New laptop, Trying to decide... Options

[Tech_Rat]

I'm looking at getting the Republic of Gamers G74SX by Asus. It seems, all in all, a better deal than comparable Alienware laptops. Any thoughts?

[Seriously Mike]

Alienware is overpriced crap, that's for starters. Also, you might want to check non-ROG Asus stuff, it may be cheaper while having similar parameters. I got mine for $700 or so and it still went through a lot of modern games on at least medium settings (Crysis stuttered on High, Brink was unplayable due to shitty optimalization, Dead Island ran on High without problems).
Also, avoid Dells, they have shitty cooling, for example my friend's Inspiron N5010 shuts down after ten minutes of playing anything and gets insanely hot just running Windows.

[Blade]

Avoid Acer. Most people I know who've got Acer laptops had to change them after 1 or 2 years.
Nowadays most laptops get hot quickly when gaming, and they have to slow down to avoid overheating so you might consider getting a cooling stand.

[Tanegar]

Why a laptop? Go full-on nerd and build a tower!

[Seriously Mike]

Avoid Acer. Most people I know who've got Acer laptops had to change them after 1 or 2 years.
Nowadays most laptops get hot quickly when gaming, and they have to slow down to avoid overheating so you might consider getting a cooling stand.

Oh yes. Acer, the brand for superspies: their laptops have built-in self-destruct devices!
Also, my Asus isn't overheating as heavily on full blast as that Inspiron did, must be better-designed cooling.

Why a laptop? Go full-on nerd and build a tower!

Yeah. Especially that a 17-inch laptop isn't really portable.

[Stahlseele]

MSI has some pretty nice 15.6" gaming machines.

[Seriously Mike]

As does Asus. Can't say a bad thing about my N52.

[Tech_Rat]

Alienware is overpriced crap, that's for starters. Also, you might want to check non-ROG Asus stuff, it may be cheaper while having similar parameters. I got mine for $700 or so and it still went through a lot of modern games on at least medium settings (Crysis stuttered on High, Brink was unplayable due to shitty optimalization, Dead Island ran on High without problems).
Also, avoid Dells, they have shitty cooling, for example my friend's Inspiron N5010 shuts down after ten minutes of playing anything and gets insanely hot just running Windows.

Thanks for the pointers.

Avoid Acer. Most people I know who've got Acer laptops had to change them after 1 or 2 years.
Nowadays most laptops get hot quickly when gaming, and they have to slow down to avoid overheating so you might consider getting a cooling stand.

My acer netbook still runs fine. 2.5 years solid.

Why a laptop? Go full-on nerd and build a tower!

I'm a truck driver. Until I get my dream truck, my space is at a premium. As much as I would love to, I just don't have the space for a full on, properly built, custom tower.

[Stahlseele]

Get one with an SSD.
If you move it lots of time and have it active in a moving truck an SSD will be better than a normal HDD.
As i said. Look at MSI Laptops. Nice ones with both SSD and HDD.

[Faraday]

I'm a truck driver. Until I get my dream truck, my space is at a premium. As much as I would love to, I just don't have the space for a full on, properly built, custom tower.

Yeah, this is one of those niches where a desktop replacement laptop is actually pretty useful. I mean, you can leave a rig at home, but I'd NEVER take my PC on the road. I wouldn't bother for a vacation, much less hauling down the road.
That said, with the tighter margin of choosing between power, heat, and price you'll have to make sacrifices somewhere. I've had good luck with small asus laptops myself. Probably not enough power for your needs, but there you go.

Also, I agree with getting an SSD. Right now there is a run on standard hard drives due to WD and a bunch of manufacturers getting flooded in Taiwan, so relative prices have narrowed by quite a bit. Getting an SSD will still cost more, but it'll likely be shipped faster as well as perform more quickly.
Oh, and btw, the mechanical hard drive shortage is expected to last until fall 2012. My guesstimate says prices should relax again early 2013, finally easing to pre-flood levels around 2014 maybe.

[Tech_Rat]

I'm definitely getting an SSD. That's been a primary factor all along. I still am not sure if I should get one and enjoy the savings[I don't use a lot of space. 50-80gb for android development, 20gb for windows OS, and all of my games fit on a 40gb], Get two and run them side by side, or get two and RAID them. I fell out of custom rig building just as RAIDing became big and reliable. If I were to RAID them, only having enough space for two, should I 0 for the performance boost, or 1 them for the redundancy?

[Stahlseele]

IF you do raid, do 1 for Redundancy.
Because 0 actually can decrease performance of SSD's.
The Main Selling Point of them is the IOPS. And that can go down, if the raid chip/software tries to do it's stuff.
RAID0 only gives an advantage if you have more read/write heads that can be utilized and if you copy to/from the raid0 you get higher transfer speeds.
But i'd tell you to go for an 80 to 120GB SSD and a 500 to 1TB HDD with only 5400 rpm too. Or one of them samsung hybrid drives with the 4 gigs of FLASH attached.
OS and some tools that you use more often on the SSD and put everything else on the HDD. Only really important stuff in terms of files should go on the SSD.
Because the HDD is more likely to go out than the SSD, if you are not exceptionally unlucky.

[Faraday]

Another note on SSDs: if you have the spare memory, consider making a RAMdisk of 1-3GBs for your temp folder and maybe paging file. The immediate performance gain is minimal, but it more importantly reduces the write cycles on your SSD. It also conveniently clears your temp and paging folder whenever you turn off your computer.

Agreed on the RAIDing note (go with RAID 1 if at all), but a single higher capacity SSD is actually a good idea if you can afford it. They tend to have better performance than lower capacity models (even within the same product line) and you might find a better price per GB. To be honest, RAIDing is rarely useful for anyone who doesn't go through hard drives all the time. It's usually simpler and cheaper to just back up data to an external drive and is also a lot more useful in case of a viral attack.

[Seriously Mike]

Dude. Paging file on a RAM disk is using RAM to do what it needs to do in the first place in an unnecessary, roundabout way.

[Faraday]

Dude. Paging file on a RAM disk is using RAM to do what it needs to do in the first place in an unnecessary, roundabout way.

Yeah, I just don't like how windows works with its paging file. And it WOULD reduce SSD write cycle usage.

[Thanee]

RAID is pretty much pointless in this context.

Best get a single big SSD and use the second drive slot for a regular HDD (there are models around that are reasonably shock resistant) for Storage and Backups.

Bye
Thanee

[Seriously Mike]

You still need an optical drive for gaming, some games aren't available digitally.
Also, I'm pretty much against 17" notebooks. Those things were designed to be portable and lugging a humongous, heavy thing with a screen larger than you really need isn't practical.

[Thanee]

That really depends on whether you are mostly carrying it or mostly having it stashed away somewhere nearby (which would be the case here).

The big screen is better in every situation, other than carrying the beast. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


A lot of people use a "desktop replacement" laptop only at home (or wherever the computer is located). It is not used as a portable computer at all.

The main reason to have a laptop over a desktop/tower here is, that you can fold it together and put it away, thereby having it take up no space at all, basically, as opposed to a permanent setup with desktop/tower, monitor, keyboard, etc.

Bye
Thanee

[Stahlseele]

If you have a car, 17" or 18.6" may actually be a good decision.
Because you can usually get those with really good hardware much cheaper than 15.6" laptops with the same hardware . .

[Tech_Rat]

If you have a car, 17" or 18.6" may actually be a good decision.
Because you can usually get those with really good hardware much cheaper than 15.6" laptops with the same hardware . .

I'm going for the larger model since this is what I drive/live in.

Mah home-mobile.

[Thanee]

Looks like there is enough room for a big laptop. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[Stahlseele]

Ah, right, i forgot about that @.@
in that case, bigger screen means a good full size keyboard with number block too, making typing/working on it easier/more pleasant.
also, somehow, the same hardware i have in my 15,6" costs only about half of what i paid in an 18,4" . .
furthermore, high resolution on bigger screen means bigger text and icons, so not as much strain on the eyes.
and if it's a good screen, more people can watch movies on it at the same time with less problems too . .
if i had a car, i would not have gone below 18" screen size ever . .