New laptop rig

[terson29]

My 4 year old laptop is finally put to rest due to dead GPU. So for the last two days I was looking for a new laptop rig to buy. I've found 2 options:

1. Dell Inspirion: Core i7 - 4500U (dual-core 1.8 GHz, 3.0 GHz turbo-boosted); Radeon HD 8850M 2 Gb GDDR5; 8 Gb RAM; 1 TB HDD.

2. HP ProBook: Core i7-4702MQ (quad-core 2.2 GHz, 3.2 GHz boosted); Radeon HD 8750M 2Gb GDDR3; 8 Gb RAM; 1 TB HDD.

 

Question is: which one will fare better at running Skyrim? I plan to run ~45 FPS High, AA/AF Off, SMIM, ELFX + CoT. On script heavy side: Frostfall, Requiem, SL.

In Dell I despise the processor, while in HP I am not really fond of the GPU.

Also, is it feasible to instead look for company, which can make me a custom spec instead? Might arise the necessity to deliver it to non-EU country in this case.

My budget is around 1000$.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

[blabba]

I have a lenovo y500 (the older version of the new y510p) and I can't say I have any complaints about the laptop or it's performance.

I'm also biased towards nvidia, as I have had the least amount of driver issues with them of course.

 

http://shop.lenovo.c...fadfw#customize

 

Only downside is, if you want the really good performance you need to pay extra $100 for the additional graphics card for SLI.

Also, SLI performance is only advantageous in mainstream games. For indie developers, most of them don't support SLI really well.

 

Other than that I like the SLI system because I can switch between powersaving work mode and high performance gaming (Well as much gaming performance as you can get from a laptop anyway)

[RitualClarity]

I have a lenovo y500 (the older version of the new y510p) and I can't say I have any complaints about the laptop or it's performance.

I'm also biased towards nvidia, as I have had the least amount of driver issues with them of course.

 

http://shop.lenovo.c...fadfw#customize

 

Only downside is, if you want the really good performance you need to pay extra $100 for the additional graphics card for SLI.

Also, SLI performance is only advantageous in mainstream games. For indie developers, most of them don't support SLI really well.

 

Other than that I like the SLI system because I can switch between powersaving work mode and high performance gaming (Well as much gaming performance as you can get from a laptop anyway)

 

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/lenovo-ideapad-y510p.aspx#

[bnadna]

Well, between your two choices I would definitely go with option number 2.

[gvman3670]

Definitely #2 if you wanna' go with many scripts firing at once. The faster processor will help there.

[terson29]

blabba, ritualclarity

 

Thanks for showing me that rig. A very solid choice indeed. Doesn't available at the local reseller here, so I'll be keeping an eye for it in EU online shops. As for the GPU, I also prefer Nvidia to AMD, due no small part in my dead laptop performance (it had Radeon HD 5650m, that thing gave me quite a headache before it started dying).

 

bnadna, gvman3670

 

Rig #2 was my first choice between the two. Main reason I even considered Dell, was it's price (660$, 250$ cheaper than HP). I knew it isn't good, but question in place how terrible is it. Especially the processor (have never used an ultrabook processor in the first place). In any case I need quite good processor power in the rig in question, as I will also use it for CAD. Thanks for the input.

[lidowxxx]

If your main use for the laptop is gaming, I would choose #1, sure you get only a dual core processor, but 8850M is a significantly faster card than 8750M, not only that any mobile card coupled with GDDR3 will cripple its performance, a card with GDDR5 will outperform the same card equipped with GDDR3 by at least 25-30%. Skyrim may be a CPU heavy game, but graphic card performance is still the #1 deciding factor like most games on the market.
 
Detailed info about each card:

8850M:;http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8850M.87118.0.html

8750M:http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8750M.87147.0.html

8850M scores 2396.5 for 3dmark11 performance GPU, and it's only 1709 for 8750M, now that's a 40% difference.

Further more, there is a good chance you can upgrade your CPU on your own down the road(check the model whether it supports quad cores, ebay is good place to find aftermarket upgrade components), trust me it's not as hard as you may think. But for video card, sorry you are out of luck, 99% of the laptops have their GPUs soldered onto the motherboard, only very few laptop models have removable/upgradable graphic cards like Alienware laptops, and the HP probook is definitely NOT one of them, you will be stuck with the GPU until the laptop dies.

[FastestDogInTheDistrict]

Get that first card in a better machine with a more powerful processor, if you're able.

[RitualClarity]

Some of my RL tech friends.. fellow aliens...   informed me that some of the laptops are coming out with the new nvidia architecture. It is suppose to be very good and energy efficient. One example if I understood correctly was the 750ti that has recently been released. I believe it is the Maxwell architecture. I would check into the possibility of getting one of those as it most likely would have a more current, future architecture. . Some of the 800 m cards are suppose to be this.

[terson29]

lidowxxx

Thanks for the info about the CPU upgrade. I was thinking that CPU upgrade is as problrmatic as the GPU upgrade. Will remember that. Unfortunately, all of that Dell model range comes out with i7 U processors which are soldered to the motherboard.

 

ritualclarity

Thanks for the info about new 8XXm model cards. After quick googling I'm not very impressed with 840m and 850m chips (the later is roughly identical to older 760m chip). 860m is good, but it is around 15% slower that 755m SLI, which you can get with Lenovo y510. Interesting enough, the two top chips - 870m and 880m has old Kepler architecture.

 

Good news is, I called local laptop reseller. They assured me, that they will get a new supply of Y series Lenovo laptops later in May. And the maxed out y510p (16 GB RAM, GT 755m 2GB GDDR5 SLI (total 4 GB VRAM) and i7-4700MQ processor) will cost 1300$. Seems like a good deal. Speaking about Lenovos, I caught a word regarding new Y model, an upgrade to y510. Coming out in June. Does enyone has more detailed info?

[blabba]

I would imagine the Lenovo's get a hardware refresh about every year or so.

 

I had the somewhat misfortunate call to be forced to by my older y500 because my older laptops AMD processor died on me and I needed a replacement fast.

Unfortunately I bought it like 1 month before the new y510p's came out.

 

The good news is that theirs a lot more mod support for the y500's then their are for the y510p's and up (like unlocked BIOS, for OC'ing, letting you use whatever wi-fi card you want and such)

 

So yea, I'd say hold out until after June (usually when Lenovo refreshes it's y series) if you care to see if they use newer GPU's.

But if you don't care too much about what's more likely to be only 20% increase in performance in the laptop and need a new one fast, you can't go wrong with the Lenovo Y series.

Works great for gaming and work (If you disable SLI and put on power saver mode I get close to 4 hour battery life at work)

 

Edit: Forgot to mention, that the new Y refresh, if it does contain a new GPU, it most likely won't have a SLI option upon release as Lenovo only makes the new Ultrabay GPU's about 1 or 2 months after laptop releases. So you'd need to wait closer to August to get the full deal. At least that's what happened when the y510p came out last year in june.

 

Edit2: I saw that in your last post you put 4GB Vram total. This is unfortunately not how SLI works. Each Card is 2GB VRAM and in SLI rendering, you will still only have 2GB Vram (but two cards to process frames). Their are some new experimental rendering modes for multiple cards to share VRAM data but it is all experimental still. So basically if you want 4k texture resolution in Skyrim at 60 fps, this Laptop is not gonna help you their (2k is fine though )