Laptops-gamers for work

[bykfixer]

Alright, so I'm jumping into waters without knowing much about it here in this thread. Words like latency, tearing, and all of those acronyms are over this guys head. So please forgive a novice for mis-speaking words or terms.

My Asus G73S gamer from 2012 got it done for a long long time. Matter of fact it still does. But at 10 pounds and a nearly 18" screen it is more of a desktop status than a portable. Fast forward 10 years and I was thinking macbook but anything in my price range just couldn't compete with my 10 year old machine creature comforts-wise. Not user serviceable and only two ports one of which the charger uses? Not much there to cause this Windows user to convert. Especially since I wasn't going to use it to play John Madden 2022 or Mario Kart.

So back to Windows it seems. I'm was Asus G14 or Alienware X14 in late 2022. Goodness knows, those Asi' machines have never let me down. Dell now owns Alienware so is a Dell any good? The Asus had an AMD, the Alienware an Intel. Long battery life from the AMD or faster processing but less battery life from the Intel? There were a bunch of questions like that. Graphics cards were pretty similar, accessory ports similar, at least for my predicted usage.

Certainly downsizing the screen size also downsizes the price, but the Alienware was more expensive. A lot more. I go to a local electronics store ready to play with keyboards and the kid in the blue shirt says they had an open box X14..... for less than the G14. As fate would have it they did not have a G14 on display.

I gave the macbook a test drive as afterall that was what started to idea of replacing my 10 year old gamer. I liked how slick it operates, but only two ports? Not even a USB for my mouse? Many of my favorite softwares don't do mac so....

It seems the X14 is a love it or hate it machine. Some hated the keyboard, some hated the power button being so close to the delete key. Some hated the battery life. Some couldn't stand that every port is on the rear. (Eh, I could live without that too.) Some said refresh rate too slow and not enough nits. (Terms I had to look up.) Some said it was too slow, not enough bass in the tweeter size speakers, fans too loud, gets too hot, yada yada yada. I think it stacks up very well against the other 2022 14" gamers but would not have paid retail price.

Being a Dell caused me to be skeptical as well. But when I was editing big file size RAW photos while listening to super slow Windows media player and downloading several hundred gb of files it never broke a sweat. One 98gb folder on a backup ssd moved through the USB port into my hard drive in less than 3 minutes. Holy smokes!! I had figured hours and hours because that's what I'm used to.

How do others feel about a 14" for portability. Do you believe a little bit larger for a lot more performance is warranted? Is 14" even a viable size for gamers? Is the i9 processor that much better than the i7? What about AMD? Is Optimus worth the extra cost to folks?

Is the 2023 offerings leaps and bounds ahead of 2022 offerings?

Whatcha thinkin?

 

[Stress_Test]

Well, you mentioned big raw file photo editing, so if that's a big part of what you need, and you use a popular software like Photoshop or Lightroom, you might check the Petapixel website for laptop reviews. Whenever there's a new laptop release they seem to run it through some photo editor speed tests.

Only experience I've had with high-power PCs is on my work machines, desktop and now a laptop. The desktop was a BIG step up in terms of pure computer power (crazy number of cores, RAM, $$graphics card$$, and so on) compared to what I'd had, and I was eager to see how it would run Pro-Engineer CAD software (aka CREO now).

Big disappointment. Creo is such a junk program that it won't take advantage of the PC's available power. It ran just as slow as on my much less powerful machine previously. Looking at the performance monitors while using the software, the PC had one core running at like 50% and the other 11 were basically idle.

Just saying that raw computing power may not make as much difference as you might think depending on the software you're using. Something to be aware of before shelling out big bucks. At least I didn't have to pay the $10,000 cost of that desktop PC!! (They are leased, though, for only a few years; replaced it with a much lower end model that didn't lose any performance. The IT people had been like "do you really need that high-end work station?" Nope, it turned out I didn't!)

 

[Stress_Test]

Forgot to add, I had read a discussion a few years ago saying that the business-oriented machines of the major brands (HP, Dell, etc) were more solid than their consumer-oriented products. The consumer stuff was more built on the cheap throwaway mindset. They can't do that with business PCs since they're often on contract to supply large numbers and service support, so they lose money if the product isn't dead nuts reliable.

All I can say is that on the .gov machines I've used for over a decade, I don't recall any hardware failures on the various HP and Dells I had.

There were other PCs that were custom built by an outside business for a non-gov system that we bought, however, and those were absolute junk. I can't say too much more about them since profanity is not allowed on this forum!!

For business I'd go with a tried and true business-class machine from a major brand; and maybe you can get a tax break on the cost as a business expense too.

 

[alpg88]

Got a lenovo legion 17in for my wife, on her BD last year, she plays warcraft and other online games, , but she occasionally uses it for work when she works from home, she is a software developer. the computer is more than capable to do her work stuff, it actually needs less power for work than for games, but she is no graphic designer, however i do 3d modeling and when i had my laptop die, i installed 123d design on hers, what a difference between my old laptop and her, but I only start noticing when the part becomes complicated with lots of small details. That soft starts to become slow as complicity of a model increases, but even with very complex part the legion is still fast,
I designed and printed a light for BLF scratch build contest several years back, i wish i had her laptop when i did it, cuz some parts with roman/greek patter on the sides slowed down my laptop pretty bad. i actually had to abandon half of the pattern or my comp would just freeze.

 

[bykfixer]

I went to petapixel (hoping the name wasn't a sign) and saw a review of a desktop made by intel. Those landscape photographers sure do love their mac gear. The review was informative to me not because the intel was better or faster, but because it went into how some software uses the computer's gpu, or ram, or cpu and which ones use what. It explained why a given software excelled on the intel or mac and why. So I appreciate the insight stress test.

The lenovo legion looks like a really good value alpg88. If I'm ever in the market for another stay at home laptop I'll give those a look-see.

The company I work for has a contract with Dell (had said HP incorrectly). Trouble with that is they are locked in with specific models. What is worse is they frown on use of personal (read better) gear. They forbid it matter of fact. Sometimes that leads to hassles down the road. A client sends me a ginourmous pdf of a subdivision for example. My company lap top bogs down just trying to move around a page, much less scroll to a new page. Now those Dell (had incorrectly said HP here too) are plenty reliable, sure but dawg gonnit they are so throttled back anymore. It's a Latitude 7490 with an 8th gen i7 and integrated graphics.

 

[Stress_Test]

........

The company I work for has a contract with HP. Trouble with that is they are locked in with specific models. What is worse is they frown on use of personal (read better) gear. They forbid it matter of fact. Sometimes that leads to hassles down the road. A client sends me a ginourmous pdf of a subdivision for example. My company lap top bogs down just trying to move around a page, much less scroll to a new page. Now those HP are plenty reliable, sure but dawg gonnit they are so throttled back anymore.

I feel your pain on that. The IT department can make or break the experience depending on how they control the thing. There are some things that my old home Dell quad-core-8GBram computer does faster than the work PC, despite the theoretical triple difference in power.

On my work PC, I've had trouble with the PDF slowness too. Strange thing was, it seemed to be caused by using an older PDF software version; when I updated to the latest (at the time) it became much snappier. Which was unusual, since frequently a newer software version will have the opposite effect since the programs seem to get more bloated with each revision.

That said.... my particular case on the work PC could've been due to something the IT dept. did to it. I tried just now opening a 38 MB pdf catalog on my home PC, on Reader version 11. It'll whip through that no problem even though the pages have lots of images. Single-page display mode will flip pages as fast as I can roll the mouse wheel.

If I do the fit-width-continuous display, and hold the m3 mouse button to scroll down by dragging, it'll stutter just a little bit when it hits the large images, but it's still fast enough to make me dizzy if I'm trying to watch what's scrolling by!

 

[bykfixer]

When the PDF was a converted 1 page Word document that bogs down my work laptop I think "c'mon, really?" Then about the time it actually begins to run kinda snappy again.... time for another update by the IT. After that it's nice and slow again. Rrrrr.

I totally get it. With all those nasties that would love to infiltrate it requires diligence on their part. I keep an iPhone nearby that's hooked into the mother ship borg system and keep the laptop "off air" until needed so that does help some. That way I stay current on incoming emails and notifications while saving things to the hard drive first then their cloud later.

At work I asked for a gamer. So far..... crickets chirping. One of the first things I did to my shiney new alienware at home was turn off one drive and delete xbox apps. It's a gamer but won't be used for playing games. I did however download all of the borg episodes of star trek tng in mpeg format from my old Asus.

 

[Stress_Test]

The PDF / Microsoft Office conversion features have been buggy for us the past couple years too. I don't think they play well together since that last Office update (surprise!)

Trying to convert a web page or email also sometimes freezes or bombs. I had an old version of Adobe Reader Pro (like 9.0 I think) for a long time that was a stand-alone disk copy, and I hated to have to give that up because it worked so well. But every time there was a forced update over the network, it would wipe out Pro and load the basic Reader software. So I'd re-install. Then 3 weeks later it'd be wiped out again. Went through that for a long time before finally giving up!

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what IT security does that bogs things down so much, but a while back some guru told me something like it was the security "spyware" constantly scanning everything and being in the loop on every file and instruction that passed back and forth in the operating system. So it's basically a bottleneck between RAM / CPU / HD.

Anyway, your question about portability: My current work laptop is a big honkin' thing. The battery life is nice but it just kills my shoulder if I carry it in the bag with just one strap for very long. I have to use both backpack straps which gives me flashbacks to being a middle-schooler hauling around books and stuff like a Sherpa!

I think I'd rather go smaller if I was going to spend much time at all walking around with it. If it's mostly stationary, it's not a big deal. Though for a "laptop" it takes up most all of my lap!

Remember you can always plug the laptop into a desktop monitor when it's at home or in an office, so the small screen is not a limitation there.

 

[bykfixer]

I appreciate the insight around conversions from Windows to adobe and how IT changes can cause slow down(s). Good info to a newb like me who at times believes my ex-wife has put a voodoo spell on my work computer. And it's a Dell btw. For some reason I thought it was an HP.

My son is an IT guy for his company but not one who sends out patches or updates. He's a guy who helps you reset your password or install that PDF editor software.

In talking with him I said "what computer is your personal?" He said after working on computers all day he doesn't have one. He said he has an older desktop he built a few years back from spare parts but his smart phone does nearly everything he wants to do including broadcasting tv to his 54" monitor.

 

[orbital]

+

6nm AMD Ryzen core / DDR5 ram / dedicated RTX3060 gpu. Thin chips mean low power with good performance.
.. the first one for $1149 (30% off) is good, but not crazy high end gaming

Legion 5 Gen 7 (15″ AMD) | AMD-powered gaming laptop

Game anywhere on the Legion 5 Gen 7 (15″ AMD). It’s powered by the latest AMD Ryzen™ 6000 Series Mobile Processors and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ graphics.

www.lenovo.com

 

[orbital]

+

Forgot to add the most important aspect of the Lenovo above::

Having PCI-E Gen4 bus, this means you will get all the performance of those very good chips in it.
Like having a super/SUPER highway in your computer

 

[bykfixer]

I was reading about AMD vs Intel and it seems the AMD goes zoom when demand calls for like games and such but runs conservative in the office type demands like emails and such where the Intel is running on high so battery life of an AMD machine is typically good, Intel not as good. I was trying to learn why the Asus G14 states 10 hours vs the Alienware X14 says 5 hours. But if I got 1.5 hours from my older model Asus (G73S) that was a bonus.

I may be able to convince the boss to buy me an XPS 13 if I say I need it for "blue beam". It's a Dell so they'll get a big discount.

 

[orbital]

+

bykfixer, hard pass on integrated graphics,, get something with a dedicated graphics card that can be forced On if you want.

Really important.

 

[Stress_Test]

+1 for dedicated graphics card. I'd hesitate to crack open a laptop for a DIY install, but there ought to be laptops for sale that already come with one installed.

I did buy and install a basic Nvidia card (GeForce GTX 750 Ti) years ago into my Dell quad-core desktop and that made a big difference (got it for Skyrim mostly). That, and adding a solid-state hard drive a few years ago was a big boost too (though it was a royal pain trying to setup and duplicate the old HDD).

Next one I buy though I'd rather find something that can be ordered with the card already in it so everything's under warranty and all, and saves me the trouble.

Regarding battery life on the laptop, I should mention that on my work laptop (Windows 10) I used the "Create a Power Plan" from the "Power Options" page from the Control Panel screen. This let me go down a long list of options and set everything to very low performance levels; I forget the details but it's a long list.

Basically I made a plan that drastically throttles the performance. It still runs well enough for most of what I'm doing since that laptop is so powerful to start with. I just have a shortcut icon that takes me to the "power plan" screen so I can easily change to Balanced or High Performance whenever I need the extra horsepower.

Saves a ton of battery power. I think I've gone like four hours or something without needing to plug in. Turn the screen brightness down as low as reasonable too, and set it to turn off in a shorter amount of time (if the default is like an hour or something).

 

[orbital]

+

When we say 'graphics card', what we're saying for laptop is the GPU or dedicated Graphics Processor
like NVIDIA.

Everything you see on your screen comes from the GPU, not just a gaming thing.
If your GPU is solely focused on your screen, the CPU is now solely focused on everything else.

Fast 'bus speed' makes it all sing..

 

[bykfixer]

I hear what you guys are sayin' but it's Greek to me. How do you know if it's intigrated or dedicated?

Edit: my new laptop is switchable. NVIDIA Optimus allows it to decide unless I turn it off. ie set it for high performance only. So for using Outlook it defaults to intigrated but for a game it fires up the discreet.

Edit 2: it has a PCIe Gen 5 bus

 

[orbital]

I hear what you guys are sayin' but it's Greek to me. How do you know if it's intigrated or dedicated?

Edit: my new laptop is switchable. NVIDIA Optimus allows it to decide unless I turn it off. ie set it for high performance only. So for using Outlook it defaults to intigrated but for a game it fires up the discreet.

Edit 2: it has a PCIe Gen 5 bus

+

Why didn't you just tell us what you had or have enroute??

There are only a few PCIe 5.0 laptops available right now,, and this one is like $5K

MSI's new laptops among the first to feature PCIe 5 SSDs

Among the new laptops that several manufacturers unveiled at CES 2023 this week are a few from MSI that introduce PCIe 5.0 SSDs to notebooks. The company...

www.techspot.com

 

[bykfixer]

Whoops I thought I had I mentioned I have a shiney new Alienware X14 in post 1

From Dell

Perhaps it's 4.0?
It has the 3060 graphics card and i7 processor

 

[Stress_Test]

Well that ought to do okay for PDFs and photo editing!!

Yeah, from your post I didn't realize you'd already bought the thing, I thought you were still test driving. I mean, you were asking for opinions.......

 

[bykfixer]

I'm still asking opinions for learning sake and to hopefully carry on dialog's with other computer fans. I do appreciate the know-how you and orbital have provided.