Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Life Advice => Topic started by: miauw62 on February 14, 2014, 01:49:50 pm
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This current laptop is sort of dying, or at least the graphics card is.
I've been getting crashes that I am 90% certain are GPU-related, just randomly for the most part although Aero will ALWAYS cause a crash. Taking a screenshot with a too large resolution in openTTD also gave me a BSOD with a GPU-related stop error, so yeah.
I need suggestions for a new good gaming laptop, since I have no idea where to start looking.
I have no specific requirements, just that it should have quite some bang (and preferably over 4 gigs of ram). Not even sure about the price yet.
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Sager/Clevo would be my recommendation, although the challenge would be figuring out whether they have an appropriate reseller in your area.
Companies like Dell, Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, Lenovo, etc, will all sell gaming laptops of varying qualities as well. Pretty much any laptop you find today will have 4 gb of RAM. Gaming laptops will probably have a minimum of 8gb.
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I've gamed on laptops for a long time, and I'm looking to change to a desktop. The same price will get you so much farther. But if you move around a lot, then a lappie is worth it for the portability. Otherwise, I'd go for a desktop.
I've had a Clevo for a year or two now. They're good bang for buck (for laptops...), but I had to flash the BIOS to disable hyperthreading and enable turboboost with Throttlestop. It's also pretty noisy, but most gaming laptops will be, I think. It's also a huge 17.3" monster.
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I've been very content, for gaming purposes, with my ASUS laptop. It came with i7 ivy bridge (3610QM), 8Gb ram and a 2Gb GeForce 630M.
I can only assume that by now, you could get an even better one for the same price I paid, since I got it well over a year ago (nearly 2). Back then I paid 999 euros.
I actually bought it, because my previous laptop couldn't handle DF over population 20 anymore.
It runs DF wonderfully, and it exceeded all my expectations for more graphically oriented high end gaming purposes as well.
I also love it's 1920*1080 resolution.
I can only say that I've never had bad experience with ASUS hardware. Except maybe the occasional ultra cheap edition mouse.
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Mice and headphones aren't a problem, I have a trusty Logitech G300 or something mouse that has served me well so far.
Size isn't a problem either, this isn't something to game on the move, more like a desktop that can easily be carried somewhere else and then set up, my current laptop is plugged in 95% of the time.
So far I've found this laptop (http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-G750JW-DB71-17-3-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00COQIKB4/ref=dp_ob_title_ce) and it looks fairly good, but the only place to get it at a reasonable price seems to be Amazon. The local Belgian internet shops (Cool Blue and bol.com) either seem to sell it expensively or not sell it at all.
E:
Finding Clevos to be bought online does indeed seem hard, I'm having a bit more luck with Sagers, though.
E2:
Alright, there are quite some (good) sagers for sale on amazon, but most of them only have ~4 left in stock...
E3:
https://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_customed&model_name=NP7370 (https://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_customed&model_name=NP7370)
CPU: 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) (Good CPU because dorf fort.)
Heatsink: IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU (Overheating issues SUCK)
OS: Win8.1 Pro (Win8 is better under the hood, I'll deal with the interface being a bit worse)
RAM: 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 3 X 4GB (RAM is cheap, no reason not to take a bit extra.)
sMATA drive: none (i don't even know what this is ;_;)
RAID: no
HDD1: 256GB Samsung 840 Pro Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive (I've been told the Samsung 840 Pro is the king of SSDs right now)
HDD2: 750GB 7200rpm SATA2 Secondary Hard Disk Drive (more storage capacity than I'll ever need and good RPM.)
Optical Drive: Default, optical drives aren't that important nowadays
Network Card: Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 802.11 A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Module (why not?)
Total: $1,569.00 or 1 145.33 euros.
Alright, I'm looking at this right now (if they ship to Belgium, that is.)
It's about right at the edge of my budget, I can't go much further than this, but it does seem fairly beastly.
Shipping pushes it up to US$ 1 847.13 = 1 348.36 Euros, so hmmm...
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I'd suggest you seriously consider getting a desktop if you're not going to be gaming on the move. You will get a hell of a lot more for your money and won't have to replace the entire thing when it breaks/needs an upgrade.
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E:
Finding Clevos to be bought online does indeed seem hard, I'm having a bit more luck with Sagers, though.
E2:
Alright, there are quite some (good) sagers for sale on amazon, but most of them only have ~4 left in stock...
E3:
Alright, I'm looking at this right now (if they ship to Belgium, that is.)
It's about right at the edge of my budget, I can't go much further than this, but it does seem fairly beastly.
Shipping pushes it up to US$ 1 847.13 = 1 348.36 Euros, so hmmm...
I personally can't recall whether it's Clevo or Sager that's the original manufacturer. I think it's Clevo. Then Sager (?) buys them, installs stuff, and sells them, so that makes sense that you can't find Clevo stuff.
Although there are usually default configurations for Sager products they also sell custom models - it's why I went with them for my laptop - so I'm not surprised to hear they have limited stock.
Finally regarding shipping: since Sager is kind of a well known company, various other companies will sometimes buy them and sell them under a different name - e.g. in Canada, it's Reflex Notebook. You might be able to find a Belgium Sager reseller that would reduce the shipping costs.
That graphics card is maybe a bit wimpy for gaming. Although 760 (non-mobiles) are great, the mobile versions are pared down and don't compare. I'd suggest you check out a site like notebook check - http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-765M.92907.0.html - for relevant benchmarks.
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Don't know how far you are from the Netherlands border, but if you're close, it might be worth a shot checking out Paradigit, they ususally have a pretty large assortiment of laptops.
There's one in Maastricht, 2 in Eindhoven and one in Breda, for locations close to the Belgian border
\
www.paradigit.nl
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Think REALLY hard about your actual use scenarios. If the only time you'll be seriously gaming is at home but you still need something portable to take notes/look up stuff on the fly/obsessively check email, then you might be happier with a lower end netbook for the mobile stuff, and a desktop + fullsize monitor for the gaming. You could get both of those AND have money left over instead of paying huge prices for an insanely heavy gaming laptop.
If you might want to carry it around once in a while, like to a lan party or something, you could shoot for a desktop in a small case - there are plenty of micro-atx motherboards and corresponding cases that are still big enough for a serious graphics card. And you could fit the case + monitor in a backpack, or just rig up rope or strap handles for the case.
I do it that way and it works great for me - I can fit the netbook in a big pocket, and I have plenty of lightweight games, books, or other things to do on it. I almost never have the desire or the opportunity for serious gaming during the day - I much prefer to block out at least an hour, comfortably at home. Your back will thank you for the difference between a 3 lb netbook/tablet and 8+ pounds of laptop+charger too, and you'll be much likelier to be carrying the netbook at any given time.
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Yeah, my current laptop has a GTX 660m, which according to notebookcheck isn't hugely different than the 765M you're looking at, and I don't think I run any recent games on high settings ever.
Like someone else said, do not compare mobile GPUs with their desktop counterparts, and there's no comparison whatsoever. It's just... night and day.
According to this (http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+770/compare), the 3dmark11 score for the desktop 770 is 11310, and for the mobile 770M is 5150, so more than double. This difference tends to be even bigger when using 3dmark13, which showcases newer graphics features used in newer games.
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After a pair of Dells, we broke down and went for a Dominator (http://pclaptops.com/store/display/2065/Dominator) from PC Laptops. Expensive, but they promise lifetime service, and it has some capacity for upgrades. As a bonus, it's big enough to have the numeric keypad that I find almost essential for DF.
We did notice that gaming performance seriously degrades when it's not plugged in, but that might be tunable.
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I'm 100% certain that I want a laptop, so I'll have to deal with.
I feel like I'm going to take that Asus after all (because my parents have the final say and don't want to pay the shipping costs), but I'll probably want to buy a slightly better HD for it. I'll probably take a Samsung 740 Pro SSD, since that's apparently the king of SSDs, but does anyone have any idea wether I'll be able to easily transfer my OS?
The purchase is still a few months off, so I'll see (and probably ressurect this thread).
4170 is much better than this (http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/ATI+Mobility+Radeon+HD+5650--5750/review) (930), which is what I'm running currently and seems to be sufficient for most games.
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i recently bought myself a new laptop. i checked virtually all laptop offers i could find, read up on a lot of hardware and read a bunch of benchmarks and reviews and this was the one that fit my demands best (with some customisation):
http://www.mysn.eu/xmg-p303 (i actually got it from the german site http://www.mysn.de which is virtually the same and there is a uk-site too with .co.uk and maybe some others)
the fan sometimes gets a little loud but otherwise im really happy with the purchase. i think it has a pretty good price/power ratio so i guess ill recomend it and you can reap the fruits of my hours of sifting through laptops ;)
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i recently bought myself a new laptop. i checked virtually all laptop offers i could find, read up on a lot of hardware and read a bunch of benchmarks and reviews and this was the one that fit my demands best (with some customisation):
http://www.mysn.eu/xmg-p303 (i actually got it from the german site http://www.mysn.de which is virtually the same and there is a uk-site too with .co.uk and maybe some others)
the fan sometimes gets a little loud but otherwise im really happy with the purchase. i think it has a pretty good price/power ratio so i guess ill recomend it and you can reap the fruits of my hours of sifting through laptops ;)
Hm, that DOES look very interesting. Shipping is only like 35 euros to where I live, so yay!
Thanks for sharing!
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the display is really nice and if you dont use all hard-drive slots there is some free space inside which makes it more comfortable temperature-wise when actually placing it on your lap. as i already mentioned, the ventilation can get notably loud. when using headphones or when youre focused on a game it doesnt really matter but ill warn you none the less. the rest of the machine is nice, well made, looks nice and good stats for the price, at least as far as i understand. especially the display is pretty good. oh and another tiny thing: fn-f3 is mute, fn-f4 is sleep and fn-f5 and fn-f6 are volume control, so mute is not directly next to the volume control for whatever reasons, so if such things annoy you, be warned once again ;P
edit: i failed my roll for basic english
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My gaming laptop, which I've now had since Skryim came out is some 'Republic of Gamers' and ASUS collaboration, and it runs like everything. It's great. From that perspective I recommend ASUS, although I also recommend an external cooling unit.
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i recently bought myself a new laptop. i checked virtually all laptop offers i could find, read up on a lot of hardware and read a bunch of benchmarks and reviews and this was the one that fit my demands best (with some customisation):
http://www.mysn.eu/xmg-p303 (i actually got it from the german site http://www.mysn.de which is virtually the same and there is a uk-site too with .co.uk and maybe some others)
the fan sometimes gets a little loud but otherwise im really happy with the purchase. i think it has a pretty good price/power ratio so i guess ill recomend it and you can reap the fruits of my hours of sifting through laptops ;)
That first site has two language options: French, and European Union.
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Do you not speak fluent EU, Dutchling?
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I own a mid-high range Gaming laptop since my work requires me to move around quite a bit. It's the ASUS G75VW-DH72:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-17-3-Inch-1920x1080-i7-3610QM-Quad-Core/dp/B007MW73C2 (UK Link for you!)
In terms of a desktop replacement it is still very up-to-par even with their latest model, the G750. While the processor and graphic card are mid-range, the 256G SSD and Bluray reader/burner is quite a bit of a draw. Even with these specs I don't have much trouble playing most recent games at 1080p (which shows really nicely on a 1080p native screen). If you want a relative comparison I can run The Witcher 2 at 1920x1080 at a constant 45-50 FPS, with Ambient Occlusion and 2xAA. The SSD allows for really fast load times for any multiplayer games you want to install, and allows for a 5 second boot up for your operating system. It includes a 750 GB SATA 7200RPM SATA HDD as well for storage. It has very powerful fans as well, which is a function that most laptop purchasers overlook. Since the bane of every laptop's existence is overheating, which can drastically reduce the lifespan of all of your hardware components.
Also if your situation allows for it I STRONGLY advice that you build your own desktop computer. I own one as well, except I just don't get to use it as much as my laptop. The general rule of thumb being that if you want to play video games, investing in a custom Desktop is almost twice as cost efficient as investing in a laptop, and infinitely times more future-proof since you can update your hardware every few years (whereas a laptop you just chuck out).
For a relative price-performance comparison visit this site:
http://www.logicalincrements.com/
There's even a dropdown menu for your country to get local pricing. But the main usefulness of this website is to give you an idea of how much a state-of-the-art Desktop computer will cost you, and each "template" lists all compatible parts, so you don't run the risk of buying incompatible hardware.
My desktop computer, which is in the range of a "Exceptional" gaming PC by that website's standards, runs every single modern PC game at Very-High to Ultra at a constant 60FPS. Which is quite a bit of a waste of money, but I'm hoping that it's future-proofed enough to run the Witcher 3 or some of the higher tier Korean MMOs whenever those come out. Realistically you would only need a "Great" gaming PC to run all modern games and have them all look exceptional.
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Depending on your budget these might help https://www.laptopninja.org/finding-the-best-gaming-laptops-under-500-dollars/ / https://www.laptopninja.org/finding-the-best-gaming-laptops-under-1000-dollars/
As a lot of guys have pointed out though if it's a desktop replacement and you're not moving around a lot then desktop all the way man...
Noisy fans, heat, etc. etc. meh
I own a budget Acer I picked up for $450 that is ultra slim / light then have a proper specced desktop. If I really wanna game on the move it nails the basics hundreds (D3, Dota, CS, etc)