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Apple's pricing remains pretty much constant through the generation, though. Lenovo's has fluctuated and generally trended downward already. At least upgrades cost less, the baseline T430s options disappeared. It would be interesting to play a guess-the-price game -- what will the price be on the baseline T440 and T440s on November 1, on Lenovo's main site? I'm going to guess $790 and $999.
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Jul 20, 2013 08:50
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SoggyGravy posted:If I were to get a w230ST laptop (or one of equal power, I don't mind 14") what would it be? My current laptop literally just melted in my bag somehow....probably battery related since it was off when it happened but it is virtually unusable (no usb ports warped keys etc...) so I can no longer wait. I don't want to get a laptop that will literally keep me up at night with its fan of doom but I do want something powerful enough to handle any game I throw at it for the next 1.5-2 years (obviously at realistic settings, I'm not insane about my expectations). Get one with the i7-4702, it has a tdp of 37w vs 47w for all the other current choices. That's pretty much the only significant choice with regard to power. I should receive mine next week and I'll post my thoughts on it.
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Jul 20, 2013 09:19
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shrughes posted:Apple's pricing remains pretty much constant through the generation, though. Lenovo's has fluctuated and generally trended downward already. At least upgrades cost less, the baseline T430s options disappeared. It would be interesting to play a guess-the-price game -- what will the price be on the baseline T440 and T440s on November 1, on Lenovo's main site? All of that would be way too sensible though and the T440p probably will be some horrifying thing with a double sided screen you can turn into a tablet and there's no touchpad or nub mouse because of the future of computing or whatever. e: here is the info from the service training doc for the T440s:
e2: I'd expect all of this but in higher-TDP and maybe socketed form? for the regular T440. A N14P-GV2/N14P-GS (GT 740M/745M) Quadro like the NVS 5200/5400 divide... 
Srebrenica Surprise fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 09:37
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Oh wow they've got evil maid protection.
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Jul 20, 2013 11:55
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After mulling over the previous poster's comments, taking into account my needs (schoolwork, non-fps gaming) and my time constraints (I need a laptop before the 9th of august), I've come to the conclusion that the IdeaPad Y410p Laptop - 59369916 meets my needs. • 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4700MQ Processor (2.40GHz 1600MHz 6MB) • Windows 8 64 • NVIDIA GeForce GT750M GDDR5 2GB • 8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz • 14.0" HD+ Glossy LED Backlit with integrated camera 1600x900 • 1TB 5400 RPM+24GB SSD • DVD Recordable (Dual Layer) • 6 Cell Lithium-Ion • Intel Centrino Wireless N-2230 • Bluetooth Version 4.0 • One year • Notebook • Integrated HD Camera • HDMI (Out) All that for 900$, shipped. Are there any similarly priced equivalents I've missed? Otherwise I'll spring for this little guy tomorrow.
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Jul 20, 2013 17:14
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You were ready to spend around $1400 before, so that'd put you in the price range of a 13" MBA with an upgraded SSD and probably 8GB of RAM. What games are you wanting to play? Also, if you get that, change the hard drive. It sucks poo poo and will impact performance on any game that loads textures dynamically.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:09
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InstantInfidel posted:You were ready to spend around $1400 before, so that'd put you in the price range of a 13" MBA with an upgraded SSD and probably 8GB of RAM. What games are you wanting to play? Except for games installed on the SSD portion, yes?
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Jul 20, 2013 20:33
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QuarkJets posted:Except for games installed on the SSD portion, yes? There aren't many games that load textures dynamically you'd be able to fit onto a 24GB SSD that already has Windows installed on it. You need at least 32GB, preferably 64GB. Assassin's Creed III is 18GB.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:51
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The SSD doesn't have Windows installed on it either, it's a cache SSD that will remember certain programs or processes as decided by the algorithm it uses. It's no replacement for a larger OS-only SSD and it doesn't much help a 5400RPM drive either. Non-Thinkpad Lenovos pretty much suck.
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Jul 20, 2013 21:48
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Small cache SSDs aren't terribly fast, either--sure, plenty faster than a 5400 drive, but not nearly what you'd get from even a 120GB SSD.
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Jul 20, 2013 21:55
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Thinking of this configuration, would love to know your thoughts on price and choices: I did not see a 4702 only a 4700 option, is this an issue? I also do not know the price since I requested a student price quote and they have not responded yet. Sager NP7330 (Clevo W230ST) Remove Delete Qty: x $1,613.00 = $1,613.00 Click here for more details Base price:$1,069.00 Configuration: Product Subtotal Instant $50.00 OFF! (my order is over $1, 350.00) $-50.00 13.3” Full HD 16:9 Wide screen (1920x1080) LED-Backlit with AHVA (Advanced-Hyper-View-Angle) in Matte $0.00 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 765M with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory $0.00 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.40 GHz) $0.00 IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU $35.00 Genuine Microsoft Windows® 8 Professional 64-Bit Edition $140.00 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 2 X 4GB $0.00 Remove All Branding $0.00 750GB 7200rpm SATA Hybrid Hard Drive with 8GB SSD $90.00 Crucial® 256GB CM4 Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C) $230.00 Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 with Bluetooth 4.0 (Dual Band) $50.00 Removable 6 cell smart Lithium-Ion battery pack 62.16Wh $0.00 LIFETIME Limited Labor and 1 Year Premium** Parts Warranty $0.00 Rush Order Service - Shipping within 2 business days (not including day of order) $49.00 FREE UPS Ground (CONUS Only) $0.00
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Jul 20, 2013 22:44
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Two things: don't pay extra for thermal paste and don't pay for a factory SSD, buy your own and install it yourself. Doubly true for Crucial, which has had quite a few problems with firmware for the M4 line. edit: third thing, you don't need Windows 8 Pro, get the cheapest option you can.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:47
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InstantInfidel posted:You were ready to spend around $1400 before, so that'd put you in the price range of a 13" MBA with an upgraded SSD and probably 8GB of RAM. What games are you wanting to play? I thought the SSD was standalone. My bad. I usually play RTS's a bunch. So I guess getting the version with the 1Tb hard drive, replace the 2x4 dimms by 2x8's and adding a 128 gb ssd in the ultrabay would be best? By my estimate that would be around 1080$ (849 for the laptop,  for the ultrabay caddy, 100$ for a 128 gb SSD and 120 for the memory. I'd keep the CD burner as a spare.)The 13" MBA would cost more, have lower ram, HD space as well as an inferior processor and GPU, but it'd have a better screen, be lighter and have more battery life, and probably overall better build quality. The tradeoff seems okay to me. Did I overlook anything?
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Jul 20, 2013 22:48
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InstantInfidel posted:Two things: don't pay extra for thermal paste and don't pay for a factory SSD, buy your own and install it yourself. Doubly true for Crucial, which has had quite a few problems with firmware for the M4 line. Awesome, Thanks for that advice i'll update accordingly, also do you know if the 4700 option they offer is comparable to the 4702 or should I look and see if I can find the laptop with a 4702 since I could have sworn that was an option with this model. EDIT: how do you recommend then that I have the OS come pre-configured on the SSD and what SSD do you recommend?
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Jul 20, 2013 22:54
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Frankie! posted:I thought the SSD was standalone. My bad. I usually play RTS's a bunch. So I guess getting the version with the 1Tb hard drive, replace the 2x4 dimms by 2x8's and adding a 128 gb ssd in the ultrabay would be best? By my estimate that would be around 1080$ (849 for the laptop, 8GB of memory isn't going to be a bottleneck before your GPU or CPU, don't get 16. Again, what games are you going to be playing? RTS games are historically not demanding and the HD5000 in the Air should tackle anything that's already out just fine and shouldn't have a problem with anything new for a while to come, since RTSs are rarely console ports. Next, how much of your hard drive are you currently using? How many of the programs on there could afford not to be? How much of it is just media that would be fine in a USB3.0 external HDD? Chances are 256GB is more than enough. Your big concern is whether or not you're going to install Windows, which is part of the reason why I asked what games you were going to play. On top of that, why not just get a chromebook and a desktop? SoggyGravy posted:Awesome, I don't know about the processors, although I want to say the difference is the IGP. Regardless, it won't affect you. I wouldn't get the OS pre-configured at all, I'd have them ship it on the mechanical drive. Buy an mSATA SSD that's recommended in the SSD megathread and use whatever the current disk-cloning program they recommend to put it on your SSD. InstantInfidel fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Jul 20, 2013 23:03
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Do we have a list of laptops that have HD5000+ for graphics? Is it just Macbooks at this point?DrDork posted:Small cache SSDs aren't terribly fast, either--sure, plenty faster than a 5400 drive, but not nearly what you'd get from even a 120GB SSD. They're also something like 25% faster than a 7200 RPM drive*, from what I recall. They're not nearly as fast as an SSD, of course, but you're trading speed for more GB/$ * The drive does have to be "broken in" until you start seeing real speed improvements, and fresh game installs won't benefit for some time, since it's just a cache space, but most of your OS files are going to wind up in there after a few days of use
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Jul 20, 2013 23:12
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InstantInfidel posted:8GB of memory isn't going to be a bottleneck before your GPU or CPU, don't get 16. Again, what games are you going to be playing? RTS games are historically not demanding and the HD5000 in the Air should tackle anything that's already out just fine and shouldn't have a problem with anything new for a while to come, since RTSs are rarely console ports. Next, how much of your hard drive are you currently using? How many of the programs on there could afford not to be? How much of it is just media that would be fine in a USB3.0 external HDD? Chances are 256GB is more than enough. Your big concern is whether or not you're going to install Windows, which is part of the reason why I asked what games you were going to play. I usually play a mix of LoL, Company of heroes II, indie games and planetside. I tend to stay away from most FPS's. I googled around for rankings for the HD5000, and it seems to be in a lowe tier than the GT750M that's in the Ideapad. You're right about the HD, though. Regarding Windows, I've basically never handled anything else than MS OS's. I'd rather not go with apple OS's if possible. I don't want to get a chromebook and a desktop because for the appreciable future I'll be changing countries yearly. I don't want to drag around a tower with me every time, and building a new computer every year seems unnecessarily tedious.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:30
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Frankie! posted:I usually play a mix of LoL, Company of heroes II, indie games and planetside. I tend to stay away from most FPS's. I googled around for rankings for the HD5000, and it seems to be in a lowe tier than the GT750M that's in the Ideapad. You're right about the HD, though. Regarding Windows, I've basically never handled anything else than MS OS's. I'd rather not go with apple OS's if possible. Yes, even last generation's dedicated GPUs are still superior to the best HD integrated graphics offered by Haswell. Here's a plot  The weird thing about the GT 750M is that it's not considerably better than the 650M. For instance, this notebookcheck page has examples of several games where the 650M actually outperforms the 750M, such as Metro Last Light at medium settings or Bioshock Infinite at high settings. All of these data points average out to about a 5% improvement in FPS, so applying that to the plot above, you're probably looking at about 62 FPS for the NVidia GT 750M versus 54 FPS for the Intel HD 5200. That's a pretty small difference, but if you choose the dedicated GPU then you'll also have to pay a higher price tag, have worse battery life, and deal with additional heat, thickness, and weight. I like to think of integrated graphics as keeping your laptop relevant for the years after games have moved beyond its hardware capabilities. A laptop with an obsolete GPU has all of the problems of a discrete GPU with none of the benefits, whereas an older integrated graphics laptop is still going to be a great coding and screwing around laptop. So the question is whether you're going to want to use this laptop after its GPU has become obsolete in 12-18 months.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:47
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That's... not true? Everything below the 650M is eclipsed by Haswell, and everything below the 650M is the majority of the market.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:49
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QuarkJets posted:I like to think of integrated graphics as keeping your laptop relevant for the years after games have moved beyond its hardware capabilities. A laptop with an obsolete GPU has all of the problems of a discrete GPU with none of the benefits, whereas an older integrated graphics laptop is still going to be a great coding and screwing around laptop. So the question is whether you're going to want to use this laptop after its GPU has become obsolete in 12-18 months. As I see it Optimus makes this a moot point - just switch the dGPU off if it becomes irrelevant (and really it should have been off for that sort of usage all along) There also isn't always a size/weight penalty in a lot of cases - try picking up a T430 with the dGPU and one without and see if you can tell the difference.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:52
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I think those are good points, but you guys are discussing the iris 5200, and the MBA has the iris 5000. And as far as I know there isn't gonna be a laptop with an iris 5200 out until way after my august 10th deadline. Besides, the y410p has optimus on it, doesn't it? edit:typo Frankie! fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 01:10
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No, we're talking about 5000. The graph doesn't include it, but it's still better than quite a few dGPUs.
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Jul 21, 2013 01:53
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InstantInfidel posted:No, we're talking about 5000. The graph doesn't include it, but it's still better than quite a few dGPUs. I thought it was roughly the same as a 630M?
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Jul 21, 2013 02:07
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InstantInfidel posted:No, we're talking about 5000. The graph doesn't include it, but it's still better than quite a few dGPUs. The 5000 in a 17W CPU like in the Air should be slower than the 4600 in that benchmark because of GPU/CPU throttling. See my post here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552651&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=39#post417593375
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Jul 21, 2013 02:26
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InstantInfidel posted:That's... not true? Everything below the 650M is eclipsed by Haswell, and everything below the 650M is the majority of the market. I know for a fact the last generation GT555M is better than both the 4600 and 5000 (not by very much but still), I'm sure benchmarks will confirm it also. Sendo fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 02:35
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Sendo posted:I know for a fact the last generation GT555M is better than both the 4600 and 5000 (not by very much but still), I'm sure benchmarks will confirm it also.
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Jul 21, 2013 03:31
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Naffer posted:The 5000 in a 17W CPU like in the Air should be slower than the 4600 in that benchmark because of GPU/CPU throttling. See my post here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552651&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=39#post417593375 Ok? The 5000 is still better than quite a few dGPUs, namely the 630M and the 550M. Sendo posted:I know for a fact the last generation GT555M is better than both the 4600 and 5000 (not by very much but still), I'm sure benchmarks will confirm it also. The 4600 and the 555M are neck and neck. Neither is definitively better, and in some games (ie Skyrim) the 4600 is a clear leader.
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Jul 21, 2013 04:17
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SoggyGravy posted:Awesome, The 4700 is a 47w chip vs 37w on the 4702. It has slightly higher clocks. Also, the Intel AC wireless will be faster than the killer n.
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Jul 21, 2013 04:58
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InstantInfidel posted:That's... not true? Everything below the 650M is eclipsed by Haswell, and everything below the 650M is the majority of the market. What's not? Could you elaborate on what you're talking about?
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Jul 21, 2013 08:33
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QuarkJets posted:What's not? Could you elaborate on what you're talking about? What the Haswell IGP doesn't, can't, and will not do is in any way replace any sort of mid- or enthusiast-class dGPU. And one can expect that as NVidia and ATI continue to drop updated mobile chipsets, it won't be long (months?) before we're back to the same place we were last gen: the free IGP will be good enough to play most games on ok settings, but almost any dGPU will crush it.
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Jul 21, 2013 08:48
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DrDork posted:I suppose he's correct if you just look at the laptop market as a whole: the majority don't have a dGPU, or they have some real crappy one like the 620M, in which case the HD4600/5000 is better. The majority are also poo poo-boxes sold in Walmart and BestBuy, though, so the utility of the statement in the context of this thread is pretty minimal. Yeah, we get it, Haswell's IGP is pretty nifty and is a nice step up for laptops like the X1 where a dGPU just isn't possible. It also (should) let people who would otherwise have paid for that $50 T430 dGPU skip out on it and not be totally hosed for gaming. However, I think InstantInfidel has a habit of overstating the graphical prowess of Haswell, especially after the various configurations and thermal envelopes are taken into consideration. I never said that the majority of laptops have better graphic processing power than Haswell. I said that the 650M showed better performance in that one plot, which it did, so...? e: His response was so short and cryptic that I really have no idea what he's saying isn't true. The 650M (ie last generation) outperforms the 5200 according to that plot, and buying an integrated graphics laptop is a good way of ensuring that it's still usable as a nice laptop several years down the line because it's not burdened with any of the minor annoyances that a dGPU can bring. Those were my only points. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 11:04
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Do you guys have advice on the whole dead pixel gaurantee policy as well as the copper cooling upgrades that I see? My instinct says no to each but figured I should ask some experts here. Also it is odd but I no longer see the 4702 option for the Clevo W230ST models...wierd I swear I saw it a week ago on most resellers. SoggyGravy fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 14:56
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SoggyGravy posted:Do you guys have advice on the whole dead pixel gaurantee policy as well as the copper cooling upgrades that I see? My instinct says no to each but figured I should ask some experts here. The copper cooling upgrade is likely useless. All they do is stick some small ram heatsinks on the bottom of the existing heatpipes. If you wanted to do it yourself it would be trivial and cost maybe $10.
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Jul 21, 2013 16:53
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I got my 3rd gen xps 12 in and holy poo poo is the trackpad the most hilariously terrible thing I've ever had the displeasure of using. It flat out can't track a finger doing circles and I'm not the only one to have this issue. Uninstalling the stock drivers and letting Windows fixed the tracking but seemed to make some of the gesture stuff to break. Christ. I could barely make it through the setup menus, how can this stuff pass QC?
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Jul 21, 2013 17:15
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Delta-Wye posted:I got my 3rd gen xps 12 in and holy poo poo is the trackpad the most hilariously terrible thing I've ever had the displeasure of using. It flat out can't track a finger doing circles and I'm not the only one to have this issue. Uninstalling the stock drivers and letting Windows fixed the tracking but seemed to make some of the gesture stuff to break. Christ. I could barely make it through the setup menus, how can this stuff pass QC? Thats disappointing. You would think something that costs as much as a macbook air would be free of any glaring errors like that.
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Jul 21, 2013 20:17
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So I bought a refurbed asus q200e. It's a 11.6" laptop with a touchscreen. I figure it's as close to a netbook as asus produces anymore. Anyway, the Win8 install on the thing was so loving broken. I'm not very familiar with Windows 8 but I wanted to use it like it's intended to be used, with the touchscreen, but stupid crap kept happening like the wifi connection would drop, and windows updates were getting stuck on 0% downloaded. There was also a bunch of asus crap loaded that was impossible to figure out what was essential and what was bloat. Finally in frustration I decided to install Windows 7. Being a Windows 8 laptop, asus doesn't provide any windows 7 drivers on their support site. Fuuuuck. The worst part was probably that Intel's "detect my hardware" thing didn't detect the USB 3 controller and the SMBus controller. I had to manually download a USB3 driver bundle and then download a desktop driver bundle for series 7 chipsets, because choosing series 7 express for notebooks said "no drivers available". Atheros drivers were fairly painless to hunt down since there's a bunch of third party websites dedicated to cataloging their broken poo poo. The Win7 driver seems to be 50 versions ahead of the Win8 driver and doesn't randomly drop connections, imagine that. So it was a pretty frustrating experience overall and I probably still have to find some touchpad drivers that will give me two finger scrolling back. e: One last note, the build quality feels fantastic, it's a similar shape and style to my older 10" asus netbook but the display cover and palm rest panels are both metal, and there's no removable battery, borrowing slimness techniques from ultrabooks I guess. The 1366x768 display panel sucks as expected but it's 11.6" so the resolution is ok. mewse fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 22:45
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I've been looking through the last few pages and am looking for a recommendation for a sub <$1000 laptop for my father, who only uses his laptop for basic word processing, internet, and such. I'm looking at the Lenovo E430 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8048152&CatId=4935 or a Macbook/MBA with windows 7 installed. Any suggestions/thoughts?
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Jul 22, 2013 04:07
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Why not a chromebook?
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Jul 22, 2013 04:13
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Seamonster posted:Why not a chromebook? He tried one, said he didn't like the interface. I don't know much about them, do they run standard windows programs?
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Jul 22, 2013 04:22
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Deviant posted:He tried one, said he didn't like the interface. I don't know much about them, do they run standard windows programs? As to the E430, there's nothing terribly wrong with it except it's an E series and it's 1366x768 and $600--I might bite at $450, but $600 is a rip-off. Use the B&N link in the OP and you can set yourself up with a T430 with 1600x900 screen and Intel 6205 Wifi, all for $655. Very, very much worth the extra $55. The 16GB SSD cache is another $40 but whatever, they're kinda a gimmick anyhow.
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Jul 22, 2013 04:40
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