I wanted to relay two weeks worth of experience with a HP DV6T-6100 laptop, i7-2630QM Quad Core with ATI 6770M 1GB GDDR5 graphics on a 15.6" 1920x1080 LCD. I got this system new for around $920 [I could have gotten a little cheaper as I ordered it with the larger 9 cell battery, 6GB of RAM, Bluetooth integrated, 7200 RPM 640MB hard drive]. The CPU base speed is 2.0Ghz, but runs Dolphin turbo at 2.8Ghz since it is only using 2 of the 4 cores.
Wii Sports Bowling and Punch Out has been my main benchmark games.
MY EXPERIENCE:
With Dolphin 3.0 on Windows 7 x64 on the ATI adapter, I find that Wii Sports is perfect. However, Punch Out is just not cutting it. It lags enough that running below 100% makes the game playable - but not true to console. Some other games are lagging too.
What I've learned is that gaming laptops are really in a state of serious flux. The real new problem is the shift toward muxless graphic switching. Under this new design, the Intel card is never really disabled and the ATI card is a slave to the Intel 3000 graphics... The ATI card renders and PAINTS to the Intel card frame-buffer which displays the final picture. So there is an extra delay - and worst of all, currently OpenGL drivers mode can not even be used on the ATI card and is only on the Intel. On Linux, even with beta 3.0 RC5 kernels and the latest X system, the muxless graphics switching is a complete disaster and most Linux Live CDs crash on booting, etc.
You can read gory details here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavil...phics.html
I've decided to go back to the drawing board. a 2.0Ghz i7 mobile CPU is just not really keeping up with Dolphin like I wish. The graphics processor really doesn't seem that important to Dolphin. So I decided to go with an older generation I7-2720QM DELL System that I got scratch and dent from Dell Outlet. It has a slower Nvidia NVS 4200M 512MB DDR3. THE GOOD news: the CPU i7 2.2Ghz base with 3.2Ghz turbo for dual core Dolphin, so should yield 10% increase.
All my experimenting with Intel 3000 graphics vs. ATI 6770M graphics on the i7 has shown to me that the CPU is really core to the emulator performance. I give up USB 3.0 on this older design of laptop, but it is $100 cheaper and I still get a 1080p display. Plus, most of all, the Dell allows me to MANUALLY switch the graphics in the BIOS.
I hope this helps someone. I hope to have the system in 1 week to test side by side before I return the HP.
Wii Sports Bowling and Punch Out has been my main benchmark games.
MY EXPERIENCE:
With Dolphin 3.0 on Windows 7 x64 on the ATI adapter, I find that Wii Sports is perfect. However, Punch Out is just not cutting it. It lags enough that running below 100% makes the game playable - but not true to console. Some other games are lagging too.
What I've learned is that gaming laptops are really in a state of serious flux. The real new problem is the shift toward muxless graphic switching. Under this new design, the Intel card is never really disabled and the ATI card is a slave to the Intel 3000 graphics... The ATI card renders and PAINTS to the Intel card frame-buffer which displays the final picture. So there is an extra delay - and worst of all, currently OpenGL drivers mode can not even be used on the ATI card and is only on the Intel. On Linux, even with beta 3.0 RC5 kernels and the latest X system, the muxless graphics switching is a complete disaster and most Linux Live CDs crash on booting, etc.
You can read gory details here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-pavil...phics.html
I've decided to go back to the drawing board. a 2.0Ghz i7 mobile CPU is just not really keeping up with Dolphin like I wish. The graphics processor really doesn't seem that important to Dolphin. So I decided to go with an older generation I7-2720QM DELL System that I got scratch and dent from Dell Outlet. It has a slower Nvidia NVS 4200M 512MB DDR3. THE GOOD news: the CPU i7 2.2Ghz base with 3.2Ghz turbo for dual core Dolphin, so should yield 10% increase.
All my experimenting with Intel 3000 graphics vs. ATI 6770M graphics on the i7 has shown to me that the CPU is really core to the emulator performance. I give up USB 3.0 on this older design of laptop, but it is $100 cheaper and I still get a 1080p display. Plus, most of all, the Dell allows me to MANUALLY switch the graphics in the BIOS.
I hope this helps someone. I hope to have the system in 1 week to test side by side before I return the HP.