Laptop meets game spec but doesn't play well?

[2SkodaFamily]

Hi,

 

My youngest plays a lot of Minecraft via Steam. According to Mojang these are the minimum requirements

 

• Minimum Requirements:
• CPU: Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
• RAM: 2GB
• GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics or AMD (formerly ATI) Radeon HD Graphics with OpenGL 2.1
• GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT or AMD Radeon HD 2400 with OpenGL 3.1
• HDD: At least 200MB for Game Core and Other Files
• Java 6 Release 45
•  
  Recommended Requirements:
• CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon II (K10) 2.8 GHz
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU: GeForce 2xx Series or AMD Radeon HD 5xxx Series (Excluding Integrated Chipsets) with OpenGL 3.3
• HDD: 1GB
• Latest release of Java 8 from java.com

 

 

The laptop I'm using is a Lenovo Thinkpad T420s which is an i5 processor up to 2.8GHz, 8GB of RAM, and I've fitted an SSD to it. It flies with all tasks I do on it but the lad says it's laggy playing Minecraft.

 

It's running W10. I've checked to see if there are any other updated graphics drivers available from Lenovo but there weren't. My eldest son's laptop is also running W10 so i don't think its an OS issue. As far as I can see I'm meeting the recommended requirements - any other reasons why it doesn't play properly?

[Ally_bassman]

When you say play properly, what issues exactly? Laggy graphics? have you gone into the game settings and tried changing some of the graphic / textures down a little to see if that helps the frame rate?

Edited 24 July, 2017 by Ally_bassman

[io1901]

It would be your graphics  card  -  doesn't that model have a Intel HD 3000 (edit GPU built in to the CPU)- which is basically slow and right at the bottom of your minimum specs.  The PC may also be throttling (i.e. reducing the clock speed) of the GPU and/or CPU if thermal limits are breached - which is more common than you would think especially when you have a non gaming laptop running games.

Edited 24 July, 2017 by io1901

[SuperbTWM]

Graphics card is the problem, and due to the fact you have missed out even telling us what graphics card the current laptop has, makes me think that you have overlooked the most important component when trying to play a game.

[2SkodaFamily]

26 minutes ago, io1901 said:

It would be your graphics  card  -  doesn't that model have a Intel HD 3000 (edit GPU built in to the CPU)- which is basically slow and right at the bottom of your minimum specs.  The PC may also be throttling (i.e. reducing the clock speed) of the GPU and/or CPU if thermal limits are breached - which is more common than you would think especially when you have a non gaming laptop running games.

Looking here it looks like you're right.

[io1901]

8 minutes ago, 2SkodaFamily said:

Looking here it looks like you're right.

 

The intel HD graphics are OK for business use but utter rubbish for games. 

[Ttaskmaster]

TBH, most laptops are utter rubbish for playing games.

I've had a go with several top-end "Gaming" laptops, including MSI's latest and they were just... meh. My PC that cost half as much as these things is still better, even in 1440p!

[io1901]

I also think that the marketing (especially by intel) leads people to think that all i3, i5 and i7 CPU are all very similar. But the desktop and laptop versions of the chips are different beasts all together.  Take the i5 -2520m (which I think is the CPU in this laptop) and compare to a i5-2390t (similar vintage low power desktop  cpu)  the desktop CPU 25% faster - if you pick the desktop  i5 -2400 it's 75% faster.  Looking at the numbering though you might expect the i5-2520m to be the faster chip.

[peter_k]

Possible solution - See this re Minecraft and Intel HD graphics https://communities.intel.com/message/447887#447887

 

OK. I had this exact same problem. I upgraded to Windows 10, and I had problems with Minecraft. At first, things worked fine with Minecraft 1.11 (the latest version), but not with Minecraft version 1.8 - where I left off when I played last in 2015. All the worlds, resource packs and other things I needed were still version 1.8. That's why I needed things to work with this older version of Minecraft, at least for now.

 

***Every suggestion I tried made things worse, until eventually I received the same error message you have, no matter what version I tried to play.

 

Eventually, I read somewhere that Minecraft won't work with newer versions of Java - at least not with my computer, or maybe not with this video chipset. The recommendation was to download, install, and then point Minecraft to a version earlier than "60." All I know is that I downloaded Java jre-8u51-windows-x64.exe, installed it, and then selected this version and path for my Minecraft profiles, and now everything works, no matter if I run the latest version of Minecraft, or my old 1.8 stuff.

 

Here's where I downloaded the older version of Java. You need to create an account on the Oracle site to actually download anything.

Java Archive Downloads - Java SE 8

 

Then, it's a matter of pointing Minecraft to where the binary is located on your hard drive, for the "51" version you installed. For example, I installed to the default location, so this is what I typed into my Profile Editor, where it says "Java Settings (Advanced)".

 

C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_51\bin\javaw.exe

 

Of course, you have to check the box to the left of this, which is labeled as "Executable". Basically, this allows you to point the game at whatever version of Java you have installed.

 

So, installing and referencing an older 64-bit version of Java worked for me. Maybe it will work for you also. Good luck.

[SWBoy]

18 minutes ago, peter_k said:

Eventually, I read somewhere that Minecraft won't work with newer versions of Java - at least not with my computer, or maybe not with this video chipset. The recommendation was to download, install, and then point Minecraft to a version earlier than "60." All I know is that I downloaded Java jre-8u51-windows-x64.exe, installed it, and then selected this version and path for my Minecraft profiles, and now everything works, no matter if I run the latest version of Minecraft, or my old 1.8 stuff.

Be aware though that Java of that vintage has several publicly known and "in the wild" security vulnerabilities including some that allow a hacker to take control of the PC.

 

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-93/product_id-19117/Oracle-JRE.html

[2SkodaFamily]

Is this likely to be ok for what he needs? 

 

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-h5a-pre-built-pc-amd-a4-6300-dual-core-4gb-corsair-ddr3-ram-1tb-hdd-windows-10-home

[T2000]

No, you would have the same problem, weak graphics, the CPU isn't great and only 4GB RAM, for that price point something like this would be better and future proofed and would whizz through current games at 1080p, although some of it is refurbished I would buy this over any pre built scan ones, the GTX770 alone was around £300 when launched, I just sold my old one for £90.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FAST-GAMING-PC-with-Nvidia-GTX-770-Intel-i5-LED-colour-changing-strip-Win10-/172670115570?hash=item2833f0def2:g:mz4AAOSw-K9ZFE6w

 

I have no affiliation to the seller but it looks like he has good feedback and it's a decent system for the price.