Simple Laptop For Running FFXI

Hello,

My previous Asus Laptop died over the weekend, and it really frustrated me. The charging port does not hold a charge when I plug it in, and the hard drive is completely shot. Every time I load ffxi, the game freezes periodically, and just last night, ALL of my macros disappeared (yes, I logged in, got disconnected, then came back and everything was gone). I'm just about done with this laptop, as it has recently been reimaged and it sucks.

Does anyone know of any simple and reliable laptops that can run FFXI on reasonably good/high settings, but not for an inordinate price? I kind of just want an all-around laptop that I can stick FFXI just because its an older game, while browsing the web, watching NFL games online, streaming music, watching Netflix etc. Any ideas?

My budget is 350$ or so, and I'm primarily looking for something light that my wife can also use. I need some geek support( no offense intended, just need someone who knows PCs).

Also, I am probably going to have my older laptop fixed and put back together with a new hard drive, so that's likely where I'll store all of my documents, audio, video, etc. Please give me helpful places to start looking. You can PM me or reply here.

Thanks people.

Thanks

I had an older laptop that I used mainly for school, a Dell Vostro 1500, it's really old now that I actually look at all of it but it ran XI just fine. My only complaint was the thing got so damn hot that I had to buy a bottom laptop USB fan.

Looking at Dell's site though it seems like you can get better ones that fit your budget. Here's a list

Dell Factory Outlet

Sent you a PM with an option if you're interested.

Thanks

Ugh, actually, that was the biggest issue with my Asus. It overheated EVERY TIME i ran ffxi on max settings. Even turning it down, it wold just overheat. Maybe I should have opened it and used a can of pressurized air (which i did use on the outside of the vents).

But I'm actually not much of a fan of Dell. But I will start looking at them to see if they have reasonably priced ones with a good processor.

I think I'm looking for something with an SSD, at least 3-4 GB of system memory, and at least 2GHz. If anything, I'll get a really low quality model for my media files, and just use my asus when I get it fixed solely for ffxi.

I don't think I can find a laptop within my budget that can do both, though :(

Laptops are going to have cooling issues whenever you push them. Integrated graphics have all the video going through the same chips as everything else. The best thing you can do if you want to play on a laptop is keep your heatsinks clean and watch your core temps and adjust settings accordingly. If you want to play on high level settings, you need a laptop with dedicated graphics and good cooling. Asus laptops generally have great cooling for anything below the ultrabook range, but they just aren't made for gaming.

They really aren't. I think I may have jacked this one up because I tried to run FFXI to the max for such a long time. Eventually the HD just died.

Something to consider about FFXI-

It doesn't take advantage of many of the modern features of computers like the GPU for example. It's still stuck on DirectX 8 so from what I understand one of the main reasons people have issues with overheating on laptops and such is because (again, the way I understand it) FFXI's graphics are getting rendered 100% by the CPU which isn't the way modern machines are designed, especially compact laptops.

I don't have an answer as to what would be the best machine to run FFXI on, but some things to keep in mind.

My laptop runs FFXI fine, but I rarely use it for that unless I'm just bazaaring while I'm doing something on my desktop. Typical core temps while playing are between 45c and 50c, which isn't particularly high, but higher than I like for extended periods of time. It's a little higher price range, but still pretty affordable compared to a more gaming or ultrabook tier. Asus VivoBook You can hunt for better deals or different configurations. I don't think the cooling on this laptop is as good as my original Asus laptop, but it gets the job done fine.

I appreciate the comments from people, but notice many people seem to play on desktop. I don't mean to sound anti-desktop, but I have been playing on laptop only because of convenience. I used to play on desktop years ago in my former home, but since then, my play time and style has changed so frequently, that a laptop is more portable and easier for me to use, especially since I dont use a controller.

I realize a desktop is better by all means, but I don't have a place in my current home for one. Also, I play ffxi when I have a chance - which may be at work, at the airport, on vacation or babysitting or anything like that. So its difficult for me to get a desktop.

Also, I don't think its reasonable for me to want to pay 750+ bucks for a "gaming laptop", when the only game I play right now (and probably ever) is ffxi. I just want to get something that is of good quality, and can run fairly well. I may have exaggerated "max settings" a bit when I said that earlier. I really just mean "play it without severe lag or choppiness/freezing on fairly clean looking settings". That's why I'm looking at a cheaper price range, because I don't really want to spend a large amount of money just to play ffxi. Something inexpensive but extremely durable and has great bang for buck, and something I can let my wife use when I'm not playing. That's all. Maybe my price range isn't reasonable.

I liked the chrome books, but now i see those cant run ffxi, right? Can Mac books run ffxi?+

One tip i can give is check Best Buy Sony is closing their computer department down soon and you should probably be able to get a good Vaio for short dollars my laptop is about 2 years old now runs windows 7, and only cost me like 600$ no real slow down if on high settings but i kept my settings pretty low so i could 2box and not get any input lag.

Macbooks probably can run it fine, but they are quite a lot more expensive pound for pound than PC's. The bigger issue with things like chromebooks is that most of those ultra light duty PC's use mobile processors and peripherals. You'd basically be playing on a tablet.

Weighing in on this. Chromebooks are out, they run ChromeOS out of the box (there are folks that are getting them to run Linux, but this is not strictly supported).

From a "light duty" laptop standpoint, I have a Dell Inspiron 11 3137 that I upgraded the RAM from 2gb to 8gb and installed Windows 7 on it. This is a dual core haswell Celeron chip with Intel integrated graphics. It runs well enough for me to solo Lair Reives and piddle around town, but bogs down significantly while doing anything else (read: anything meaningful). I have not done any graphic tweaking/optimization, so I might be able to squeeze more performance out of it. Though honestly, I would be hard pressed to game on this full time. That being said, it does exactly what I hoped/expected it would.

If you are planning on playing XI on a laptop, there are still some tradeoffs you'll have to decide on. Heat generation vs. processing power, cost vs performance. There are plenty of resources out there that do notebook reviews, spend some time sifting through them.

A lot of folks above have suggested outlet laptops. This is not a bad avenue to explore. Dell and Lenovo both come to mind as good sources for discount outlet laptops. (check out slickdeals.net as well, lots of deals there very often).

Good luck!

I will say through the PMs and comments, I have learned a lot in a few short hours. I used to hate Dell based on what people told me, but I'm starting to think twice about performance vs people's opinion of a name brand. I will take all of this information and put it to good use when choosing my next portable pc.

Thanks guys.

I took some advice from multiple people and I'm going to start small. Ordered an SSHD for my laptop from Newegg.com, and gonna work on replacing that first, to try to salvage some financial resources. Then I'll ;look into grabbing a secondary laptop in case this one fails again, but I'll be price shopping. I figure with Black friday coming up soon, I may be able to find some reasonable deals on something not hardcore, but good enough.

I think it depends on personal opinion. Many people think x is shitty for x reason, whereas others think x is amazing for x reason. I always go with Compaq, which is a company off HP, simply because every single laptop I've ever had has died on me, but neither of my Compaqs have and they're both a few years old now. I hope you have good luck and get a well built laptop.

Honestly it sounds like your battery is bad and it's overheating more than a bad hard disk, but a bad hard disk is probable due to it being a laptop with some use on it.

You could use a mac to run XI but you'd be paying more for less and would have to run windows in bootcamp or a vm to do it (parralels or vmware should both work).

It sour macros glitching seemed more like a client error than a laptop error, but hopefully you have them backed up server side.

A lot of laptops with a dedicated gpu are poorly designed with the heat pipe going from the gpu>cpu (or vice-versa) > cooling fan, to save space, and quite frankly they should both have their own pipe. I'm sure I could probably do the math for this, and I may do so to be 100% so kinda just ignore this conjecture for now, but my HP does this overheating ***too, it idles way too hot and doing stuff makes it go crazy, and I've replaced the thermal paste twice (if your laptop is a few years old now, it may help).

consumer grade wise compaqs are typically pretty shitty and notorious for being under par, kinda likr Acer.

But since they're owned by HP it's hard to tell. Similar to how alienware is just a painted dell with fancy lights.

On another note, to the OP again: you can't run on a chromebook they're on a different architecture than Windows supports. (at least I'm not aware of any x86/x64 chromebooks, if there is I'll retract the statement.

On another note: I find the general idea of the chromebook to be deficient, if I wanted a Google based dumbed down platform I'd throw android on something, at least then I'd have better support/options.

But I like options so meh.

Just about any PC/laptop/could likely run it on a phone if it was x86 and windows based, will run FFXI.
It's mostly CPU bound, so anything with a video chip and at least a 1.5Ghz cpu, or better will run it just fine. (more powerful and newer systems obviously do better)

I would look around Ebay or amazon for older systems if you just need something to run FFXI and basic web support.

A bit under 2yrs ago I bought an old compaq laptop (NC6230) with a 64mb radeon chip in it, and a single core 1.8Ghz cpu with about a gig of ram. Ran FFXI well enough, not super pretty but quite well enough for what I needed.

Now I run FFXI on an Asus G60VX... pretty hot running, but it does quite well. MSI and HP/Compaq are quite nice from what I hear, and are fairly common, but the former might be a bit more expensive over some of the latter's slightly older and likely more numerous models.

I do not recommend playing FFXI on a Macbook. I have one from Oct 2013 that theoretically should be great for gaming (and actually runs FFXIV pretty well), but FFXI lights it up like a torch. I do all sorts of stuff on the OSX side normally with video and audio editing and have never once had it heat up so hot where I couldn't hold it like it does when I play FFXI on it.

I'm not sure if it's a hardware thing or a Windows 7 thing, but it's pretty awful. Also the Intel Iris integrated graphics have all sorts of tearing/flickering with FFXI (again, XIV runs fine on the same machine).

I just play XI on my 3-5 year old computer lol.

the nc6320 is a rather shitty machine

It's an XI thing, blame the way it's implemented. Well that and apparently your macbook's cpu apparently draws a lot of power when it's being used. (that and apparently your integrated gpu sucks). But that's redundant.

Of course it is, by today's standards in technology, it wasn't bad back then given it had a real GPU in it and not intels old garbage stuff. Got a bit warm though but not nearly as hot as my G60 ><

I just using my purchase of it to show that FFXI can run on almost anything, as well as giving some reference to my statement of trying for a HP/compaq system.

I have good experience running 2 characters on Intel Iris Graphics 5200. (No dedicated video card needed). However, to preserve the life of my CPU (keep temps lower), I play on medium settings.

We know it can run a lot, but run and run well aren't the same thing, iirc that thing is limited to a 1280x720 resolution, no?

The main issue with running it on a laptop (even the old as ***ones, p4) was not the power but the tnl support, which on better hardware can be software emulated, but holy ***the resolution and framerate on such a piece of crap...

I mean that's like a medium grade business laptop (at best) from 2004~ iirc still used a 2.5" ide, and was in xp sp2 era. Yeah you can make just about anything work to login, but it's not going to be pretty.

I'll sell you a lanbox if you're interested for $140+shipping
-thermaltake lanbox
-600watt psu
-miniATX mobo
-4gb ram
-150 gb hdd
-intel pentium 520 cpu
-dvd/cd rw
-ati 4850 HD
-has wifi capabilities too lol.

Ended up getting a Solid State HD, and the computer worked great for about.... 2 weeks. And then the GD power jack where the charger plugs in started smelling like smoke and no longer holds a charge.

Needless to say, I am absolutely DONE with Asus products. This has been the most frustrating PC I have ever owned in my life. Piece of junk product!

My last Laptop was Asus. First the battery went on it so it wouldn't hold a charge, had to keep it plugged in at all times. Then it started overheating, the keyboard started crapping out, certain keys stopped working. Then the screen just went one day. In the space of about 2 weeks it went from a working laptop to a doorstop.

This is basically where I'm at. As you guessed, the laptop I mentioned above is the same one that is giving me problems. My brother advised against purchasing a motherboard for it, and simply moving on to another product, and maybe in the future, fixing this one up.

I have been so disgruntled by Asus in general, I have had so many problems with this one laptop in 2 years. I am pretty much done with this product forever. Just disappointed.

Make sure when you notice your computer is overheating to clean out the fans to see if that's the problem. I noticed my computer started reaching really high heat when I was running ffxi(which shouldnt happen) and I was simply playing ffxi with my processor on super power save mode which, while keeping the pc cool, played the game horribly. When I opened my computer to finally give cleaning the fans a shot, the fans were basically blowing into dust so none of the heat was escaping. After I cleaned out that huge mess I can run ffxi on high setting again and the max it reaches is 50-60 degrees(with videos, pandora, etc opened) which is huge considering it was almost 80-90 degrees before. It may not even be the fans, but it's always worth a shot. Blowing into the fans from the side would never have helped either. That thing was completely clogged. This laptop was only a year old too.

Thanks for this comment. I actually purchased a fan 2 days ago to address my laptop overheating. Can of pressurized air does nothing with it closed, so I've been reading a few tutorials on how to open my laptop and disassemble it.

I'll also need to look at the motherboard soon, too. And I am totally dreading that.