Good gaming laptops for under 500 bucks.

[RadeonProVega]

Looking to buy a good gaming laptop but my budget is 500 dollars, might can swing 501 lol. But I'm looking on ebay and all i see are laptops well over 600 dollars.
Also alot of laptops have cpus that have 2 cores, which is strange. Anyone know of any good brand new laptops that has at least 4 cores, and 1920x1080.
Thanks.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Looking to buy a good gaming laptop but my budget is 500 dollars, might can swing 501 lol. But I'm looking on ebay and all i see are laptops well over 600 dollars.
Also alot of laptops have cpus that have 2 cores, which is strange. Anyone know of any good brand new laptops that has at least 4 cores, and 1920x1080.
Thanks.

uh you aint gonna get anything but a low end system for that much money im sorry to say
you may be able to get it used but still would be a strech
laptops are expensive

 

[jboydgolfer]

i grabbed a 15-db0069wm a couple years back for my daughter, just so she could run minecraft & other games when on the road, etc. its not a 4K high end gaming laptop, but it does run the games she plays well.

a decent ryzen chip wit ha reasonably decent iGPU worked great for her. the one i got had an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
ive seen it running games & it was nice for sub $500 range. i paid under $200 iirc. i suggest installing a m.2 (which it supports natively) as well as a second 8Gb stick of RAM, which was a small investment, i still hadnt even broken the $400 barrier even after the upgrades in storage & RAM.

 

[abactuon]

The dual-core Intel® Core ™ i3-1005G1 outperforms comparable quad-cores in benchmarks.
Laptops based on it cost up to $ 500.
For example https://www.newegg.com/white-hp-15/p/1TS-000D-0BH63?quicklink=true.
These are not gaming computers anyway.
IMHO old games are single-threaded, but Cyberpunk 2077 will not run on such a computer.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

The dual-core Intel® Core ™ i3-1005G1 outperforms comparable quad-cores in benchmarks.
Laptops based on it cost up to $ 500.
For example https://www.newegg.com/white-hp-15/p/1TS-000D-0BH63?quicklink=true.
These are not gaming computers anyway.

yeah but hyper threading often helps in benchmarks and not in games

 

[FreedomEclipse]

yeah but hyper threading often helps in benchmarks and not in games

This is actually old news. HT actually helps in a lot more modern games as of late. Most games that came after Battlefield 4 showed improvements with HT on. Though how well it performs (if at all) is purely game dependent and some games will perform better with it or not at all.

The days where having HT on was detrimental to gaming performance is long gone.

 

[newtekie1]

Robot or human?

Hurry, there is only 1 left in stock.

 

[RadeonProVega]

Robot or human?

Hurry, there is only 1 left in stock.

lol gone. All good.

Btw i was looking at that i3-1005G1 laptops, was concern about the 1ghz thing. When i say gaming laptop, basically anything better than what i have now, not hardcore games, light games and just something faster. Thanks for all the information, i found a few new laptops with the i3-1005G1 cpu and 8gb and more ram.

 

[Colddecked]

Damn that laptop was only 599 new like a week ago...

I'd wait for some new stock or an updated model of that Gateway.

 

[jboydgolfer]

the best thing you can do if you want to game on a laptop under a certain price, is to start by not searching for 'gaming' laptops. just search laptops, with the mobile CPU that is best for budget gaming.

i know thats obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people will search gaming this , & overlook better options that dont have the qualifier gaming added

 

[Chrispy_]

Pre-COVID, $800 was the starting price of a half-decent gaming laptop. Not a good one, but one that wasn't too badly compromised.

COVID increased the price.

 

[Frick]

lol gone. All good.

Btw i was looking at that i3-1005G1 laptops, was concern about the 1ghz thing. When i say gaming laptop, basically anything better than what i have now, not hardcore games, light games and just something faster. Thanks for all the information, i found a few new laptops with the i3-1005G1 cpu and 8gb and more ram.

Is your system specs accurate? If yes, it'll be hard, for games. Where I live you can occasionally find laptops with GTX1650 and a decent Ryzen for €600-700, but <$500? Refurbs and demo stuff maybe, or stuff like store returns. Last summer was a decent time for buying laptops as they cleared out Ryzen 3xxx models. Three people I know (including two siblings) got the ASUS TUF FX505DT for a decent price (one of them at about €550) and they have been solid.

And as hinted above, covid didn't help this. Used laptop prices spiked when lockdown/distancing started (where I live anyway, again...) and they have settled a bit but they are still higher than early 2020.

 

[RadeonProVega]

Guys, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean like super gaming, its only for light gaming and movies, etc. I found some laptops for under 500 that has 16GB of ram, and a AMD Ryzen 5 3450U, cpu . Going to grab one soon. The laptop is really for my wife though, I'm a workstation desktop gamer/person.

 

[Colddecked]

A 4300u or equivalent tiger lake would probably suit her better.

 

[Chrispy_]

Guys, sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean like super gaming, its only for light gaming and movies, etc. I found some laptops for under 500 that has 16GB of ram, and a AMD Ryzen 5 3450U, cpu . Going to grab one soon. The laptop is really for my wife though, I'm a workstation desktop gamer/person.

As mentioned by @Colddecked you're looking at integrated graphics.

i5-1165G7 or any Ryzen 5/7 4000-series will be capable of light gaming. Those mostly start at $600 but you might find something on discount if you keep your eyes peeled.

The thing to be wary of when it comes to cheap laptops are terrible screens and configurations that only use one stick of RAM. The bad screen ruins the whole laptop experience and the single RAM stick hurts the gaming performance significantly.

 

[RadeonProVega]

As mentioned by @Colddecked you're looking at integrated graphics.

i5-1165G7 or any Ryzen 5/7 4000-series will be capable of light gaming. Those mostly start at $600 but you might find something on discount if you keep your eyes peeled.

The thing to be wary of when it comes to cheap laptops are terrible screens and configurations that only use one stick of RAM. The bad screen ruins the whole laptop experience and the single RAM stick hurts the gaming performance significantly.

I found plenty of 4300u's for cheap.