Trying to decide on a new laptop

That's too bad. IMO AMD's offerings for notebooks are really lackluster compared to nVidia at the moment (this is coming from a guy who just bought a R9 290X).

For some WTF reason, AMD has been seating for over a year with Bonaire out and without bringing it to laptops. Bonaire is the desktop GCN GPU with the best performance/consumption and already has TrueAudio and GCN1.1.


Not to mention that all of AMD's notebook graphics cards you find in the market are over 2 years old.
Pitcairn is HD7970M = HD8970M = R9 M290X.
You know something is wrong when they have to name 3 cards with the exact same chip, two of them with the exact same clocks.
Or maybe they're just trying to beat nVidia in their guinness world record of number of times they renamed G92.

HD7970M = R9 M290X... talk about misleading naming...

 

Graphics chip renaming is the scourge of the computing industry. It's basically fraud, plain and simple. Completely and wholly deplorable.

 

Yes, GF 8800GT= GF 9800GT= GF GTS 250 is equally shitty, but given that they did it first, maybe we should blame them for teaching AMD.

Anyways, I will wait for Pirate Islands on 20nm, Broadwell on 14nm, and whatever else comes from AMD as CPU improvements. And also 17.3' Ultra HD 4K panels + Windows 9.

I think this should be the smartest and fairest decision.

 

No no, its to prevent customer confusion. just ask Dave

 

It would be a good idea to ask Dave why they don't use Bonaire in mobile platforms.
Bonaire however has a lower than Pitcairn absolute performance.
And why Pitcairn has two mobile codenames, Wimbledon and Neptune.

 

This sub-forum probably isn't prominent enough to catch Dave's attention.

Not that I assume he would present us with the thorough explanation we'd like to hear, though.

 

Sadly, the explanation itself won't fix the problems that AMD have. Perhaps they have some internal logic not to do it.

Who knows, time is ticking away and waiting for good products is painful, we need them now.

 

GM107 is a great low power part. Better even than Bonaire. Unfortunately the NVIDIA's mobile naming scheme makes it difficult to tell what chip you're getting. Even the same model number GPUs can have either Maxwell or Kepler!

 

I will go with the all AMD machine from MSI, the GX70.

Just need to find spare 700 EUR, 200 EUR I will take from my oldie laptop.

Keep your fingers crossed to fix my vulnerable finances and I will for it, as soon as possible!

 

Best of luck, but I think it's a terrible choice of a laptop.
You'd do substantially better by building a Clevo with a Haswell+Maxwell combo.

But maybe you'll be lucky and get to play lots of games with Mantle, where that CPU may not hinder the overal performance so much.



I'm not saying AMD is eternally incompetent regarding laptops. But this is an awful timing to get an all-AMD system.

 

Clevo don't have so good design and execution of the body of their laptops. Seems that what I saw, I don't like it.

There is no need for Maxwell because R9 M290X is very very good graphics.

Intel or lack thereof seems to be the only drawback but I will live with it.

Unless you show something spectacular and change my opinion which hasn't happened yet.

I am not going to research on my own anymore, simply because I am already very bored, tired and don't believe there is something better for 900 EUR.

Why is it bad timing for all-AMD machine?

 

Rather then searching for an Intel machine, search for a SSD machine. Only afterwards you should talk about cpus, which are only your second bottleneck.

 

I can put an additional SSD later on my own because here (http://www.notebook.de/msi-gx70-3cc87fd-amd-a10-5750m-250ghz-dos-p-61865&ref=idealo) it seems they overcharge (190 EUR) for a 128 GB one!

Edit: Can we trust that there will be a TI released in July as this post from the PI thread sugggests:

Once again, is it because of this, "bad timing for an all-AMD system"?

 

First of all, I wouldn't even fathom the idea of going back fo a PC without a SSD for the O.S., ever again.
Having the OS in a SSD is the single most important thing you'll ever want in a PC, period.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I have a Clevo, I know several people who recently got Clevos and we are all very happy with the build quality of our laptops.
They won't win any beauty contests but they're really sturdy and made to last.
My W110ER is a work horse. I've been carrying it to work and used it over 8-hours a day for the last 2 years and it doesn't seem to be on the verge of failing any time soon. And if it does, the only moving part in it is a fan that can be very easily replaced.

I did show you something spectacular. The AMD A10 CPU actually halves the games' performance when compared to a mobile Core i5/i7.

That A10 CPU is spectacularly bad. You can tell from a kilometer away that the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture was not made with mobile devices in mind.
The CPU cores' IPC is very bad and they're constantly throttling down to minimum speeds because of their inefficiency.

Steamroller mobile APUs coming out sometime this year might be a tad better and at least their iGPUs can eventually be used for computing tasks since they're GCN parts.

Because their current CPUs/APUs are ~2 year-old models based on the inefficient Bulldozer architecture and made on the now-aging 32nm process.
The Kaveri-based parts should be quite a bit better and more efficient and they should appear within the next months.

Furthermore, all their mobile GPUs are now over 2 years-old and the 20nm Pirate Islands shouldn't take too long to appear, carrying significantly better performance/watt and performance/price.


So as I said, an all-AMD laptop right now is a huge mistake IMO.

 

I am sensitive to beauty and eye-candies and I won't enjoy your laptop.

Everything else I understand.

Thanks.

 

Guys, opinions please about this:

Toshiba Satellite L70-B-113 Notebook

Intel® Core™ i7-4700HQ (2.4 GHz, Turbo Boost bis 3.4 GHz, 6 MB Intel® Smart Cache)
• 43,9 cm (17,3") glänzendes 1920 x 1080 Full HD LED TFT
• AMD Radeon™ R9 M265X mit 2GB Grafikspeicher
• 8 GB RAM, 750 GB Festplatte, DVD Brenner
• HDMI, VGA, USB 3.0, WLAN 802.11 a/c/g/n, Bluetooth® 4.0
• X,X kg, Akkulaufzeit bis zu X h, Microsoft® Windows® 8.1 (64 Bit)

http://www.comtech.de/Notebook-und-.../Idealo/Notebook-und-Laptop/Toshiba-Notebooks

Review at http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/laptop/3467276/toshiba-satellite-p70-review/

€ 799,00

 

So, this silence should mean that no one approves the laptop or what?

What doesn't anyone say anything? No one has Toshiba or MSI laptops?

 

As several people mentioned before in this very same thread, a laptop without a SSD isn't even worth considering.

You'll probably be able to play new-gen titles at 720p comfortably with that laptop, but the 2 year-old Cape Verde is showing its age..
The only recent GPU you'll find nowadays is the GM107 in the GT 850M which really does loops around everything else for that same target budget and power envelope (about twice the gaming performance of the R9 M265X in many games).

 

Man, it will need to have two drives anyways (I can't afford paying price premiums for large SSD storage anyways), I can put a cheap SSD on my own, it is just trivial. I am not building my laptop around the SSD, but will put it after the purchase, eventually.

This Toshiba is not good either way, is it?

 

I like that a lot more than the previous one you posted. Great CPU and good GPU (for a laptop). As you said you can throw an SSD in later.

Obviously you won't be gaming at max settings at 1080p, but if you settle for 720p you'll be in good shape. Just keep in mind, the GeForce 860M would be a better choice. Better performance and power consumption.