Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Devast]

Hello, I'm hoping this would fit into this topic.
I've currently got a i7 2600k CPU and it's the oldest thing in my computer aside from the motherboard.
Aside from music/other media I really only use my PC for gaming, Dwarf Fortress being my main interest.
I'm hoping someone can shed light on a new CPU (or one coming out soon) that would benefit me

Any CPU worth upgrading to will require a new motherboard, so you'd want a Skylake chip. This, plus motherboard and RAM, would cost you in the $5-600 range. If all you're running is DF I doubt it's worthwhile - DF remains a single-thread game for the most part, and the Skylake equivalent of what you have is not that much faster in single-thread performance. For other games, particularly modern AAA titles, the multi-thread performance would be a major boost (I have a non-K Skylake i5 that trounces my friend's i7 of similar vintage to yours), but that's an entirely different question.

I do play other video games, GTA5, The Witcher & Cityskylines would the most recent. Would a Broadwell do nothing for DF ?

[Insanegame27]

Is the MSI GE72 6QE Apache Pro good for a gaming laptop?


I was given one as an early 18th birthday present and I wish to know how good it is. I haven't even unboxed it yet and I am super hyped.

In particular, how well would it run:
 Total War: Rome 2
 Rise and Fall: Civilisations at War
 Warframe
 Dwarf Fortress
 Interstellar Marines
 CoD (MW 1, 2, 3, BO2)
 

[Thief^]

I didn't actually buy the one I linked. I did go for one with 80+ certification after doing a bit more research.

Partially because it had the cabling I needed, and partially because of the review that was given.

I wound up getting this one instead.

http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16817139026

Seems like it would work out fine.

Yeah that's a decent PSU.

Is the MSI GE72 6QE Apache Pro good for a gaming laptop?


I was given one as an early 18th birthday present and I wish to know how good it is. I haven't even unboxed it yet and I am super hyped.

In particular, how well would it run:
 Total War: Rome 2
 Rise and Fall: Civilisations at War
 Warframe
 Dwarf Fortress
 Interstellar Marines
 CoD (MW 1, 2, 3, BO2)
 

Try it and let us know!

More helpfully -

Jesus Christ that's an expensive laptop

ahem.

The CPU is more than powerful enough for almost everything (as almost every CPU is now). The GPU is ~15% below a desktop GTX 960 in performance, so if you look up benchmarks of those games on a GTX 960 you should get a rough idea.

It's damn good for a laptop.

[Lord Shonus]

Hello, I'm hoping this would fit into this topic.
I've currently got a i7 2600k CPU and it's the oldest thing in my computer aside from the motherboard.
Aside from music/other media I really only use my PC for gaming, Dwarf Fortress being my main interest.
I'm hoping someone can shed light on a new CPU (or one coming out soon) that would benefit me

Any CPU worth upgrading to will require a new motherboard, so you'd want a Skylake chip. This, plus motherboard and RAM, would cost you in the $5-600 range. If all you're running is DF I doubt it's worthwhile - DF remains a single-thread game for the most part, and the Skylake equivalent of what you have is not that much faster in single-thread performance. For other games, particularly modern AAA titles, the multi-thread performance would be a major boost (I have a non-K Skylake i5 that trounces my friend's i7 of similar vintage to yours), but that's an entirely different question.

I do play other video games, GTA5, The Witcher & Cityskylines would the most recent. Would a Broadwell do nothing for DF ?

For those, you'll get a very noticeable improvement in performance with a new chip, but there is no reason to buy a Broadwell.

Broadwell is an outdated architecture, and will generally be more expensive for lower performance. There are a few Broadwell-E chips that are more powerful than the best Skylake chips on the market right now - they have more cores, slightly worse single-thread performance, cost a thousand dollars, and still need a new motherboard. If you're playing modern AAA games, get a nice Skylake - a top-end i5 with a good motherboard and 12 gigs of RAM will set you back less than $500, and getting a high-end i7 (DF is one of the few games where this would actually be worthwhile, as it relies heavily on single-thread performance) wouldn't bump you up past 600. You'd probably be able to keep your existing PSU, as the much newer architecture than you have provides drastically reduced power usage.

[BigD145]

Is the MSI GE72 6QE Apache Pro good for a gaming laptop?


I was given one as an early 18th birthday present and I wish to know how good it is. I haven't even unboxed it yet and I am super hyped.

In particular, how well would it run:
 Total War: Rome 2
 Rise and Fall: Civilisations at War
 Warframe
 Dwarf Fortress
 Interstellar Marines
 CoD (MW 1, 2, 3, BO2)

It's fine. It'll run ARK, Fallout 4, and other modern games at around medium settings.

[Insanegame27]

So far I've tested War Thunder - all settings at maximum - solid 30 FPS with ten planes all shooting at and missing me. no fluctuation, find out later I have my framerate capped at 30. Good enough for me.

[AzyWng]

Just a question regarding browsers (Firefox specifically)...

When I open up my bookmark folders on the bookmarks bar, the text appears yellow.
The text for tabs, and the text of the actual folders and stuff on the bookmarks bar is fine, though.
The audio icon is yellow, too.

I've already tried refreshing the browser.

[Amperzand]

So, I've been looking around for a new laptop, and for various reasons it presently looks like my best option is the ASUS K501UX, since I'd like to be able to run games at least somewhat in addition to standard portable computational engine tasks like writing and browsing.

Just sorta looking for a general opinion on the machine, I've seen a variety of positive and negative reviews and felt that asking here was a good idea.

[BigD145]

ASUS tends to drop support for their devices very quickly. They also tend to use the barest minimum spec power plug for their laptops, usually leading to easy breakage. Their turnaround for repairs is slow and you may end up with other things broken in the process. I would buy a low end device from them but not anything more than $500-600.

The 950M is not great and 2gb vram is shit. Add $100 to that price, find a 960 with 4gb vram, and pick a different company. Toshiba's are okay. Lenovo is pretty good. I'm fairly happy with my Y700.

[Amperzand]

I've found used-very good ones on Amazon for 656$. Thanks for the information, this seems useful to know. :V
 
Edit: Any particular machines that would be recommended?

[Thief^]

Also don't discount AMD, their laptop chips are brilliant if you're on a budget and their GPU switching works so much better than an Intel/nVidia combo.

My HP Pavilion 15" with an A6 quad CPU and R7 m260 GPU only cost me £215 (including delivery!). You can't even get a laptop with an nVidia at that price!

I wouldn't necessarily recommend that exact laptop, it's about the lowest spec dedicated GPU you can get, but it's definitely worth checking benchmarks for whatever AMD you can get at the price you're after.

[Amperzand]

I have a fairly wide potential price range, but I'd rather keep it fairly low, and am, at least to a degree, more interested in portability and durability than gaming performance. I'd like to be able to run modern things, but it doesn't need to be at especially high settings or framerates.

[Thief^]

Durability's not great on any modern laptop...

You definitely want to swap out the hdd for an ssd though if you're going to be carting it around, hdds are so fragile and hate the slightest movement or bump and ssds just don't care.

[Amperzand]

Oh, certainly. All the options I've seriously considered have had SSDs.

As for durability, I mean, there are 3500$ laptops with ballistic armor cases and operational ranges from -75 to 50 degrees c in a sandstorm, while being dropped a meter and a half onto concrete, but that's a little outside my search terms.

[Thief^]

For me it was far cheaper to install the SSD myself rather than get a laptop with one built-in.

I also upgraded the ram and wifi card with parts I already had, so it's now pretty tricked-out