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CrazyLittle posted:What laptops out there have 3x3 or 4x4 MU-MIMO wave2 802.11ac WiFi built in? I need one for testing purposes. some macbook pros have had 3x3 but I'm pretty sure not wave2. It's tough to find precise info but it appears they're now using the Cypress 4339. If you can figure out what that means for 3x3 vs 2x2 or MU-MIMO, you're doing better than me everything else I can find caps out at 2x2 wave2 (Intel 9560 or Killer AC1550)
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May 22, 2018 18:15
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CrazyLittle posted:What laptops out there have 3x3 or 4x4 MU-MIMO wave2 802.11ac WiFi built in? I need one for testing purposes. Practically none. 3x3 exists but nobody's really adopting it other than some Apple models, and afaik there's no 4x4 m.2 solution at all yet. What's your use case?
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May 22, 2018 18:44
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I'm shopping for a new laptop, to replace the device I wrote my PhD thesis on, this Asus P53 that I've had for more than 6 years. My computer needs to be a competent workhorse, not a high-performance elite machine. My priorities are long battery life, at least 3 USB ports, and being neither enormous nor ultralite - about 15 inches for the screen seems right. My budget is $1200 Canadian. My stupid questions are, what's the deal with the i7 / i5 / i3 Intel processors? Is bigger number = better? Is the i-number more or less important than the number of cores?
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May 22, 2018 18:46
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The i-number is marketing bullshit and means nothing except within a given generation and wattage class, in which case it can mean any of a number of different things. Like, just looking at 8th generation to keep ourselves from going nuts, i5 can mean: a slow 15W mobile quad-core with HT a slightly faster 28W mobile quad-core with HT and an upgraded IGP a slightly faster 65W mobile/SFF quad-core with HT and a Vega IGP a midrange 35W mobile quad-core with HT (and a normal IGP) a slow 65W desktop six-core without HT a faster 95W desktop six-core without HT that can overclock Look the specs up for whatever chips you are considering on ark.intel.com and use the comparison tool if you want to actually know what's going on. Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 18:49
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I don't think paying extra for the i7 was ever worth it. Especially now since the i5 are also quad core.
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May 22, 2018 18:56
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ExecuDork posted:My stupid questions are, what's the deal with the i7 / i5 / i3 Intel processors? Is bigger number = better? Is the i-number more or less important than the number of cores? The number is not important, look at the number of cores and boost clock if you want to compare them. Even then it can be misleading, for example the pre-8th gen i5s and i7s behaved pretty much the same in most laptops since thermals are usually the limiting factor.
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May 22, 2018 18:56
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ExecuDork posted:I'm shopping for a new laptop, to replace the device I wrote my PhD thesis on, this Asus P53 that I've had for more than 6 years. My computer needs to be a competent workhorse, not a high-performance elite machine. My priorities are long battery life, at least 3 USB ports, and being neither enormous nor ultralite - about 15 inches for the screen seems right. My budget is $1200 Canadian. I'm pretty happy with the T580 I just got on the ongoing 33% sale, which is in the neighborhood of those requirements.
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May 22, 2018 18:58
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Mu Zeta posted:I don't think paying extra for the i7 was ever worth it. Especially now since the i5 are also quad core.
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May 22, 2018 19:10
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no
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May 22, 2018 19:11
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Oh, that really makes the i5/i7 designations confusing or meaningless, then. Edit: Or I guess you just have to look at what generation it is to understand what it means. mystes fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 19:14
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mystes posted:Don't only the i7 processors have hyperthreading? Look above at the list of what constitutes an "8th generation i5", then realize that in addition some (but far from all!) of the i3/Pentium processors have HT to make up for lower core counts. mystes posted:Oh, that really makes the i5/i7 designations confusing or meaningless, then. Not only are they meaningless now but processor designations have been largely marketing bullshit since 15 years ago when Intel put out a new series with much higher clock speeds but much lower performance per clock (Pentium 4) and AMD said "we'll just label Athlon XP with a 'performance rating' that coincidentally looks like a clock speed number but totally isn't, since we can't compete on sheer clocks". I don't really know what the alternative would be at this point, considering that with multicore processors clock speed itself ceased to be a clear indicator of performance even within an architecture. You have to look at the spec sheet if you want to know what you're getting.
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May 22, 2018 19:24
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Practically none. 3x3 exists but nobody's really adopting it other than some Apple models, and afaik there's no 4x4 m.2 solution at all yet. What's your use case? There's no use case. It's literally an end user dick-waving about not getting the theoretical speeds of wifi devices. That said, Netgear makes a USB adapter, "Nighthawk AC1900" model A7000, and I have to say it's not worth it. The built-in 2x2 802.11ac wifi built into my laptop performs 90% as well as the Netgear USB adapter, and the driver for the USB adapter is not very stable. CrazyLittle fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 22, 2018 |
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May 22, 2018 20:04
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Why does my stupid laptop run its stupid fans all day long? I bought a Helios 300 a couple months back when it was on sale on Amazon and its so loud with its fans. According to the program that came with it, its always around 70 C, which is pretty hot but it doesn't feel hot. It's a pretty new computer, what's the deal here?
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May 22, 2018 21:02
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That's pretty hot, and if that's with the fans blowing then it'd be a lot hotter without them. Laptops have a bunch of heat-generating components in a very tight space (especially gaming ones with a discrete GPU). If you're not really doing a lot, the CPU running easy with discrete graphics, it won't put out a lot of heat and the fan might not run at all, or very quietly - it depends on the ambient temperature in the room too. But start to do anything more demanding and it'll need to start actively cooling the components You can do a few things - make sure there's good airflow (maybe raising the laptop off the desk or whatever), undervolt it, or mess with the cooling policy so the fans kick in later. But when it starts to get actually hot, those fans need to come on, and if you're gaming then they're gonna crank up
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May 22, 2018 21:20
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Mantis42 posted:Why does my stupid laptop run its stupid fans all day long? I bought a Helios 300 a couple months back when it was on sale on Amazon and its so loud with its fans. According to the program that came with it, its always around 70 C, which is pretty hot but it doesn't feel hot. It's a pretty new computer, what's the deal here? There's no reason it should sit at 70c constantly. You either have some background task consuming a lot of CPU, or there's something wrong with your cooling. Check software first, then repaste it if it's not under warranty.
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May 22, 2018 21:42
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Atomizer posted:
Sorry, that whole part went straight up and over my head, but I think I've got it this time. I've become such a Luddite as of late.
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May 22, 2018 22:53
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The Razer Blade 15 looks pretty badass. It fixes most if not all of my complaints about the 14. One thing though: why haven't laptop manufacturers adopted 1440p? It's the perfect resolution for the screen size. 1080 is OK but pixelated, 4k is overkill for a 15" screen and you can't push over 60hz easily. 1440p at 144hz would be the perfect resolution for a gaming laptop with a GPU such as a 1070.
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May 23, 2018 00:22
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Animal posted:The Razer Blade 15 looks pretty badass. It fixes most if not all of my complaints about the 14. One thing though: why haven't laptop manufacturers adopted 1440p? It's the perfect resolution for the screen size. 1080 is OK but pixelated, 4k is overkill for a 15" screen and you can't push over 60hz easily. 1440p at 144hz would be the perfect resolution for a gaming laptop with a GPU such as a 1070. I find that a 15" 4k screen running at 1080p when gaming (perfectly halved resolution, so no scaling blurriness) and scaled 150% the rest of the time is an ideal road warrior gaming machine, fellow nerd pilot.
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May 23, 2018 00:32
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greasyhands posted:I find that a 15" 4k screen running at 1080p when gaming (perfectly halved resolution, so no scaling blurriness) and scaled 150% the rest of the time is an ideal road warrior gaming machine, fellow nerd pilot. The problem is that none of the 4k screens of that size have refresh rates higher than 60hz. I want my high refresh rate damnit!
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May 23, 2018 00:41
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I could see it working in games but 1440 isn’t going to be usable on a 15” screen without scaling for most people.
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May 23, 2018 00:59
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dissss posted:I could see it working in games but 1440 isn’t going to be usable on a 15” screen without scaling for most people. Scaling is fine, 4k is twice the pixels and people make due.
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May 23, 2018 01:50
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dissss posted:I could see it working in games but 1440 isn’t going to be usable on a 15” screen without scaling for most people. So you scale it! That's sort of the point. Windows scaling works like 99% of the time at this point, it's really nothing to be afraid of unless you're an IT grognard who has to deal with supporting ancient applications, in which case get a thinkpad.
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May 23, 2018 02:21
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Animal posted:Scaling is fine, 4k is twice the pixels and people make due. Thing is scaling works much, much better when you have more pixels to work with. 1440 is in that awkward area where it doesn’t work well scaled or unscaled IMO
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May 23, 2018 02:24
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drunken officeparty posted:Depending on just how unwiedly it would be, I am willing to keep the laptop back open 24/7. I just use it as a desktop anyway. It stays plugged in and I haven't moved it as a portable computer since I bought it. Then get the 2.5" to USB adapter! Why are you making this so difficult?!? sausage king of Chicago posted:In mid june I'm going to be traveling for a month or so and during this time, would like to get some work done. I'd like something super, super cheap (in case it get's stolen or something) that I can run linux on and android studio. Those are basically my only requirements. This, add an m.2 SSD and as much RAM as you'd like. ExecuDork posted:I'm shopping for a new laptop, to replace the device I wrote my PhD thesis on, this Asus P53 that I've had for more than 6 years. My computer needs to be a competent workhorse, not a high-performance elite machine. My priorities are long battery life, at least 3 USB ports, and being neither enormous nor ultralite - about 15 inches for the screen seems right. My budget is $1200 Canadian. See my recommendation above. Mantis42 posted:Why does my stupid laptop run its stupid fans all day long? I bought a Helios 300 a couple months back when it was on sale on Amazon and its so loud with its fans. According to the program that came with it, its always around 70 C, which is pretty hot but it doesn't feel hot. It's a pretty new computer, what's the deal here? My brother's Helios 300 is basically silent. He does keep it on a cooling pad, but nevertheless it's just fine in terms of tempurature & fan usage.  Animal posted:The Razer Blade 15 looks pretty badass. It fixes most if not all of my complaints about the 14. One thing though: why haven't laptop manufacturers adopted 1440p? It's the perfect resolution for the screen size. 1080 is OK but pixelated, 4k is overkill for a 15" screen and you can't push over 60hz easily. 1440p at 144hz would be the perfect resolution for a gaming laptop with a GPU such as a 1070. Manufacturers are still struggling with not putting huge, lovely WXGA displays in laptops. I could see QHD@>60 Hz with a 1070 in some games, but most gaming laptops are probably sold with the 1060, which is ideal for FHD. Otherwise, I'm generally fine with having a higher resolution and scaling when necessary, although I'm sure power draw in laptops is a concern with the higher-res displays.
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May 23, 2018 03:20
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my helios gets a bit huffy and puffy when i play COD but that game generates a shitload of heat it seems on my other system too  if its running at 70c all the time even when doing 'nothing' then something is amiss
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May 23, 2018 03:39
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Laptop fan noise is often pet hair clogging up the airflow If out of warranty, take it apart and pull out the dust and pet hair Also yeah there's a non zero chance you're mining bitcoins for the Russians. If none of that then yeah you need to repaste the heatsink Laptops in 2018 should never overheat at idle.
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May 23, 2018 04:23
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Are there any relatively low priced touchscreen laptops that could run photoshop? I was just hoping some amazing Memorial Day sale might come up.
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May 23, 2018 17:40
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Atomizer posted:This, add an m.2 SSD and as much RAM as you'd like. I would prefer Windows 10 Pro over Home if possible, unless they're not actually different in a meaningful way. I plan to run all sorts of random, old, low-user-count programs on this computer, and basically use it as the computer of last resort for every application of my lab group. I'm a scientist, I need a machine that will spend most of its time running Microsoft Office stuff and R Studio, but sometimes will need to run the gas analyser or automatically log output from the precision balance. I *think* all of those old weird scientific-instrument programs are going to run just fine on anything made since 1998, but if Win 10 Home has an over-protective nanny mode that won't let me install this poo poo I need to avoid it or know how to turn that nanny mode off (actually off, not just the "OK! I'll only bug you EVERY TIME" that Windows Vista does). Also, what would be the advantage of adding a 250GB SSD? I know SSD means much faster access compared to a spinning disk, but is permanent-storage access a limiting factor for most programs running smoothly? I do use my computer for photo editing, and loading 16GB RAW files can take a bit of time but speeding that up doesn't seem to be worth the hassle of maintaining a file structure more complex than C:\Photos. Is there another, more general advantage of an SSD I'm missing?
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May 23, 2018 17:45
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Hadlock posted:Other option: https://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/perksoffer/StdAffinityPortal/en_US/Lenovo:EnterStdAffinity?affinity=perksoffer
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May 23, 2018 18:29
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ExecuDork posted:Also, what would be the advantage of adding a 250GB SSD? I know SSD means much faster access compared to a spinning disk, but is permanent-storage access a limiting factor for most programs running smoothly? Yes, it's the single most important limiting factor in the vast majority of cases. Put your applications and OS on the SSD and everything else on the hard drive.
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May 23, 2018 18:51
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Ralith posted:Looks like this is over. Glad I got mine while the getting was good! New, working lenovo perks code: PERK*GOLD
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May 23, 2018 19:40
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ExecuDork posted:This looks pretty good, thank you! I recommend checking the comparison chart for Pro vs. Home, but if you decide you have to have Pro then getting keys aftermarket is pretty cheap. Most programs at least have a substantial improvement in startup time with an SSD and some perform way better during use as well; you should definitely give it a try if you haven't had one before now. You don't need to maintain a complex file structure, just install the OS and any programs you want to on the SSD as C: and any HDD you add in will have a separate drive letter by default or can be mapped to a folder instead.
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May 23, 2018 19:47
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Atomizer posted:
The 1070 in the Blade 15 is a Max-Q, anyway, and is far better mated to 1080p 144hz gaming than high refresh 1440p gaming. The last high refresh (120hz) laptop 1440p panels were 17" ones that had major problems with scanlines (Aorus X7, Alienware 17).
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May 24, 2018 00:14
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Acer's coming out with a higher-end Helios 500 and a refreshed 300. The 500 isn't that interesting as it's going to be a higher-priced entry, albeit with high-end features, but the new 300 is mainly upgraded with a 144 Hz display (and more storage) with the rest of the specs appearing to remain the same. Hopefully the price will be close to $1k as that's what made it notable.ExecuDork posted:This looks pretty good, thank you! If you don't know the feature differences in Pro over Home then you probably don't need the former. I mean it's a possibility but I'd say it's more than likely you'll be fine with Home. Even then I'm sure you can still find $5-10 Pro keys on eBay; look for the ones from UK sellers that say they ship with a broken mobo (they won't bother shipping anything of course.) You absolutely, 100% want any OS to run off of solid-state storage. This means any SSD for a PC, and of course things like tablets and phones have eMMC at least. You will totally notice the difference in performance (due to random access as opposed to continuous data transfer) over an HDD. You can use HDDs for bulk data storage. If anything, a modest SSD (e.g. one of the $30-40 128 GB ones you can find for sale all the time, even one without DRAM which I otherwise wouldn't normally recommend) will definitely give you better OS performance compared to any HDD, whereas a fast HDD would be a wise complement for loading your huge RAW files. Shrimp or Shrimps posted:The 1070 in the Blade 15 is a Max-Q, anyway, and is far better mated to 1080p 144hz gaming than high refresh 1440p gaming. Yeah if you have a high resolution, high-refresh rate display and a powerful GPU but have to choose between high-res gaming and/or high detail settings versus a lower resolution/details at a higher framerate you'd be a fool not to go for the latter. >60 Hz displays are rare enough as it is (in terms of the market share they represent overall,) especially on laptops, so why wouldn't you take advantage of that feature?
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May 24, 2018 02:52
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I guess the golden age of gaming laptops will come when we get 4k@144hz combined with the next gen of GPU's and adaptive vsync, so you can choose to have both a 4K desktop and 1080p gaming at high refresh rate and good scaling.
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May 24, 2018 04:34
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Ralith posted:New, working lenovo perks code: PERK*GOLD Thanks, will update
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May 24, 2018 06:17
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With knee surgery coming up and me being stuck in bed for a while I finally got a laptop of my own. Through a series of constraints I had to get a Dell, so got the new Alienware 15 (8750h, 1070). Since I don't plan on moving it around too much anyway and battery life isnt a concern. It wasnt my first choice if I had the option to get any laptop but I'm kinda liking it. The last laptops Ive touched were some Win8 era machines so the improvements are all really nice. There wasn't even as much bloatware as I expected, though MS itself put a bunch of phone games on here. Think Im gonna play FFXV this summer, since my desktop is rocking an older AMD card that couldnt really run it. Still, the laptop experience is a lot better than I expected. The phone mirroring app is cool too, since it is basically Vysor with bluetooth so it can handle calls. Glad buying PCs isnt the hellscape of garbage software I remember from years ago, even with me buying one of the would-be worst offenders.
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May 24, 2018 09:59
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dell is probably the best consumer laptop brand rn i have one. it felt very strange to be buying one since it isnt like, 1997. but ill be damned if they arent great. a lot of laptops are actually great now imo if you make sure to fit the purchase to the use case
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May 24, 2018 13:07
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Animal posted:I guess the golden age of gaming laptops will come when we get 4k@144hz combined with the next gen of GPU's and adaptive vsync, so you can choose to have both a 4K desktop and 1080p gaming at high refresh rate and good scaling. Maybe, but that sounds like a recipe for throttling and high fan noise to me.
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May 24, 2018 13:16
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The golden age of laptop gaming will come when we can get 1050 Ti - 1060 level performance in a thin-and-light. We're almost there, but not quite.
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May 24, 2018 14:23
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