Hardware & Technical Affordable gaming laptops?

Porina

Porina
Since I have a bit of travel ahead, I'm debating replacing my laptop. I picked it years ago for some gaming potential, but ED pushes it too hard. It has a HD5650 mobility, and even reduced to 720p at low settings, I'm barely able to reach 30fps.

In a quick look I'm struggling to find a mid range replacement. Laptops seem to come in two flavours: forget gaming, or you need a deep wallet. I'd accept a 15" model with a target of 60fps. Does anyone have a suggestion for something that'll do ED without breaking the bank? Say, something in the £500-800 ball park? Lower is of course better :) The dedicated gaming laptops I've found so far all seem to go for £1000+.
 

Porina

Porina
I hadn't, but user options to build a laptop? Yes please! Not so sure about them charging £9 for updated thermal compound though! Will have a play now although I'm finding myself add to much and pushing the price up already... now how do I work out how fast a 950M is compared to... anything else?

I'm 99.9% a desktop user too, but do travel now and then and the GPU isn't upgradable on my current one. Even opened it up to have a look, found it soldered onto mobo and not on a module.
 

Cody

Cody
Yeah, price creep is a problem - decide on your budget then add 10% - that usually covers it.

I knew someone would help with gpu stuff - cool.
 

Porina

Porina
I can see myself spending all day on that site... :D

Depending on the base model, I could go up to the 960M, but it was relating that performance to the desktop parts that I was having difficulty with. I also figured out if I go for a 13" model I could replace both my existing laptops, and the resale of those could help bump up the budget a bit.

Also working out if I need to "do a Dell" as in, for some options, if it is cheaper for me to obtain and fit after than it is for them to do it. At least for the easy items like disk and ram. As far as I can tell CPUs still work best with dual channel but they don't offer that option below 16GB which is a bit annoying. So I'd have to go 2x4GB myself.
 

Davevti

Davevti
Laptop GPUs are normally less powerful than their desktop variants, I would start by researching benchmarks for the 950 + 960, I think I have seen a website that soley benchmarked for ED.

This will give you an idea whether the laptop will perform as expected, I would provide a bit more help but I'm away from my PC at the moment.
 

Porina

Porina
Haven't managed to find a meaningful benchmark for ED. I've even tried to start one myself, but obviously I only have a small handful of kit so can't cover all the options. That never got anywhere... I do recall seeing a site which tries to predict if a game would run, but I'm not sure it was based on actual benchmarking.

Anyway, using the dubious method of comparing the core configuration and clocks, I might guess where the bottleneck is and therefore what the performance of the mobile part is relative to desktop parts. The two desktop parts I'm choosing to compare are the GTX 960, and GTX 560Ti. Again, this is mainly due to me having them already! These give 100fps and 40fps respectively on 1080p Ultra in my reference condition (with ED 1.2, would be slightly higher with 1.3).

On the mobile side, I'm comparing to the 960M and maybe 950M. Actually, this might be easier than it sounds since they appear to be the same configuration other than a minor clock difference, with a caution the 950M might come with GDDR5 or slower DDR3. On closer inspection, I'm not sure if there is any difference between them and the 850M/860M since these all use the same core. Even the desktop 750Ti seems to use the same core. Again, there are some clock differences.

Anyway, relative to the GTX 960 I'd estimate the mobile parts may be over 50% of that. It would be harder to compare against the 560Ti since there are more generation differences and also differing configuration. Link below from Tom's Hardware tries to roughly group GPUs into performance levels, and they put the 750Ti at the same level as 560Ti, with the mobile GPUs of my interest not on the list at all. I suspect this might not take adequate consideration of generational differences, especially if the software is optimised for newer features that aren't present or as optimised on older hardware.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32899-7.html
 

adoredtv

adoredtv
The GDDR5 version of the 950M should perform a little lower than the 750 Ti - http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1738-elite-dangerous-gpu-benchmark-4k-fps

elite-dangerous-bench1.jpg

Say 20% below I guess. A lot depends on the thermals and the CPU as well obviously.

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-750-ti/specifications
http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-950m/specifications
 
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Porina

Porina
adoredtv said:
A lot depends on the thermals and the CPU as well obviously.
Click to expand...

Damn it, now I have something else to test! It has been my belief that as long as you have "enough" CPU, it doesn't impact fps much if at all. But I guess to be safe I need to try quantifying that. On the assumption that CPU power isn't terribly critical, I was inclined to go for the slowest i5 which are 2 core 4 thread. Not a true quad but likely more than enough still. To put age in perspective, my laptop has the original generation i5, and most of the laptop systems offered on PC Specialist are 4th generation. There are some 5th, but only on the smaller highly integrated ones which aren't of interest here.
 

adoredtv

adoredtv
It's kind of true but depends on a few things. CPUs are generally just gonna slow you down if not fast enough, and mostly only at lower resolutions as well. That's why AMD CPUs are so bad at low res but mostly "ok" at higher res, max settings - ie the bottleneck moves to the GPU instead.

Depends on the game as well, MMOs tend to be more CPU hungry. I guess it'll play fine just likely not at full max settings 1080p.
 

Porina

Porina
I just did a test on one of my desktop systems with a GTX 960 and i5-4570S in it. Now, the fps values I'll mention aren't directly comparable to others as I've been playing with SweetFX today. I have no idea what configuration I'm in now, and I'm too lazy to put them back to normal. But I disabled vsync to keep things unlimited and went to my usual combat training test scenario.

CPU at stock 4x 2.9GHz + turbo = 112 fps
CPU reduced to 2x 2.5 GHz = 111 fps - basically no change there
CPU reduced to 2x 1.5 GHz = 83 fps - now we see a hit

Why pick 2.5 GHz? That's close to the speed the low end mobile i5 runs at. Actually the mobile one runs at 2.6 GHz + possible turbo and any gain from hyper-threading. So at least I know that is probably "fast enough" at 1080p+ settings. Only when dropping it further down to 2x 1.5 GHz did it start to limit things. Technically I have to be a little cautious here, as I'm not sure if when I disable cores, if that will limit the caches at all. So this test condition may be running more cache than the mobile CPU would be.

Usual disclaimers apply, this was only tested in one situation and other situations (like in a station) may do better or worse.
 

Porina

Porina
Help. Scope creep is kicking in. My logic is as follows... I was going to get a newer DESKTOP at some point too. I'm now thinking, if I spec up the proposed laptop a bit, it would likely suffice as a desktop replacement. e.g. I'd go up to an actual quad core CPU. It would also help get around my old problem of not having access to all my "stuff" when I'm on my laptop as opposed to main desktop. The only thing the laptop wouldn't do is hold many TB of files, but it wouldn't be hard to set up a low power NAS box. I even have one already, although only for backups. On the rare occasion I might need sustained processing power for a long period, I could still use my current main desktop. Note this doesn't affect my gaming desktop.

This also gets around my current problem in that I don't really use a laptop unless travelling, and I can go long periods of not touching my laptop.
 

kilvenny

kilvenny
Beware the dreaded M suffix on an NVIDIA GPU. I have just purchased a new laptop and I went with a GTX970M and it has 60 per cent the performance of a GTX970. I toyed with a 960M and decided in the end to go to the next level. The GTX960M appears to be about 25 percent of the performance of a GTX960. (G3D Mark). How that relates to ED I dont know. I have a GTX760 in my Desktop and that is fine, the 970M is slightly weaker on these stats to the 760. The other thing I factored in was the likelihood of planet landing and FPS increasing the graphics requirement. I would be tempted to wait a while and see how it works out. Unfortunately I couldnt wait - real life requiremnt.
 

Porina

Porina
I've decided to wait until skylake CPUs before jumping, as it still may or may not replace my current general purpose desktop (note I have a separate gaming desktop).

Agreed the mobile versions are less powerful than the desktop equivalents, and that can be estimated by looking at their specifications relative to desktop parts.
 

Davo OHno

D
fitch said:
Lenovo Y50 seems like a good pick to meet your budget

- - - Updated - - -

Look into this site for suggestions http://pcgamerhome.com/best-gaming-laptop-under-800-dollars/
Click to expand...

I would suggest looking at the Lenovo Y series as well. They have a sale going on right now too. I have a Y series that I have been traveling with for about 3-4 years, and it is still doing well. I can't really play Battlefield on it, but I do play ED and Eve. It's the hotel wifi connections that will kill you in pvp though. Head to Lenovo web site.

I take my Saitek Cyborg X with me as well. If you can find an actual Saitek, and not the MadCatz Fly 5 on Ebay it's pretty good quality. I've had the stick for years. It's getting a bit loose, but still functions great.
 
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Porina

Porina
Having had a closer look at the Y50-70, it's price/spec doesn't seem particularly special. Also do their UK models come with a UK keyboard? Pics on their website appear to show US style layout.
 

Davo OHno

D
Porina said:
Having had a closer look at the Y50-70, it's price/spec doesn't seem particularly special. Also do their UK models come with a UK keyboard? Pics on their website appear to show US style layout.
Click to expand...

I couldn't tell ya about the keyboard. Honestly, it is just my opinion based on personal experience. It has served me well.

It can be an agonizing decision where to spend your money. Ultimately, we all want a good deal. Finding a deal that is particularly advantageous can drive ya nuts. Everyone is trying to make a set margin on their goods, and frankly I have never found a "killer" deal from any retailer. Have I been happy with the purchase though, yes. For the money, it is a reliable machine, with specs that run my games while I am on the road (which is often).
 
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