Hardware Discussion Thread

[Zee530]

(10-13-2014, 08:25 PM)MaJoR Wrote: Well, my laptop troubles are over! Or at least, they will be after 5-7 business days... After five years with the craptop, I'm finally replacing it.


http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/edge-series/e540/

Specs that I got:
CPU: Core i5-4200M
GPU: Intel HD4600
Ram: 4GB DDR3L (I'll probably add more later)
Storage: 500GB 7200RPM HDD (probably plop in an SSD later)

Purchase Price: $540

While this ThinkPad may not be able to fit into a manilla envelope or have all day battery life, it has parts that would cost three times as much in an ultrabook, giving it enough horsepower to last a nice loooong time! And unlike the craptop, it won't be a dud from day one and suck the whole time I have it.

The craptop is still around (as long as the fan holds up between now and when the new one gets here) for hilarious dolphin testing. The worst computer with full Dolphin capability is alive and groaning yet!

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

How well will it run Dolphin?

Have you gotten it yet, i also found a similar system but with an i7-4700MQ in it, the only thing has me hesitant is the HD4600, i looked at some benchmarks and it seems like it'll handle emulation decently but may struggle with some PC games at higher resolutions, still searching for something with a GTX 9xx in it but to no avail so far.

[AnyOldName3]

In case anyone's interested, getting my cheap laptop has basically confirmed my theory that any recent laptop with an SSHD and running linux will seem more than fast enough for everything except gaming. It also helps that it can run Minecraft pretty well, and can stream anything else via limelight from my desktop, so I'm really satisfied, and don't really have an excuse to want something with a dedicated GPU later. The plan was that if this machine sucked, it'd replace my mother's shitty Celeron machine (originally bought for my grandpa as the cheapest thing Dell sold) but it looks like she's stuck with what she's got.

[teh_speleegn_polease]

Well, my mum's 2009 low-end laptop is pretty much almost fast enough for anything except gaming, and can run minecraft at 2 chunks render distance at 40 FPS. Really, running an OS, web browser, and similar stuff is not demanding at all, so your find comes as no surprise.

(I also used to run things like Visual Studio and Blender on that laptop - obviously rendering in blender sucked, but for most purposes it was fine.)

[NaturalViolence]

DatKid20 Wrote:That's pretty amazing.

It will be if it finds it's way into a decent product. Until then it's nothing but investor hype. Right now all we have to go on is a vague description, a single benchmark, and only 2 reported specs (does it scale to high clock rates for example?). Also they are using a very short/simple pipeline which will boost IPC at the expense of clock rate. Not exactly a fair comparison.

AnyOldName3 Wrote:any recent laptop with an SSHD and running linux will seem more than fast enough for everything except gaming.

My pentium M laptop runs linux just fine. There are probably wristwatches that can run linux well considering how lightweight some linux distros are.

[DatKid20]

Wristwatches can run android so you are correct.

Also at 350mhz it runs away faster then baytrail does and Samsung and AMD are both investors who make ARM chips. I'm pretty sure that AMD or Samsung wouldn't invest in this if they didn't think it could live up to it's hype. Especially AMD.

[NaturalViolence]

DatKid20 Wrote:Also at 350mhz it runs away faster then baytrail does

How do you figure that? The IPC listed is 3 times as high as baytrail yet baytrails clock rate is 6 times as high so baytrail should be twice as fast per core.

DatKid20 Wrote:and Samsung and AMD are both investors who make ARM chips. I'm pretty sure that AMD or Samsung wouldn't invest in this if they didn't think it could live up to it's hype. Especially AMD.

That adds some level of promise. But still most of these investments don't pan out. Big companies understand this but do it anyways because it's less risky to have more eggs in their basket.

Also AMD has not had the best track record with their investments recently.

All I'm saying it to wait until there is an actual product on the market living up to expectations before buying into any marketing hype. Too many times in the past have I seen grand claims about new microprocessors fall completely short once they were implemented into an actual product.

DatKid20 Wrote:Wristwatches can run android so you are correct.

Yeah. That statement doesn't work well anymore as it's actually quite common these days. I suppose I should instead mention that lightweight linux distros run well on 486 setups. Nearly any computer will run linux well if you cut enough applications/processes/services out of the distro.

[Zee530]

1TB drive is finally here, i can finally stop deleting data every few days

[sl23]

(10-19-2014, 12:22 PM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: A custom water cooling loop with massive radiators is noticeably better at cooling and being quiet than an air cooler, but also requires a tonne of planning and building and testing and money. A cheaper kit type cooler, such as a Corsair H100 is only a few percent better than a good air cooler, but costs far more. It's not worth the investment unless you're going all in, and even then it's only worth it if you're doing really serious overclocking or want your rig to look nice.

Thanks for the tip ;-)

[Xtreme2damax]

Ah I think I may have found a culprit of my performance woes but I'm not sure.

I noticed in The Evil Within when I hear my gpu fans speed up my fps drops and when they slow down fps rises up. It seems my gpu may be downclocking itself to prevent damage from overheating which is probable given the fact the gpu's being sandwiched so close together due to the layout of my Sabertooth X58 board.

[Garteal]

Have you done some testing then? Monitor both your CPU and GPU usage, clocks and temps and verify whether that is the issue.