New Laptop - Gaming Testing Time!

So, I recently bought a new laptop for productivity workloads and to use as a second screen using SpaceDesk on my main PC.

It is still quite dirty because it came with a broken keyboard and I had to send it in to repair, luckily the seller paid for the repair. I also decided to put in a 120GB SSD (alongside the 1TB HDD) and an extra 4GBs for a total of 8GBs. The native resolution is 1366x768 which is standard for laptops like these and I paid only $70 for it.

'Tis quite a good deal!

The CPU is an i3-6006u, not very strong, but that has never stopped me from trying to game muahahaha.
So anyways, here are some results from tests I just did on this hardware:

• Fortnite

On performance mode at 65% resolution scaling, the game is actually quite playable, fluctuating from 35 to 45 FPS. The real deal breaker are the load times since I'm playing this on a hard drive.

First match took so long to load that I was already falling out of the battlebus, second match I could actually interact in the lobby.
But yeah, it's somewhat playable and I managed to get a couple of kills on that first match even, ended the match on 11th place, which is good enough for me on such low end hardware.

• Counter Strike 2

Menus load okay and look pretty, but the game gets stuck on steam select, I can't even get a screenshot of it, it just freezes there and there's nothing I can do. It's crazy that CS2 is now a heavier game to run than Fortnite.

• Grand Theft Auto V

Even this runs better than Counter Strike 2 hahaha. With shadows at 800x600 on normal settings, it gets me 16-20 FPS. With shadows disabled through the .ini file on the same settings on DirectX 10, I get around 25-30FPS while cruising around town.

Not really playable by any means, but definitely an interesting result.

• Paladins

With all settings on medium and textures on high, I get 45-60FPS. Although the frame dips to 45 are rather annoying, they're still tolerable and the game is overall pretty playable like this. This is a game that I like a lot and will definitely be playing whenever I take my laptop out with me.

• Trackmania

At native resolution, with everything else set to low, I get a steady 30FPS, not dropping from there. It sounds bad, but it's actually quite playable. It's better than what my old i3-3217U could do and it's the same framerate I remember the Series S pulling when doing splitscreen at 4K, and I did lots of 4K splitscreen on this game.

So yeah, it's honestly quite playable.

• Tomb Raider

Decided to run a quick benchmark for Tomb Raider at "normal" settings on native resolution. These are the same specs that my friend used to play through the entire game, so if he could do it, I bet I can too. An average of around 30 is definitely not bad here, and if I'm not mistaken this is how 7th gen consoles ran the game anyway.

It still looks quite good, and 30FPS isn't the end of the world, specially for such a low powered chip.

I'm overall happy with these results, I knew this wasn't going to be a gaming powerhouse, but for productivity workloads, browsing the web and watching videos, it's definitely a great laptop.

Not to mention that indies or older titles will run here without a hitch, that much I'm 100% sure because I've owned worse hardware in the past. The battery is also doing really well, with light usage at around 2:52 hours and with heavy gaming at around 1:20 hours.

Another thing that surprised me is how cool this laptop is. It doesn't heat up at all, I mean, not where your palm rests at least. The air all comes out through the back and you don't even feel it at all. This is quite great, because it makes it for a really comfortable experience, be it typing posts for HIVE or doing some gaming.

Anyway, thanks for reading my silly experiment with my new laptop!