A few questions about laptops

[Sar1n]

So, I'm kinda looking for new laptop, as I posted in computer upgrade help thread, and as I'm browsing the selection, I came across a few points where I could use some clarification.

First, OS. Virtually everything offers either Win 8 or Win 8.1. What's the difference between them, especially for gaming (and backwards compatibility for older games)?

Video card. Most common seems to be, in my price range, GeForce GT 740M, few offer GT 730M or Radeon HD 8750 (almost all 2GB). Opinions on those?

For...well, mostly gaming (as I specified in that thread), CPU, there seems to be mostly i5 and i7 options. Assuming 8GM RAM and one of the GPUs specified above...is i5 4200M Haswell (I'll be damned if I know exactly what that means) enough to avoid bottleneck problems?

And finally, for now. One model so far caught my eye....Lenovo IdeaPad Z510, model with CPU I specified above, GT 740M, 8GB RAM, Win 8.1/64. Anyone got experience with this (or another model of same series)?

Edit: Another laptop I found, this might be more suited to my needs...IdeaPad G710. Specs (copied from website and translated) RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce 820M 2GB, SSHD 1TB+ 8GB cache for accelerating OS, CPU either Core i5 4210M Haswell or Intel Core i7 4702MQ Haswell. What I'm interested here, except for general user's feedback, is...how big difference would the CPU choice do on this setup?

[Ishan]

-Win 8 Win 8.1 are the same thing, 8.1 is patched as earlier windows 8 was crap. Certainly an improvement. It's because of this no one supports windows 8 drivers and AMD\NVIDIA advises the user to upgrade to 8.1 instead, which they support. Here are the differences between the 2:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2455821,00.asp

From a gamer's perspective it also upgrades the direct x version from 11.1 to 11.2. 11.2 provides further improvements to it by adding things like geometry realizations to Direct2D.

-In terms of performance 740M>730M>HD 8750.

-CPU Bottleneck differences from one game to another (seeing how they utilize the core and put their static requirements on it), however it's a modern day processor and it can easily handle all the modern games of today. See this:

i7 is a quad while i5 is a dual core processor and most games don't utilize more than 2 cores or even the threads. i7 will help you if you do a lot of multitasking on your desktop but for a normal gamer i5 is a suitable and economical good choice. What matters most is the GPU choice, mate.

And i'm not going to comment on the laptops since Karamzovmm is an expert on that, i don't keep track of laptop market. I can only rip apart components it has and tell how will they be wil be but SSHD is something that would catch my attention, these hybrids are good, helps in faster booting improving the overall experience of computing.

All the GPUs you have shown here are not something spectacular so if the laptop has a 1080p resolution don't expect any miracles. Which is why i tell users to go for a smaller screen size of 768p, this helps in increasing GPU power (as they have to work on less area).

If you want to make an investment then you can save some money by choosing i5 4200M Haswell and then putting everything you got on something like GTX765M, it's as the french say, magnifique.

[Sar1n]

Thanks, you've been very helpful.

The OS choice had me worried....I've grown fond of Win7 for putting up with me for 6 and half years without reinstalling or compatibility problems, and I've heard bad things about Win8, especially in relations to older games.

It's starting to look more and more like choosing the G710 model. Seems like GeForce 820M is best video card I can get in laptop (unless I missed something and it's worse than 740). I'm a bit worried about SSHD in terms of endurance though...will it last another six years with me?

Edit: the GPU choice seems a bit restricted for me....in my price range ~700EUR there doesn't seem to be much of a choice. I haven't found any model with GTX765M yet or anything similar...

[Ishan]

Windows: Lot of discontent related to Windows 8 was related to its UI structure and its integration with the touch screen and mobile type layout. After that since windows 7 was already strongly popular it just became a trend to bash it even if someone hadn't personally experienced it. Win8 is fine & any compatibility issue with any latest software\program or any other driver issue are ironed out either by the MS side or from the developer\manufacturer side as usual. Anyways to the main point...

820M: The very first thing you need to forget is higher name means higher performance. GPU names work differently and a higher series name doesn't necessarily mean it will have good performance over the lower number. Besides a slightly different clock rate 820M is exactly the same as old 710M/720M. Its performance in gaming is identical to Intel Iris 5100 or 720M.

It's meant for medium-high settings gaming for 720p resolution (not all games will run well, obviously) and it will itself in 1080p in most games. Like on BF4 on 720p high settings it gives 18fps and normally you need 30+ fps to play games with an ease. So i wouldn't recommend this at all. So you were right in thinking it's worse than 740M. And i wouldn't recommend 740M as well.

SSHD: The first thing about computer components is that no one can assure you that something will run flawless for 6 years. That's why they give you warranty and people RMA stuff all the time. Recently i bought ASUS R9-280X-DC2T graphics card and i had to RMA it, because it was shite. I recently lost 4 HDDs in timespan of 2 years. One of them was due to my own sloppiness where i dropped it, so this one doesn't really count.

SSHD as a computer component upgrade is a solid choice and if the product isn't defective on arrival then yes it will last 6 years. SSHD+Windows 8.1 is the way to go. It has a host optimized mode where they know which essential data elements needs to be allocated in the NAND flash memory, things like drivers and essential host level components.

You won't get SSD performance on random read/write and sequential read/write operations but you will get clear noticeable difference in starting and shutting applications. So your windows will be a lot more responsive than the traditional SATA HDDs. From the technology point of view SSHD is reliable and you don't have to worry about it as they don't have any higher failure rates than HDDs or SSDs.

Budget: Well 700 Euros is like 1000 USD so i'm not sure how many options we have but GFe-765M is definitely you would want. Perfect for 900p gaming and can do well in 1080 mode as well. 760M is considered the starting point here. So i wouldn't recommend anything below that. Which is your country btw? I will try to find some laptops that may have the GPU we're looking for.

[Sar1n]

Any help would be welcome, thanks. I'm from Czech Republic, if you want to look, so I'm working with ~20000 CZK budget tops (that is, depending on current exchange rate, between 680 and 720 EUR).

Finding successor to my Aspire 5740G seems to be difficult. It put up with me for over 6 years now, and it wasn't easy service...yet it lasted without any repairs or even system reinstall. It was probably a lucky model (survived even unfortunate meeting with pavement), I shouldn't expect that much from another laptop.

Like I said, I want system with compatibility with older games too. This might be difficult...stuff that's too new for GoG yet too old for 64bit systems, there are still gems from that era I haven't played yet.

Edit: poking around various shops, I noticed another model. This time, the CPU is i5 4210U Haswell. What's the difference between this and 4210M (or 4200M)? Also...compared to the GT 740M 2GM that most laptops in my price range use, how good is GT 840M 4GM?

[karamazovmm]

Basically what you should look at:

1) build quality - its a notebook, you need that

2) guts - the components of choice are indeed what makes things go boom boom

I know acer does some models that should fit your needs and your budget, they usually come with the 740m upwards to 850m and ulv cpus. ULV cpus aren't as bad as they were, now actually they give around the same power as the dual core versions.

the main problem here is the low budget.

you can try to look for the clevo models like the w350, I saw one at mysn for 799 euros http://mysn.eu/shop/schenker-m504.ht..._store=default

it comes with a 850m which should give around the same power as the 760m

the 840m is between the 750m and the 760m


anyway you should try to look at least for the 740m, this is the base of the base in terms of gaming prowess that you want

maybe you can try to find the msi ge40 from last year, it was a good enough notebook, with good battery life, but it ran hot. or basically any notebooks from last year, they should still use the hotter kepler, however they are still good performers.

here is a thread that I maintain in another forum

http://forum.notebookreview.com/what...13-update.html

this is for thin and light, meaning I don't even mention 15" or upwards, but you can get an idea of what to look for now. The 15" that are worth mentioning are the larger sibling of the acer that appeared in that thread, the dell inspiron (they don't throttle) and the clevo model I mentioned earlier

There is a gigabyte notebook that should also fit the budget, maybe barely the P15

and for msi, the ge60 and maybe the P series. however be warned that the lesser price you go with msi, the lesser quality you get

[Sar1n]

I've been sorting out various possibilities, and so far, in my price range, best thing seems to be Lenovo IdeaPad Z50-70.

Specs: i5 4210U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1920x1080, 8GB PC3-12800 DDR3L SDRAM 1600 MHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M 4GB, 1TB SSHD 5400RPM + 8GB cache, Win 8.1/64. The main concerns for me are: resolution, will it up too much strain on GPU when gaming, and it seems to be quite a new model so I don't have much feedback on reliability and durability.

Yes, budget is a bit on a low side. But I'm not looking for high-tech gaming laptop either. I don't need something that will run newest games on full details two years later, but something that will run (even if it has to be on lowest quality) those few interesting games that pop up from time to time for next several years. My old laptop managed to do just that, even at lower budget. Of course, the issue might be country too-the price of electronics here is a bit on a high side, and recent economy problems seem to make it even worse.

[karamazovmm]

well I wasn't aiming for the sli systems or anything like that, just something out of the budget region and into the mainstream.

The resolution will strain that card, but you will be able to play some games at high/medium settings at the given res for sometime. just not demanding ones.

I don't have much info on that notebook to be truthful to you, I avoid budget systems because I try to keep my pcs for as long as I can. But from what I gather the build quality is on the entry level and the cooling shouldn't be problematic given the guts it got, a 15w tdp cpu and a very cool maxwell gpu.

What I wanted is for you to have an 850m at least in there with a better processor, those that I said are in the entry range of mainstream.

One thing to note is that the price of notebooks, at least the ones that I know are good have risen, the companies are not aiming for the lowest possible price anymore in most of their line ups, and are aiming to give something resembling more quality work, and this is very important for notebooks due to the simple standard of you supposedly carry that pc around and it should be able to withstand the day to day abuse.

[Ishan]

GT 840M on 1080p is going to die:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....105681.0.html (See the games running on 1920x1080)

It's meant for 720p resolutions. Don't buy that. Jesus! why are laptops so ing expensive? Compact parts are heavily charged and outside of US people are just robbed with overpriced laptops.

Help him Karam.

[Sar1n]

Yep, based on your insight, it seems prices here are really quite high.

Besides...as I'm browsing selection of few biggest shops here (small country, few reliable shops), it seems like almost every model with better GPU that 740 is choked for gaming purposes with higher resolution. I was hoping to stuff better GPU that 740, 8GB RAM and i5 4200M+ into something in my budget...seems like I'll have to compromise somewhere, unless Radeon R7 M265 somehow turns out to be a better choice for GPU...for some reason, I have a feeling it won't be that way.

Edit: okay, gonna put a few possibilities here. I'd appreciate your opinions on those (copypaste specs from website). I ommited laptops like obvious chokes (GT 740 and worse on HD), AMD CPUs (those in my price range all seem to have bad GPU) and such...

IdeaPad Z50-70: Intel Core i5 4210U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M 2GB
Aspire V5-573G:Intel Core i5 4210U Haswell, 15.6" IPS 1920x1080, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M 4GB
IdeaPad Z510:Intel Core i5 4200M Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M 2GB
IdeaPad G510:Intel Core i5 4200M Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, AMD Radeon HD 8750M 2GB
*Aspire V3-772G: Intel Core i5 4210M Haswell, 17.3" LED 1920x1080, 8GB RAM DDR3L, NVIDIA GeForce GT750M 4GB
Asus X75LN: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 17.3" 1600x900, RAM 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840 2GB
Inspiron 15R SE: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 6GB, NVIDIA GT750M 2GB
*Inspiron 17R: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 17.3" LED 1600x900, RAM 8GB, AMD Radeon HD8870M 2GB
**Asus K-551LN: Intel Core i7 4510U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M 2GB
*Aspire E-15: Intel Core i7 4712MQ Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB DDR3L, NVIDIA GeForce 840M 2GB

* means it's exhausting budget and might turn out not to be available, depending on few things. ** means it's a bit over. Again, depends how things turn out, it might or miht not be available.

[karamazovmm]

GT 840M on 1080p is going to die:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....105681.0.html (See the games running on 1920x1080)

It's meant for 720p resolutions. Don't buy that. Jesus! why are laptops so ing expensive? Compact parts are heavily charged and outside of US people are just robbed with overpriced laptops.

Help him Karam.

do realize the settings that notebook check uses on those tests. you can just hover your mouse over the test and it will tell you the settings... its simply quite a stupid measurement I tell you that

1080p is always ultra with 4x AA, and that gpu won't cut it at all. For that you need at least the 860m upwards, and the 860m would still struggle with it. the 870m which is basically a 670 with cut down bus and clocks (it won't differ from performance of the previous 680m which is exactly the same thing, though heat... they are putting that on thin and light designs)

Yep, based on your insight, it seems prices here are really quite high.

Besides...as I'm browsing selection of few biggest shops here (small country, few reliable shops), it seems like almost every model with better GPU that 740 is choked for gaming purposes with higher resolution. I was hoping to stuff better GPU that 740, 8GB RAM and i5 4200M+ into something in my budget...seems like I'll have to compromise somewhere, unless Radeon R7 M265 somehow turns out to be a better choice for GPU...for some reason, I have a feeling it won't be that way.

Edit: okay, gonna put a few possibilities here. I'd appreciate your opinions on those (copypaste specs from website). I ommited laptops like obvious chokes (GT 740 and worse on HD), AMD CPUs (those in my price range all seem to have bad GPU) and such...

IdeaPad Z50-70: Intel Core i5 4210U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M 2GB
Aspire V5-573G:Intel Core i5 4210U Haswell, 15.6" IPS 1920x1080, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M 4GB
IdeaPad Z510:Intel Core i5 4200M Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M 2GB
IdeaPad G510:Intel Core i5 4200M Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, AMD Radeon HD 8750M 2GB
*Aspire V3-772G: Intel Core i5 4210M Haswell, 17.3" LED 1920x1080, 8GB RAM DDR3L, NVIDIA GeForce GT750M 4GB
Asus X75LN: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 17.3" 1600x900, RAM 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840 2GB
Inspiron 15R SE: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 6GB, NVIDIA GT750M 2GB
*Inspiron 17R: Intel Core i5 4200U Haswell, 17.3" LED 1600x900, RAM 8GB, AMD Radeon HD8870M 2GB
**Asus K-551LN: Intel Core i7 4510U Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M 2GB
*Aspire E-15: Intel Core i7 4712MQ Haswell, 15.6" LED 1366x768, RAM 8GB DDR3L, NVIDIA GeForce 840M 2GB

* means it's exhausting budget and might turn out not to be available, depending on few things. ** means it's a bit over. Again, depends how things turn out, it might or miht not be available.

the best is the last one, followed by the Aspire V5-573G, which is the larger version of the one in the thread I posted here.

have you tried schenker? their site is mysn.eu I almost bought from them the p34g v2 (rebranded as the c404) but they will stretch your budget.

and does amazon UK delivers to your country? in the end I bought the p34g v2 there, it was cheaper than buying in mainland and I wouldn't suffer from the azerty keyboard from france

you can also try finding the previous version of that one (its called p34g), its heavily discounted now, I saw one in those deals sites in france for 700 euro there must be one around you that would have the right keyboard for your region, the msi ge40 was the cheaper one with the good enough 760m (the indicated res for that gpu is 900p that way its ultra all around) when it launched last year it was around 900 euro, if you can still score one it should be cheaper

or even the previous msi ge60 with the 765m? (not sure about the gpu it may be the 760m), now its equipped with the 860m, however there was a price hike with the current model.

another thing, if you aren't going for a maxwell gpu, 840m, 850m or 860m, you can go for the ivy bridge equipped notebooks. There wasn't a good boost in terms of cpu power from ivy to haswell, its around 5%, and the GPUs are the same from that time, aka kepler, they are just renamed with negligible clock changes. The major exception is the 660m to the 760m/765m which are indeed new designs from that phase and quite more powerful.

also, there is the notebook review marketplace, where the members of that site sell their used or not even that notebooks. I was always looking to snipe a good deal there, almost got a precision m3800 for 1200 with 3 years of warranty ACD and on site service (dodged a bullet there though), a razer blade 256gb for 1100 (2013 model) and a razer blade 256gb for 1700 (2014)

The main problem with notebook costs is that:

you have to design a chassis that would only be used in that model (there are a few exceptions like macs that maintain the same chassis for several years, which in truth is a sound business and user friendly decision)

you need bespoke cooling system for each model you make

several customization options for retailers and boutiques

higher binning parts, the cost of a notebook gpu even a simple one like the 840m is higher than the 750ti that you can find at your local parts shop. For example for an OEM the cost of a 880m is around 600, which is just a very high binned 680, and that gpu would still lose to its desktop counterpart by 20-30% in performance.

testing by gov agencies in all the places that they will sell it

Product shelf life is much lower, while that is somewhat the same for gpu, cpu and possibly mobo, its the entire product that leaves the market after 1 year.

there are several other reasons for notebooks costing a lot more, but those as I see are the main ones.

and tell me about the prices Ishan, I just bought the p34g v2 in amazon uk because my father is taking a trip to visit some parents up north and will bring it back with him and thus not paying the import taxes. Sar1n I don't even have the options that you have available at your country, I need to import everything

[Sar1n]

Aspire V5 caught my eye too, but user reviews agree on issues with zero support for the video card both from Acer and Nvidia.

Buying from foreign shops...well, there are issues. Warranty (and time to get things done if something goes wrong), cost of transport, and payment...I don't have whole price on hand-I'll be paying part of the price now, rest in payments over next several months. A few shops here offer such deals with almost no total price rise.

E-15 seems good, although I am wondering...Inspiron 17R...the Radeon HD8870, how does it perform at 1600x900 resolution, and how much is the CPU constricting it?

Edit: also, I should have backup possibility in case I won't be able to buy E-15 or 17R...from the rest (without *), which are decent ones?

[Sar1n]

Sorry for doublepost....but I think it is better than creating yet another thread.

So, in the end I settled for the Aspire E-15 from above post. Acer has a bad habit of cluttering the system with useless applications, so good part of the default programs were given the boot (I kept mostly recovery, backup, update and system tools) and I'm replacing what I can with something better. Luckily my laptop came with free antivirus licence for one year (McAfee...probably not the best, but works) and MS Office.

But problem is, some of my favorite useful programs don't have proper x64 distribution. I don't want to clutter the system with 32bit only apps too much, that would leave me with three cores and 5GB RAM idling with the rest going like crazy. 7yip was a no-brainer, but right now I need some good music player. Something free and lightweight...I want minimum use of system resources, equalizer and basic playlist functions. No bloody sharing or visualisation stuff that clutters the default player. Also, a replacement for KMPlayer that I am so used to could be handy...unfortunately KM doesn't have x64 distribution.

Also, any recommendation on other useful stuff is appreciated.

[karamazovmm]

I mostly use OS X but when in windows I do use iTunes for the connection and home sharing.

I do use vlc as my main player for videos, everywhere, and did use for music foobar, when in windows.

and there would be no issues with the x86-32 apps

[TWarRomeII]

Hi,

I have just bought a new Laptop to play Total Rome II which I have am about to go and buy.

Can anyone tell me if this Laptop will play Total Ware Rome II and to what quality?

Hewlett Packard Pavilion 15-p008TX 15.6"
OS: Windows 8.1 64
Processor Family: Intel Core i5 Processor
Processor: Intel Core 1600 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (1 x 8GB)
Display: 15.6" diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit (1366 x 768)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 830M (2GB GDDR3 dedicated)

Hard Drive: 750GB
RAM: 8GB

Thank you