I solved it myself.

Not 100% what helped but I think it was updating the driver for the AMD GPU integrated in the CPU. I have a separate nvidia GPU which is used according to the log file but it looks like the AMD update helped. Maybe the sprites are generated/loaded using the onboard graphics?

It ...

I'm just installed factorio on my laptop. It's working great on my main PC but now I want it on my laptop for reasons. It is not the fastest but CPU and memory doesn't seem nearly exhausted.

Anywho, the log that follow is what I get when starting with factorio.exe --single-thread-loading --gfx-safe ...