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Optikalusion posted:I've just ordered up a new thinkpad yoga 14 with dedicated graphics card. So far I like pretty much everything about it.... Except I'm about to throw it out the window thanks to the wifi problems I'm having Went through exactly the same symptoms with another Intel card and basically the answer was to get another router because it wouldn't play nice with the one I had.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:09
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Twerk from Home posted:He was talking about upgrading from an 860m, which is a 7 series based card, to a 960m, which is Maxwell. That's a pretty good jump regardless of the VRAM. I'm pretty sure Lenovo never used the Kepler 860m (perhaps they did when the Y50 was first introduced, but as far as I can tell they're all Maxwell based). For the most part, when comparing the 860 and 960, most of us just assume we're comparing Maxwell parts, in which case the 960m has about an 8-10% performance improvement. It's the same card, it just clocks higher.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:18
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Grundulum posted:Is streaming gaming a thing yet? Could you buy a lower-power laptop and let the workhorse desktop you already have do the gaming? Yeah, anything post-2013 should be able to stream 1080p from a desktop, given a good wifi connection (or any wired connection, it's mainly latency, not bandwidth that's the issue), and also that the desktop has a decent video card. My desktop has a 2010 era 460GTX 2GB and first gen i5, and my laptop is an HD4000 i5 and I was able to play Just Cause 2 over wifi no problem. I can only imagine how fast things would go with modern hardware.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:38
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I think reviews show that the 860m and 960m are essentially the same hardware. The 960 just has bit higher clock so it has 5-10% performance increase.
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Apr 22, 2015 23:45
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Twerk from Home posted:He was talking about upgrading from an 860m, which is a 7 series based card, to a 960m, which is Maxwell. That's a pretty good jump regardless of the VRAM. Missed that, bu a 960m is only like 10% faster than an 860m. You need to get a 965m or better before you start seeing real improvement.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:05
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Cat Army 
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Grundulum posted:Is streaming gaming a thing yet? Could you buy a lower-power laptop and let the workhorse desktop you already have do the gaming? Gwaihir posted:If you have a great gaming desktop already, check out steam inhome streaming- You don't need to get a laptop with a super powerful GPU then, you can get most anything (Pick based on the screen I guess) and then use the powerful desktop to stream the game to the laptop. So... I've tried this with the existing lovely laptop she is already using and it's really not working well at all. Have any of you actually been using this for long gaming sessions of action/twitch games? Over wireless? The input lag was considerable and I'd get constant screen tearing. Got me motion sick pretty quick. I figured maybe the network quality was to balme but even with a wired connection into the same router as the source didn't make much of a difference. I think it may actually be video encoding or decoding lagging behind. Our video cards are maybe 3 or so years old, could it be they just can't handle rendering and HD broadcasting at the same time? Or is there some minimal GPU support (or CPU feature) requried to make decoding viable? Either way, what we have now isn't working - that's for sure :/
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Apr 23, 2015 00:58
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Gwaihir posted:The only problem is that laptops with huge low res screens generally tend to also be pieces of poo poo that fall apart. Something like http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np2670-clevo-w670srq-p-6517.html or http://www.xoticpc.com/force-1757-24012-860m-msi-ge70-apachepro-barebones-p-7178.html isn't a bad choice. They both have 17" 1080 screens, but you can always lower the resolution or crank the DPI. Oh man, the weak  dollar is murder. Those are both over $1.1K here. What can be had for less if we're willing to dial down performance foruther? (and never mind DPI)
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Apr 23, 2015 01:02
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Mr. Wynand posted:So... I've tried this with the existing lovely laptop she is already using and it's really not working well at all. Have any of you actually been using this for long gaming sessions of action/twitch games? Over wireless? The input lag was considerable and I'd get constant screen tearing. Got me motion sick pretty quick. Have you tried messing with the Steam in-home streaming settings? When I had a Core i3-4330/Radeon 7850, I was able to stream games just fine to whatever client PC over WiFi, even to lower end bay trail based devices like the Asus X205. From what I remember, I capped the bitrate to 10 or 15Mbps and locked the res at 720p on the X205. My router isn't anything to write home about either, it's some Wireless N router made by TP-Link running Gargoyle. I think it's the N600.
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Apr 23, 2015 01:44
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Streaming doesn't work well at all for twitch games even on a wired network. Its good for stuff that runs at a Skyrim ish pace
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Apr 23, 2015 04:31
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SouthLAnd posted:Kind of excited to hear your thoughts about this machine when you get it. Particularly in regards to build quality and system noise under light use (web browsing, video streaming). Its being ordered tonight apparently so next week I should get it. Ill update everyone because on paper, the MSI GE62 looks amazing.
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Apr 23, 2015 04:33
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dissss posted:Streaming doesn't work well at all for twitch games even on a wired network. Twitch games = FPS or fighting games? Because if so, yeah. No way I'd play something like CSGO or USF4 over Steam streaming. I use it to play poo poo like Sonic all-star racing, Bastion/Transistor, Guild Wars 2, etc. [edit] If anyone was in the market for a super rugged 11.6" Chromebook, Amazon currently has Dell's 2015 Chromebook 11 model on sale for $189.99 (reg. price is $249.99 at Dell.com). http://www.amazon.com/Dell-CRM3120-...Inch+Chromebook. I just ordered one as I've been missing having a secondary Chromebook to lug around when I'm not working. More info here: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/chromebook-11-3120/pd?~ck=anav and here's a review from techradar: http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/dell-chromebook-11-2015-1284386/review teagone fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 04:41
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Flipperwaldt posted:This is going to sound weird but check whether it makes your router overheat. Thanks for the tip but I don't think that's it as all of our other devices continue to function using the same router at the same time. Also the solution to buy a new router isn't a good one for me simply because I travel a LOT and need to have something that will work anywhere.
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Apr 23, 2015 06:53
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 My girlfriend is looking for a budget laptop and I was wondering if you guys had any recommendations. She has a pretty hard price limit of $400, and under $300 is much preferred. She wants a conventional laptop, wants a decent amount of storage (>150 gigs, doesn't rely on the cloud), and would prefer it to have a DVD drive (but that's negotiable). Other than that she doesn't really have much in the way of performance requirements--she needs it to be able to stream video smoothly but that's about it. Does anything like that exist anymore? We were having trouble finding it when we were researching--it seems like everything in that price range nowadays is a chromebook or a tablet. We tried buying an HP 15-g170nr but I think we are going to return it this weekend because its performance is so bad that it can't even reliably play streaming video without stuttering.
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Apr 23, 2015 08:17
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Optikalusion posted:Thanks for the tip but I don't think that's it as all of our other devices continue to function using the same router at the same time. Go into steam settings, set client options to fast, limit bandwidth to 5-10 megs or so, depending on what resolution you want. Works great for me.
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Apr 23, 2015 08:44
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Optikalusion posted:Thanks for the tip but I don't think that's it as all of our other devices continue to function using the se router at the same time.
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Apr 23, 2015 09:58
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VikingofRock posted:
Sounds like a used T-series Thinkpad to me. T420 if you're budget conscious, T430 if you don't mind venturing to the high end of your limit. Make sure to get the 1600x900 screen, perhaps budget to upgrade the RAM and an SSD depending on what it comes with. TopherCStone fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 13:19
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What's with the soldered memory on the T440's from Lenovo?
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Apr 23, 2015 20:33
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Gumbel2Gumbel posted:What's with the soldered memory on the T440's from Lenovo? For whatever reason they soldered 4GB in, and there's only a single slot if you want to add more. Which leaves you with a max of 12GB if you add your own 8GB SO-DIMM. If you need more than that, you need to get the T5x0 (16GB max) or better yet the W5x0 and then you can add up to 32GB because they have 4 RAM slots.
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Apr 23, 2015 20:38
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My immediate thought would be its memory, which is soldered to the board. Hence the name. As to why they might do it: Thinness.
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Apr 23, 2015 20:39
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Boiled Water posted:My immediate thought would be its memory, which is soldered to the board. Hence the name. As to why they might do it: Thinness. Yet, they put 3 loving M.2 slots in the thing.
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Apr 23, 2015 20:40
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I wonder how deep the Lenovo rabbit hole is  . Can they do cool raid at least?
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Apr 23, 2015 20:54
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Wow, rude. Also isn't soldering it a bad idea? My previous ThinkPad had a bad stick that kept on bluescreening my laptop until I swapped it out. Is there a way to deactivate it if it goes bad or am I prying this thing out with a putty knife?
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Apr 23, 2015 21:36
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Gumbel2Gumbel posted:Wow, rude. Also isn't soldering it a bad idea? My previous ThinkPad had a bad stick that kept on bluescreening my laptop until I swapped it out. Is there a way to deactivate it if it goes bad or am I prying this thing out with a putty knife? It's part of the motherboard so you'd have to swap the board out if the RAM goes bad.
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Apr 23, 2015 21:44
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Tiger Direct's Ebay store has a T430 up with a Buy It Now price of 419.99 . http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-T430...=item58bb8c6231 Its got 180g SSD, 8 gigs of RAM, and the processor is the i5 3320M (2.60GHz). This seems like a pretty solid get right? Are there any better model 430's out there? Edit: The screen res is the lower end at 1366 x 768 instead of 1600x900
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Apr 24, 2015 00:57
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Don't ever buy a laptop with 1366x768 unless it's a chromebook You can buy refurb'd 1600*900 T420s all day long on ebay for $380. They're equally as powerful with slightly worse battery life.
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Apr 24, 2015 01:00
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Hadlock posted:Don't ever buy a laptop with 1366x768 unless it's a chromebook Yeah I just noticed that. My search continues!
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Apr 24, 2015 01:01
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Hadlock posted:Don't ever buy a laptop with 1366x768 unless it's a chromebook I just got a T430S with 8GB and SSD for less than that
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Apr 24, 2015 02:19
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Looking for a nudge in the right direction on a laptop. I've had a desktop for forever and its finally starting to poo poo the bed (which I mostly don't mind), but I need something trusty for going back to school and I've been thinking about just getting a laptop to replace it. I've liked having a PC because I play games once in a while but nothing major - Diablo 3, Pillars of Eternity, other random steam games, so I'm not super worried about having to run the latest and greatest and I'm definitely not looking for a ~gaming laptop~. Then obviously normal usage like netflix, school work (nursing so nothing graphics intense) and browsing. Will be using a separate monitor as well. I also used to have a macbook for work and barely touched my PC unless I wanted to play games or something while I had it so I do like Macs and am very familiar with them. I'm looking at MacBook Pro Retinas and the Dell XPS 13 and having trouble deciding between the two. It seems like if I do want to play games once in a while the MBP is the way to go, but obviously at a cost. I'm willing to pay for a brand new MBP so I guess I'd be willing to consider a budget up to $1400 (might need to snag a superdrive). I'd love to not buy another computer for 4-5 years and may never go back to a full desktop anyways - I love not needing that much space (obviously could switch to a small form factor etc). Does the Dell or another laptop compete to the MBP? Should I look at refurbished MBPs w/ retina (they're from Oct 2013 apparently)? I definitely like the MBP aesthetic and ease of use, but not spending $1400 is also appealing! Thanks.
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Apr 24, 2015 03:13
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Iron Lung posted:Looking for a nudge in the right direction on a laptop. I've had a desktop for forever and its finally starting to poo poo the bed (which I mostly don't mind), but I need something trusty for going back to school and I've been thinking about just getting a laptop to replace it. I've liked having a PC because I play games once in a while but nothing major - Diablo 3, Pillars of Eternity, other random steam games, so I'm not super worried about having to run the latest and greatest and I'm definitely not looking for a ~gaming laptop~. Then obviously normal usage like netflix, school work (nursing so nothing graphics intense) and browsing. Will be using a separate monitor as well. I also used to have a macbook for work and barely touched my PC unless I wanted to play games or something while I had it so I do like Macs and am very familiar with them. I think it may come down to which environment you want to live with for the next five years or so. Mac OS or Windows? Once you decide on this your hardware decision will be easier.
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Apr 24, 2015 03:40
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I'll let some other nerd correct me on the exact math, but the MBP is about 50% more computer than the XPS 13, the XPS 13 has the "U" model CPU while the MBP has a full mobile processor. It also has a real GPU. You can dual boot on the MBP as well, or will be able to soon (it sometimes takes them a while to roll out that feature) but I don't think the fancy GPU is available in PC dual boot mode. Both are great laptops but the MBP is going to have more CPU/GPU power which will last you longer and it sounds like you ride your systems until they die so that may be a big factor for you.
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Apr 24, 2015 03:46
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Hadlock posted:I'll let some other nerd correct me on the exact math, but the MBP is about 50% more computer than the XPS 13, the XPS 13 has the "U" model CPU while the MBP has a full mobile processor. It also has a real GPU. You can dual boot on the MBP as well, or will be able to soon (it sometimes takes them a while to roll out that feature) but I don't think the fancy GPU is available in PC dual boot mode. Is the GPU really not accessible under Windows Bootcamp? I'm considering making the switch to a MBP (from Thinkpads) but need to be able to use Rhino and a few other Windows propitiatory softwares.
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Apr 24, 2015 03:55
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Hadlock posted:I'll let some other nerd correct me on the exact math, but the MBP is about 50% more computer than the XPS 13, the XPS 13 has the "U" model CPU while the MBP has a full mobile processor. It also has a real GPU. You can dual boot on the MBP as well, or will be able to soon (it sometimes takes them a while to roll out that feature) but I don't think the fancy GPU is available in PC dual boot mode. You can dual boot now. And it's actually the reverse, only the GPU works in Windows.
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Apr 24, 2015 04:07
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Ohhh see, I didn't know bootcamp was a thing still. That kind of helps... Especially if i can get a student deal on a Windows install eventually. Hmm.
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Apr 24, 2015 04:19
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Hey, sorry if this has been asked before, but I searched for it beforehand and couldn't find an answer. I have a T430, got it based on the recommendations in an older version of the OP, and it's been pretty excellent, aside from the fairly easy-to-ignore monitor issues. However, there have been some compatibility issues lately, related to the graphics driver (I only got the integrated HD 4000). To cut it short, Lenovo's version of the driver is shamefully outdated, it doesn't look like they plan to ever fix it, and it's causing some trouble for me. So, the question is, is it safe for me to just manually install the latest Intel driver myself, or would it totally gently caress up my laptop to overwrite Lenovo's custom driver?
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Apr 24, 2015 05:26
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Hadlock posted:I'll let some other nerd correct me on the exact math, but the MBP is about 50% more computer than the XPS 13, the XPS 13 has the "U" model CPU while the MBP has a full mobile processor. It also has a real GPU. You can dual boot on the MBP as well, or will be able to soon (it sometimes takes them a while to roll out that feature) but I don't think the fancy GPU is available in PC dual boot mode. Note this is specifically the 15" rMBP. The 13" version is just a dual core with integrated graphics (it is a higher TDP chip than the XPS 13 but performance isn't very different) Also the Dell does a 15" version of the XPS which is quite similar to the 15" rMBP (same dated GPU even)
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Apr 24, 2015 05:48
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Flipperwaldt posted:Yes, that was exactly the case for me as well. Just saying. Fair enough if you just prefer to look for another solution though. I think it will likely work fine with a variety of routers, but probably nothing as frustrating as bumping into another one it doesn't work with in a hotel or something. Yeah exactly, need to be compatible with the shittiest router in the shittiest hotel! But a small heads up - might have fixed it. Found a cryptic post on some forum and basically uninstalled the Intel PRO/Set thing and manually updated just the driver without reinstalling the Intel pack. Deactivated all power saving and I've had about a day now without incident. Apparently the Intel app does some aggressive polling and some routers can't handle it (overheat like you said). Hopefully this was the solution, fingers crossed!
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Apr 24, 2015 08:01
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EclecticTastes posted:So, the question is, is it safe for me to just manually install the latest Intel driver myself, or would it totally gently caress up my laptop to overwrite Lenovo's custom driver? Optikalusion posted:manually updated just the driver without reinstalling the Intel pack
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Apr 24, 2015 11:55
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Iron Lung posted:Looking for a nudge in the right direction on a laptop. I've had a desktop for forever and its finally starting to poo poo the bed (which I mostly don't mind), but I need something trusty for going back to school and I've been thinking about just getting a laptop to replace it. I've liked having a PC because I play games once in a while but nothing major - Diablo 3, Pillars of Eternity, other random steam games, so I'm not super worried about having to run the latest and greatest and I'm definitely not looking for a ~gaming laptop~. Then obviously normal usage like netflix, school work (nursing so nothing graphics intense) and browsing. Will be using a separate monitor as well. I also used to have a macbook for work and barely touched my PC unless I wanted to play games or something while I had it so I do like Macs and am very familiar with them. If you're ok with a 128 GB SSD. The base MBP Retina is $1099 right now, and can be had for less than $980 if you get your hands on a movers coupon and .edu coupon (not hard). The 13" does not have a dedicated GPU but does have a full mobile processor which should be faster than the XPS 13. The main question is, do you want to run OSX or Windows?
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Apr 24, 2015 16:00
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Remember if you go with a 128GB drive, you're only going to have about 100GB out of the box usable space. OS install, file system overhead and rounding... OS X has some large apps like iMovie and stuff. Are you going to use Microsoft Office (try to get away with OpenOffice or LibreOffice if you can, smaller and faster)? Are you going to use Adobe Creative Suite? Do you have a 5-10GB Dropbox account that you're going to store locally? Are you going to keep your iTunes library on the laptop? (tip, buy a 64GB SD card for $25) Are you going to have a Windows 7/8 install to run in Bootcamp or as a VM? (good luck with 128GB) Are you going to connect and backup your iPhone to it? Are you going to do any gaming? I lived with a 64GB Air for a long time but I don't really use a ton of disk space for poo poo I do. I upgraded my 2012 13" rMBP to 256GB, and when I bought my 2013" 13 rMBP I got the 8GB/256GB model. I am at like 130GB on it, but I have a bunch of music, a bunch of video game ROMs, a few virtual machines, and other crap. I don't need to worry about space or carrying USB or SD cards with me. I don't need the 512GB by any stretch and I could make it work with the 128GB but I got a deal on it so I figured why not have 256GB.
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Apr 24, 2015 16:28
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Bought an x250 trackpad to put on my x240. So much better. Better yet, Lenovo added back the ability to have the middle button act as a simple middle click for the x250 pads! No more tpmiddle.exe, which worked for the most part, but would often register two clicks instead of one, which was a complete pain in the rear end. I swapped it out by getting at it from the back, and essentially completely disassembling the laptop. Took a couple hours, mostly spent looking for screws that rolled off the table. Since the touchpad is just held in place with double sided tape, I suppose it's theoretically possible to replace it without removing anything at all and just trying it off. There's not a ton of slack in the ribbon connector, so you'd likely spend the most frustrating hour of your life trying to connect it. I'd rather spend the hour taking the thing apart from behind.
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