Back into the PC Master Race. It was never a total absence but still.

[Cyan]

You will become SSD-spoiled SO quickly. It's ridiculous, as soon as I use a computer with a HDD these days I think there's something wrong with it, everything takes so long to finish...

now I know that feeling. Got the laptop and in less than 5 minutes -pictures below- things were installed and working, that's impressive because I am used to install lots of OSes anew in machine with HDs but it's the first time I installed an OS on a SSD.





Another interesting thing is the SSD drive's silence, of course, which I am grateful for. Very happy with this laptop, especially because I tend to prefer sleek portable and capable devices.

Looking at it in terms of compactness, capabilities, speed -the SSD helps a lot- silence -except when pushed hard-, it's the best computer I've ever had. My desktop machine is better in raw performance but I find this better overall.

My main gripe with it is the sound, the speakers are so bad and have no bass sound whatsoever, but I shall try to live with that.

Everything else is fine with me -the power cable though isn't so firm when you have it attached to the laptop, but that's a non issue for me 'cos I am careful about pulls- and it can do a bit of everything because of the 4gb 1050 -non Ti- and the processor, you can even play any eSports game fine with it.

Also got a Trust GXT 278 cooling stand, not because I play very demanding games on PC -usually it's the other way around- but because I've had laptops for 15 years and you know how it goes.

 

[Grall]

Damn, that's a 1980s punk-ass burd you got as a desktop background there!

Just as a fun experiment, try to go back to a HDD after a few months, see how it feels...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

My main gripe with it is the sound, the speakers are so bad and have no bass sound whatsoever, but I shall try to live with that.

Treat yourself to a really nice pair of headphones. V-Moda makes some high quality affordable headphones if you wanted a place to start. Combined with either Windows Sonic for headphones or Dolby Atmos for headphones, you can get some really nice sound out of any device.

If the headphone output on your laptop isn't that good, you can also do something like the Kingston HyperX series headphones which come with USB connectors for digital audio. They also have good sound reproduction for the price.

Regards,
SB

 

[zed]

You will become SSD-spoiled SO quickly. It's ridiculous, as soon as I use a computer with a HDD these days I think there's something wrong with it, everything takes so long to finish...

that and the garbage disposal noise, I have 2 ssd's and now are wanting a M.2 one, though that requires me to get a whole new motherboard/cpu but since cpu speed increases have slowed down so much over the last few years upgrading apart from the M.2 isnt really justified. Comeon intel/AMD get your act together, make me upgrade

 

[Cyan]

Damn, that's a 1980s punk-ass burd you got as a desktop background there!

Just as a fun experiment, try to go back to a HDD after a few months, see how it feels...

hahahah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I wonder which bird it is, maybe a bird of paradise? The picture is from a theme in the w10 store.

That's not a bad idea, but I do hope I dont have to do that on this computer. My desktop computer is faster but it does feel a lot slower.

One can notice it when the OS launches (W10 Home of my laptop and W10 Pro in my desktop computer, it's just a few seconds in my laptop vs more than a minute in my desktop) or simply after restarting from the lock screen. It's night and day.

Even things like switching from a youtube channel to another in the left side notification screen on youtube feels orders of magnitude faster.

 

[Cyan]

that and the garbage disposal noise, I have 2 ssd's and now are wanting a M.2 one, though that requires me to get a whole new motherboard/cpu but since cpu speed increases have slowed down so much over the last few years upgrading apart from the M.2 isnt really justified. Comeon intel/AMD get your act together, make me upgrade

can attest to that, my laptop's CPU i7 7700HQ is slightly slower -but not much, has the same 4C/8T- than the Ryzen 1500X of my desktop computer, and the 1050 4GB vs RX 570 4GB isn't a match for the RX 570, but to me this is the best computer I've ever had 'cos it is mobile and feels faster overall.

Another cool thing is that it has 2 GPUs. That's an amazing plus! I dont just play AAA games and my main GPU is the i7's integrated GPU which with 24 compute units is not that bad! So I can play my Heroes of Might and Magic like games, emulators, modern games with decent graphics, just on the integrated graphics unit. And the computer never slows down.

I mean..you can say play a AAA game on the 1050 with decent settings and go to the os desktop and everything works smooth. Or you can play a game on the integrated graphics card and another on the 1050, or mine with the 1050 or whatever. None of that slows the system down.

 

[Cyan]

Treat yourself to a really nice pair of headphones. V-Moda makes some high quality affordable headphones if you wanted a place to start. Combined with either Windows Sonic for headphones or Dolby Atmos for headphones, you can get some really nice sound out of any device.

If the headphone output on your laptop isn't that good, you can also do something like the Kingston HyperX series headphones which come with USB connectors for digital audio. They also have good sound reproduction for the price.

Regards,
SB

gotta look into that because the sound of this thing is sooo bad. It's acceptable overall but your ears can start to cringe with the super high trebles. One good thing about it though is that, I finally have an integrated mic in my PC. That's another plus, to talk with my friends when they play emulators online or on GoG, Steam...

Gotta begin to save money again because I dont have the luxury to spend much more now. For now the first priority is to increase the RAM to 16GB with another 8GB ddr4 2400MHz mem stick --finally laptops are easy to open and manipulate, unlike in the past where they were super protected and you almost needed engineering skills and tools to get them open. Then do something about the sound. Both things might take a while, it depends.

A feature which is a sleeper for me and an eye opener is the illuminated keyboard. (you can switch it on and off)

I studied typewriting for 5 years as part of my administrative studies so I know how to place my fingers and type fast. But...on low light conditions I could get easily lost while writing using my previous laptops and my classic desktop keyboard. And this is a life saver, especially at night.

I think HP managed to build a sleek piece of hardware overall.

 

[Grall]

@Cyan
Yeah, illuminated keyboards are great. I wish Apple would make illuminated desktop keyboards like on their portables... I have a glowy red keys Corsair board for my main PC rig, and it's a bother to switch over to the mac when it is out of commission (such as right now, as I'm replacing fans in it now.) First-world problem, I know, but my eyes aren't the best these days either so I have a somewhat valid excuse to feel this way also.

that and the garbage disposal noise, I have 2 ssd's and now are wanting a M.2 one

Don't sweat it with the M.2 SSD, mate. The speed increase versus a SATA SSD is almost imperceptible under normal desktop usage scenarios. My previous main PC rig had a SATA SSD from 2012 in it; it was a performance-leading drive at the time but in tests it has slipped way down the charts now. Still, compared to my new rig with the Samsung 960 M.2 Evo drive in it, there's almost no difference at all. If I was to run huge database sorting jobs or whatever, the M.2 would probably complete way faster, but just surfing, running some programs and games and stuff it's literally only a second or two difference here and there. You don't even notice, unless you watch the loading bar in a game like a hawk.

 

[Davros]

I studied typewriting for 5 years

It doesnt take that long

 

[zed]

just surfing, running some programs and games and stuff it's literally only a second or two difference here and there. You don't even notice, unless you watch the loading bar in a game like a hawk.

Sure if you're gaming/surfing/office/graphics etc it prolly wont make a huge difference but I do a fair bit of prolly the worse thing you can do on a PC, make music. Loading an instrument each between 1-100MB, which usually a take a couple of seconds to load, times that by perhaps 100 instruments that you check out before you find a decent one (I normally give up before I find a perfect one), unlike say graphics where you can view many thumbnails at once and quickly discard those that you dont want with music you have to load it before you can hear it. I've seen sound libraries that approach the 1TB mark! I always find it surprising that take a media file, the actual audio part is perhaps 1/4 - 1/3 of the file. Wierd I would of instinctively thought that visuals were require far more data than audio but they don't

 

[Grall]

@zed

You could just RAID0 together a few SATA SSDs and get big speedup if you need to load a lot of data. It's cheaper and simpler than buying new mobo with m.2 slot.

 

[zed]

Thanks man, I had no idea about that, I do have 2x250 SSD
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2365767/feed-your-greed-for-speed-by-installing-ssds-in-raid-0.html
it does look like ~50% speed increase, not near the ~6x increase of M.2 but still I have all the necessary hardware so its definitely work checking out

 

[Grall]

it does look like ~50% speed increase

Saw somewhere of a person raiding (maybe by using windows built-in software striping) three samsung 850/860 evo drives or whatchamacallem, got like 1.5GB/s transfer rate. Fairly decent.

So could be worth checking out...

 

[Cyan]

It doesnt take that long

well, tbh, first year was the most intense, we had 5 hours of typewriting a week (1 hour a day), 2nd year they reduced it to 4 (1 hour a day), 3rd year just 3 hours (also 1 hour a day), 4th years 2 hours (1 hour a day too) and the last year only 1 hour a week.

Thanks man, I had no idea about that, I do have 2x250 SSD
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2365767/feed-your-greed-for-speed-by-installing-ssds-in-raid-0.html
it does look like ~50% speed increase, not near the ~6x increase of M.2 but still I have all the necessary hardware so its definitely work checking out

Saw somewhere of a person raiding (maybe by using windows built-in software striping) three samsung 850/860 evo drives or whatchamacallem, got like 1.5GB/s transfer rate. Fairly decent.

So could be worth checking out...

raid 0 is the way to go.

On another note, the 2 GPUs thing of the laptop reminds of the fact that I believed in the XB1 secret sauce and thought that its weaker GPU was meant to be a double GPU system. I was totally into 3D then and got a 1080p 3DTV thinking that the XB1 perhaps was going to be some kind of full-fledged non portable 3DS...

 

[Grall]

thought that its weaker GPU was meant to be a double GPU system.

So you were thinking it would have two of these weaker GPUs then, one for each eye essentially?

Hmm. Interesting theory. Would have been a cool gimmick to try out methinks!

 

[Cyan]

So you were thinking it would have two of these weaker GPUs then, one for each eye essentially?

Hmm. Interesting theory. Would have been a cool gimmick to try out methinks!

yes, that was the idea basically, imho it would have a bit more soul than what they ended up with.

 

[Cyan]

currently downloading 3DMark from Steam --I installed GoG and Steam today- to see how it performs the laptop. Also, I've been playing one of my favourite games ever at 4k on my desktop monitor. Without extra effects 4k is a game changer, everything looks so crisp like never before, and you get to see that the textures were quite good for the time.

 

[Cyan]

well, another step in this long "return home for Christmas" PC journey. I knew about ISP screens and used them in real life but never had one that was my own to use for hours. And now that I have one....I kinda feel bad about having had TN panels until now, even my 4k screen which can look gorgeous, can't compare. Long story short, I had to return my laptop, 'cos I had bought some kind of refurbished version of the HP Omen 17-W211NS, and I saved myself 200€ (the laptop normally costs 1105€ and I paid 900€).

Liked it so very much I took care of it as if my life depended on it... (cooling base, not a single scratch..,etc). But as fate would have it, it suddenly stopped working after a week. It just shut down like a desktop machine would do, suddenly, even if the battery was plugged and charged 100%. It never ever worked again.

So I returned it, made a one last little extra effort and purchased this. It just had FreeDOS, no other OS, it is a bit expensive, but this now is the best computer I've ever had, if you take into account the screen, the 256GB SSD, how light it is -just 1.8Kg, almost as light as my notebook- and finally, 16GB of RAM. That's where most of my savings went, so no christmas gifts for me.

This is the computer.

MSI GS63 7RE-048XES Stealth Pro with Intel Core i7-7700HQ/16GB/1TB+256SSD/GTX1050Ti/15.6" FHD ISP screen

 

[Cyan]

Has anyone tried the new AMD Adrenaline drivers? Allegedly, the increase in performance is spectacular!! A friend of mine asked me via WhatsApp if I had tried them on my RX 570 and told me that the 3DMark test of his RX 480 graphics card increased 1400 points!!!!!!!

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-art...-Adrenalin-Edition-17.12.1-Release-Notes.aspx

 

[Grall]

Well I've installed it, but not run any benches or anything since my vegas are still stuck in friggin' Denmark. Anyhoo, 3dmark increase isn't really interesting since it's a pretty boring game if you get what I'm saying...