How long will my laptop last for?

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

Id say about next Thursday.

[LuDux]

Thanks for the quick reply dude, just wondering, would you say your graphics card is better/equal/worse than mine? I know that they're probably better because you've got two and your running them in SLI, but on the whole, which would you say was better? Thanks.

 

 

I honestly could only guess. Maybe a bit better? Mainly because with two 460's I have a total of 2GB of graphics RAM to work with. Really, for any current or near-future games, I imagine my setup may be a /bit/ better than yours, but nothing to really worry over.

 

I think I might upgrade once the 6xx round of Nvidia's next cards come out, and once the high end of that has become stable, or maybe even the 7xx series.

 

For now, since most games are made for consoles first (DirectX 9), there isn't a noticible benefit to a high end graphics card unless you're playing one of a handful of games, or really seriously tweaking stuff for absolute maximum performance. For the vast majority of games, even a card from two years ago can run almost everything in high settings. I expect that trend to continue.

[Rennn]

Thanks for the quick reply dude, just wondering, would you say your graphics card is better/equal/worse than mine? I know that they're probably better because you've got two and your running them in SLI, but on the whole, which would you say was better? Thanks.

 

 

I honestly could only guess. Maybe a bit better? Mainly because with two 460's I have a total of 2GB of graphics RAM to work with. Really, for any current or near-future games, I imagine my setup may be a /bit/ better than yours, but nothing to really worry over.

 

 

GTX 460's in SLI will probably outperform that card by quite a lot if I recall the core speeds correctly (somewhere around 900-1000Mhz, with a 1400ish shader clock? It's been a while since I looked that model of GTX 460 up). The thing to understand is that unlike standalone cards, you can't really gauge a mobility card by VRAM, since core speeds are usually scaled back to allow for better cooling and battery life. Having said that, I'd be very surprised if either setup was unable to maintain high (maybe not ultra, but high) settings on the latest and future games. Games like BF3 might need a new $500 card to play on ultra with all the bells and whistles, but most games don't require that much.

Edited January 14, 2012 by Rennn

[RitchieTheMerc]

Thanks for the quick reply dude, just wondering, would you say your graphics card is better/equal/worse than mine? I know that they're probably better because you've got two and your running them in SLI, but on the whole, which would you say was better? Thanks.

 

 

I honestly could only guess. Maybe a bit better? Mainly because with two 460's I have a total of 2GB of graphics RAM to work with. Really, for any current or near-future games, I imagine my setup may be a /bit/ better than yours, but nothing to really worry over.

 

 

GTX 460's in SLI will probably outperform that card by quite a lot if I recall the core speeds correctly (somewhere around 900-1000Mhz, with a 1400ish shader clock? It's been a while since I looked that model of GTX 460 up). The thing to understand is that unlike standalone cards, you can't really gauge a mobility card by VRAM, since core speeds are usually scaled back to allow for better cooling and battery life. Having said that, I'd be very surprised if either setup was unable to maintain high (maybe not ultra, but high) settings on the latest and future games. Games like BF3 might need a new $500 card to play on ultra with all the bells and whistles, but most games don't require that much.

 

Yeah, I just looked it up on YouTube, and there's a video of some guy using my exact same laptop with Fraps on High settings. No lag. I was like :blink:

[eltucu]

No way that the CPU is going to be a bottleneck.

 

But for the GPU, thats a 550m card. 96 shaders, 128bit memory bus. It should be a bit more powerful than a 8800GTS of the good ol days. A single GTX460 should outperform that 550m by a very wide margin. If we take a guess just by the numbers, that is, 336 shaders and 256 bit wide bus for the GTX460, you can clearly see the difference we're talking here. That said, gpu clock speed wasnt the best thing of the GTX460, but still, more than triple the ammount of shaders surely makes up for it.

 

As ren said, you cant really compare a mobility card to a desktop version. Mobility ones are veeeeeery crippled chips.

 

That CPU is based off the Sandy Bridge architecture, really nice, that thing should last a good while. But if you're running anything above 1366x768 res(or anything at 1366x768 with high details), then you card will suffer a lot.

Edited January 14, 2012 by eltucu

[LuDux]

And I guess I should have mentioned I'm running on Ultra, not the highest AA though, and a bunch of highest-rez texture mods, with only very brief lag once I start my game while stuff loads, then no lag thereafter.

 

That said, Skyrim in high or even medium settings, with texture mods, remains outright beautiful.

[faifh]

You're right; your cpu will be the bottleneck for sure.

 

How you get that idea? Its a top-notch CPU. And no icore5 isn't in most real applications any worse than icore7, only some virtualisations with multi-visors or something like that benefit from it. Also industry development on CPU has recently quite slowed down comparing to the 1980-2005, so I suppose a good CPU today will still hold its ground for quite a few years. Of course its impossible to tell the future, maybe tomorrow there is a hugh break through that ten-folds CPU time, but I don't see it coming, with linear processing, silicon based, transistor based computing, they have quite reached a ceiling and currently try to improve with more and more cores. I suppose we will need a major technolgoy change for a drastic improvement, and thats unsure when that will hit the market.

 

Oh I ran skyrim with a Dell-Business Laptop with no gamers graphic card, worked quite well with medium setting. I think with laptops you really use as laptop - take it mobile, there hardware abrasion is much more a concern. I take mine daily on the train, and have yet to have a laptop that survived more than 4 years. Battery gets wonky, lid closing, scratches here there, keyboard abrasion, etc. The display lamp has also a limited live time, but never had one running long enough to see it fail.

Edited January 14, 2012 by faifh

[scrivener07]

How you get that idea? Its a top-notch CPU. And no icore5 isn't in most real applications any worse than icore7, only some virtualisations with multi-visors or something like that benefit from it. Also industry development on CPU has recently quite slowed down comparing to the 1980-2005, so I suppose a good CPU today will still hold its ground for quite a few years.

 

Yup, software developers will always be designing software for whatever they think is the lowest factor (worst hardware) of their target consumer to increase their overall consumer base. So I guess you could also say software designed this way could also hold back advances in hardware tech and prices. Ill stop before I hijack this thread.

 

Id say your laptop will serve you well for 4+ years as long as you just want to play games and you dont expect to run games with bleeding edge settings past that.