) lower energy usage compared to the baseline i310100 was probably the target here.
@@benhillman8384 The i3 10100 probably has better multicore cpu performance with its 4c/8t configuration, and the cache size on the i3 1115g4 would probably mean single core is not that great either. The 48 eus of intel xe graphics is much better than the ancient uhd 630, but I believe cpu performance is more important anyway
That PS2 performance was insane. I didn't imagine R&C running that flawlessly on what is considered a lower-end CPU, and I was curious how it and GT4 ran so it was perfect you tested both. Thanks for the video!
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
Looks very good. Why didn't he try the things that he thought would not run with 4Gb just to see as it seemed to exceed his general expectations anyway.
4G of Ram soldiered seems like a silly design choice for a windows machine. The i3 1115G4 seems as good as a Ryzen 3500u for CPU performance, maybe a bit better with the single core score.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
@@greenprotag yes, just: 1- Use the connected laptop 2- use the laptop in performance mode 3-Close all the applications that you have open in the background 3-disable v-sync 4- use vulkan 5-show the fps 6-Try first with 800x600 and then increase the resolution as you see the performance that should be enough to have 60 fps or more ;)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
I remember Gateway Computers here in Ireland years ago when I was a kid. I think I played the first Grand Theft Auto on it. That cow is surely bringing back some nostalgic memories.
So for the price of less than what I paid for the PS2 back in 2002, not only would I essentially get a PS2, I also get a Dreamcast, GameCube, AND Wii! Pretty good deal!
I want this laptop for my dad. He mostly will use it for web browsing, youtube, listening music or podcast. I found it really cheap in a dept store in Mexico.
What version of PCSX2 are you running? Is it the latest version? I know that my laptop that has: 128mb of Video Memory. 8gb ram And Intel I3-7100U @ 2.40GHz What I'm asking for is, how do I run PCSX2 with those specs?
@@westleyjohnstone4719 yeah sounds roughly what I get on my desktop. it runs okay, but nowhere near full speed! fares a little better on TVC on dolphin but still slows way down on occasion.
@@darktetsuya oddly it runs better in software mode, possible due to uhd 630 being garbage maybe. Still not great though. Rogue squadron on dolphin isn't great either.
Nice review! Just wanted to let you know I just found a desktop system with 4x2.5Gbe ports and a chunky metal fin case for effective passive cooling that uses this same i3-1115G4 processor for under $200 on Aliexpress today. First I've seen this processor on something nearly so cheap and it might just be the best value out there right now for a light gaming desktop.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
I recently got the 8GB version of this laptop. Handles emulation excellent. One side note though, if you're looking to put more storage in it make sure you get an m.2 SATA III drive. NVMe's will not work.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
This Gateway laptop (with i3-1115g4 and 8GB soldered ram and 256 GB SSD) is currently sold new on ebay for $190 + tax + shipping and new on Amazon for $235 + tax 😃
Great, I am using an old Dell latitude e6330 (core i5 3360m + 2*'GB of DDR3) I am using recalbox x64 and for now all is working fine except I find issue with gamecube
Thank you so much for doing these reviews 😊 This might not be your area, but I was wondering if you think these laptops would run a retro programming environment quite well?
@@opiumized The 8GB variant he shared in the description is 15.6" and costs USD399, at which point it stops being a decent deal. There's no 8GB version of this 14" SKU, not even with the AMD APU.
Just Upgrade the ram With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
Thank you for always providing valuable information. It looks like a very good product. Is it comfortable to play around "Tekken 5" and "Dragon Quest 8" on PCSX2? It doesn't matter if you have time, so I'd appreciate it if you could verify it.
It's a shame it is only 4gb. Even though only 2c and 4t this processor still has a more to give, especially with the improved graphics it includes, if you had 8gb dual channel.
I know i'm two years late, but i have this processor, and, depending of the version you're using in the emulators, the optimization can reach some very impressive levels. If you take PCSX2 for example (which i believe is the heaviest emulator used in the video), the first version supporting Vulkan, which i believe that is Nightly 1.7.2521, cannot run Need For Speed Most Wanted in playable performance (a heavy game to the emulator). But, the version Nightly 1.7.3915, which i'm using now, can run the game in 2x PS2 resolution. So, the difference between then is brutal, and you can test for yourself...
well its better than all the celerons you can find. got an hp with a 1125g4 quad core version and 8gb of ram, glad to see its decent to carry around when visiting relatives.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
With this Laptop Proccesor i run Nintendo swicht Mario 3D World 60 fps , I upgrade the ram to 12gb , and Black ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant i get 100 fps too
@@Just.d4rkin 1- Use the connected laptop 2- use the laptop in performance mode 3-Close all the applications that you have open in the background 3-disable v-sync 4-show the fps 5-Try first with 800x600 and then increase the resolution as you see the performance that should be enough to have 80 or 90 fps ;)
Jus upgrade the ram With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
Nice. I have an Acer laptop with the same CPU and integrated graphics but with 8GB of RAM, I bought it to do normal video streaming, work and minor digital art with a graphic tablet but it's good to know I can emulate PS2, NGC and Wii games! Specially since my last laptop, a DELL with a 5th Gen Core i5 coudln't run well Dolhpine or any other emulator for 6th gen consoles.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
Soldered ram offers better performance than hot swappable ram but the downsides are already known so I dont have to explain it. Overall I would rather preffer hot swappable ram as I think 3200mhz is good enough and I could uograde to 64 or 128 gigs of ram
I got a good deal on a dell laptop with this chip like weeks after they hit the market last fall (fall 2020). It was pretty amazing performance with dual channel DDR4 3200. These chips natively support ddr4 3200 so make sure the laptop you get is using that, some of the budget models i have seen running tiger lake chips were using older ddr4 2400. Just general gaming performance was better than the overclocked GT 730 GDDR5 I have been using for quit awhile now.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
I bought the 8GB version for 200, and it runs ps2 flawlessly at 1080p, and while I haven't tried a ton of PS3 games, it shockingly can emulate All Pro Football 2K8 and College Hoops 2K8 really well. It also seems like it can handle the Wii at 1080 with no major issues too. I believe that the 8GB is still 200 at Walmart, and I'd recommend it to anyone that just wants something to emulate PS2 etc. It's really surprising how well this thing performs. It's ridiculous
Just Upgrade the RAM With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
Exactly. Except for the 4gb of ram. Even my parents need 8gb of ram in their laptops these days. Browsers and Windows itself justs eat it up. 4 is no longer enough for even casual users.
do you think the RAM upgrade might be on the other side of the motherboard? because some of the IO seem to be upside down so the motherboard might be a little weird too
I have what is today considered to be a VERY low-end computer. It's a 2.4Ghz Core-2-Duo with a GT430 graphics card. I just loaded up Chains of Olympus in PPSSPP 1.8.0 (last one I can run) and set it to 3x resolution. I'll admit that I did have some pretty bad stuttering in a few spots where it dipped down to 30FPS or so, but for the most part, I was getting above 50FPS, including during that fight at the start that everyone shows.If I drop it down to 2x, it runs great. Even at 3x, the stutters weren't frequent enough to ruin the game. It was mostly when something big happened. Even during boss fights, like with the Persian and the sea creature, I was getting around 55FPS most of the time. I thought this was a hard game to emulate? How can my under-powered system that's now more than a decade old, run this game at mostly 50-60FPS on a cheap video card if even an i3 struggles to run it?
I re-watched the section at around 4:09, most of the stuff covered on this channel has a lower TDP, or Thermal Design Power. it might not be the best number to look at, but its a good start. If it's a desktop its 65w for the CPU, and 49w for the GPU. "Mostly 50-60fps" at first glance does sound worse than "occasional drops". It might be worth comparing the percentages of CPU and GPU usage of your computer with the percentages shown in the video. One thing not mentioned in the video is how the experience in the emulator compares to original hardware. If the game has some slowdowns on hardware and the emulators accurately emulate that, it's not exactly the PCs fault... Personally I'm hoping Intel keeps adding a little bit here and there to their internal GPUs.
@@DoctorWhom I have an old system and I'm not sure what software would work for me to measure voltages, CPU temperatures, etc. I've always just run my CPU/GPU stock and trusted that everything was working properly. I typically don't even pay attention to FPS in games/emulators unless I'm specifically trying to compare performance. If a game seems to be running smoothly, that's good enough for me. It's just that Chains of Olympus is always held up as the gold standard of hard to emulate PSP games, the idea being that if a system can run that well, then every game that works in PPSSPP will also work well. That's not the case for me. In particular there are two games that have much worse performance unless I tweak the options. Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice - This runs at about 50-75% of normal speed unless I set the Spline/Bezier Curve quality to medium. That gets it up to full speed. Or at least it seems like full speed. The opening FMV is fine, but when it goes to the actual game, you can hear that the audio is running slowly. Death Jr. II - When the game starts, it runs extremely slow, like 2-3FPS. I have to check the option to Disable slower effects. That gets it running normally. I'm not sure what, if anything, is missing with that setting checked, as the game still looks pretty nice to me. My point is this: If Chains of Olympus runs like a champ, but Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice and Death Jr. II run like crap with the exact same settings on the same system, doesn't that indicate that those two games are more demanding than Chains of Olympus? But yet nobody ever tests those games, instead they test Chains of Olympus and say "See, it runs great, and since this is one of the most demanding PSP games, if it can run this, it's going to run just about any PSP game at full speed." Maybe there's something about my particular system that makes those two specific games run worse, but I wouldn't know because nobody ever uses them to test these systems or compare their performance to other PSP games. I'd actually be interested to know if these games are more demanding than CoO for everyone else as well. Maybe most people today just have systems powerful enough that they don't notice any performance loss.
I was shocked it performed as well as it did. When I saw it was only a dual-core I assumed it would be even slower than the quad-core celery they use in the super console x PC and many other ultra-micro-mini-nano PCs. But instead it was faster. Weird. Personally even though it performed okay and the price is low I still wouldn't buy it. I don't expect a laptop to last for ages, but it feels stupid to invest in a dual-core, 4GB ram PC in 2021. Quad-core 8GB ram MINIMUM for me to consider.
It's pretty powerful architecture still even though only 2 cores, and is hyperthreaded. It is also clocked pretty high. The thing beats some decent 4 core chips from not that long ago in raw processor performance, and has massively more powerful graphics than the processor you mentioned.
My problem with the i3-1115G4 is only Dual-Core but a 4.1Ghz Turbo Boost Speed makes up for it. Also if you want a better performance out of this CPU, get the Acer Aspire 5 with 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD (i think its probably m.2)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
I’d get one for online shopping and paying bills. I might get my kid one if it can handle Roblox or the Sims 4. Does this meet the Windows 11 requirements?
What size m.2 can I add to this to expand the storage? And it says it can only take up to 512 GB SD card which seems silly since I have a terabyte in my switch.
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
For the price and what it can do I got to have it I hate Walmart don't have layaway anymore please don't let the price increase before I can get it I been looking for something new that can emulate all this for under 300 is a steal great review on budget device's ETA thank you 👍😀
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
With this Laptop Processor i run Nintendo switch Mario 3D World at 60 fps , I upgrade the RAM to 12gb, and Black Ops 2 online I get 100+ fps , In Valorant I get 100 fps too, I have the Levono Ideapad 3 (81X7)
@@timmyburden5701 It's surprisingly close! It's got such beefy single core perf that it's quite close in multithread benchmarks, and in single core it eats my poor thing alive! Not sure about graphics but I'm guessing it's much better too 😅
which laptop i should purchase i5 10300h or r5 5600h ? gaming is not my purpose , i need a laptop which i can run for atleast 5-6 years so which processor do you prefer because intel is expensive and some rumours say that amd processor don't run for long time so please clear my confusion.
From cpu benchmark using passmark software the r5 is the stronger cpu. It has 6 cores and 12 threads vs the i5 4 cores and 8 threads. Clockspeed on the AMD r5 is also faster. I would pick up the r5 if it was me.
