>clickity-click< (NC thread 0.0.1a)

[Nsight7]

Originally Posted by gammoner

Hi CTH!
I am going to buy a gaming laptop, probably this one from Costco. I am leaning toward one of these dv6t guys--I kind of wanted the bigger 17" screen of the dv7, but the video card that comes with it (Geforce GT 630M) looks way worse than the one in the dv6 (radeon 7690M) based on some performance reports I found. A few questions:

1) Is this a ridiculous way to buy a gaming laptop?
2) Is it worth upgrading the processor or memory?

I don't have heavy gaming needs right now--the fanciest thing I have is Fallout:NV--but I might like to play Skyrim or something fancier someday. Maybe once I get through my current steam library (hahahahahaha)

Basically my question is, should the laptop I linked above be sufficient for sort of medium-end gaming (assuming I add on the 1GB 7690M graphics card), or is this a waste of money? (I want a laptop rather than a desktop for travel and family reasons, I know in that sense it is a waste of money).

Thanks and sorry if such a question doesn't belong here...

It is not going to be great for Skyrim at anything better than about medium details are somewhat lower resolutions from what I know about the card. If you want something a bit more future-proof, I suggest going for an actual gaming laptop. I think some medium-level gaming is possible on it though, but it is going to have a short gaming life versus newer games as they come out. Also, to answer your question about processor upgrades, I can't see a huge upside to the processor upgrades available given the cost of the upgrades. Probably not really worth it imo.

[gammoner]

Originally Posted by Nsight7

It is not going to be great for Skyrim at anything better than about medium details are somewhat lower resolutions from what I know about the card. If you want something a bit more future-proof, I suggest going for an actual gaming laptop. I think some medium-level gaming is possible on it though, but it is going to have a short gaming life versus newer games as they come out. Also, to answer your question about processor upgrades, I can't see a huge upside to the processor upgrades available given the cost of the upgrades. Probably not really worth it imo.

Hmm, interesting, thanks. So I really have to shell out for one of these Alienware things or something similar? It just looks like I'm paying for a lot of fluff with those, with glowing keyboards and nameplates and such, but I don't see many better options. Although I guess I'm already at $870 with the one I was going to buy, so what's another $200 to get the M14x one and make sure it works?

I'm not *certain* I need something future-proof though as I'm not sure I'll have the time or motivation to play games that are coming out now, although maybe my daughter will in a few years.

[Nsight7]

Originally Posted by gammoner

Hmm, interesting, thanks. So I really have to shell out for one of these Alienware things or something similar? It just looks like I'm paying for a lot of fluff with those, with glowing keyboards and nameplates and such, but I don't see many better options. Although I guess I'm already at $870 with the one I was going to buy, so what's another $200 to get the M14x one and make sure it works?

I'm not *certain* I need something future-proof though as I'm not sure I'll have the time or motivation to play games that are coming out now, although maybe my daughter will in a few years.

For just $200 more you would do much better to get the m14x honestly. The upgrade path is better too, as $100 there moves you from a decent dual-core i5 to a much better quad-core i7. A hybrid-drive would just be another $75 (w/ 500GB of hard-drive space and 32GB of SSD). Even if you stick with the base-model, it is significantly better.

I still think you could go with other companies too. For the budget gamer I have always liked the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) line, as they tend to pack just as much oommpphh!! as the Alienware laptops without nearly the hit to the pocketbook.

[ItalianFX]

Random, odd question:

Does anyone know of a program that allows me to use a Bamboo Tablet to draw directly on my screen?

I'm looking for something similar to OmniDazzle http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidazzle/ but for a PC.

A quick search on google didn't come up with any answers. I'm currently using a program similar to Paint, but sometimes I don't want to jump back and forth if I'm reading a PDF document.

Thanks.

[Low Key]

Bloody laptops!

I have 3 computers connected to a Linksys E1200 - 2 wifi, 1 ethernet. Also have 2 iPhones and 1 iPad, 1 Wii and 1 PS3, and 1 wifi printer. Also used to have an old HTC hero connected, but I sold it after it was time to upgrade. The router has been reset since then.

I have it set up to accept up to 10 users in IP addresses x.x.x.100-109.

Everything works fine except 1 laptop which is seldom used. It will not let me pull up webpages on Chrome or IE. It will update Avast, it will let me use TeamViewer to monitor other pcs on the network, it will let me print wirelessly, it will let me ping outside of the network with dns resolution.

I don't believe I've ever tried to set up a proxy server, as I never cared enough to fully learn how. I don't see any proxy server set up when I go into Internet Options.

IE gives me the following error when I troubleshoot: "The remote device or resource won't accept the connection." I cannot connect to my router via the gateway address on my laptop, but can on other PCs.

Chrome says the connection attempt was rejected.

I'm not really sure what to do here, and any help would be, as always, greatly appreciated. I really can't think of anything I've done to mess this up - as I said, this laptop barely gets used normally, but now I need it for school work.

[Ankimo]

Check browser setting to make sure it's not set to use a proxy

[Low Key]

When I tried to open Chrome's proxy settings, it just took me to IE's Internet Options. There was nothing about proxies being set up there.

Between last night and this morning, the only things I changed was to disable IE "check to make sure IE is default browser" and, this morning when I started IE before Chrome, a thing popped up at the bottom asking to enable some addons and I hit disable.

Then both browsers started working.

o.O

Literally did nothing else. Can't figure out wtf changed.

[Nsight7]

Google keynote stuff was pretty neat today. They are releasing tons of junk ($200 quad-core tablets, $350 off-contract Galaxy Nexus, et cetera).

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I really do like the ease of OC'ing AMD Black Edition processors. I have been playing around with my sister-in-law's computer (that I built) and I am trying to give her ideas to keep it modern and speedy (I basically said we could get an SSD and OC the processor, so like $200 and I could basically make it fly like a new system, with maybe another $50-$100 for better gaming performance in the form of a new graphics card).

At any rate, the OC'ing was as easy as cranking up the multiplier and upping the voltage slightly. With pretty much NO effort I managed 700 Mhz before a BSOD at 800 Mhz. Benchmarks saw over 20% benefit. If I tweaked I could get more but it was stable right there for like an hour. I wish unlocked CPUs from Intel didn't cost $1000+...

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Per the above, I am giving real consideration to building a cheap AMD system with a buncha overhead. They are releasing BE AMD 8-core processors before the end of summer apparently, and if they are about $200 or so, I might pop for one (or perhaps the 6-core even). It would be cheap, and for my wife.

[Gonso]

Originally Posted by Nsight7

I wish unlocked CPUs from Intel didn't cost $1000+

They don't. All of the k-series chips are unlocked, the newest i5 being $220 and around $330 for the newest i7. The previous gen k's can be found for $180/$280 or so looking around. I'm using a 2700k now and it opened up to 4.3GHz easy just trying out the auto overclocking function on a cheap motherboard. (I've heard people hitting 5GHz with theirs if cooled well).

I mean I did two clicks of a mouse in UEFI BIOS and boom, done. That's about as easy as it gets.



Now the board sets the voltage a bit higher than is probably needed, but it's still not a problem for this chip and I haven't really got around to bothering with it manually. I don't see a point as the temps are in check and I'm happy with the OC. Besides that, most of the time it's throttled back significantly anyway:



I ran the hell out of Prime95. All was good, so I'm set. But yeah you definitely don't need $1k for an overclockable chip on the Intel side at all. Just i-something-k and you're good.

[RAAAAAAR]

At what point do you start to see diminishing returns with CPU increase using HEM? I know postgres can make use of the extra cores, but on the HEM site they stress that SSDs are bigger performance jumps than additional cores, so just wondering how important the processor is in the equation.

I'm looking at putting a new build together for grinding/audio editing/side of gaming and am basically trying to decide if getting something like the 3930k would be the route to go, or if something like a 3570K/2500k will be more than enough to handle large (30-50g) HEM databases and dorking around in Ableton Live. I know gaming wise there's little to no difference between a $200 2500k and a $1000 3960X, so again just wondering how much computational power a large HEM database requires.

[Nsight7]

Originally Posted by Gonso

They don't. All of the k-series chips are unlocked, the newest i5 being $220 and around $330 for the newest i7. The previous gen k's can be found for $180/$280 or so looking around. I'm using a 2700k now and it opened up to 4.3GHz easy just trying out the auto overclocking function on a cheap motherboard. (I've heard people hitting 5GHz with theirs if cooled well).

I mean I did two clicks of a mouse in UEFI BIOS and boom, done. That's about as easy as it gets.

Now the board sets the voltage a bit higher than is probably needed, but it's still not a problem for this chip and I haven't really got around to bothering with it manually. I don't see a point as the temps are in check and I'm happy with the OC. Besides that, most of the time it's throttled back significantly anyway:

I ran the hell out of Prime95. All was good, so I'm set. But yeah you definitely don't need $1k for an overclockable chip on the Intel side at all. Just i-something-k and you're good.

Wow, where have I been! I have been keeping up here and there with with the tech, but my last system build was with an i7 920 (the first generation of i7's) and back then it was $1000+ or no go. This makes it pretty easy to go with Intel chips imo, even in a cheap build, as the premium for a significant performance boost just dropped a ton. Pretty interesting information indeed, thanks!

[Gonso]

Originally Posted by RAAAAAAR

At what point do you start to see diminishing returns with CPU increase using HEM? I know postgres can make use of the extra cores, but on the HEM site they stress that SSDs are bigger performance jumps than additional cores, so just wondering how important the processor is in the equation.

I'm looking at putting a new build together for grinding/audio editing/side of gaming and am basically trying to decide if getting something like the 3930k would be the route to go, or if something like a 3570K/2500k will be more than enough to handle large (30-50g) HEM databases and dorking around in Ableton Live. I know gaming wise there's little to no difference between a $200 2500k and a $1000 3960X, so again just wondering how much computational power a large HEM database requires.

the quad core i5s, the cheapest one even at stock speeds would set you right. I used a 2500k at stock with Reaper for a good while too. Could argue that even the 2500 is overkill but w/e, its $180

[Hoopster81]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16842102048

Is this UPS powerful enough for my desktop, dual 30s, and modem? Don't need it to run more than a couple minutes. I know APC has a calculator on their site, but dual 30s weren't an option.

[joe12286]

it's probably fine but you should still verify by getting the power usage off of the equipment specifications and adding it up. if you're still a decent amount under 900w then you're fine. that doesn't necessarily say anything about the run time that you'll get, but it should at least get you a couple minutes in any case.

[Go Get It]

Gonso, or anyone really, is there any real difference between a computer running at 3.0-3.3GHz vs 4.0-4.3GHz. I mean would the user really be able to tell the difference besides like hardcore gamers/ PC enthusiasts.