Hello PC people,

I need advice. I want a cheap, gaming capable laptop. Under $1000 but preferably closer to $500. Not going to play with max graphics or the most pressing games, just something decent. Suggestions? Also, I don't like to build my on computers so that's not an option

Laptop, cheap and gaming... you can only have 2 of these 3 at the same time ;)

"$500 and Gaming Laptop" don't exactly match. The cheapest one that I can find that can be considered a super entry level "gaming laptop" is

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834890015

But that costs $699

Personally I would recommend something higher like 970M but thats not really that cheap.

There is also this one but I wouldn't recommend it personally

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834154113

Maybe I should clarify. My intent is not to play current games, rather emulate classics from Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, PSX, PS2, etc. So not looking for something high end but that will play those games smoothly.

Thanks!

I'd look for something that has an AMD APU in it. The CPu performance is less then the Intel chips, but it's probably the best bang for the buck graphicswise at that budget. Look for something with a quad-core Excavator chip.
Something like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-15-ba047na-15-6-Inch-Antiglare-Laptop/dp/B01M4I8XQD/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480800411&sr=8-1&keywords=AMD+A12

Mind you, it's an HP laptop.

Totally hijacking this thread, but can anybody help me find a rather good and future proof laptop ?

The first one is on sale for 3 days.. It's actually 1000 dollars, not 699.. Well, 700, if you get it now... Which is a steal, omg, my 600 dollar laptop doesn't compare.

But, yeah.  Don't buy gaming laptops.  They're too grand to even be called luxiourious.  You're not going to need that kinda power on the go.  And, if you are (and you wont) you're not going to have sufficient ways to keep the thing powered on.

Also, for everything you get in a laptop, you can get better.  50% less in a desktop.  You'd be better off just building a PC. 700 dollars, after you've bought everything, except a graphics card.  The graphics card will run you another 500-700 dollars.  Or 250 for a cheap one. 

You can't be cheap, but someone else has to build it, and it has to be a mobile laptop, and capable of gaming.  You'd do better asking someone to just buy you a PC for christmas.

Not even sure how to go about the emulation, as I only play on the consoles and swore off emulation.

But, then again, if you're looking for a good laptop that's less than 1000, but closer to 500, you cant do better than the 699 PC in the link in the quote.

You don't need much for old school emulation. I got a Acer laptop with an old i5, 8GB of RAM and a old 640m that runs everything up to Wii and I got that years ago. Just look for a laptop with around those specs but a better graphics card and you should be fine. I even run shaders on epsxe without issue.

My laptop bought recently was a refurbished Toshiba with a AMD A10 8700p chipset for £190. It's about a 550 gflops gpu with decent quad core processor. It's competitive with the latest i7 chipset laptop with integrated graphics for games but of course battery life and pure cpu performance don't match it. Very happy with it. I bought my mother a i3 laptop recently based on the same chassis and that was hopeless the wifi range was awful and windows 10 support was poor had to return it. The intel gpu just wasn't compatible with a lot of software where as the radeon in my amd laptop gets full support. If you can't afford a decent intel laptop with discrete graphics either nvidia or radeon then an amd apu laptop may be a good option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WdGx8O3Vc8