jhelzei Posted November 10, 2017 Author Share Posted November 10, 2017 When you're playing a game (FO4) that uses up to 12GB of RAM overall, then you're going to be faced with a problem when having only 9GB of RAM overall. Even when the GPU would have 4GB, that's still just 12GB with an OS and background programs that need roughly 2.5GB of system RAM. I don't care too much how many letters and numbers NVidia drops on whatever laptop GPU. You're still dealing with a heat generating item in a tiny, badly ventilated box. That's why I will never consider a laptop for gaming purposes. Again, that's me. But I guess it's good news that laptop GPUs no longer suffer from being much slower than their desktop counterparts.Is that 12GB of RAM when using ultra (or even 4k) textures? I imagine low res textures will use quite a bit less VRAM/DRAM. The laptop can take up to 16GB of DRAM. I do have 2x8GB modules I can drop in. However - the laptop is supposed to take DDR3L. I think my modules are the right speed (1600MHz), but I think they're plain DDR3. Would that be compatible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iXenite Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 (edited) When you're playing a game (FO4) that uses up to 12GB of RAM overall, then you're going to be faced with a problem when having only 9GB of RAM overall. Even when the GPU would have 4GB, that's still just 12GB with an OS and background programs that need roughly 2.5GB of system RAM. I don't care too much how many letters and numbers NVidia drops on whatever laptop GPU. You're still dealing with a heat generating item in a tiny, badly ventilated box. That's why I will never consider a laptop for gaming purposes. Again, that's me. But I guess it's good news that laptop GPUs no longer suffer from being much slower than their desktop counterparts. When does Fallout 4 ever use 12GB's of system memory at once? I've only watch benchmarks of Fallout 4 - as my current setup isn't quite strong enough to play it - so I'm not really familiar with all of its ins and outs. Does it have a bad memory leak or something? Or, are you combining VRAM and system RAM as an analogy or something? If so - then yeah it does use around that much. The Vanilla game uses around 2 GB's of VRAM and can use like 8GB's of system RAM from what I've seen. Edited November 10, 2017 by DaddyDirection Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyRJump Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 I'm playing on Ultra settings in 1080p. I said 12GB overall, which means system RAM and V-RAM combined. The game has been known to have major RAM spikes since the day it was released because of really bad optimisation. There's also problems with the game's way of rendering as of version 1.3 or thereabout, when they switched to a streaming system instead of direct rendering, which makes that some of the textures can take a while to load or sometimes don't even load at all. And it's the other way round for me. In my case, the game uses an average of around 3GB of system RAM (sometimes up to 5GB) and around 7.5GB of V-RAM. I'm also using ENBoost to make the game use system RAM as V-RAM just to make sure the game doesn't croak on me. Many folks on here have said that lowering game settings doesn't do much to the RAM use. Only lowering the resolution has a real impact. I've tried and have to agree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhelzei Posted November 12, 2017 Author Share Posted November 12, 2017 So the deal for the 750M laptop fell through. I thought about what you guys said, and scraped my pennies together and got this: https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-15-7000-2017/review/ I got the model with a 4GB 1050 Ti and IPS screen (which fixes the viewing angles), but I only got a 256GB SSD. I do have a 500GB spinner I can drop in the extra HD bay. I've run some benchmarks on it and performance looks good. Next I'll be installing/transferring my FO4, Oldrim and SSE installs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyRJump Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 Congrats on the buy... doesn't look to shabby for that kind of money either, eh? Have fun :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhelzei Posted November 12, 2017 Author Share Posted November 12, 2017 Got it on sale too...$699 for the $899 model (quad i5, 256GB SSD, 4GB 1050 Ti, 8GB DRAM). Hopefully it can handle the 12GB vram/dram peak you're seeing. Running 50 - 60 fps on Ultra at 1080p in Nuka-World so far, but I'll have to try it out in Diamond City and see how it does. Performance and speakers are nice, but the wifi and keyboard are meh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iXenite Posted November 12, 2017 Share Posted November 12, 2017 I'm playing on Ultra settings in 1080p. I said 12GB overall, which means system RAM and V-RAM combined. The game has been known to have major RAM spikes since the day it was released because of really bad optimisation. There's also problems with the game's way of rendering as of version 1.3 or thereabout, when they switched to a streaming system instead of direct rendering, which makes that some of the textures can take a while to load or sometimes don't even load at all. And it's the other way round for me. In my case, the game uses an average of around 3GB of system RAM (sometimes up to 5GB) and around 7.5GB of V-RAM. I'm also using ENBoost to make the game use system RAM as V-RAM just to make sure the game doesn't croak on me. Many folks on here have said that lowering game settings doesn't do much to the RAM use. Only lowering the resolution has a real impact. I've tried and have to agree. That's very interesting. I suppose an SSD would help with asset loading in this game a great deal. I suppose it depends on how much RAM you have installed as well. If you only have 8GB's of RAM installed the game may compress the memory usage to use less of it - and if you have 16GB's it wont compress the RAM usage and let it use as much as it needs. As for ENB Boost - I wasn't aware that it did that, that's cool to know. It's my understanding that the biggest help to framerate for Fallout 4 is lowering the shadow render distance to Medium (which I believe is the lowest it goes) and then lower shadow quality to High rather than Ultra. It renders all shadows in the game on a single core of your CPU - which is one of the big things that chokes performance in the city areas. It's a real shame on how poorly design Fallout 4 is from a technical standpoint. It doesn't utilize the hardware the way it should at all. So the deal for the 750M laptop fell through. I thought about what you guys said, and scraped my pennies together and got this: https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-15-7000-2017/review/ I got the model with a 4GB 1050 Ti and IPS screen (which fixes the viewing angles), but I only got a 256GB SSD. I do have a 500GB spinner I can drop in the extra HD bay. I've run some benchmarks on it and performance looks good. Next I'll be installing/transferring my FO4, Oldrim and SSE installs... That's a good buy, you should get plenty of good use out of that. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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