Hi. I have an old Dell XPS 15 9550 bought 5 years ago. Original specs were


i5-6300hq
250gb 2.5 inch ssd
32gb nvme ssd - Which I never used
8gb ram
56whr battery


Back then, I would say this laptop was very good in terms of very little lagging. I remember back then it was said to make sure get a quadcore laptop if one wanted little lagging and having hem2 running so I did that. I had played on stars/888 and used hem2 and used the starscaption/888caption I believe without much issue.



I got a new 56wh battery probably 1.5 years later. My laptop is plugged in always and I had connected it to 2 monitors. Both were 24' 1920x1200 monitors and rarely any lag.



Then when stars did aurora and 888 did software update the last few years, I notice the lag was really bad. I normally try to 8-12 table and back then I remembered when I tested 20 tabling on stars, there was never an issue.



Last year I was deciding on whether to buy a new dell xps laptop or upgrade the parts. Eventually I upgraded and got



1tb nvme samsung ssd
32gb ram
84wh battery


In order to put the 84wh battery in, I had to remove both 250gb 2.5 inch ssd and the 32gb nvme ssd which is fine since I never used it. I also then cloned my 250gb ssd into the new 1tb nvme samsung ssd. I paid around $450 for all these parts. I notice my computer was a bit faster but didn't really notice that much. Is that normal? I am using windows 10 pro if it matters.

At the moment, stars lags a ton as you all know with aurora. 888 software after they did that software change more than a year ago has made the software very bad. Party... as many of you know the software is just plain bad.



Now my question is... is it worth it to buy a new laptop? Or will I have the same problem anyway since all these sites nowadays have just bad software? Someone in the 888 and stars thread mentioned they have a ryzen processor which is very fast and it still lags when they have like 6 tables etc. Thing is if I do get a new laptop, I probably want it to be dell xps since I still like using this laptop. But any laptop nowadays is miles better than my i5-6300hq processor right? I remember back then if you choose quad core processor over a U Processor, you sacrifice battery life vs power... which to me was fine since its plugged in always. I assume its different now with the processors for laptops?



Also the other thing is I still use hem2 for stars if I play there. But with 888, you can't use hem2 and have to use hem3. Which when i tried using it... lagged really bad. When playing on 888 and party with hem3 running, if you have more than say 8 tables or so, the client will freeze and crash and its basically unplayable. Didn't have this issue that bad with HEM2. Now others have mentioned hem3 software is not good and use something else. I did hear about hand2note and drivehud2 so I will try them out later. But do you guys who use hand2note and drivehud2 have good experiences with your laptop?



At the moment, im playing on 2 monitors... a 32' 4k monitor and a 24' 1920x1200 monitor. Though rarely i have tables on the 24' anymore.



But if i get a new laptop, i would most likely take my 1tb nvme samsung ssd and 32gb ram and put that in the new laptop. That is definitely recommended right? So would this make sense to buy a new laptop for my purpose? Thus buy it with the lowest specs and just put my ssd and 32gb into it? I did read people say you should get a new laptop every 3 years or so. But is my laptop outdated with the processor? Is the processor going to play a significant part in this since all these sites just have horrible software now? I also do not play any games or anything like that on my computer if it matters. Everything else I do on the computer do not or rarely lag. But when I'm multitabling on these sites, the lag is really bad.



The other thing seem to be the new dell xps laptop supports multiple 4k monitors... is that correct? For example, i know with my xps 15 9550, if I wanted to have two 4k monitors at 60hz, I would need to buy a docking station. But with the new dell xps laptop now, I assume that isn't necessary?


Thanks.

I love and admire the complexity of your deliberations.

I suspect that this will probably help you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...4-c2c1fbceb8dd

You should back up the files that you need

New laptops probably come with ddr4 with higher frequency than your current laptop.

Yes I know I could reformat my hard drive. But I kind of don't want to do that. But doing that would be the only way to see if my computer is just as good right? Again when i got the new 1tb nvme samsung ssd last year, one thing i wanted to do was clone it because i want everything in my old 250gb ssd in this one. Such that many programs i had installed, i want it there. But since some files might be corrupted, then best to just had start fresh instead? I didn't want to install hem2 and all those clients again and everything so that is why i cloned it.



But as of recently, the lag im getting is much worst than before. Literally while playing on just stars, with hem2... yes aurora is very bad... I was testing many stars tables and i think once it got to 8 tables, the lag was bad. Once i tested 12 tables, it was almost unplayable. When i tested 12 stars tables with 3 party tables... the lag as impossible to play its folding in all my tables. So basically whether its 888/party with hem3 running... its impossible to play because of the client. If playing on stars with hem2, its fine only if you play max probably 6 tables. If playing on stars/party, the lag is too much.



Also i notice tons of processes in task manager. Example things like postgreSQL but like 6 of them. Runtime broker like 6 of them. When I restarted my laptop and didn't open any programs... not even chrome I saw so many of these processes. Do you want me to post a screenshot of my task manager on this? So is it possible all these processes is what is slowing my computer? Recently when i was playing on stars and party, i had that blue screen message where it said your pc ran into a problem and it was checking for errors. Then it scanned it and restarted etc. And it was around this time, my hem2 with stars and party tables was lagging so much where i was sitting out at all my tables so i think that is what caused it.



Yea gabe I read the new laptops now come with faster frequency ram. But based on all this, would you say just buy a new dell xps laptop? Or format my computer and start fresh? The one thing is I don't want to buy a new dell xps laptop... only to find out playing on these sites, and stars party and 888 still has the same exact issues as im having now. And because someone said they have a very fast ryzen laptop and still has lags on these sites, im wondering if i should even get a new laptop.



Again years ago when i got this laptop, there was almost no lag on stars and 888 with hem2 running. But i guess with the new aurora software and the new 888 software and the always bad party software... then a newer laptop probably isn't going to solve these issues? When doing other things on my laptop such as webbrowsing, youtube etc, its fine usually.

Posting a bazillion questions here wont solve it either. Just buy something new with a 14 day money back guarantee. Load your 4 sites and 20 tables with HEM 3 and chrome with 50 tabs open and see if it can handle it.

Not that i grind anymore but i have never did it on a laptop. Realise alot of people do but my laptop is for sitting on the sofa watching TV making posts like these. For poker and the high intensity of multiple sites PT4/HEM and whatever else you cant beat a desktop.

No one has suggested that.

Instead, I encourage you to follow the advice in my previous post. It seems likely to me that some software in your system is using some amount of your system resources (CPU, or memory, or something). The process that I advised will solve that, and help to identify if it is a hardware problem.

Thanks for the responses. I don't want to bother returning anything after buying it. The thing is if a new laptop has say certain specs... i mean another laptop with the same specs will work pretty much the same right? Again i like the dell xps so i kind of want to stick with it. I know there are other brands like asus, acer etc but I feel like the xps is the best laptop brand out there. I know if my processor is more modern... then my laptop would be fast enough since its 32gb. Again I had zero issues with lags few years ago on this with hem2 and other sites. But again the new software these sites are doing is obviously playing a huge part in this... since I read someone with a ryzen 7 computer has issues.



I prefer a laptop because its mobile and you could move it around even though i have it plugged in mostly and connected to 2 external monitors. I haven't used a desktop in years. Yes i know its faster but i prefer laptop.



I took a look at your post josem. Few issue is i never created any system restore points. So im not sure where i would restore back to. Also doing that might mean any programs or files i downloaded since then... i lose right?



Again this lagging that i had happened a while back. So I can't restore it back to months ago since i downloaded lot of files since then. Also in the holdem manager thread, apparently when checking my log files as fozzy in that thread mentioned for me to look at, I have tons of errors in it. Again many times my hem3 crash and so does the other programs like party and 888. But again most people know how bad the party software is.



But I would like to know if anyone here has recommendation for specific laptops in case I just decide to buy another one instead. The main one im looking at is the
dell xps 15 9500. One thing for sure that I would not do with the new laptop is clone my old ssd to the new ssd. This is what I did last year when I bought a 1tb nvme ssd. Since last year, I recall I had lagging in it already.

If you have data saved on your laptop that you want to retain, then you could Refresh your PC to reinstall Windows and keep your personal files and settings. Refresh also keeps the apps that came with your PC and the apps you installed from the Microsoft Store. This is probably what you want.

If you wanted to remove all the data you have saved, you could Reset your PC to reinstall Windows but delete your files, settings, and apps—except for the apps that came with your PC.