Watch out on the intel side of things, laptop CPU's differ from their desktop counterparts. For example on the desktop side an i3 is dual core with hyperthreading (2 core 4 threads), an i5 is 4 cores, an i7 is 4 cores (usually but more on there more expensive i7's) with hyperthreading (4 core 8 thread). On the other hand on the laptop side there are i5's that are 2 core 4 thread. So be careful, however I do suggest a intel CPU and I suggest it be either Broadwell or Skylake. Something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315167 maybe. Also 8gig minimum, and if you plan on developing and multitasking at the same time 16gigs will serve you well. If you up your budget to approx 650 you can get a small discrete gpu.

watch out for the OPs requirements.

any mobile intel chip, starting with core i series, will be enough. Even the ULV ones (they are weedy compared to desktop chips but more than enough for 2D development).

16 Gigs are clear overkill... doesn't hurt, but usually bumps up the price of a laptop which comes in fixed configurations way higher than 500$. I would even say 4 Gigs might be enough, given the modest requirements of the OP.

Is buying a 4 Gig machine in 2015 future proof? Most probably not. On the other hand, if I had to choose between a bad screen and only 4 Gigs of RAM, I would know where to cut corners

A discrete GPU is clear overkill for the OP, and in fact under a GTX 960M equivalent (laptops with this card start at 1000$, double the OPs budget) a discrete GPU does not make much sense... a modest bump over the iGPU you pay for anyway, additional draw on the battery, all that for money that would be better invested into a better screen or a better CPU.

I think the most important thing to not cheap out on is to get a newest generation CPU and graphics chip, because you will curse yourself in a year or two if you can not test properly as your computer does not support a newer version of graphics API or instruction set you want to use.

An extra graphics chip is nice cause Intel is the fastest to stop supporting older chips with the drivers, AMD and NVidia often support a higher OpenGL or DirectX version than Intel and its nice if you can test 2 of the 3 vendors implementations on a single machine.

Good point actually... Intel IS the unloved stepchild among the three GPU producers... given they are stepping up their game though in the last few years when it came to their iGPUs power and that the iGPU is the main selling point for new CPUs nowadays, is this still true?

And might that point be a good reason to try and hunt down a Laptop with a current gen AMD APU (if there even is such a thing), as their iGPUs seem to be based on their current gen GPU architecture... which might be supported for longer?

Atom, on the other hand, is just abysmal. My Odroid XU4 (not so much a laptop, but a credit-card sized mini computer) which is about 1/10 the price of my Atom netbook (and 1/10 the size and 1/2 the power consumption, too), performs approximately equivalently to a 3-4 year old desktop computer (you can tell the difference from whether a full rebuild takes 5 minutes or 50 minutes!). The Atom performs about the same as a 15 year old computer. I so totally regret ever buying one. May the guys who designed Atom rot in hell forever.

Not wanting to really put the Atom chips on the same level as any REAL PC CPU, but they have come a long way since the day of the netbook. Check the tests for the Surface 3 or the newest generation Atom x7.

Quadcore and JUST about fast enough for everyday work (provided you don't do hardcore photoshopping or anything else demanding)... while still being quite frugal when it comes to powerdraw.

Seems like after all these years, "netbooks" finally start to make sense as the "netbooks" of 2015 no longer choke on a simple website

Still, the ONLY real use case I see for such a CPU is for a lightweight MS Office/Mail/Surfing device to lug around all day. That is why the Surface 3 LTE sounds great... before you look at the price.

But I wouldn't try to do anything more than write a GDD on this thing... or maybe some quick doodles (yay for stylus support!)

Multimedia.

Under 500.

Intel chips.

Are you guys on Intel Payroll? Or just talking shit?

i3 are absolutely far beyond what a starter needs.

I strongly suggest to take a look at AMD Carrizo laptops.

If one can find a Laptop with AMD Inside, go for it... but there aren't that many around.

On the other hand I regularly see laptops with i3 and i5 chips popping up even around here in switzerland where we pay at least 25-50% more than in the US for the equivalent of 400-500$ during store sales.

They might not be the most attractive machines in the world, not ultraportable (most are 15"-ers and as non-ultrabook as they can be), but they got acceptable core i mobile chips and a decent amount of RAM.

Never was interested enough to check the other specs, I fear most of them had crap screens, that is definitely what I would check first.

But they do seem to exist, even if you have to wait for a sale (which seems to happen often lately... I guess with the PC Market shrinking, sellers are desperate to move their ware)

About i3s being beyond what a starter needs... well, as soon as you start up Gimp or any other tool needed for 2D development and use some of the heavier options or a bigger resolution file, you will be thankful not having to put up with the slowest chip out there.

Having said that, I like the idea of getting an old, used machine. As long as it is cheap as hell (used PC Parts could fail any minute... or last a lifetime, you don't know... and nobody will give you any warranty for it), why not see what you can get on E-Bay or Craigslist?

If you want less hardware russian roulette, go to a used hardware store... we have several here in switzerland that sell used Business laptops. these things might only have served for 2-3 years in some companies (though given the recessions of the last few years, most companies will exchange hardware less often), will have been good midrange machines when they were rented/leased/bought by the company, and most probably come from big well known brands like Dell, HP, IBM...

You might get a good deal with such a used laptop.

watch out for the OPs requirements.

He also mentions it being scalable and something he could grow with. Since laptops are either not upgradeable at all or expensive if they are it's important to not under buy.

16 Gigs are clear overkill... doesn't hurt, but usually bumps up the price of a laptop which comes in fixed configurations way higher than 500$. I would even say 4 Gigs might be enough, given the modest requirements of the OP.
Is buying a 4 Gig machine in 2015 future proof? Most probably not. On the other hand, if I had to choose between a bad screen and only 4 Gigs of RAM, I would know where to cut corners

Again I would go 8gigs minimum... on my desktop I hit 8gigs usage with browsers and pdf files alone. I was just saying if willing to splurge I would get a machine with 8 in one slot with one slot available to upgrade to 16 without removing previously installed RAM.

A discrete GPU is clear overkill for the OP, and in fact under a GTX 960M equivalent (laptops with this card start at 1000$, double the OPs budget) a discrete GPU does not make much sense... a modest bump over the iGPU you pay for anyway, additional draw on the battery, all that for money that would be better invested into a better screen or a better CPU.

Again I mention this only if the OP wants to splurge, and the only reason I mention it is scalability. I saw a laptop with a geforce 940m for 649.99 it had nice specs.

OP just remember if you go intel try to get a Broadwell or Skylake based one... like the one I linked. (although I don't know about battery life for it)

if I had to choose between a bad screen and only 4 Gigs of RAM, I would know where to cut corners

This depends. It's annoying when you buy a laptop that has 4gb of ram, and it's two 2gb slots occupying both memory slots "because it's faster". When you upgrade, which you WILL, you.inevitably have to buy twice as much ram as you actually need (twice the size of dimm module) and throw the old half away (or stash it in a cupboard). ANNOYING!

The only thing worse is desktops sold like this by oems, with all four slots taken up with one gig or two gig dimms. Grrrr!

I'm going to make this really super simple: Start with the Dell Inspiron 15" 7000 series. You don't have to choose this particular machine, but it's an excellent baseline for the Skylake laptops that are now coming out in terms of both price and features. One neat touch on this particular machine is that it ships with a single 8 GB SO-DIMM and an empty slot for whenever you feel like upgrading. All of the laptops are now in the process of upgrading to Intel Skylake (aka "Intel 6th gen Core") so it's probably best to wait for that to roll out everywhere. It'll take through the end of the year for all of the manufacturers to update. The aforementioned Inspiron is out of the gate early and seems to be awesome. Might even take a look at the Amazon SSD equipped version.

Looking for something with a more robust build and premium appointments? Dell XPS 15. Smaller? Inspiron 13 or XPS 13. More gaming-oriented? Probably the Lenovo Y50, although we're still waiting on a Skylake version. Want the coolest, expensivest, fanciest thing on the block? Surface Book.

This depends. It's annoying when you buy a laptop that has 4gb of ram, and it's two 2gb slots occupying both memory slots "because it's faster". When you upgrade, which you WILL, you.inevitably have to buy twice as much ram as you actually need (twice the size of dimm module) and throw the old half away (or stash it in a cupboard). ANNOYING!

The only thing worse is desktops sold like this by oems, with all four slots taken up with one gig or two gig dimms. Grrrr!

How expensive is memory in your parts of the world?

Even here in Switzerland where everything is overly expensive, memory is still cheap, even the more expensive laptop style memory. I certainly wouldn't use a laptop with only 1 of 2 slots used so I could cheapen out when I upgrade 2 years down the line... definitely not worth the lowered memory bandwidth.

I think it IS important to buy a laptop that HAS extendable memory, at least if you are not looking for an ultraportable option (in which case the memory will be soldered to the motherboard in most cases). So yeah, that is certainly something to check. But personally I wouldn't care too much what is in the slots when I buy. Memory can be upgraded to a decent amount for under 100$ even if you have to throw away all the memory (granted, you might be able to upgrade for 50$ if you can reuse the memory already in the slot), you will not have to worry about compatibility (which is not given if the memory specs deviate too much), and I would still recommend looking at the stuff first that CANNOT be swapped for better parts like the screen.

and I would still recommend looking at the stuff first that CANNOT be swapped for better parts like the screen.

This is exactly why i decided i had enough of laptops this time around and went back to a desktop.

When the world is moving on to mobile computing, tablets and laptops, netbooks etc, i moved back to my roots and got a big black box that sits permenantly on my desk.

It has the advantage of nearly every part being upgradable, and it will last me a lot longer. I don't have the need to move my machine about the house.

On that note though the OP mentioned that he wants a laptop so he gets the time to work on his project where he wouldn't have time to slink off to the basement to use a desktop. I often use my low-end laptop with a KVM over IP solution to connect to my desktop. I am in much the same situation as the OP, not having much time to work on my game due to family commitments. If you have a fast enough network (wireless N and powerline ethernet adaptors will do fine), and something like this (which you can pick up second hand much cheaper!) then you can have a high end desktop and work on it without being near it. Even your video signal from your high end desktop graphics card will be pushed across to your low end laptop. You can use a laptop that is five years old (i do!) and keep your desktop current, even to the point of being able to play new AAA games if you had the money.

Of course, if you're looking to save money, there's no need to buy a PC that can play AAA games, just upgrade the one you have a bit to last a little longer :)

I recently went through this exact process and put together a bit of a guide for people looking for a laptop for gamedev.

One major thing about this guide is it assumes you want your laptop for portability. If you don't care about battery life or weight, they are many more options available. If on the other hand those properties are important to you, this guide represents pretty much every option out there as of right now.

The choice of 4,8 or 16 GB of memory is a straightforward budgeting problem: what do you plan to run simultaneously?

Real example:

• 1.5 -2 GB various web browsers (including always open web mail)
• 1 - 1.5 GB odds and ends
• C# work:
  • 2-4 GB: one virtual machine with an old Windows version
  • negligible: assorted remote desktop sessions
• OR Java work:
  • 3.5 GB Eclipse
  • 1 GB Websphere
  • 1 GB (transient) Maven

Clearly, my workload fits tightly in 8 GB. With 16 GB I could allow Eclipse to use more memory, or run a second separate VM with a different C# development environment in case of need.

If you're making even a moderately big game in an engine such as UE4 you'll be grateful for the 16gb. That is unless you plan to close photoshop/gimp and blender, 3dsmax, audacity etc every time you plan to load a new program, that's including the perpetual memory suck of Firefox etc.

I often use 13 of my 16gb during a gamedev session and to not use it means to be constantly opening and closing things rather than properly multi tasking...