Trying to decide on a new laptop

I also don't want an extended battery life, two - two and a half hours would do it, in the name of the other specifications

 

Have you googled for stores that sell customized Clevo laptops?

That way you could choose the hardware yourself and still get a decent price. I think the P170 family comes with an IPS FullHD Matte screen by default. From there, you can choose graphics card, Haswell CPU, RAM, optical drive and what to put in the 2.5" bay and/or mSATA bays.


Unfortunately, I don't think you'll find 1440p laptops outside of the macbook retina and top-end ultrabook models.

 

My wife got issued a 3K 14inch Windows laptop (Fujitsu lifebook) from work and everything she uses seems to work great. She has had zero complaints so far.

 

Also, it doesn't meet most of UT's requirements, but the new dell xps 15 has a gorgeous display, 750m gtx and 8 hr battery...too big for me though.

 

I'm back using my old laptop, a Sandy Bridge based Thinkpad E530. This thing is a hulking beast compared to the T100 and the battery life while not abysmal is sooo much worse. On the plus side the AC adapter can power the laptop and charge it simultaneously, while the T100 could actually die with the high wattage micro USB adapter plugged in and in comparison to the Thinkpad took ages to charge

 

How does the T100 fare using Steam In-Home Streaming?

 

The T100 was destroyed in my car accident.

 

I've checked Windows 8.1 features, there is a feature to scale up old applications. It's maybe Windows 7 that would work not so well. So I'm glad it's better than what I thouht.
I saw a Surface Pro in a store by the way, it's probably similar as it is 1920x1080 on only 10". Looks very neat and the tablet didn't feel oversized.

 

With 4K on a small surface you can probably afford to game at a non native resolution. Hopefully, if the graphics drivers and hardware allow it, simple pixel doubling and pixel tripling would also allow you to play at a "native" 1280x720 or 1920x1080 res in case you don't want any slight text fuzziness in a game.

 

Hmm, it is very interesting to me, this:

MSI GX70-A10897287 - AMD A10-5750M 2.50GHz (DOS)

- 43.94 cm (17.3 ") Full HD LED screen, matte (1920x1080)
- AMD Quad Core A10-5750m 2.50GHz (4MB Cache, 3.50GHz Turbo up)
- 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM
- 750GB SATA HDD 7200rpm, 1x free slot for an additional 2.5 "hard drive
- 2 GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 8970M
- DVD Super Multi Burner
- Wireless LAN 802.11 b / g / n
- Killer E2200 gaming network card
- Bluetooth 4.0
- HD webcam and internal microphone
- Sound Blaster Cinema with subwoofer
operable up to 3 external display - - AMD Eyefinity
- SteelSeries QWERTY keyboard with 3-zone lighting
- 9 cells Li-Ion battery
- Weight: approx 3.90 kg
- without an operating system
- 2 years pick-up and return Manufacturer Warranty Manufacturer no. 00176K-SKU2 Availability: IN STOCK

http://www.notebook.de/msi-gx70-a10897287-amd-a10-5750m-250ghz-dos-p-59217&ref=idealo



http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ing-notebook-review-amd-a10-5750m-tested.html

What do you, guys, think about this beauty?

 

Go for it...as long as the LCD panel isn't TN I'm sure it'll be fine/great for your purposes. MSI is a big player, so it should have good enough quality overall. Specs doesn't state battery life, but I suspect it won't be very long with such a big screen (relatively for a laptop I mean), AMD CPU and a dGPU. Maybe that won't matter to you though, or it'll simply last long enough when just doing normal desktop tasks.

 

Looks like a solid gaming machine. Intel CPU would be better, and I also don't see an SSD in there, but the GPU is very strong.

What is the asking price?

 

Well, there is a review link in my post:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-notebook-review-amd-a10-5750m-tested-12.html

With AMD’s Enduro switchable graphics working in the background, the GX70 provides surprisingly decent battery life, even when gaming. Finding a gaming notebook that boasts nearly 5 hours of unplugged browsing time is a rarity these days and serves as proof that AMD is making huge strides in efficiency and power management.

The battery is good. I think I will not resist to this offer.

900 EUR.

 

Wow that's a great price for such a beefy laptop.

 

I would be happy to go but would you go for it so easily as you recommend it?

Actually, it is exactly a TN panel. But in the review they write only superlatives.

The GPU is M290X, it was my fault to link the MSI GX70 A revision, and not C one.

MSI GX70 -3CC87FD

http://www.notebook.de/msi-gx70-3cc87fd-amd-a10-5750m-250ghz-dos-p-61865&ref=idealo

This is the fastest mobile card from AMD and comes with free Battlefield 4.

 

For the price I'd pull the trigger, TN panel and all. Not all TN panels suck as badly as their reputation would lead you to believe anyway.

The thing I would want the most in there is an Intel CPU, even over an SSD since you can add that later. But again, for the price it's going to be a good little gaming machine, especially in Mantle games assuming Mantle is supported on mobile platforms.

 

Lack of OS is a good feature, no crapware, no recovery partition, control of the partition scheme. It means too that for playing games you're supposed to pay for a 100 euro Windows license on the side.

 

Buy one of these for myself? Hell, no! This one's good for you, not me. It would be way too big for my needs (I like 13.3 inch size), probably too heavy also, and I generally detest plastic PC laptops running windows as they tend to be creaky with flexing chassis, as well as poorly integrated, hardware and software-wise (may need separate drivers for some pieces of hardware like trackpad, wifi/networking, graphics and so on.)

When I buy a new laptop, it will be a Mac, as I like metal and glass construction and high-quality innards, trackpad, screen and keyboard. Also, magsafe power connector beats anything I've seen on a PC laptop. They all tend to have that standard round power plug that breaks off whenever you stumble over the charging cable, thus pulling the computer with it...

I would be suspicious. TN panels always have flaws in some manner or other, so if possible I'd recommend you'd look at the screen in person, if at all possible. Anyway, maybe you're not (as) demanding as I am and maybe the screen will be fine for your needs. Best of luck with your purchase.

 

Beware of that CPU, it's really an achilles' heel compared to almost any Intel solution and it puts quite a weight in gaming performance.

For example, that hardwarecanucks review shows an Ivybridge with a GK107 (2 SMXs, 384 shaders) being some 30% away from that A10-5750 + Pitcairn. The HD8970 should run circles around the GTX660M, but it doesn't because of the CPU.

Check the results in notebookcheck for the results with different CPUs (press the FPS numbers when you find two different values in a game/settings).
There are some very large differences in performance between the A10-5750 and the slowest Haswell Core i7.
For example, at the same settings the AMD gets 23FPS in Company of Heroes 2 while the Intel gets 47FPS.
GRID 2: goes from 38FPS in the AMD versus 62FPS in the Intel.
Metro Last Light: 29FPS AMD versus 56FPS with the Intel.
Far Cry 3: 33FPS AMD vs. 61FPS Intel

The list goes on and on, with too many games showing a huge performance deficit with the AMD CPU.

That said, you might be better off with a Haswell Core i7 + GK106 (GTX765M, GTX770M). Those GPUs are starting to appear in some laptops below 1000€ and you might get a better all-round machine in the end (not to mention slimmer and lighter).

Preferably, you'd wait for laptops with the new Maxwell chip, GTX860M. If those come to laptops under 1000€ with Haswell CPUs then I'm pretty sure you'll get better performance than the AMD+HD8970.

It's a shame that AMD's CPU cores have been so bad on the performance/watt for the last several years. Bulldozer was such a bad idea...

 

I am willing to sacrifice the CPU from AMD in the name of more performance but changing AMD+AMD to Intel+Nvidia is never going to happen.
In my original specifications I clearly stated that I wanna Radeon.

I need a clear proposal, a specific laptop model, as in this list:

http://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich...-1039484-2394397-2394403-2462245-2941921.html

How about this Samsung?

Samsung NP700G7A-S02DE

43.94 cm (17.3 inches), Full HD SuperBright © Plus Glossy LED Display
Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels (16:9 HD)
Intel Core i7-2630QM 4x2.00GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6970M
RAM: 16GB
HDD: 2x 750GB HDD
Optical drive: Blu-ray (BD-ROM) and DVD + /-RW DL

The battery is clearly worse tho, display is glossy.

959 EUR for a used one.




Edit:

Or maybe it is indeed the best to wait at least one year.
Intel's Broadwell on 14nm will be released and perhaps there will be more information and progress on the GloFo buying IBM's fabs?
AMD could very well benefit and use it to build faster processors on new nodes?