Laptop vs Desktop performance

[Gpower]

Hello, I've recently purchased a Thinkpad Edge E420 with i5 2520 processor. However, I'm under the impression that performance is lower on a laptop even with the same model of hardware.

I have a old desktop with Q8300 processor (and integrated graphics). How would my new laptop compare with my desktop in performance?

[Totalheadache]

generally desktop>laptop for gaming.

processors are generally ok on a laptop but where it falls down is the gpu compared to desktop.

for me buying a laptop to game on is one of the last things i'd spend my money on but I can understand people who out of necessity play on a laptop. but given the choice it's a no-brainer. you will have ofc learn how to build your own deskptop but that's not hard.

(well i suppose it's fun on hols if you dont own a console and it's a rainy day )

and what makes it worse is that shogun2 is such a badly optmised engine it will struggle even more on a laptop (ofc less tech demanding games like say a footy game or skyrim should run well enough on a laptop).

[karamazovmm]

the laptop should outperform the gpu and the cpu of the q8300 badly. The intel HD 3000 is quite enough, and the res of the 1366*768 is quite low and for you quite advantageous, only in that regard, btw.

What makes you think its otherwise?

Shogun 2 runs quite well on a 7870 doesnt it? Well the 7970m is basically that card. The gap between notebooks and desktops is closing, it will ever be there, and the price of a notebook is always going to be higher, after all you pay for the mobility.

I do like the idea of going for a double approach, one you can take with your e420 as well, basically buy a desktop gpu and hook it up with your notebook, the e420 can do that with the expresscard slot, and the mbp can do that via thunderbolt, and there is the middle ground which is basically connecting directly to the mpcie slot in the board.

it will give you more performance, and the expresscard slot still will give some bottleneck since its usually rated at pcie 2.0 x1, if it was at least x4, you shouldnt have any serious problem with running games on it, much like thunderbolt delivers. Usually for egpus its best if you go for nvidia, you can get optimus to work and avoid the hassle of connecting the card, well less hassle.

[Gpower]

the laptop should outperform the gpu and the cpu of the q8300 badly. The intel HD 3000 is quite enough, and the res of the 1366*768 is quite low and for you quite advantageous, only in that regard, btw.

What makes you think its otherwise?

Shogun 2 runs quite well on a 7870 doesnt it? Well the 7970m is basically that card. The gap between notebooks and desktops is closing, it will ever be there, and the price of a notebook is always going to be higher, after all you pay for the mobility.

Thanks. It's just that my dad had a laptop that's labeled i5 and runs really slowly. Probably because it's an older model, but it left me with the impression that laptops are slow. Oh, I forgot to say that I hadn't got my laptop yet, Lenovo is taking their time with the shipping.

I didn't buy the laptop for gaming purposes. It's a laptop for collage next year under strict budget. It'll be nice to play M2TW, EU3, CS, etc on it, but if it's performance isn't bad than there shouldn't be any problems.

I do like the idea of going for a double approach, one you can take with your e420 as well, basically buy a desktop gpu and hook it up with your notebook, the e420 can do that with the expresscard slot, and the mbp can do that via thunderbolt, and there is the middle ground which is basically connecting directly to the mpcie slot in the board.

it will give you more performance, and the expresscard slot still will give some bottleneck since its usually rated at pcie 2.0 x1, if it was at least x4, you shouldnt have any serious problem with running games on it, much like thunderbolt delivers. Usually for egpus its best if you go for nvidia, you can get optimus to work and avoid the hassle of connecting the card, well less hassle.

I appreciate the tip! I didn't know this is possible, and it seems to be a good upgrade choice.

[Argentus]

Well I recently got a Dell laptop, with an intel i7 processor and a lot of RAM and HD, for Rome, Rome BI, M2TW & Kingdoms, Empire and several other games and they all run fine and fast.
I dunno, maybe it's because the Dell's new but it hasn't acted up at all and no games have crashed. You also have the portability with a laptop as opposed to a desktop.

[Totalheadache]

Well I recently got a Dell laptop, with an intel i7 processor and a lot of RAM and HD, for Rome, Rome BI, M2TW & Kingdoms, Empire and several other games and they all run fine and fast.
I dunno, maybe it's because the Dell's new but it hasn't acted up at all and no games have crashed. You also have the portability with a laptop as opposed to a desktop.

yeah but for how much?....

sorry but Dell (am guessing it's an alienware) tend to be overpriced considering what you can get for the same price if you build it yourself.

i am of the school of thought that you should only buy a laptop over making your own if you really have to.

still we all have spent money on stuff (tech) that was a mistake in some form or other. (well i did till i learnt the hard way)....and that said laptops arent all that bad. just avoid if you can!

p.s just saying for future reference take a closer look at what you are getting in terms of price v perf. (and yes laptops are certainly getting or have got a lot better in terms of gaming).

[Crazyeyesreaper]

it also needs to be mentioned Rome - 2003 and Medieval II = 2006 both games using the same game engine one that will run on a slow Pentium 4 and todays integrated graphics at high settings, so their not really that great a benchmark to go by

[Totalheadache]

it also needs to be mentioned Rome - 2003 and Medieval II = 2006 both games using the same game engine one that will run on a slow Pentium 4 and todays integrated graphics at high settings, so their not really that great a benchmark to go by

also i can imagine one toasty laptop after playing a few hrs on shogun2. if it heats up my 580 on h20 in cool weather...i can only cringe in horror what it might do to some laptops...

[irishron]

also i can imagine one toasty laptop after playing a few hrs on shogun2. if it heats up my 580 on h20 in cool weather...i can only cringe in horror what it might do to some laptops...

Believe it or not but you will find threads in Medieval2 Tech where laptop owners have had to invest in cooling pads to even play it. Yeah, even goldenn oldie Medieval2 can be a stress test.

[karamazovmm]

Sincerely there are 6 kind of laptops:

1) budget
2) mainstream/ budget enterprise
3) gaming
4) enterprise
5) workstation
6) ultrabooks

1) wont game much unless you get the amd apus. The HD 4000 aint something that gamer, but it will get you through, cooling is so so

2) can game somewhat since the 4000m and the 400 series it was stagnated in terms of performance, but the TDP were getting lower, now we have a bump in performance, a great one. cooling is average

3) It will provide you up to the same power as 2x xfire 7870, or the speculated 680m it can be up to 2x sli 670, cooling is top notch

4) not gaming worth, but build quality is top notch, this year there is notion that you either go mid range or go home, the terrible entry gpus are dead, and should reamin so. cooling is top notch

5) the best of the best, they can come with screens that rival nec monitors, extreme cooling, and extreme price. However for gaming due to their quadro and firepro gpus they arent that good, specially if they are green.

6) they are all the rage now, and sincerely Im tempted to buy one, just wanted one to pack thunderbolt

Basically a notebook can put you mobile, however you are going to pay for that, sincerely the upgrade path for the average consumer can also be done in notebooks, the 3,4,5 categories that I put there are the ones with that usual path, sometimes one or so odd model can come out without an upgrade path, like the np6110/w110er, 11'' packing a gt 650m (same power as a gts 450).

The idea is that go on swallow the price and get mobility. I do find it stupid to buy those dual gpu setups, you just killed your mobility, up to 15'' and 3kg you are still mobile, after that you are soiled. Sincerely for me the perfect size is 13'' with a 1080p screen, loved the vaio z2 screen, performance and weight hated mostly everything else.


@Ron

send those poor bastards to clean their laptops, I have no problems running m2tw or rtw, both with mods, in this mbp 13 of mine. The cooling is satisfactory, but nothing to write home about.

[Totalheadache]

Sincerely there are 6 kind of laptops:

1) budget
2) mainstream/ budget enterprise
3) gaming
4) enterprise
5) workstation
6) ultrabooks

1) wont game much unless you get the amd apus. The HD 4000 aint something that gamer, but it will get you through, cooling is so so

2) can game somewhat since the 4000m and the 400 series it was stagnated in terms of performance, but the TDP were getting lower, now we have a bump in performance, a great one. cooling is average

3) It will provide you up to the same power as 2x xfire 7870, or the speculated 680m it can be up to 2x sli 670, cooling is top notch

4) not gaming worth, but build quality is top notch, this year there is notion that you either go mid range or go home, the terrible entry gpus are dead, and should reamin so. cooling is top notch

5) the best of the best, they can come with screens that rival nec monitors, extreme cooling, and extreme price. However for gaming due to their quadro and firepro gpus they arent that good, specially if they are green.

6) they are all the rage now, and sincerely Im tempted to buy one, just wanted one to pack thunderbolt

Basically a notebook can put you mobile, however you are going to pay for that, sincerely the upgrade path for the average consumer can also be done in notebooks, the 3,4,5 categories that I put there are the ones with that usual path, sometimes one or so odd model can come out without an upgrade path, like the np6110/w110er, 11'' packing a gt 650m (same power as a gts 450).

The idea is that go on swallow the price and get mobility. I do find it stupid to buy those dual gpu setups, you just killed your mobility, up to 15'' and 3kg you are still mobile, after that you are soiled. Sincerely for me the perfect size is 13'' with a 1080p screen, loved the vaio z2 screen, performance and weight hated mostly everything else.


@Ron

send those poor bastards to clean their laptops, I have no problems running m2tw or rtw, both with mods, in this mbp 13 of mine. The cooling is satisfactory, but nothing to write home about.

thks for the info! but still cost for me and screen size is a big no-no.

however if I needed one for work which i dont i'd certainly play the odd game on one but i'd rather it was small+light with a snappy processor n good ram...whether it had a good gpu wouldnt bother me but then i wouldnt be using it for games.

a laptop is oh so usefull when you are on hols/abroad/travelling and you need to be online etc...i'm often on them quite a bit to check up on the sport/email/skype etc but playing games on them is like sleeping with the devil.

it can be done but you dont half feel bad afterwards (j/k).

[karamazovmm]

I had a large monitor that I hooked up when I was gaming, sold it.

Sincerely I dont own a desktop since 2006, and I dont miss a thing. My day is basically on the move, I only arrive home at 11pm and leave it at 6am, so for me its a no no.

The sandy bridge gave mobile almost desktop levels of performance. gpus are evolving quite fast, and they provide you somewhat gaming on the portable ones, and high quality gaming on the non that portable ones, read m18x and the 17'' from clevo, aw, samsung and msi, asus dont do high end mobile gaming, they cater the young and dumb since 2010.

the 7770 is going to be the 7850m/7870m and basically it will give us a hell of a punch in the mobile market, since the 7770 performs like the 6870 and that was our 100w tdp cards before, since those cards are aimed at 15'' up to 17'' and those are supposed to be 1'' thick. The 7750 is going to be the 7750m/7770m and that is one hell of a mid range card, those are supposed to come in 13'' up to 15'' also thin and light

The real problem for me is that I dont live in the part of the globe that has a focus on smaller designs, the east has a much more focus on that.

6630m - lenovo e320, e420, e420s, vaio S
gt 555m (newest model of the pack a good one) - lg p330

there are more models, even from hp, that were launched with good gpus, but they dont have a market for mobility + power in the west, thus they werent released here.

The desktops are going to die, they are already selling much lower than they used to, the focus on lower power consumption aint a worry regarding we are green! no its simply because laptops dont dissipate as much heat as a case that has more than 10x the mass of the vaio SA or the mbp that I have. thus the move to lower tdp is based on that

sincerely, the move to higher res screens on laptops is going to be great, I just hope that I can get my 1080p in a 13'' again, wihtout that much compromise that was the vaio Z2