Building A Gaming Laptop, Questions

[StarCecil]

So I've pinned down most the features I'm looking for, but I can't quite decide on two options.

Firstly, a dual graphics card setup vs a single card. Is their a real difference worth the price because I've heard some rather uncertain things. And if a single card is the better option, will 2 gigs video RAM suffice for my purposes or should I spring for 3?

Secondly, is an SSD worth the extra cash spent on it? Some people seem to swear by it but others say it's just a luxury for the folks obsessed with microseconds off their load times.

I'm mainly thinking to use this rig for playing Total War and Skyrim - basically games that are already available vs the Next Big Thing. I would like to play these games maxed out on their settings, and I just want to know if paying more will equal a very noticeable increase in performance or if the cheaper routes will be plenty.

NOTE: Please don't try to persuade me to go with a desktop instead. I've already gone over my options and a laptop meets my uses much better and is what I want.

 

[DoPo]

Firstly, a dual graphics card setup vs a single card. Is their a real difference worth the price because I've heard some rather uncertain things.

Yes, also you'll find difference in quality. Big difference. Most times a single graphics card laptop would just have an Intel chipset (newer Intel CPUs come automatically with one - that's the i3/5/7 series) which is barely enough to run a lot of games - some won't even run. Intel chipsets are notorious for being a pain in the ass if you actually want to game on one. The dual graphics card setup is usually the correct one - you get an energy saving option (the chipset) and something you can actually use. Still, it depends on the graphics card itself - some are more trouble than they are worth.

And if a single card is the better option, will 2 gigs video RAM suffice for my purposes or should I spring for 3?

No. Wait, the correct answer is N/A. Video RAM is pretty much meaningless - you should be looking at the performance of the cards themselves. Go to this website [http://www.notebookcheck.net/] and check the make and model of the card - they have a pretty nice description of each as well as performance charts, as well as handily classifying them - you're probably looking at Class 2 cards at least, for gaming purposes. Class 1 is highest class, the more the number grows, the weaker the card - Class 3 I'd say is probably the weakest you should get and still be able to run games at least on low-medium (maybe more modern-ish games - some few years old could run fine).

Secondly, is an SSD worth the extra cash spent on it? Some people seem to swear by it but others say it's just a luxury for the folks obsessed with microseconds off their load times.

Microseconds? Try actual seconds. Or even minutes (depends on what loading times we're talking about). But the performance boost is huge at any rate - it's magnitudes above "microseconds". Hell, most of your loading times would be reduced to under 10 seconds or so, including the OS startup. Still - is it worth it? It depends - you don't actually need an SSD but it's damn convenient. If you're tight for the money you can safely skip it. Heck, I'd say you can safely skip if even if you're not that tight for money but still don't want to shell out too much. Do go for it if money is no problem.

 

[StarCecil]

Firstly, a dual graphics card setup vs a single card. Is their a real difference worth the price because I've heard some rather uncertain things.

Yes, also you'll find difference in quality. Big difference. Most times a single graphics card laptop would just have an Intel chipset (newer Intel CPUs come automatically with one - that's the i3/5/7 series) which is barely enough to run a lot of games - some won't even run. Intel chipsets are notorious for being a pain in the ass if you actually want to game on one. The dual graphics card setup is usually the correct one - you get an energy saving option (the chipset) and something you can actually use. Still, it depends on the graphics card itself - some are more trouble than they are worth.

I should clarify on this point. I'm looking at a pair of NVIDIA GTX 765M vs a single such card (or a single GTX 770M). I'm not exactly asking to play Crysis on high settings or anything so I'm just trying to feel out if the price bump would be well worth it or if I'd be just as good with a single one for my needs.

So for an extra $100 an added 80 gigs of SSD is actually a decent buy? If I cared enough about load times to spend the money, that is?

 

[Exhuminator]

So for an extra $100 an added 80 gigs of SSD is actually a decent buy? If I cared enough about load times to spend the money, that is?

Given the size of current operating systems and modern games, I think you'll find that 80 gigs will be gone mighty fast. For example, Total War II takes 35 gigabytes [http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=4691&game=Total%20War:%20Rome%20II] of installation space alone. Skyrim takes 6 gigabytes for its base installation (without any mods). That's 40 gigs used right there. Then Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC both require a minimum 20 gigabytes for their base installs (64 bit versions). So just with those two games and an operating system you've already used up 60 gigs of that 80. Because of this I would just get a traditional platter based drive of at least one terabyte in size.

 

[DoPo]

I should clarify on this point. I'm looking at a pair of NVIDIA GTX 765M vs a single such card (or a single GTX 770M). I'm not exactly asking to play Crysis on high settings or anything so I'm just trying to feel out if the price bump would be well worth it or if I'd be just as good with a single one for my needs.

Here you go: GTX 765M SLI [http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-765M-SLI.96627.0.html] and GTX 770 [http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-770M.88995.0.html] - you can look at the performance ratings and decide. A single 770 should be enough for your needs - it is supposed to run Skyrim on high at about 80 FPS and on ultra at about 50. Total War should be a non-issue. Then again, the pair of 765Ms would future proof you. I don't know what the price difference is but if it's small enough, you could go for it.

So for an extra $100 an added 80 gigs of SSD is actually a decent buy? If I cared enough about load times to spend the money, that is?

Well, if you do care for load times, then yes. To give you an idea, you would barely notice the loading screens in Skyrim. You know how there is a statue on them you can turn around and stuff? Well, if you have an SSD you won't even get the chance to do it - that's how fast it'll be - literally just a few seconds of a loading screen. Although, I'd generally advise to get a bigger SSD - you'd want to fit several things there, and an OS can happily take up at least half of that space or more (my Windows partition is 50GB and...I do have to do some maintenance when space starts running out). If you don't want an OS there, then...I dunno, maybe. If I was buying one myself and wasn't going to have an OS on it, I'd go for about 100GB at least, maybe 150GB or so. For reference, my games folder right now is just under 80 GB and generally, if I want to install something larger, I'd need to remove something first, so I suppose you can say it hovers around 80 gig, so I'd suggest slightly more. Then again, not all of my games need to be on an SSD and it's not about me but you - if you do have a lot of games outside TW/Skyrim then go for something bigger, if it's really mostly these two, you can probably manage with 80 GB.

Note: I just checked and it says that Total War: Rome 2 needs 35GB of hard drive space. Dunno if that is actually accurate (it may very well be less - way less) but it's just something to consider.

 

[DoPo]

Then Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC both require a minimum 20 gigabytes for their base installs (64 bit versions).

Yeah..."minimum". I guess you might be able to run them with 20 gig but I'd really not recommend it to just anybody - as I said, I've got my Windows 7 partition at 50 GB and it struggles at times. Note that I do not have anything there but the OS - I've got all my programs/games/downloads/documents/stuff on a separate partition, same with the swap file, I also moved My Documents too.

 

[StarCecil]

Okay, that's all very helpful and informative. I still have quite a bit of time to figure out what I want, and this information shall be put to good use. Thanks for your help.

 

[antidonkey]

Something to keep in mind. You don't want an SSD as your primary storage device. While they are crazy fast, they do have a pretty big limiting flaw. you can only write to a certain sector so many times before it becomes useless. Admittedly, that number is pretty high and they've gone out of their way to make sure writes get spread out but it is still something to think about. Most people use a SSD to keep their OS on as well as anything that get frequently used. All other data goes to a regular hard drive. If you're concerned about heat and battery life, then go with a single GPU. One will heat up and kill your battery fast enough.

 

[GladiatorUA]

GPU. SLI should be avoided if possible. It's troublesome and has side effects. Doubly so for laptops because it has to cool them both.
SSD. HDD on laptops are shittier than they are on PC. Having a 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD might be a good idea.

Laptops are tricky. They have to have good cooling and they are much more troublesome to upgrade, so they become irrelevant much faster.

 

[clippen05]

Thought it was kinda funny how you said "rig" in reference to a laptop lol. Anyway, yeah, I'd go with a single card over SLI. Not all games support SLI, and you'll likely run into heat issues. Ram is not likely to be a problem if your only going to be displaying on your laptop's screen, I believe. And in regards to SDD's... it really depends. I run a desktop I build myself with just a HDD and Windows still boots in less than 5 seconds. (I could get it to go even faster if I wanted) I personally feel their benfits are overstated. Certainly if you had loads of money to throw-around, get one. But in most people's cases (at least most gamers), I think saving that money or spending it on better parts is a better use of funds. I know you didn't ask for a recommendation, and I don't know what country you are from, but I'd recommend taking a look at CyberPowerPC's laptops. I don't know what budget you are working with, but they seem to be the best configurator for value. The Xplorer X-6-9500 with extra RAM in particular looks good to me, although some of their other ones come with the latest Total War game for free as you mentioned you'd be playing Total War. Or if your just looking at getting a OEM laptop, MSI and Asus seem to be the best gaming-friendly brands.

 

[OneCatch]

it is supposed to run Skyrim on high at about 80 FPS and on ultra at about 50. Total War should be a non-issue. Then again, the pair of 765Ms would future proof you. I don't know what the price difference is but if it's small enough, you could go for it.

Err.... Rome II Total war is far more intensive that Skyrim. I run Skyrim at a vsynced 60fps maxed out, but can drop down to 20-30 on Rome II on med-high settings. That said, the main bottleneck for Rome II is CPU, but even so it's extremely GPU intensive.

 

[Strelok]

GPU. SLI should be avoided if possible. It's troublesome and has side effects. Doubly so for laptops because it has to cool them both.
SSD. HDD on laptops are shittier than they are on PC. Having a 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD might be a good idea.

Laptops are tricky. They have to have good cooling and they are much more troublesome to upgrade, so they become irrelevant much faster.

Thought it was kinda funny how you said "rig" in reference to a laptop lol. Anyway, yeah, I'd go with a single card over SLI. Not all games support SLI, and you'll likely run into heat issues. Ram is not likely to be a problem if your only going to be displaying on your laptop's screen, I believe. And in regards to SDD's... it really depends.

SLi can be the difference of a game running extremely well or an unplayable slideshow, see Alan Wake before the Sli profile came out (don't worry, Nvidia is fast, and there are temp work arounds), Nvidia makes makes SLi profiles for nearly every game released, probably every game released, as I have not seen one that did not have a profile. I think it's funny that you both still think heat is an issue for gaming notebooks, seriously what year is it for you two? Feels like I am back in 2004 here. I have been running an Sli notebook for 5 years. It eats most games alive, unless they ar PC exclusives which can really push the envelope. Only issues were the build quality it's a Sager NP9850, so steer clear of the Sager/Clevo brand, pretty sure the above Cyberpower are just rebranded Clevos.

If you want great advice go here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/

The gaming section and what notbook should I buy will help you a lot. Here you will get a lot of false info or really outdated info.

 

[clippen05]

GPU. SLI should be avoided if possible. It's troublesome and has side effects. Doubly so for laptops because it has to cool them both.
SSD. HDD on laptops are shittier than they are on PC. Having a 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD might be a good idea.

Laptops are tricky. They have to have good cooling and they are much more troublesome to upgrade, so they become irrelevant much faster.

Thought it was kinda funny how you said "rig" in reference to a laptop lol. Anyway, yeah, I'd go with a single card over SLI. Not all games support SLI, and you'll likely run into heat issues. Ram is not likely to be a problem if your only going to be displaying on your laptop's screen, I believe. And in regards to SDD's... it really depends.

SLi can be the difference of a game running extremely well or an unplayable slideshow, see Alan Wake before the Sli profile came out (don't worry, Nvidia is fast, and there are temp work arounds), Nvidia makes makes SLi profiles for nearly every game released, probably every game released, as I have not seen one that did not have a profile. I think it's funny that you both still think heat is an issue for gaming notebooks, seriously what year is it for you two? Feels like I am back in 2004 here. I have been running an Sli notebook for 5 years. It eats most games alive, unless they ar PC exclusives which can really push the envelope. Only issues were the build quality it's a Sager NP9850, so steer clear of the Sager/Clevo brand, pretty sure the above Cyberpower are just rebranded Clevos.

If you want great advice go here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/

The gaming section and what notbook should I buy will help you a lot. Here you will get a lot of false info or really outdated info.

I have to disagree. A lot of big name games still do not support SLI, most recently being Company of Heroes 2. I also know that League of Legends does not support SLI. I know that's only two examples, but that's all I know off the top of my head and I'm positive there are more.

 

[Strelok]

I have to disagree. A lot of big name games still do not support SLI, most recently being Company of Heroes 2. I also know that League of Legends does not support SLI. I know that's only two examples, but that's all I know off the top of my head and I'm positive there are more.

League of Legends does not require multiple GPUs, looks like it would run at a decent frame rate on a toaster.

Company of Heroes 2 does not, but that is because of an incompetent dev here's notes from their faq about it:

Q: Does CoH 2 Support SLI/Crossfire?

A: Crossfire and SLI owners are fully supported to run Company of Heroes 2 with the latest drivers and application profiles. Conflicts with how our ColdTech works and how multi-gpu solutions operate introduce an overhead that exceeds the benefit of using the additional GPUs. After consulting with chipset designers we made the decision to have them disable support for multiple GPUs.

What they are likely trying to say is Sli/Crossfire will not cause problems with the game, but additional GPUs are not required. In other words they are aware of the issue, haven't a clue how to fix it.

If this guy wants any hope in Hell of running PC exclusives like Star Citizen you better have SLi/Crossfire.

Edit: I also buy a lot of games, and have run into very few that do not support Sli/Crossfire natively, fixed within a week or two by Nvidia. Could you expand your list to a little more than two?

 

[octafish]

Re: SSD loadtimes. I was missing the first five minutes of a round of BF4 on a 7200rpm SATA 2 HDD, now I am waiting for the server to populate after replacing my tiny old boot SSD with a 500 Gb Samsung SSD. Fast Boot, fast Battlefield, and most importantly, fast Photoshop.

 

[Best of the 3]

Unfortunately I have nothing to contribute because I am totally technologically inept. But I was wondering if anyone in this thread could help me some advice. I've got a bit of spare money now and I was looking to get a laptop as well for gaming, my current one is a bit to old. I was wondering if anyone knew a good laptop for gaming that I could just buy, and from where, and what it would cost?

 

[Kittyhawk]

Two years ago I needed to upgrade from desktop to laptop. I popped over to the Dell website where they let you choose the components for your system. Its a good way to get the gaming laptop performance you want.

My Dell is my life and should last me a damn good few years yet. The bonus is being able to indulge in high end PC gaming again (on the move if needed), beside other tasks.

I have a Core i7, 6gb ram, G550 Nvidia card and a lovely 6hr battery. Make sure you get cool extras like that. Also keep an eye out for discount deals. I got this laptop for £657, discounted from near a thousand.

And if at all possible, use Quid Co.

 

[MercurySteam]

Err.... Rome II Total war is far more intensive that Skyrim. I run Skyrim at a vsynced 60fps maxed out, but can drop down to 20-30 on Rome II on med-high settings. That said, the main bottleneck for Rome II is CPU, but even so it's extremely GPU intensive.

Rome II is largely a poorly optimised game that runs shit on most people's systems, even with the huge CPU reliance.

Dell

Anyone who builds computers knows this rule: never buy from Dell.

Unfortunately I have nothing to contribute because I am totally technologically inept. But I was wondering if anyone in this thread could help me some advice. I've got a bit of spare money now and I was looking to get a laptop as well for gaming, my current one is a bit to old. I was wondering if anyone knew a good laptop for gaming that I could just buy, and from where, and what it would cost?

Buy a desktop. If you already have the peripherals it will be better and cheaper.