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Calico Heart posted:My machine is an ASUS ROG Strix ZX553VD-DM640T. I just meant "messed around with" to describe playing with the settings after it didn't seem to work correctly; I can't see exactly what you did so I have to guess, which is why we want to get the options in the nVidia configuration tool reset to defaults. At default settings, however, the system should behave as you'd expect; I can't say I've had an issue like you've described, where a PC doesn't run a game with GPU acceleration, so it may be hard to troubleshoot over the 'Net. I'm hoping it's a driver issue, but it could certainly be a hardware one. Based on how you said the games ran fine on one GPU and not the other makes me think that the system really is using the dGPU but it just wasn't apparent. murked by dragon posted:I need to help my partner get herself a new laptop for a GIS heavy school program and I'm not really sure how to go about buying one. She'll be doing lots of ArcGIS cartography stuff, which is apparently computationally intensive. She doesn't play video games, but it looks like she needs a serious GPU. Is that an i7 as in an actual quad-core or one of the more common dual-core ULV ones? If the latter will suffice, one of these laptops has the GPU you specified. You can find similar models cheaper, on eBay (mainly with different storage/RAM configurations.) Atomizer fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 08:33
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Thanks to the advice in this thread! Performing another run after reconfiguring the drivers I got a result of 1050 on the benchmark test. I am thinking of returning it and getting a machine with a 1060 - can anyone attest to the specs of the Medion Erazer (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B073PBYF2T/ref=sr_1_3)? Is it worth the extra £150 for this machine over what I currently have (an ASUS ROG Strix with an NVIDIA 1050)? It seems it might be worth it to future-proof it another few years. What are people's recommendations for 1060 laptops? The responses I've received so far have been very helpful, thanks thread! Calico Heart fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 11:50
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What laptops have easy accessibility to heat sinks and fans for cleaning? This information is not really readily available anywhere, so I'm not sure what I should look for, and I'm pretty sick of losing laptop after laptop to avoidable heat issues because everything is locked in place and cleaning them is as likely to break them completely as it is to fix anything. My only other major requirement is an i7 or better and a good graphics card since I'm using it for graphics development.
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Aug 5, 2017 19:04
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See if the laptop meets milspec standard MIL810-F, specifically method 510.4 "Sand and Dust – Blows dust for an extended amount of time" Faster way to look for these is to google "mil spec laptop" the short answer is "buisness class laptop" i.e. Thinkpad, HP Elitebook, dell Business laptops etc are all designed and actually tested - most consumer laptops are not tested anywhere near how business class laptops are tested. My girlfriend works for a very large company and asked for a replacement laptop, the response from the IT department is that they expect her laptop to last 7 years of daily use. TL;DR this is why Thinkpads and other business class laptops are highly recommended in the OP
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Aug 5, 2017 21:23
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Hadlock posted:My girlfriend works for a very large company and asked for a replacement laptop, the response from the IT department is that they expect her laptop to last 7 years of daily use. hahahahahahahah jesus christ almighty. We don't deploy thinkpads, preferring Dell 7470s and Macbooks. Our upgrade cycle is 2 years and I'd say the average time to replacement is closer to 18 months, just from how much wear and tear you're going to be putting on a daily driver. Well, that's not quite fair. PMs and folks who travel around a lot wear theirs out sooner, graphic designers who sit at their desks later, but no one in a million years thinks that an upgrade cycle longer than 2, maybe 3 years is in any way sustainable.
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Aug 5, 2017 22:18
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You're in a bubble if you think a 2 year replacement cadence is "normal" although you're absolutely right that 7 years is laughable. Hadlock your girlfriends IT section is incompetent or hamstrung by overly zealous bean counters, a 7 year replacement cycle on mobile computers is just asking for extended downtimes and probable data losses as old mobile systems wear down from years of being roughed around and dust/grime buildup in their internals. It's a great way to end up paying your staff to sit around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for their systems to be fixed/replaced.
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Aug 5, 2017 22:59
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The Iron Rose posted:Well, that's not quite fair. PMs and folks who travel around a lot wear theirs out sooner, graphic designers who sit at their desks later, but no one in a million years thinks that an upgrade cycle longer than 2, maybe 3 years is in any way sustainable. Have you perhaps not met the federal government, military, state government, K-12 schools, or frankly almost any large organization that's not profit-driven? Upgrade cycles on the 4-5 year range are not at all uncommon. Turns out that when all you need is something that'll run Office, you don't actually have a very compelling upgrade demand. I mean, yeah, "we don't expect to replace this for 7 years" is a bit silly, but "we don't expect this to break for 7 years, so that you're telling me your year-old laptop needs to be replaced is gonna get a real skeptical response" is entirely reasonable if it's a laptop that lives on a desk and only occasionally makes excursions to a presentation platform of some sort.
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Aug 5, 2017 23:15
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DrDork posted:Have you perhaps not met the federal government, military, state government, K-12 schools, or frankly almost any large organization that's not profit-driven? Upgrade cycles on the 4-5 year range are not at all uncommon. Turns out that when all you need is something that'll run Office, you don't actually have a very compelling upgrade demand. Especially when there isn't a lot of difference between the systems. We have a mix of HP Elitebooks (Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, Kabylake) and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart performance wise and they all have the same crappy displays anyway. The only real difference a user would see is they got a bit thinner and lighter with the Skylake generation.
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Aug 5, 2017 23:44
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A 7-year life for any PC is pretty ridiculous, especially a laptop considering it's not going to be receiving any meaningful hardware upgrades. Hell, a 7-year-old PC is going to have, what, a Core 2 CPU or first-gen i at best? You might have some of them still kicking around after several years, but to expect all of them to survive that long is naive.Calico Heart posted:Thanks to the advice in this thread! Performing another run after reconfiguring the drivers I got a result of 1050 on the benchmark test. I'd say, in terms of desktop GPUs a 1060 [should] retail for US$150-200 more than a plain 1050, so on a laptop I say an upgrade of that component alone is worth at least a US$200 price premium because you're stuck with what you start with since you're not realistically going to upgrade a laptop dGPU. So if you paid 1k Euro funbux for a 1050 laptop, a 1060 is worth at least 1.2-1.3k for a 1060 just for the immediate performance increase as well as better longevity. That Medion is probably worth the upgrade, although it's a large 17" model first of all (make sure you want that) and the RAM should be upgraded to 16 GB right out of the box (which would be another ~US$50 if you can just drop in another 8 GB module.) Also it's a Skylake CPU, which isn't bad, but Kaby Lake has been out long enough where I'd consider that "old" and it should carry a clearance price. This is the laptop I recommend (to anyone with access to it,) hands-down, over any other 1060 or 1050 system because of everything it packs in there for the price. Literally the only thing it needs is some kind of HDD, internal or external, for game storage. So if you can somehow place an order from the US Amazon go for it. Joda posted:What laptops have easy accessibility to heat sinks and fans for cleaning? This information is not really readily available anywhere, so I'm not sure what I should look for, and I'm pretty sick of losing laptop after laptop to avoidable heat issues because everything is locked in place and cleaning them is as likely to break them completely as it is to fix anything. My only other major requirement is an i7 or better and a good graphics card since I'm using it for graphics development. This is a good question, but there's no easy answer. You could find models you're interested in, then look up teardown videos (or Web pages like on ifixit) to see how easy it is to crack them open. As long as there are just screws and no glue holding everything down, and you don't have to disassemble the whole thing to get to some vital components on the other side of the board, you should be fine. I haven't lost any laptop to overheating and/or disassembly/reassembly over the past 20-25 years, though. How good of a GPU are you looking for? Do you need a consumer-grade one or a commercial ("Quadro"/"Radeon Pro" or whatever) one?
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Aug 5, 2017 23:56
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Elem7 posted:Hadlock your girlfriends IT section is incompetent or hamstrung by overly zealous bean counter You're not wrong They replace parts on the laptop as they break, everything is stored offsite anyways. That's the whole point of business class laptops; screen breaks? Replace it. Hard drive dead? Swap in a new one. Memory? Mainboard? Keyboard? Yup. Turnaround time for a screen replacement is something like 45 minutes depending on whether or not the guy is on his coffee break. The last company I was at, had about 200 laptops from 2011 on hand as backups in the computer storage room for when they needed parts or a total replacement due to theft. As a company you get to write off your computer expenses as they depreciate in value over five years; anything over that is basically a reduction in your fixed cost expenditures. They may be claiming it as furniture to get the full 7 year write off. 
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Aug 6, 2017 00:32
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Three years is pretty standard as a write off in my experience - we buy with three years support included and try and keep the bulk of what is deployed within that.
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Aug 6, 2017 01:50
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I read the OP but it is confusing me. I need a new laptop for college as my old one decided to eat poo poo and die (an old Samsung R580, so you know how low my expectations are) I don't need to game intensely on it, though all of my gaming is on a laptop. However, I have not really been gaming much as it is so my expectations aren't huge. I have no interest in VR. I was going to buy a ps4 later this year, but seeing as that's for fun and games, and this is in part something I am going to 100% be required to have, I'm looking for a laptop instead. I have little to no knowledge on what good laptop brands are.
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Aug 6, 2017 04:22
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I thought my W520 is coming on 6.5 years soon and I still use it for work, but come to think of it, I did have to replace its keyboard after spilling Coke on it. And of course RAM, SSD upgrades. It's due for a new battery.
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Aug 6, 2017 04:28
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Those refurbished HP CB 13s are on woot again in case anyone's interested. They have 3 out of the 4 versions (missing the m5 one.)KittyEmpress posted:I read the OP but it is confusing me. I need a new laptop for college as my old one decided to eat poo poo and die (an old Samsung R580, so you know how low my expectations are) I don't need to game intensely on it, though all of my gaming is on a laptop. However, I have not really been gaming much as it is so my expectations aren't huge. I have no interest in VR. I had to Google that Samsung laptop, I had no idea what it was.  And on that note, it appears to be...a ~7-year-old laptop!  So do you want a reasonable gaming laptop, a super-cheap one with little gaming ability, or something in-between? That last one, by the way, is not specifically one I'm recommending but it's the only one with an MX150 GPU that I could easily find a product link for; ideally wait a few weeks for one in the ~$600 range to come out if you're interested.
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Aug 6, 2017 07:05
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Atomizer posted:Those refurbished HP CB 13s are on woot again in case anyone's interested. They have 3 out of the 4 versions (missing the m5 one.) To add onto this excellent advice, I want to give a general overview, and also want to ask what specific games do you have a mind to play on your laptop? Because if you just want to play indie games and roguelikes, then you can probably get away with either Integrated Graphics or the MX150 - the latter will provide a significantly smoother experience. If you want to play modern AAA games like the Witcher or Xcom 2, then you want something with a little more "oomph." The 1060 that Atomizer recommended is a cheap, excellent option. But if you have more money to burn, you can get even better machines. Towards the $1500 USD range you'll get increasingly better built laptops with 1060s in them. They'll either have better machined and more durable casings, better cooling, fancier features or RGB keyboards, or even better screen resolution. The Gigabyte Aero 14 and Aero 15 is what I'd recommend here, without a doubt. About the $15-1600 range you'll find the lower end laptops with 1070s in them. These are serious gaming machines and will easily play games now and 5 years from now. They're pricey, but absolutely worth it if you need the performance. You can run current games at medium-high settings... at 4K, or Ultra settings at 2K and 3K, to say nothing of 1080p. These will almost certainly be able to run even the latest and greatest games five years from now at decent resolutions and frame rates. I myself have the Aorus x5v6, and it (and its successor the v7) are beautiful, thin machines with fancy RGB keyboards and a sweet 3K screen. It's a beautiful, thin, kinda classy machine that will knock the socks off of every game I've run on it at native resolution. The GSYNC only adds to the longevity, since it basically means you don't notice the difference between 30 frames and 50 frames, and only adds to the smoothness at every resolution. It's a good machine, is what I'm saying... but if you don't want to run AAA games on it, then you really don't need to be and should not be spending $2000 on a laptop. Or, for that matter, even $1000 for the performance.
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Aug 6, 2017 07:49
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Hadlock posted:See if the laptop meets milspec standard MIL810-F, specifically method 510.4 "Sand and Dust – Blows dust for an extended amount of time" Atomizer posted:This is a good question, but there's no easy answer. You could find models you're interested in, then look up teardown videos (or Web pages like on ifixit) to see how easy it is to crack them open. As long as there are just screws and no glue holding everything down, and you don't have to disassemble the whole thing to get to some vital components on the other side of the board, you should be fine. I haven't lost any laptop to overheating and/or disassembly/reassembly over the past 20-25 years, though. Alright, I'll keep these things in mind. I don't really lose laptops to heat issues per se, but they lose their performance to heat issue (and will eventually start shutting off when I work them hard,) and then I usually end up breaking something trying to open them up to do a proper cleaning of heat sinks and fans when compressed air isn't really enough anymore. Re: GPU I think a 1060/1070 or equivalent should be sufficient. I may need it for GPU based ray-tracing at some point, but for now anything that will run my lovely unoptimised GL code at a reasonable framerate while recording should do.
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Aug 6, 2017 14:30
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Atomizer posted:I had to Google that Samsung laptop, I had no idea what it was. I definitely don't need anything top of the line. As you said, my previous laptop was 7ish years old. I don't care to play most AAA games on a laptop, because honestly I have friends who have consoles and those play AAA games well enough for me. The only reason I care about having even a little gaming ability is because I love indie projects like Rimworld and Battle Brothers. So middle of the line, even lower middle is probably fine for me. I can wait a couple weeks, but need a laptop for semesters start on the 28th of this month, unfortunately.
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Aug 6, 2017 15:23
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I have a buddy with a really low budget ~$200 and is ok with used. He is just going to use it for word document editing, editing some home movies (nothing crazy) and running some simple accounting software. I told him to check out the lenovo outlet, anything in particular he should look for or stay away from?
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Aug 6, 2017 20:04
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Atomizer posted:Those refurbished HP CB 13s are on woot again in case anyone's interested. They have 3 out of the 4 versions (missing the m5 one.) Man, that's tempting. $400 for the M3 model ain't bad. It's a shame that the battery life on the G1 is kinda bad compared to other modern Chromebooks, and downright terrible compared to the Dell 13. 3200x1800 screen res and sub-3 lbs might be worth it, though...
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Aug 6, 2017 20:21
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I'm in the market for a mobile video workstation. 15-inch territory, but as light as possible. Most important to me would be processing power (desktop processor if possible), build quality (lots of traveling), and lightweight. Less important is price, screen, and battery life. Needs a beefy graphics card as it needs to drive multiple external video monitors. Bonus points if it doesn't look too embarrassing. Anything like this out there? Optikalusion fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Aug 6, 2017 |
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Aug 6, 2017 21:03
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Optikalusion posted:I'm in the market for a mobile video workstation. 15-inch territory, but as light as possible. Most important to me would be processing power (desktop processor if possible), build quality (lots of traveling), and lightweight. Less important is price, screen, and battery life. Needs a beefy graphics card as it needs to drive multiple external video monitors. How beefy? If a GTX 1050 will do it, the Dell XPS 15 will do it. If you need a beefier card, some of the recent Aorus guys should do it, although someone else may need to do the vouching for build quality.
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Aug 6, 2017 21:26
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Joda posted:Alright, I'll keep these things in mind. I don't really lose laptops to heat issues per se, but they lose their performance to heat issue (and will eventually start shutting off when I work them hard,) and then I usually end up breaking something trying to open them up to do a proper cleaning of heat sinks and fans when compressed air isn't really enough anymore. In that case, I'd still recommend the Acer Helios 300 then, or check out The Iron Rose's post above for more detail about 1070 laptops. KittyEmpress posted:I definitely don't need anything top of the line. As you said, my previous laptop was 7ish years old. I don't care to play most AAA games on a laptop, because honestly I have friends who have consoles and those play AAA games well enough for me. Alright, so when I make gaming laptop recommendations, I'm taking into consideration the performance at each price point. Since you can get a hell of a deal on that Acer Helios with a 1060 for ~$1.1k, I only suggest considering a 1050 Ti laptop in the $800 range. Then a MX150 laptop around $600; otherwise, if you were going to spend more for a given "tier" it makes sense to add a bit more money for significantly more performance. It doesn't make sense, for example, to spend the same amount for a 1050 Ti as you could on the Helios. If the MX150 sounds interesting as a lower-midrange GPU but you can't find a laptop in time for school, you could drop down to the previous-gen 940MX; check eBay for models around $500 (note that Acer tends to make models with user-accessible RAM slots and dual storage, whereas Lenovo has similar laptops but with less expandability.) The only caveat is that there are significantly fewer lower-priced 940MX laptops on eBay at the moment, likely because others have snatched them up for the upcoming schoolyear. The other consideration is that both of the games you mentioned appear to be able to run on Intel iGPUs. That means you could consider something like this Acer which is my standard entry-level recommendation. It's solid all-around for the price, but note it needs a 4 GB RAM upgrade (~$25 on eBay) and a m.2 SATA SSD (~$50 for ~128 GB on eBay.) fyallm posted:I have a buddy with a really low budget ~$200 and is ok with used. He is just going to use it for word document editing, editing some home movies (nothing crazy) and running some simple accounting software. I told him to check out the lenovo outlet, anything in particular he should look for or stay away from? He needs a laptop specifically for that? I don't know if you're going to get a good enough laptop that can do reasonable video editing for $200, although you can keep an eye on woot refurbs. The other software you mentioned should run on anything. Otherwise, he can get one of these modernized Asus netbooks for under $200; it should suffice for most general-purpose tasks but I have no idea how that Atom will work on his video transcoding. DrDork posted:Man, that's tempting. $400 for the M3 model ain't bad. It's a shame that the battery life on the G1 is kinda bad compared to other modern Chromebooks, and downright terrible compared to the Dell 13. 3200x1800 screen res and sub-3 lbs might be worth it, though... Yeah, the build, keyboard, and display are great, but I haven't been able to find a good battery-life comparison between the models. All I can tell you is that the life on the m7 is rather disappointing, maybe lasting 5-7 hours depending on use. I'm assuming the lower-end CPUs give better life. Optikalusion posted:I'm in the market for a mobile video workstation. 15-inch territory, but as light as possible. Most important to me would be processing power (desktop processor if possible), build quality (lots of traveling), and lightweight. Less important is price, screen, and battery life. Needs a beefy graphics card as it needs to drive multiple external video monitors. How about the Acer Helios 300 that I've been recommending to everybody?  Core i7, 16 GB RAM, 1060 6 GB. Seems pretty sturdy, not terribly gamer-y, and fairly compact for a 15" gaming laptop. The GPU is good, but laptops don't usually have more than a couple video outputs at best; it has one HDMI, and per Acer the Type C port is data only, no power or alt modes. Do you specifically need multiple dGPU-accelerated outputs though? If you're just using extra displays for more open windows instead of multi-panel gaming, you could use DisplayLink monitors or adapters.
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Aug 6, 2017 21:36
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Optikalusion posted:I'm in the market for a mobile video workstation. 15-inch territory, but as light as possible. Most important to me would be processing power (desktop processor if possible), build quality (lots of traveling), and lightweight. Less important is price, screen, and battery life. Needs a beefy graphics card as it needs to drive multiple external video monitors. This is basically ad copy for the XPS 15
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Aug 6, 2017 21:43
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Atomizer posted:Yeah, the build, keyboard, and display are great, but I haven't been able to find a good battery-life comparison between the models. All I can tell you is that the life on the m7 is rather disappointing, maybe lasting 5-7 hours depending on use. I'm assuming the lower-end CPUs give better life. Yeah, most of the reviews seem to be with the M5 version, also claiming ~6hrs. The best I've seen claimed was ~8hrs, presumably with the lowest tier CPU and maybe the 1080p screen--they weren't specific. If anything, that's what I'd imagine is the kicker: the power hungry 3200x1800 screen, more so than the CPU. Also, at 2.8lbs, they could only mash in a 45Wh battery, vs the 67Wh that the Dell 13 sports, and there's no real way to make up for that, regardless of the other specs.
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Aug 6, 2017 21:59
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Atomizer posted:not terribly gamer-y  It's covered in aggressive angles, red accents, red backlighting, edgy logo. It doesn't have the Bank Gothic keyboard font at least I've only been looking at laptops recently and it's like everything with a decent GPU in it looks like this. Even stuff like that new Aorus one with the copper accents looks wicked sick when you open it up. Laptops that can play games aren't a bad-tradeoff paving slab niche anymore, why's all the styling still stuck looking like a custom Winamp skin? If you like that look then cool, but it's like, almost everything I know there's that Zenbook Pro coming out but reviews have been saying it's a bit janky. I'll probably end up getting an XPS 15 but it'd be nice to have something that'll age a bit better
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Aug 6, 2017 22:25
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baka kaba posted:
Clevo/Sager is literally the only brand I know of that doesn't do this. If they had a 13" with a 1060 I'd be there.
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Aug 6, 2017 22:42
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baka kaba posted:
I'll give you a hint, and it's that most of the companies making gaming laptops are HQed in certain non-US countries with fairly different ideas of electronic aesthetics. See also: motherboards.
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Aug 6, 2017 22:47
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DrDork posted:Yeah, most of the reviews seem to be with the M5 version, also claiming ~6hrs. The best I've seen claimed was ~8hrs, presumably with the lowest tier CPU and maybe the 1080p screen--they weren't specific. If anything, that's what I'd imagine is the kicker: the power hungry 3200x1800 screen, more so than the CPU. Also, at 2.8lbs, they could only mash in a 45Wh battery, vs the 67Wh that the Dell 13 sports, and there's no real way to make up for that, regardless of the other specs. It's really thin too, leaving little extra room for a larger battery. Also, I wonder if running the display at quarter-resolution (1600x900,) which I do, because ChromeOS doesn't scale the interface, reduces the load on the system because it doesn't have to drive the display at native resolution. I love the Dell though; you can easily tell they were able to fit a large battery because the thing is a tank. baka kaba posted:
The Helios definitely has a "gaming laptop" build, but it's more subdued than some alternatives. I think the trend is heading towards more subtlety; see the new un-branded Razer Blade Stealth, for example.
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Aug 7, 2017 01:34
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Atomizer posted:It's really thin too, leaving little extra room for a larger battery. Also, I wonder if running the display at quarter-resolution (1600x900,) which I do, because ChromeOS doesn't scale the interface, reduces the load on the system because it doesn't have to drive the display at native resolution. I love the Dell though; you can easily tell they were able to fit a large battery because the thing is a tank. Yeah, physics is still a real bitch when it comes to batteries: thin and light does not go great with battery life--though at more than 1/2 a pound lighter, it should be a noticeable heft difference. I don't expect that running it scaled would make much of a difference: even for ULV CPUs and their attendant anemic GPUs, powering a simple desktop ain't much of a thing. The screen itself, on the other hand, very likely has a substantially higher power draw, since you've obviously got a bunch more pixels to power, and the more dense the display, the brighter the backlight you need, so that's more power, too. And much like batteries, there hasn't been nearly the power improvements in monitor tech over the last few years as there has been in processors.
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Aug 7, 2017 01:53
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Optikalusion posted:I'm in the market for a mobile video workstation. 15-inch territory, but as light as possible. Most important to me would be processing power (desktop processor if possible), build quality (lots of traveling), and lightweight. Less important is price, screen, and battery life. Needs a beefy graphics card as it needs to drive multiple external video monitors. You're not going to find a desktop class CPU in a thin and portable laptop. At the 15" size, if you need a desktop processor, your only option is the EVOC 16L / Eurocom Tornado F5, which feature desktop CPUs and GTX 1070/80s, and are housed in the MSI GT62VR chassis. This, however, is not portable by any stretch of the definition. It's not particularly heavy for a DTR, but it's like 1.6" thick and has a large footprint.
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Aug 7, 2017 01:58
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:You're not going to find a desktop class CPU in a thin and portable laptop. This is true. Also, though "mobile video workstation" is noted, what exactly are you doing with it? Frankly, you don't need much of a GPU to push multiple external monitors if you're just playing back video presentations or whatever, vs live 3D rendering or CAD programs or whatever. Similarly, are you doing serious video editing and compression, or just some lighter cut-and-pasting clips together? Because the CPU needed for the second option is notably less.
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Aug 7, 2017 02:04
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DrDork posted:I'll give you a hint, and it's that most of the companies making gaming laptops are HQed in certain non-US countries with fairly different ideas of electronic aesthetics. See also: motherboards. But all of these companies produce completely normal-lookin stuff too? The common factor here is games - see also: graphics card boxes and names, terrible overclocking UIs, 'gamer' anything, from American companies or otherwise. I honestly have no idea which country you think is imposing a cultural aesthetic on the entire gaming market Atomizer posted:The Helios definitely has a "gaming laptop" build, but it's more subdued than some alternatives. I think the trend is heading towards more subtlety; see the new un-branded Razer Blade Stealth, for example. Yeah but honestly 'more subdued' says a lot about the standard! But it's definitely nice to see stuff getting dialed back, even aiming for a premium look and style sometimes  Speaking of, is there a reason they still stick with huge bezels? Is it sort of an excuse to have a larger chassis so they can get more cooling?
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Aug 7, 2017 02:09
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:You're not going to find a desktop class CPU in a thin and portable laptop. This is going to come down to how you define "desktop class" and "thin and portable" - if you mean so small that we're ruling out all quad-core laptops yeah, but there's not really much difference in a mobile i5-7440HQ and a desktop i5-7400 in terms of speed. You can't get overclocking or >4 cores in a laptop without going for something nutty though.
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Aug 7, 2017 03:12
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:You're not going to find a desktop class CPU in a thin and portable laptop. At the 15" size, if you need a desktop processor, your only option is the EVOC 16L / Eurocom Tornado F5, which feature desktop CPUs and GTX 1070/80s, and are housed in the MSI GT62VR chassis. This, however, is not portable by any stretch of the definition. It's not particularly heavy for a DTR, but it's like 1.6" thick and has a large footprint. Like Eletriarnation said, the full quad-core mobile chips are pretty close in performance to their desktop counterparts. A 7700HQ is basically just a lower-TDP 7700 with lower clocks; both are quad-core with Hyperthreading. If that's not good enough, just get a desktop. baka kaba posted:But all of these companies produce completely normal-lookin stuff too? The common factor here is games - see also: graphics card boxes and names, terrible overclocking UIs, 'gamer' anything, from American companies or otherwise. I honestly have no idea which country you think is imposing a cultural aesthetic on the entire gaming market He was referring to most of these electronic components being made in China. Remember decades ago when PCs were in beige boxes? And you could occasionally find something nice like a metallic Lian-Li case? To stand out manufacturers started to create flashy "gaming" components, both in terms of materials and lighting (remember how just a few years ago RGB everything wasn't a thing?) Then everybody started copying each other and now we have the "gamer aesthetic." Now we're [hopefully] going back in the other direction. I think the thing with display- vs. chassis-size has to do with building the chassis around a minimum size for the components and cooling, including the predetermined display size, with the panel probably being picked due to price to begin with. Then they end up with a chassis that leaves room for a ton of bezel space rather than retroactively up-sizing the display panel to try to fit the available space. Also a larger display would further drain the battery, which is already barely sufficient to power a gaming laptop for any reasonable length of time.
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Aug 7, 2017 03:44
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baka kaba posted:But all of these companies produce completely normal-lookin stuff too? The common factor here is games baka kaba posted:Speaking of, is there a reason they still stick with huge bezels? Is it sort of an excuse to have a larger chassis so they can get more cooling? Also remember that many of the "gaming" laptops, like Clevos and Sagers, are not nearly as custom-built and hand-fit/engineered as a lot of the smaller and lighter ultraportable ones are. The advantage is they can use the same or similar casings for multiple setups, and drop in replacement parts fairly easy. The downside is space efficiency isn't as good. DrDork fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 03:44
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Eletriarnation posted:This is going to come down to how you define "desktop class" and "thin and portable" - if you mean so small that we're ruling out all quad-core laptops yeah, but there's not really much difference in a mobile i5-7440HQ and a desktop i5-7400 in terms of speed. You can't get overclocking or >4 cores in a laptop without going for something nutty though. Atomizer posted:Like Eletriarnation said, the full quad-core mobile chips are pretty close in performance to their desktop counterparts. A 7700HQ is basically just a lower-TDP 7700 with lower clocks; both are quad-core with Hyperthreading. If that's not good enough, just get a desktop. I mean, when someone says they want a desktop class CPU, I assume that to mean they want a desktop CPU literally as opposed to a mobile chip. There are a few DTR laptops that contain these, but most of them are 17" and the only 15" being the one I listed. With that said, the 7700HQ turbos to 2.8ghz on 4 cores(if you assume no throttling, which is not always the case, including on the XPS15 which throttles due to VRM temperatures), while the 7700 desktop turbos to 3.6ghz. That's like a ~22% difference. I agree that on the whole, for the average person, performance is pretty similar and probably not noticeable in day-to-day. But if someone is asking for "desktop class", could be that the ~22% does matter.
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Aug 7, 2017 03:59
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Just chiming in to say the Dell Inspiron 7567 I ended up buying last week on sale turned out great. BB's display model had the crappy TN panel but my model came with an IPS (a middling one apparently, but still leagues better than the TN). The fans can be loud under heavy load and I'm still trying to figure out display calibration, but overall it was a good purchase for the price. There's no red backlight keyboard, something I originally thought would be a downside but was a blessing in disguise since it doesn't scream 'Gamer laptop'. In fact, the only red on the entire machine is the bottom front side, the Dell logo, and a bit on the back vents so it's reasonably subdued. I'm planning on getting another stick of 8gb RAM and an SSD for a boot drive. Any random stick of DDR4 2400 RAM should be okay right? Any recommendations for decent (and affordable) 256gb M.2. SSDs? From what I've read my machine can support NVME PCI-E, though I'm not sure what that means.
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Aug 7, 2017 04:04
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IncendiaC posted:I'm planning on getting another stick of 8gb RAM and an SSD for a boot drive. Any random stick of DDR4 2400 RAM should be okay right? Any recommendations for decent (and affordable) 256gb M.2. SSDs? From what I've read my machine can support NVME PCI-E, though I'm not sure what that means. Download something like CPU-Z and check out the stats on the RAM currently installed. Ideally, you buy another stick of RAM with a CAS latency the same or lower than your current stick. But yeah, pretty much anything should work. NVME PCIe SSDs are a newer, better class of SSDs than the older type. They're much faster than the older SATA based ones, albeit they're also typically more expensive. Note that M.2 is just the physical slot, which can support both NVME and SATA type SSDs.
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Aug 7, 2017 04:34
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:I mean, when someone says they want a desktop class CPU, I assume that to mean they want a desktop CPU literally as opposed to a mobile chip. There are a few DTR laptops that contain these, but most of them are 17" and the only 15" being the one I listed. The 7700HQ base speed is 2.8GHz and it turbos to 3.4GHz on all cores, 3.8 on single. The desktop 7700 turbos up to 4.2 actually but the mobile line doesn't stop at the 7700, there's an i7-7920HQ that goes up to 4.1 at maximum. That aside, when someone says "desktop class" I take that to mean "a quad-core with comparable clock speeds and IPC to normal desktop quad-cores" - not "as good as the best processor in the normal consumer lineup." I'll grant that it's a pretty loose term though. Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Aug 7, 2017 |
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Aug 7, 2017 05:14
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:With that said, the 7700HQ turbos to 2.8ghz on 4 cores(if you assume no throttling, which is not always the case, including on the XPS15 which throttles due to VRM temperatures), while the 7700 desktop turbos to 3.6ghz. That's like a ~22% difference. 
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Aug 7, 2017 05:17
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