LF Laptop / Desktop Upgrade Advice

ThumbtackJ

So I'm back at school and I need a laptop. I'm not too worried about it running Office, because I'm pretty sure I could just pick up a bargain bin laptop for that, but I'd like to pay a bit more to be able to do some light gaming during my longer breaks between classes. 

 

By light gaming I mean games with less demanding visuals like 2D platformers (Rogue Legacy, Steamworld Dig, Spelunky, etc.), Minecraft, Don't Starve, FTL, some aRPG's like Torchlight 2, and older RPG's like the Infinity Engine titles. Doesn't need to run anything like BF4/Crysis 3/Metro LL or other demanding titles like those. 

 

Size and weight don't matter all that much to me. Most of my classes are in the same building so I'm not worried about lugging it around. I'd like to get some options in the $500-$750 range. Also, if there's some sort of hardware coming out in the next month or so, then I could get by with a old bargain bin clunker I have for a short while longer if it means getting better options then. 

 

Thanks,

TJ

Quizzical

Let's start with the obligatory question:  why do you want a laptop in the first place?  Why not a desktop?  Even if a laptop does make sense for you, what you want to do with it has a tremendous effect on what you should get.

You mention something about school, but unless you have classes that explicitly tell you that you need to use a laptop in class, if you have a laptop out in class, your professors will assume--probably correctly--that it means that you're not paying attention.

If you do want a laptop, you could try a Kaveri system.  The CPUs have been available since January, but they've just started showing up in laptops.  For example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317602

Now that Kaveri laptops are showing up at all, there's a good chance that HP will offer a more customizable version soon, probably with the option to pay extra for a 7200 RPM hard drive or a 1080p monitor.  Though if you'd rather stay closer to $500 than $750, you're probably not going to beat the option linked above soon.

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

Let's start with the obligatory question:  why do you want a laptop in the first place?  Why not a desktop?  Even if a laptop does make sense for you, what you want to do with it has a tremendous effect on what you should get.

Already have a desktop.

You mention something about school, but unless you have classes that explicitly tell you that you need to use a laptop in class, if you have a laptop out in class, your professors will assume--probably correctly--that it means that you're not paying attention.

It depends on the class and professor at my Uni. When I was getting my AIS my psych professor had a no tolerance policy, but my English professor didn't care. I have several classes for finances/accounting and such that require you to have a laptop. Plus being there for 6-10 hours a day with 1-3 hour breaks between classes, it'd be nice to get some work done and/or keep myself entertained.

If you do want a laptop, you could try a Kaveri system.  The CPUs have been available since January, but they've just started showing up in laptops.  For example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317602

Now that Kaveri laptops are showing up at all, there's a good chance that HP will offer a more customizable version soon, probably with the option to pay extra for a 7200 RPM hard drive or a 1080p monitor.  Though if you'd rather stay closer to $500 than $750, you're probably not going to beat the option linked above soon.

I'll take a look at that. Thank you. 

ThumbtackJ

While I have this thread going, I figured I'd go ahead and ask for advice about upgrading my current desktop.

 

Gigabyte P67X-UD3-B3 Mobo 

8GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance 

TX750 v2 Corsair PSU 

i5 2500k 

GTX 680 -

60GB Crucial M4 SSD (for OS) 

2x WD Caviar Black 500GB HDD 

 

I really need a bigger SSD, that much I'm sure of. I'm also eyeballing the GTX980/970s. But I would imagine getting one of those would bottleneck my system pretty hard with my current 2500k. 

 

What I'm hesitant about is getting a mobo/CPU that is DDR4 compatible. DDR4 seems pretty pricey right now, but I also want my system to be ready for it when it becomes more affordable/standard. 

 

I was thinking of just getting a better GPU and CPU right now, then several months from now worry about getting a new mobo, DDR4, and probably another CPU.

 

Any help, info, advice, feedback, etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Quizzical

I don't see any point in upgrading your CPU or motherboard unless your basic problem is that 4 cores aren't enough.  Otherwise, if you need a faster CPU, overclock the one you have now and you'll beat anything on the market today at stock speeds--and come within rounding of anything you could buy today and then overclock.  Overclocking might require a new CPU cooler (you didn't say what you have now), but your motherboard and power supply will handle a reasonable overclock without incident.

I also don't see any point in trying to go to DDR4 anytime soon.  Go to DDR4 when you buy a CPU that requires DDR4 and no sooner.  If you need more memory, then add more memory to what you have now.  But 8 GB is plenty for the foreseeable future unless you're doing something unusual.

While there are faster video cards than the one you have now, there's no point in upgrading until the card you have now isn't fast enough.  If you say, hey, I need a faster GPU for this particular game that I'm playing right now, then sure, you can upgrade.  But if not, upgrading might not offer you any benefits for years.

A bigger SSD is certainly a worthwhile investment, though.  Try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721108

You can leave the OS on your current SSD, and use the new one for programs other than the OS.  Bulk data like videos, pictures, and music still goes on the hard drives.

Vrika

EDIT: Post deleted. Quizzical already wrote everything I wanted to say to the post above this, and he phrased it better than I was able to do /EDIT

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

I don't see any point in upgrading your CPU or motherboard unless your basic problem is that 4 cores aren't enough.  Otherwise, if you need a faster CPU, overclock the one you have now and you'll beat anything on the market today at stock speeds--and come within rounding of anything you could buy today and then overclock.  Overclocking might require a new CPU cooler (you didn't say what you have now), but your motherboard and power supply will handle a reasonable overclock without incident.

I also don't see any point in trying to go to DDR4 anytime soon.  Go to DDR4 when you buy a CPU that requires DDR4 and no sooner.  If you need more memory, then add more memory to what you have now.  But 8 GB is plenty for the foreseeable future unless you're doing something unusual.

While there are faster video cards than the one you have now, there's no point in upgrading until the card you have now isn't fast enough.  If you say, hey, I need a faster GPU for this particular game that I'm playing right now, then sure, you can upgrade.  But if not, upgrading might not offer you any benefits for years.

A bigger SSD is certainly a worthwhile investment, though.  Try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721108

You can leave the OS on your current SSD, and use the new one for programs other than the OS.  Bulk data like videos, pictures, and music still goes on the hard drives.

My CPU cooler is a Hyper 212 Plus. At idle I usually sit between 28-32 degrees, depending on my room temperature. IF that's not sufficient enough, could you recommend me a better cooler. Also, I've never overclocked before, but indeed, a faster CPU would be pretty nice as I believe several games I play are pretty CPU intensive. Is there a guide you could link me to?

 

I think my 680 is fine, but I wasn't 100% sure on what is GPU heavy and what is CPU heavy. If rendering lots of AI and/or other players at once (say large scale PVP in MMO's, or using mods like Open Cities for Skyrim) is CPU heavy, then overcloking my CPU should give me a decent performance increase I'd hope. 

 

Thank you for linking me to that SSD. I pulled StarCraft 2 from my HDD to my SSD the other day, and damn are those load times so much better. So getting another one is definitely priority #1 now. 

Quizzical

If you want to know if you're limited by your CPU or your GPU, try tinkering with anti-aliasing settings.  If going from anti-aliasing off entirely to the highest, most demanding setting available doesn't make your frame rate change at all, you're entirely CPU bound.  If the difference between the anti-aliasing setting you want to run at and anti-aliasing off entirely makes a big difference in your frame rate, you're heavily GPU bound.  It's also possible to be kind of mixed where either a faster CPU or a faster GPU would make some difference.  And obviously, where the bottleneck is will vary wildly from one game to the next, or even what settings you like to run in a given game.

Octagon7711

They have some good reviews on Youtube.  Good laptops for around $500.00, Good gaming laptops for $1000.00,  5 or 10 best gaming laptops, etc.  Just make sure they're recent reviews.

Octagon7711

Originally posted by Quizzical

I don't see any point in upgrading your CPU or motherboard unless your basic problem is that 4 cores aren't enough.  Otherwise, if you need a faster CPU, overclock the one you have now and you'll beat anything on the market today at stock speeds--and come within rounding of anything you could buy today and then overclock.  Overclocking might require a new CPU cooler (you didn't say what you have now), but your motherboard and power supply will handle a reasonable overclock without incident.

I also don't see any point in trying to go to DDR4 anytime soon.  Go to DDR4 when you buy a CPU that requires DDR4 and no sooner.  If you need more memory, then add more memory to what you have now.  But 8 GB is plenty for the foreseeable future unless you're doing something unusual.

While there are faster video cards than the one you have now, there's no point in upgrading until the card you have now isn't fast enough.  If you say, hey, I need a faster GPU for this particular game that I'm playing right now, then sure, you can upgrade.  But if not, upgrading might not offer you any benefits for years.

A bigger SSD is certainly a worthwhile investment, though.  Try this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721108

You can leave the OS on your current SSD, and use the new one for programs other than the OS.  Bulk data like videos, pictures, and music still goes on the hard drives.

+1

syntax42

Giving my seal of approval for AMD A-series laptops.  I have owned a Toshiba with a A8-4500M for a couple years and it runs Minecraft and other "light" games without issues.  I wouldn't recommend Toshiba or any brand which doesn't allow ATI-published video driver updates.

I have played SWTOR and Rift on my laptop at lower settings with steady 25ish framerates.  I would imagine the newer generations of A-series APUs are quite capable of gaming on a budget.  I do suggest getting a SSD and 8GB of RAM.  Sometimes it is cheaper to upgrade a laptop than to buy one which includes the SSD and memory.

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

If you want to know if you're limited by your CPU or your GPU, try tinkering with anti-aliasing settings.  If going from anti-aliasing off entirely to the highest, most demanding setting available doesn't make your frame rate change at all, you're entirely CPU bound.  If the difference between the anti-aliasing setting you want to run at and anti-aliasing off entirely makes a big difference in your frame rate, you're heavily GPU bound.  It's also possible to be kind of mixed where either a faster CPU or a faster GPU would make some difference.  And obviously, where the bottleneck is will vary wildly from one game to the next, or even what settings you like to run in a given game.

Okay, I've fiddled with the AA settings in a couple of my most played games and it's not making too much of a difference  (maybe 5 frames per second increase, if that). I'm still getting some pretty big dips in these situations where there are lots of players or NPCs/AI on the screen at once. 

 

So how do I go about doing this, and would I be okay with my current CPU cooler? Like I said before, at idle, my temp varies between 28 and 32 degrees. If I need a better cooler that shouldn't be too much of an issue, especially if overclocking my CPU will give me a boost in performance for these CPU intensive games. 

 

 

Quizzical

Originally posted by ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

If you want to know if you're limited by your CPU or your GPU, try tinkering with anti-aliasing settings.  If going from anti-aliasing off entirely to the highest, most demanding setting available doesn't make your frame rate change at all, you're entirely CPU bound.  If the difference between the anti-aliasing setting you want to run at and anti-aliasing off entirely makes a big difference in your frame rate, you're heavily GPU bound.  It's also possible to be kind of mixed where either a faster CPU or a faster GPU would make some difference.  And obviously, where the bottleneck is will vary wildly from one game to the next, or even what settings you like to run in a given game.

Okay, I've fiddled with the AA settings in a couple of my most played games and it's not making too much of a difference  (maybe 5 frames per second increase, if that). I'm still getting some pretty big dips in these situations where there are lots of players or NPCs/AI on the screen at once. 

If that's the only situation where you're having problems, then it's probably a case of massive single-threaded CPU overhead to draw a ton of animated characters each frame, and that's why you get the slowdowns.  That's a case where any hardware will struggle with sufficiently slow software.  But in many games, you can just say, well, I'm in town so it doesn't matter if my frame rate drops.

Overclocking your CPU will help a little, but not a lot.  Buying new hardware won't fix it, either.

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

If you want to know if you're limited by your CPU or your GPU, try tinkering with anti-aliasing settings.  If going from anti-aliasing off entirely to the highest, most demanding setting available doesn't make your frame rate change at all, you're entirely CPU bound.  If the difference between the anti-aliasing setting you want to run at and anti-aliasing off entirely makes a big difference in your frame rate, you're heavily GPU bound.  It's also possible to be kind of mixed where either a faster CPU or a faster GPU would make some difference.  And obviously, where the bottleneck is will vary wildly from one game to the next, or even what settings you like to run in a given game.

Okay, I've fiddled with the AA settings in a couple of my most played games and it's not making too much of a difference  (maybe 5 frames per second increase, if that). I'm still getting some pretty big dips in these situations where there are lots of players or NPCs/AI on the screen at once. 

If that's the only situation where you're having problems, then it's probably a case of massive single-threaded CPU overhead to draw a ton of animated characters each frame, and that's why you get the slowdowns.  That's a case where any hardware will struggle with sufficiently slow software.  But in many games, you can just say, well, I'm in town so it doesn't matter if my frame rate drops.

Overclocking your CPU will help a little, but not a lot.  Buying new hardware won't fix it, either.

I went ahead and read a few guides, watched some videos (Because I figure I might as well learn how to do it anyways), and I got it clocked at 4.5GHz, with my idle temp seeming to be ~42 degrees. 

 

What you said there seems to be the case with Rift. It helped a little, but not that much (maybe a boost of 10FPS at most), with me running around Tempest Bay (a largely crowded area). 

 

With Skyrim on the other hand, it seems to have made a huge difference. Running with Open Cities Skyrim I was getting dips to below 30 (with no other mods installed) when being close to and approaching cities. After OCing, I'm staying above 40 now when around and approaching cities, and 50+ while inside them. 

 

Thanks for all the info and advice.

 

Quizzical

The temperature to watch is your load temperature, not your idle temperature.  The idle temperature is easier to measure, but barely relevant to anything.

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical
The temperature to watch is your load temperature, not your idle temperature.  The idle temperature is easier to measure, but barely relevant to anything.

Understood. I'm using Core Temp (if that matters, not sure how recommended that is) to monitor my temps. Is there a number I should make sure I stay under? I think the highest I've managed to push it so far was 80 degrees (when running Prime95). 

Quizzical

80 C is rather hot for a CPU, though I wouldn't worry if you only touch that on a stress test.  If you mostly stay under 60 C under realistic gaming loads, I wouldn't worry about it.

One thing about overclocking is that voltage makes a huge difference.  For a given clock speed, you'd like to have the lowest voltage at which that clock speed will be stable.  If you can reduce the voltage by 0.05 V and still be stable, that can make a big difference in how much stress you put on your system.

ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

80 C is rather hot for a CPU, though I wouldn't worry if you only touch that on a stress test.  If you mostly stay under 60 C under realistic gaming loads, I wouldn't worry about it.

One thing about overclocking is that voltage makes a huge difference.  For a given clock speed, you'd like to have the lowest voltage at which that clock speed will be stable.  If you can reduce the voltage by 0.05 V and still be stable, that can make a big difference in how much stress you put on your system.

I am 1.3v right now. Later I'll try dropping it down to 1.25v and see if it remains stable. My Max temp so far has been 59 degrees while playing Skyrim (with numerous graphics mods and ENB). I'm still considering getting a better cooler, I've been eyeing the Corsair H50, but I've never used liquid cooling before so I'm a little hesitant. If it's superior than my Hyper 212, and if it will fit in my top fan slot in my case (Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced), then it might be worth it I imagine.

 

Also, is there a reason OCing RAM would be necessary? One of the guides I was reading had a step to set the System Memory Multiplier to 16, which I didn't do. My RAM is 1333MHz and I've had no issues with the speed and responsiveness of programs opening, closing, and having numerous windows at once open. 

Quizzical

Originally posted by ThumbtackJ

Originally posted by Quizzical

80 C is rather hot for a CPU, though I wouldn't worry if you only touch that on a stress test.  If you mostly stay under 60 C under realistic gaming loads, I wouldn't worry about it.

One thing about overclocking is that voltage makes a huge difference.  For a given clock speed, you'd like to have the lowest voltage at which that clock speed will be stable.  If you can reduce the voltage by 0.05 V and still be stable, that can make a big difference in how much stress you put on your system.

I am 1.3v right now. Later I'll try dropping it down to 1.25v and see if it remains stable. My Max temp so far has been 59 degrees while playing Skyrim (with numerous graphics mods and ENB). I'm still considering getting a better cooler, I've been eyeing the Corsair H50, but I've never used liquid cooling before so I'm a little hesitant. If it's superior than my Hyper 212, and if it will fit in my top fan slot in my case (Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced), then it might be worth it I imagine.

 

Also, is there a reason OCing RAM would be necessary? One of the guides I was reading had a step to set the System Memory Multiplier to 16, which I didn't do. My RAM is 1333MHz and I've had no issues with the speed and responsiveness of programs opening, closing, and having numerous windows at once open. 

I'm not saying that you should shoot for 1.25 V in particular.  But I am saying that once you pick the clock speed you're going to run at, you should test to find the minimum voltage that is stable at that clock speed.  If it's stable at 1.29 V but not 1.28 V, then run it at 1.29 V--and not at 1.3 V.  Overclocking is already putting a lot of stress on that system, so you don't want to put more stress on it than you have to.  If it's stable under a stress test, then it's probably stable under everything else.

As for memory, I wouldn't bother with overclocking it.  1333 MHz memory is on the slow side, but faster memory will make so little difference that it's not worth bothering--especially since you're primarily trying to alleviate a corner case where it's a single-threaded bottleneck, so you probably don't need to feed four cores going all out.