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In UK Pounds, what's the cheapest Windows PC or Mac to get for game design course?

Mr Allen

Mr Allen

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
If you've seen my thread in the education and employment section earlier, you'll know I'm considering doing a game design course through Prospects.

However, most game design software such as Unity, Scratch et al require either a Mac or a Windows PC to run.

I'm on a very limited Budget due to being on Benefits (please don't go all Daily Fail on me about that) so I can only afford up to £200 or less.

I might hit PC World this week and see what they've got.

But can anyone recommend anything?
 
Rich Allen said:
If you've seen my thread in the education and employment section earlier, you'll know I'm considering doing a game design course through Prospects.

However, most game design software such as Unity, Scratch et al require either a Mac or a Windows PC to run.

I'm on a very limited Budget due to being on Benefits (please don't go all Daily Fail on me about that) so I can only afford up to £200 or less.

I might hit PC World this week and see what they've got.

But can anyone recommend anything?
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just saw on the mirror newspaper website lenovo ideapad 11.6" lowest £109.49 from Amazon rising to 199.99 depending on the colour the 199 one was white
 
Your best option to get the most for your money is probably to build one if mobility isn't needed. Depending on what you're planning to make a good graphics card might be needed.

Currys PC World has very limited selection and you probably won't get much for your money.

Alternatively you could buy something off of eBay. This popped up as a first result.
 
I'd buy ex lease from EBay.

Business class pc with decent graphics card will be better than anything else.

Macs are over priced. Consumer PC's are often rubbish.

Business class Lenovo, HP or dell. £200 should get an ok desktop. If you want advice on a model, post a link.
 
I'd think the most prudent thing would be to directly contact Prospects to determine what hardware you're expected to be using based on their classes, and whether it's expected for you to have access to your own resources outside of class.

Besides, porting a game to certain platforms means different hardware requirements. It's not a universal process. Or does this only involve game development on a particular platform other than a PC ?
 
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xudo said:
I'd suggest this too. My brother in law is a web developer and he bought some ridiculous laptop this way and it was about 1/4 of the price it would have been otherwise.
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Keep in mind the difference between web development and game development. Superior performance of most websites are based primarily on bandwidth- not a CPU or GPU's processing power.

Games? These days it's likely they're based on both bandwidth and hardware specs if you're taking about anything ported to the PC platform to gauge optimal gameplay.
 
Judge said:
Keep in mind the difference between web development and game development. Superior performance of most websites are based primarily on bandwidth- not a CPU or GPU's processing power. Games? These days likely based on both if you're taking about anything ported to the PC platform.
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Oh yeah I get that you'd need different things for each, but just saying he did get a really good deal buying ex-lease!
 
xudo said:
Oh yeah I get that you'd need different things for each, but just saying he did get a really good deal buying ex-lease!
Click to expand...

Well, it all comes down to whether or not "Prospects" would involve teaching students porting a game to the PC. If not, hardware requirements wouldn't likely be any more severe than what a console game can do.

I gave up on PC games around 2007...the developers just kept pushing the video card requirements so high that I could never obtain the optimal results that are usually advertised in the sale of such products.

It became a "bait and switch" thing to me, as I always seemed to have to upgrade my hardware just to play the damn games even on a nominal level. Which wasn't much fun having seen what gameplay was like on the most robust of PCs. Seeing the video card industry continue to crank out ever-more powerful video cards leaves me thinking that this marketing dynamic hasn't changed since I worked for a software entertainment company at the turn of the century.
 
Streetwise said:
just saw on the mirror newspaper website lenovo ideapad 11.6" lowest £109.49 from Amazon rising to 199.99 depending on the colour the 199 one was white
Click to expand...

As long as it's not Pink, I'm not that fussed about the colour! :D

I just want a cheap, decent spec PC that will run Unity and 3D modelling stuff.
 
Judge said:
I gave up on PC games around 2007...the developers just kept pushing the video card requirements so high that I could never obtain the optimal results that are usually advertised in the sale of such products.
Click to expand...

Yeah, our PC can run the Sims 4 (with all the settings turned down a bit) but pretty much nothing on Steam that I'd like to play will run.
 
I pretty much gave up on PC gaming in December 2002 after buying 2 PC games from Woolworth's and neither of them worked under Windows XP.

And then my Brother persuaded me to get the original Xbox, best thing ever.
 
Basically if you're looking for a laptop dedicated to console game development with an integrated GPU in the CPU, you're going to want to find something what is no slower than an XBox 1's graphics processor. Which translates into a clock speed of 853 mhz and shader cores at 768 peak. Not bad for console gaming. :cool:

Here's a list of all the integrated graphics processors (HD Graphics) within select Intel CPUs:

List of Intel graphics processing units - Wikipedia

Xbox One / PS4 equivalent - GTX 750 Ti or GTX 960 - [Solved] - Graphics Cards

In essence you want to make sure the graphics capability of a cheap laptop computer is sufficient to use to test a game to run at the XBox 1 level/PS4 level. Otherwise you're probably wasting your time unless you're making very slow, very primitive games.

Much like web development, you can't just be a creative artist. You have to be an engineer of sorts as well. Don't feel bad if you feel over your head in such things. They aren't for everyone.
 
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If you keep looking you might get better.

I have a dual cpu xeon dell t5500 on order with similar spec.

Look for Lenovo, Dell or HP workstations.
 
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