Need advise for laptop

[admin89]

Asus , Dell , Acer , Lenovo ...basically all major brands are bad because those laptops don't use aftermarket thermal compound , not to mention their crappy cooling design
If you can reapply thermal pound and upgrade the cooling unit by yourself then it's all good however
IMO , just get a BTO (customizable) laptop with Arctic MX-4 or IC diamond 7 option
Laptop that has excellent cooling design will last very long

[shreduhsoreus]

(01-21-2015, 12:22 PM)ZLRK Wrote: I'll try doing some searches, but if you have some few more advise about "conventional" ones given what just has been said I'll be grateful.
Thanks beforehand.

My advice would be to buy a Sager that is in your price range. It functions exactly the same as any other laptop you've been looking at, just better and at a better price. If you pick out specific mainstream brand notebooks I can tell you the pros and cons or answer questions whether notebook A would be better than notebook B, but I'm still going to recommend something that was designed more for what you're looking for.

There's no kind of extra knowledge needed when it comes to using those kinds of laptops, the OS will function the same as another major brand with the same OS, the system settings will operate the same, pretty much everything about it will be the same aside from performance. If you've never had a notebook with both integrated and dedicated graphics, there's going to be some new features you've never had before regardless of what brand you buy, but nothing that isn't super easy to figure out. There's no benefit or anything easier about buying a main brand notebook versus a custom designed notebook.

I'm going to keep drilling it in your head that you should buy something designed for gaming because you'll thank us for it later

[ZLRK]

Even if I don't play that much nowadays?
When I said "not a constant exigent gamer" I meant I don't play that much anymore, but sporadically. I.e., when a game that really catches my interest comes out, either PC or through emulator. But when I play it, I play it for quite a while.
To give an idea of frequency, I used the previous laptop 10 months just as an office rig (homework, videos, youtube...), and 2 months -or less- playing a PC or through-Dolphin game half a day daily.
Regarding the "exigent" part, I do care about general good FPS, but not that much about the best resolution or the like.
And yes, it would be my first integrated-dedicated graphics laptop...

[KHg8m3r]

I mainly use my Sager for school work, and have no problems. I got my dad to upgrade to a Sager for his work (AutoCAD, RAM Elemetns, etc) and he loves it. They're really great as regualr computers also, and better than other "gaming" brands because the others have bulky and unwieldy cases most of the time, but the Sagers are built very nicely.

[shreduhsoreus]

(01-22-2015, 03:21 AM)ZLRK Wrote: And yes, it would be my first integrated-dedicated graphics laptop...

It's super easy to figure out, your laptop will do most of the thinking for you. Just an extra application "NVIDIA Control Panel", half of the work will be just selecting from a drop down menu that you want it to use the dedicated card for 3D applications and not the integrated. There's a thread here somewhere that walks you through the 5 minutes of work it takes to set it up properly for Dolphin/gaming in general.

If you do long sessions though(albeit not frequent) you'll be much happier with something that will tear through it with ease, and when you're using it for other stuff your laptop will be really responsive. Plus it will stay nice and cool which will help it last a long time.

My fiance bought the Toshiba we have(though I use it WAY more) but had I known that there were affordable gaming laptops in the same price range(Sager for example) I would have insisted on getting one of those instead, kinda kicking myself in the ass for not looking honestly lol.

Wanting to stay away from HP is good though, so you're already on your way there, we just have to finish convincing you to take it up another notch and save money at the same time

[ZLRK]

Ok, ok, thanks all very much.
I get the main idea, though it would be certainly a bit harder for me -though maybe not impossible- looking for a Sager one. I'm still a bit paranoid due to a recent happening, and really the most direct stores I have at hand are conventional ones, like Best Buy.
I'll have to think about what I'll be able to do. I'm starting to miss the previous laptop, the times when graphics were either Intel integrated OR ATI/Nvidia dedicated, but not both... Times nowadays got more complex. Not just because of architecture or the like, but the heating issues...
By the way, that Dell Inspiron 1520 that I used lasted circa 7 years, and would have lasted easily even more hadn't it been for a little accident...

[KHg8m3r]

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-laptop-performance-guide how to use integrated graphics

[shreduhsoreus]

Well the good thing about the CPUs that come in these laptops is they can handle up to 100 degrees Celsius, I don't think I could overheat my processor even if I tried haha. I use software to slightly overclock my GPU though and it idles around 50 when not in use and usually floats around 65-70 when gaming...so that's the kind of heat you're looking at if you go with a conventional brand, not ideal but not horrible. That reminds me, I need to get some new thermal paste...


If there's literally nothing we can say to get you on a custom ordered gaming laptop, then this is the one I would pick from your first page of posts. Keep in mind though of the temperatures I run at, and then factor in that the video card in that ASUS has higher TDP than mine(75W vs 45W).

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-15-6-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-black-aluminum/9826169.p?id=1219438698403&skuId=9826169

Edit: On second thought, I'm seeing a lot of BSOD issues in reviews on Newegg and complaints about heat(as I expected).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232122

[ZLRK]

Well, I would like to try a Sager indeed, but I'd need to be mentally prepared and other miscelaneous stuff. I'm considering it, but I'd still like to explore the "conventional" options.

Regarding the reviews about the Asus one on Newegg, I only spotted maybe 2 mentions for the heating, and strangely they didn't have too much emphasis about it. What worried me a bit more was the fair amount of blue death screen and battery life mentions, though manufacturers suggested clean OS reinstall and manual battery calibration...

Also, the ones I mentioned in first post would not be the only options. Those were about the ones I found with a first search, to give an idea. I expected some more similar suggestions if you knew, and also different brands if you knew about some good ones, like you did about Sager and possibly MSI.......

P.S.: @Shreduhsoreus, "craptop" the one of yours? (Don't know if it's the Toshiba one). Well, graphics card could be a bit low indeed, but it'd still depend on what you want/need. Because rest of specs look awesume. Or will you say your i7 is not 4th gen?

[shreduhsoreus]

Yea, it's the Toshiba Satellite, it's an i7 4700MQ, one of the first 4th gen mobile i7's. It was a little overpriced considering the specs, but that's because of the touchscreen. I formatted the hard drive though and did a clean install of Windows 7 instead of 8.1 that it came with. It gets the job done but I have to keep Dolphin at 2x native for Wii and some games just won't run at what I consider tolerable speeds(Metroid Prime 3 being one of them, which is upsetting). Usually bump it up to 2.5 or 3 for Gamecube games but AA and AF really kills performance so I don't bother with it. It doesn't like it when I play 2v2 ladder matches in Starcraft 2 though haha, I can't play on the highest settings on 2v2 or campaign either. Diablo 3 runs perfect at max settings, and my Skyrim...is so modded to hell that it's not even Skyrim anymore, some of the mods actually boost performance though. It runs at what I consider a good speed and looks nice(again, mods lol).

The GTX 860M that comes in a lot of the laptops we've been looking at is literally 3 times as powerful as mine, and I'm talking frame rate. On max settings it gets on average triple the framerate as mine according to benchmarks.

But yea, pretty much anything you find at Best Buy is going to run into the same issue with less than ideal cooling. I'm browsing through their gaming laptops section and it really just looks like a lot of the same shit in different cases with different amounts of memory by different brands.


Edit: Condensing my double post into one long post

Do they have this one at Best Buy?

http://www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt70-dominator895-p-6948.html


Edit: Yup, must have skipped over it.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-gt70-dominator-895-17-3-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-aluminum-black/5142092.p?id=1219111591490&skuId=5142092

CPU is ~10-15 faster than mine. GPU DESTROYS mine haha

Verdict after reading reviews: Wipe the HDD and install Windows 7 lol and also use a cooling pad.