Laptop for on the road Street Fighter practice?

Hi guys

I hope this is the right section? And someone can help.

I’m looking for a laptop to play USF4 on the road.

I’m not tech expert at all but I’d like something like this:

  1. Very little input delay (I currently have an Asus that has 9ms input delay).
  2. Small (for travel).
  3. Has a USB for my fightstick.
  4. Runs the game smoothly.
  5. Inexpensive (of course!).

Background. I’m traveling out for Evo from NYC. I’ll be going to SDCC first, so there’s a week of traveling around on the west coast in between. I’d like to be able to practice and warm up on a laptop (rather than bring a monitor and Xbox.

Any help. Just a link perhaps would be great.

And yes I have googled this but had no luck.

Cheers!

How inexpensive are we talking here, what’s your budget?

Under $500 ideally. I’m not strapped for cash so could pay more, but I just need it for practicing in the training room.

I honestly know nothing about PC laptops. I have no idea if they suffer from input delay - that’s my main worry.

I also have a 2011 MacBook Pro. I read an emulator might also work??? But my concern with this is I’m really not a PC guy, and I’ll have to do a lot of complicated work to set it…not sure.

I guess I need a laptop that has these specs:

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66 GHz or better
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 8600 or better
DirectX Version: DirectX

Does it have to be a Windows OS?

And again, I’m looking for something with very little input delay.

Someone one facebook recommended an Acer Chromebook…?

I don’t have time while at work to look up a suitable choice for you but don’t listen to whoever said to get a Chromebook lol

Hey FattyWinnarz - I’d love your help!

I’m confused by the specs - there are so many different brands of processors with different names, it’s hard to tell what is equivalent to the written specs.

I read that the Google OS is not for gaming.

I’m assuming Acer, Asus, AlienWare, Razor are all good for gaming… But, again I do not know what’s best for Street Fighter.

Obviously I want as little input delay as possible, and the game running at the right speed.

I’m just retarded in terms of PC specs.

Thought there might be an FGC go-to?

your asus might not be too bad. follow these steps to post the specs for it. search and start the “run” program. type in dxdiag, the processor and ram will be displayed on the first page, the the graphics hardware will be displayed in the second tab. i have a 300 dollar samsung laptop that runs street fighter fine on minimum settings. there are some graphics and system settings that you can adjust to get it running better.

Hey Coffeejuice

Thanks for the help.
I do not have an Asus. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro.
I’m looking for a somewhat reasonably priced PC laptop.
I’m also an idiot when it comes to specs - my friends have told me the specs for USF4 are very outdated, which is probably why I’m struggling a bit in regards to the processor, and graphics card.

I looked at the vest selling “gaming laptops” on Amazon. Seems they are all just a bit over $1000 (considered budget).

I noticed this one for $650 which looks like it could run USF4 pretty well. But I’ve never heard of the brand (MSI). And I might be wrong about the specs.

I was hoping there would be a “go-to” laptop for the FGC, much like the few monitors out their.

I also realise that with a bit of knowledge you can probably find exactly what you need - which is a laptop that plays USF4 at the correct speed, with no (or “normal”) input delay.

Any thoughts?

Also, is refurbished a good idea to save money? When I say refurbished I’d want to get it from a reputable place - not just a random eBay used laptop.

Cheers!

You can run bootcamp on your Macbook Pro and install Win7 and it runs pretty great, your Macbook should of came with a bootcamp CD to install the drivers and tell you step by step how to do it.
But if you wanted a whole new laptop, I don’t know, I’d get something with decent specs and price like an intel i5 with 4GB ram etc at a store like Bestbuy that you could return if it’s what you expected.
As for input lag I think most laptop screens will have it, I can feel input lag on my Macbook Pro and gaming Laptops I own(ed) compared to my sub 1f monitors and CRT.

@BornFreeSRK strongly considering the ASUSmyself for a on the go setup. has all the essentials for gaming - great processor, good GPU, nice screen speed and size… the step up has a SSD option but its about 200 more. Im probably gonna pull the trigger tomorrow and ill update this post on my findings. Its gonna be close to impossible to find a gaming laptop for the $500 range (possibly 2nd hand?). Im a big mac guy myself but have recently built a PC desktop dedicated to streaming and gaming… and i hate to say to macs really cant compete in these 2 areas - especially for the price. This is prolly the 1st PC laptop i buy in over 10 years… Anyways… Have you checked all the usual suspects: newegg.com / microcenter.com / tigerdirect.com ?

MSI makes pretty nice gaming laptops, I recently got one a few months ago and I love it.

Street Fighter 4 is an older game, so really any laptop computer made in the last few years should be able to run it pretty easily.

However you might want to get a better system so you’ll be able to play Street Fighter V when it drops if you don’t already have a PS4.

futuremark.com has benchmark data for most video cards and processors. you can use it to compare the specs of the laptop you plan to purchase with a known computer specs that would run usf4 well. a desktop computer with an i3 4150 processor and gtx 650 would be able to run usf4 at full settings and constant 60fps. the $650 laptop you linked has a benchmark score of 1200 which would maybe run it at 60fps w/ minimum settings. you would be better off with this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314806

gaming laptops are never worth it since most of the cost goes into portability rather than hardware. refurbished laptops can be risky, especially if you’re buying ones with discrete graphics cards. these laptops produce more heat and it’s usually overheated ones that get sent in for a warranty replacement. overheated cards and processors can be irreversibly heat damaged but would only show problems after some time at full load.

@Tensho Thanks. I’ll look into it. My Macbook Pro is a bit battered and has been a bit jittery of late but it might work.

@jonyfraze Thanks. I saw a bunch of reviews saying that the Asus you linked to is the best budget gaming laptop. Please do come back and report on it. I’d really appreciate something anecdotal.

@“Running Wild” Thanks. Yeah that’s a good point re. SFV. I have a PS4 for SFV at home. This is more about traveling and practising. You raise a good point regarding the future.

@Coffeejuice Thanks for the website - I’ll check it out. Also, that reco looks really solid. I have an Acer monitor and love it. Great price. Thanks for the advice re. gaming laptops vs. regular laptops, and refurbished laptops.

I’ve learnt a fair bit today. Like I said I don’t really know my computer specs beyond RAM and Hard Drives. One of my friends was explaining to me how important the graphics card/co-processor is for gaming. But I guess it has to work in tandem with a decent processor. That’s where I get lost, and of course all the different processor and graphics cards have different names, or have changed as time has gone by, so it seems (to me at least) quite complicated.

If anyone does a search or knows of any other recos. Please do let me know with a link. I won’t put any money down for a week.
Right now the Acer that Coffeejuice recommended looks like my best bet for what I need. I just hope the input delay doesn’t defeat the object.

@BornFreeSRK hey regarding your macbook. do you happen to have the 15" version? if so you might already have a powerful enough laptop since those came with discreet graphics nvidia cards and intel i5 / i7 CPUs. I had an early 2011 15" pro myself that ran SF4 like butter on high settings. only catch is that you need to run & install your own copy of windows via a bootcamp partition (not a virtual machine like parallels or vmware) so you can truly take advantage of the hardware. if you have the 13" macbook pro then it had integrated graphics which is no bueno for gaming.

It doesn’t take much to run fighting games on PC, it the other genre of games that it processor and graphic heavy. If it’s strictly for SF, anything currently with a Radeon or GTX card will be able to run it fine. Just fine tuning it in the settings will make it run better.

@

@jonyfraze
These are my macbook pro specs.
Even though I do not really know my stuff I upgraded the RAM quite significantly myself.

http://i.imgur.com/CwS4XFP.png

How do I install windows via a “bootcamp partition”?
Do you know if it costs money and do you have a link with good instructions / info?

I was also considering upgrading the Hard Drive to an SSD.

So, do you think if I do this it will run as well as it would on the budget laptops?

@FR0STBIT3 So would my MacBook be enough?

Or how about this?: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314806

This is where I get confused. I don’t see GTX or Radeon in the descriptions for the graphics card on either my Mac or the Acer PC.

Your MacBook Pro has both the onboard Intel HD 3000 and a AMD Radeon 6490M discreet card. The Mac only uses it during intense graphical tasks, but when using Windows via bootcamp it is used as the default card. To confirm go to “system report” -> “graphics/displays” from the about this mac page you posted above. If so that should be adequate to run usf4 at decent settings.

To install bootcamp. Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Bootcamp Assistant. Follow the directions from there.

I dont know the full specs on your Mac so I can’t say. The one that you linked will run it with a breeze, but you’ll have to change some settings to make it run over 60fps, GTX cards have a power saving option that will not let you run pass 60fps, simply turning it off will let it, and make sure the vsync is turned on will lock it strictly at 60fps. If you do decide to purchase, pm me and I can’t walk you thru the graphic card settings.