Will A6 3300 run Skyrim

[frozentundra123456]

Hi all,

My grandson's laptop just died, and I am looking to replace it with a new one.
The old one was an Asus gaming system with a 2.2 ghz dual core and GTX 260M I believe.

However, I do not want to pay so much for a replacement system. I was wondering if an AMD fusion laptop with the A8 or A6 processer will work for light gaming.

He has finished skyrim on the Asus, but undoubtedly will want to play more. The only other "demanding" games he might want to play would be MW3, and Mass Effect 3 for sure.

Otherwise, he uses it for you tube, lisening to music, and playing online games such as minecraft, League of Legends, and some game called Dungeon Fighter. I would think it would handle these fine.

I really dont want to pay 1000+ for another gaming laptop, since almost every laptop I have seen or used has had problems within a couple of years, and I dont want to get an extended warranty as well. He also has an xbox now so could use that to play games that the laptop will not handle, although we usually share PC games, so I would rather use the PC.

I looked for benchmark reviews, but they were hard to find and rather brief in general.
Does anyone have direct experience that they could share or other information that would be useful? I would appreciate any feedback the forum community could give.

 

[tweakboy]

That is too general of a question. Any PC with DirectX 9 can run skyrim.

What do you want out of it ???

Your going to need more then a 2.2 mobil dual and a gtx 260. What you need is a GTX 460 1GB along with quad core CPU. Find those two thing in a laptop,, I dont know why you wanna give him a laptop, get him a desktop and save mucho money,,, let me know,, gl

 

[frozentundra123456]

That is too general of a question. Any PC with DirectX 9 can run skyrim.

What do you want out of it ???

Your going to need more then a 2.2 mobil dual and a gtx 260. What you need is a GTX 460 1GB along with quad core CPU. Find those two thing in a laptop,, I dont know why you wanna give him a laptop, get him a desktop and save mucho money,,, let me know,, gl

Ok, you are correct I will give more details.

He is not particularly demanding as far as graphics are concerned.

I am sure he would be satisfied with med settings at a native laptop resolution of
1366 x 768 and 30 FPS.

He wants a laptop for general use, such as using it in bed, on the couch, using the webcam, etc..not being tied to sitting at a desk. He was satisfied with the way Skyrim ran on the Asus, but now it is giving multiple problems with booting up and corrupted files, which makes me think the hard drive is going out. I am not sure that it is worth it to replace the hard drive, especially since the restore disk I got from best buy with the computer does not seem to work, so I might have to buy a copy of Win 7 too. I live in Minnesota, and he has moved to Ohio, so it is difficult to know what is wrong with the Asus since I cannot do anything with the machine myself. I did try to get him to take my old desktop when he was home last summer, but the Asus was working then, so he was not interested. I might offer again to take him my desktop, but we are not going to Ohio until spring, and he does not want to be without a comp for that long.

 

[EliteRetard]

An A8-3500m should handle medium details at 13x7...and I have seen a few laptops with that APU under 500$. Performance is quite dependant on RAM speed though, and many times they use the slowest stuff possible (as in you may want to look into swaping it out). Dell recently had one and before that I saw an HP model for 430$ with the A8. For a new laptop I dont think theres anything in that price range that can beat it. Once you go over 600$ I think you may start finding other options with real dedicated GPUs that will be faster.

 

[frozentundra123456]

An A8-3500m should handle medium details at 13x7...and I have seen a few laptops with that APU under 500$. Performance is quite dependant on RAM speed though, and many times they use the slowest stuff possible (as in you may want to look into swaping it out). Dell recently had one and before that I saw an HP model for 430$ with the A8. For a new laptop I dont think theres anything in that price range that can beat it. Once you go over 600$ I think you may start finding other options with real dedicated GPUs that will be faster.

Those are good prices, where are you finding them? I have seen a few of those fusion laptops at Costco, and I was thinking of buying there, because I believe they still double the warranty to two years.

I will have to check out this policy regarding laptops though.

 

[Arkadrel]

A A8-3850 can run skyrim just fine at 1280x1024 @ high settings ~30-40 fps.
You can always play around with the ini settings until its running the way you want it.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I have this laptop with the A6-3400M. I'm installing Skyrim on it now, I'll let you know how it plays.

 

[tweakboy]

To OP and to rest of my brothers posting on this thread. Since his resolution is 1377 skyrim will be VERY fast , You can put a 8800 GT mobile in there and at that resolution it will do 30fps easy..

so video card, try for 8800 or 9800 series for mobile, and actually doesnt need quad CPU dual core mobil chip is fine,, thx guys,, gl

 

[soccerballtux]

no it will not

 

[SlowSpyder]

To OP and to rest of my brothers posting on this thread. Since his resolution is 1377 skyrim will be VERY fast , You can put a 8800 GT mobile in there and at that resolution it will do 30fps easy..

so video card, try for 8800 or 9800 series for mobile, and actually doesnt need quad CPU dual core mobil chip is fine,, thx guys,, gl

My A6 is a quad core at only 1.4Ghz and a single core capable of 2.3GHz. That may hold it back regardless of low graphical detail settings and resolution.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I have this laptop with the A6-3400M. I'm installing Skyrim on it now, I'll let you know how it plays.

That sounds great. Let me know. I am running a 9800GT and E4500 and can only do medium but with shaders set to high, so I would say you will probably be looking at medium settings at best, but let me know what you find.

I figure Skyrim is a pretty good test. I figure if it will run skyrim, it will be OK for ME3 and MW3, since those are not very demading games either. Those are the only other games that are coming up that he is really interested in.

 

[frozentundra123456]

My A6 is a quad core at only 1.4Ghz and a single core capable of 2.3GHz. That may hold it back regardless of low graphical detail settings and resolution.

Yes, I noticed that. Kind of depends on how the turbo responds maybe. They have a dual core that is clocked quite a bit faster, which might actually be better, except that the GPU is cut way down unfortunately.

 

[digitaldurandal]

To OP and to rest of my brothers posting on this thread. Since his resolution is 1377 skyrim will be VERY fast , You can put a 8800 GT mobile in there and at that resolution it will do 30fps easy..

so video card, try for 8800 or 9800 series for mobile, and actually doesnt need quad CPU dual core mobil chip is fine,, thx guys,, gl

Seriously this guy is obviously a troll, he says random false things in just about every thread he ever posts in. I refuse to believe that he really believes everything he is saying - and honestly even if he does - is there really any point to keeping him in the community?

 

[Blitzvogel]

You can get some pretty decent laptops in the >$1000 range with Geforce GT 540s and Radeon 6650Ms. No they don't match the 260M that was in the Asus, but they will get the job done. If you're willing to take a chance on an HP with APU, there is this HP with an A8-3500 quad core and Radeon 6750 w/ 1 GB GDDR5. Graphics wise that is about as good as you're going to get without going over really close $1000. The 6750 beats out the numerous medium end Nvidia options in the same pricing category and you might see even more FPS when running in hybrid Crossfire X with the APU. My biggest worry would be how well the APU x86 cores handle Skyrim at only 1.5 GHz since turbo is so limited.

Tis a shame there are not more Radeon 6750 and 6770 equipped laptops out there because they are GDDR5 only. You have to worry about the fuss involved like with finding out if Nvidia's competing category GPUs are the DDR3 or GDDR5 version. God I hate that. Tape out your ****ing specs Nvidia

 

[SlowSpyder]

Well, I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. Oddly Skyrim auto-detects high settings and 8xAA. I turned off AA, left AF at 8x, left the distance sliders to the default, and set everything else to medium and found it to be perfectly playable. In fact I would guess the framerate was above 30, it was smoother than I expected. I'll play around a little more, try high settings or AA and see how it does later. But, it was playable without a doubt at Medium, though the jaggies stuck out to me.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. Oddly Skyrim auto-detects high settings and 8xAA. I turned off AA, left AF at 8x, left the distance sliders to the default, and set everything else to medium and found it to be perfectly playable. In fact I would guess the framerate was above 30, it was smoother than I expected. I'll play around a little more, try high settings or AA and see how it does later. But, it was playable without a doubt at Medium, though the jaggies stuck out to me.

Thanks for the information. Like I said, I tried playing on high, and after running for 30 min to an hour, the framerate slows to almost a crawl. I could never figure out why, so I just went back to medium.

The graphics of the game were sort of a disappointment to me considering it is a new engine. Running at my settings, it seems like some areas look fairly nice, while other areas look like something out of 2005. It seems like the snowy areas are the most blocky looking for some reason. It looked much better on high settings, but like I said, it would run fine for a while and then really slow down.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I overestimaged the frame rate, but I think it's still playable. I downloaded FRAPS, it's bouncing around between 20 FPS on the low end and low 30's max is what I am seeing. So depending on his tastes, while hardly ideal it can still be played.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Well, I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. Oddly Skyrim auto-detects high settings and 8xAA. I turned off AA, left AF at 8x, left the distance sliders to the default, and set everything else to medium and found it to be perfectly playable. In fact I would guess the framerate was above 30, it was smoother than I expected. I'll play around a little more, try high settings or AA and see how it does later. But, it was playable without a doubt at Medium, though the jaggies stuck out to me.

Good information.

The daughter of a friend wants to buy a laptop capable of some gaming and we saw an A8-3500M for a really decent price, unfortunately she wants a blue laptop and that model only exists in gray. Girls...

 

[Arkadrel]

I believe I read that K10stats works with Llano mobile chips.
So if the laptop needs abit more kick to it, you can overclock it with K10stat.

And at the same time, lower its idle power consumption by downclocking it, lower voltage (fine tuneing it to find lowest stable voltage ei.).

 

[DooKey]

If you don't mind going with a recertified laptop then this is a nice one at a good price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230111

I purchased a recertified ASUS this summer from Newegg and it's still going strong. I love it and got a great deal.

 

[frozentundra123456]

If you don't mind going with a recertified laptop then this is a nice one at a good price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834230111

I purchased a recertified ASUS this summer from Newegg and it's still going strong. I love it and got a great deal.

Looks like a good price. Always been wary of recertified though.

What kind of warranty does it have?

 

[EliteRetard]

The HP A8 I saw at best buy for 430$ is sold out, as is the Dell Vostro 3555 I saw for 499$ (had a backlit keyboard too). Just keep your eyes open if you want an A8-3500, another will come around for 500$ or less.

But heres a Samsung A6 for 380$
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Samsung+...&skuId=4073078

Honestly for that kind of price you can't complain about 25FPS medium details. Fact is you never used to be able to even run games at all in that range. The A6 doesnt quite hit 30FPS average but the A8, like I said should do medium details at 30FPS.

If I bump into another A8 deal Ill post it here (if you havnt bought a laptop yet).

 

[EliteRetard]

Oh actually heres an A8 for 500$, not quite as nice as the dell or as cheap as the HP, but an option if you don't want to wait: http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...uter-With-156/

 

[EliteRetard]

And if the laptop can take it, getting some 1600MHz RAM should boost performance (and possibly battery life, if you use 1.35v instead of 1.5v) for 30$. Many laptops ship with 1066, or possibly 1333, but since the APU shares system memory the higher speeds do help noticeably (as long as the laptop can run it, check the specific model you buy).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...e=3092%3A49472

 

[DooKey]

Looks like a good price. Always been wary of recertified though.

What kind of warranty does it have?

It has a 90 day warranty. I purchased a 2 year extended warranty for mine for an additional $110.