Help me find a new laptop?
 

I've decided it's time for a new laptop. My Stealth (not pro) is three years old now and the battery is wobbly and worse, my games are edging out of its specs. I've been looking at laptops for an hour plus now and all I've gotten myself are second guesses and a headache.

I've consulted my techy relatives and one suggested I go with the ASUS ROG (not totally sure which) but I've heard of keyboard issues (not that I didn't have keyboard issues with this thing) and the one I saw in store didn't appear to have enough USBs (without separate jacks for headset and mic, I need to switch my headset to USB, plus one USB for my mouse at minimum).

So it seems I have a couple snags when picking out a laptop.

Problem 1: I'm picky.
I have a list of must haves and it's hard to find them all in one unit. A right hand number-pad. NVidia 1050 or above Video card. i7 Processor. 12gig or better RAM. Better storage than I have now. 5 pounds or less. (Yeah, that's a hard one).

Problem 2: Price.
I'm in Canada. This seems to mean that whenever I see what looks like a good deal, I'm inevitably on a US website and the real price is actually a few hundred dollars more. I was hoping to spend less on a laptop this time around but I doubt I can pull that off and keep much of my picky list.

At this point, I'm tempted to just get another Stealth but I've heard that MSI has been going a little downhill since I bought this thing in 2014.I thought I'd try and find a new comp all by myself this time! But no...fail. At least for now.

I'm just gonna sit here in this thread because I need a new one, too, and basically want the same specs as you.

Okay, so... Just a few points of note.

It's not possible to find a number pad in a laptop smaller than 15.6". There's just not room for it. And at that size, 4.5lbs is about the lightest that physics will allow it to be.

You said "at least" a 1050. Why a 1050 in specific? Because that influences what "at least" means. If you don't need a feature new to the 1000 series then a 960 is equivalent and a 980 is better. If you DO need a 1000-series feature, then the search gets harder. But you probably DON'T.

You aren't going to find lots of USB ports on a laptop. More ports is opposed to lighter weight and lower price. Just buy a cheap unpowered hub. Don't let USB ports be a make-or-break point.

You said "better storage" but you didn't say what you have or what "better" means to you. Do you mean "bigger" or "faster"?

What's your budget look like?

Right now, the ASUS ZenBook looks like it might be your best bet.

The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 is coming in close behind, with slightly better specs but a somewhat less reliable manufacturer.

I don't think Quiet will mind if I borrow her thread for a moment (I've already exhausted my opinions on what she should get) but I'm also looking to replace mine this year sometime and having a hard time finding anything.

I've had https://www.amazon.com/G752VY-DH72-1...01578ZM6Q?th=1 this for going on 3 years now, with really no complaints, but the warranty is running out and it feels like I should be able to find a decent upgrade now, but aside from jumping up into the $3500+ price bracket, I can't seem to find anything that looks objectively better despite the age. Excluding the sale on Amazon, it's still selling for the exact price I got it at even.

Any recommendations, Coda? Is it even worth replacing right now?

*whistle* That's a beast of a rig you got there, Suze. No, there's no reason to upgrade. You've already got a M.2 SSD for high-performance I/O and plenty of slower storage for content, more RAM than you're likely to ever use, and a GTX980 is (as mentioned above) better than a 1050. Given that most games really don't use all that much CPU power (they're primarily GPU- and I/O-constrained) you would be hard-pressed to find a machine that would give you a noticeable increase in performance even if you paid $3500 for it.

(Sure, if you landed a GTX1080 then you'd squeeze a few more FPS out of your games or you could crank up the quality settings a little more, but with those specs your current performance is probably so good that the improvement would just be incremental.)

Yeah, that's what I was concerned about. Guess I'll look into renewing the warranty. Thanks, Coda.

Yeah, I guess I left out a few details, and not at all! Go ahead, Suze.

My price range is $1500-$2000 Canadian, ideally on the lower end, which hampers things a little. I had hoped this thing (I currently have an MSI Stealth GS70) would last longer but I guess I got spoiled by my previous laptop that went almost a decade.

My current computer has a 900 series card and it's not keeping up with what I wan to do, so I need something better. I picked 1050 more or less because that's what I keep seeing as the average. A 1060 or higher would be nice, but not required.

The size is for portability. Yes, it's likely I can't get under 5 pounds without just buying another Stealth, but I have enough problems with my back and neck that I'd go for the lighter weight over other things, like the number pad. Part of the shift from 17 to 15.6 inch is the hope to find a lighter set-up, and maybe a cheaper one. I intend to get a desktop at some point, but it's not practical right now since I tote my computer around a good bit and will be doing so another year or two at least.

I'm actually looking at an ASUS GL503VD-DB71, which looks like the Strix but doesn't have the name attached to it. It does mention a hybrid drive, which is new to me. Reads: 1TB SSHD Hybrid Drive (8GB SSD Cache). Am I right in the thought that it's basically a 1T hard drive with an SSD for a bit of a speed boost? I'm not sure if I need an SSD for most games. I don't use it now for playing games like Dark Souls 3, but I do have some hiccups running them, which I've assumed so far is the video card.

EDIT: My mistake. I have a GTX 860M, and I'm looking at GTX 1050.

*stalks this thread for ideas*

So after further consultations with Tech Support, and looking up these benchmark things I hear about, I checked out the specs for Nier Automata which appears to be my most demanding and barely playable game right now, and I should be looking at at least a GTX 1060 (or equivalent, but I'm not sure what that would be. These are still just numbers to me). I'm not married to 60 fps at 1080 resolution, but it would be nice if the game actually worked. I think I'd like to have around 16GB ram.

You mentioned Dell, Coda. Thought on that? My brother, who has bought some 20 of the things for his company, finds them to be quite reliable, more so than others they have tried, but these also aren't gaming laptops.

I checked out these "I Buy Power" people that I just encountered in a youtube review of the ASUS ROG Strix. There little quick picks thing on their mobile site picked up the MSI GF62VR 7RF, the Chimera PA71HS-G Slim, and the MSI GS73VR 120Hz Stealth Pro-225. Prices range from 1400 - 1900 USD. (ASUS ROG Zephyrus is there but out of my price range).

I have thought about getting the new model Stealth Pro, but Iam concerned of the potential resurgence of they keyboard issue (a known keyboard issue from the response I got from the MSI forums when I asked about it) which I had to get MSI to fix under warranty. I have a personal suspicious that the thinness of the design is partly to blame, because pressure on certain parts of the case can cause the mouse to jump, so I am leery when I hear talk about the "soft touch" casing, which I think this is supposed to be. There was a comment on a review of the new Stealth Pro that the mouse has the same jumping habit. A user made a complaint about the space bar, though not what the complaint was. I notice this space bar doesn't always work on the right side.

My brother is going to check out a local place known for building custom computers and modifying others, so we'll see if they can put something together. That's what I'd like to do, I think. Would save me the headaches of looking through comparing every number that I barely understand on these things.

I'm mostly copying what I seem to find online as honestly, most of this talk is still above my knowledge level. I know there are different features with certain NVidia series of cards, but I'm not sure what they are. Since the big card of the say seems to be the 1080, I've been running with the 10 series in mind, as well as what I find in reviews and such.

Here's my annoying game list, from most trouble to least.

NieR: Automata - this is the game where I need to load it twice, restart my comp, load it again, cross my fingers and rain dance and hope I get above a 13 fps. I do run a user made menu thing to change some graphics settings around, but it's still haphazard to play.

Dark Souls 3 - didn't used to be an issue but it is now. I can barely maintain a frame rate in the 20-30s, which I need for online play. I have the graphics settings and resolution turned down to roughly medium and I still get booted at times. The area of the map I'm in does seem to matter.

Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire - was running alright until the PoF expansion came out. That raised the specs needed and now I have a diagonal line across my screen where the picture will cut or wobble a little bit. I've turned some settings down. My frame rate is usually okay but it doesn't look at nice as it used to.

Looks like the new features in the 10-series have little to do with gaming. It's got stuff for doing compute on GPU (which is why they're nigh-impossible to find on the market right now) and DRM compatibility features (4K Blu-Ray mostly), but the only stuff that will actually matter to a gaming workload on a laptop is support for GDDR5 RAM, which on its own isn't going to make that big of a difference.

So yeah, for your purposes, a 980 is going to be WAY better than a 1050, and even a 950 will be an upgrade from what you have. This will help you keep costs down because it means you can go for a slightly older laptop, though by now you may need to buy refurbished (but this will ALSO bring costs down) -- you can probably find a good machine for USD$1100.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Dell. They don't make crap systems. Their customer service is awful and their system software is blah, but if you get a Dell laptop then it'll serve you fine. I just prefer to go for a brand that doesn't think it's necessary to preload branded software into the OS.

I want this computer to last a couple years, and be able to play a new game or two so I'd prefer to have a video card a little above mid-range. I've decided that, for my purposes, it's better to overspend on better tech, than under spend on something that won't have any longevity. I don't want to regret going too cheap in six months.

Is this the "bloatware" that I hear about?

A 980 IS above midrange. A 1050 won't give you the staying power. My wife has a 960 in her desktop, it's a year and a half old, and it's not showing signs of slowing down at all yet -- she runs Overwatch at high/ultra settings at full framerate. A 980 is better than that. A 1080 isn't "a little above mid-range", it's "top of the line." Meanwhile a 1050 is right in the middle of midrange.

The thing about tech these days is that we've hit the point where even the cheap stuff is so good that it's no longer necessary to upgrade every two years if you want to play games.

If you buy last year's high-end laptop, it'll give you 2-3 years no problem.

As for bloatware: Yeah, it is. It's the kind of stuff you're certain to almost never use but you can't get rid of.

Given the price tag attached to the 1080, it's not something I'm trying for. The 1050 does seem to be the dominant figure in the laptops I was looking at, but after deciding its probably not up to what I want to do, I'm upping my price range a bit.

I'm assuming I'll want to stick with an Intel i7 processor? I know nothing about the other one (AMD?).

My step-bro is currently leery of MSI, which has apparently gone downhill right now, which is a titch annoying because they seem to be in the weight range that I want. But then, it looks like I might have the same problem that this one had. He's recommending an ASUS, as far as brand. Not sure how important the brand it, but it's convenient to be able to axe some options from the list.

i haven't had time (or sobriety) to read through the rest of this thread, but.

a few of my friends are reccing that i just get the rig i have right now, or one w similar specs. ftr I'm currently using a dell xps 15, i5, nvidia gtx 9...60? 970? can't remember. works pretty damn well when it actually works, and is really friggin light. the screen is as edge-to-edge as you can get on a laptop; the border/margin is maybe...half a centimeter on all sides?

so yeah, maybe look into that, or similar laptops. major downsides for me is the lack of an ethernet port and cd drive. Also, the fan vent is stupidly located on the bottom of the laptop, and also blowing into the hinge of the screen. who tf designed that.

oh, another con is that the fan's fucking loud. and i might have just gotten a faulty laptop, since apparently none of my friends' friends have the BIOS and boot issues that I've had. But. yeah.

Not sure what defines loud, until I hear it. I can hear mine running all the time, I just take it as a given. I don't much care about the screen border. Mine right now I suppose is pretty thick, with an inch or more on each side (more on top and bottom than sides).

I just assume that disc drives aren't the norm anymore, and I've only suffered once from it, when I needed one to use my tablet install software, so I borrowed my brother's external drive.

There are a few XPS 15s that I can see, but most seem to have the GTX 1050, and one with a 630. That lack of a number pad would irritate me though. It has the same weight listed as my Stealth, which is pretty cool.

Weight is an issue that I may just have to work around, which sucks. I already have one of the lightest you can get and it probably strained my buddy neck and shoulder muscles just toting it to one class and some errands on campus the other day.

It looks like, at the end of the day, so get something I figure I'll be happy with is going to cost me $2000, which is what I spent on this thing, so figure it shouldn't be surprised.

Looking forward to the day I can get a desktop without too much inconvenience Really, if it weren't for the video card dragging, I wouldn't get a new laptop at all right now.

Is anyone here familiar with Lenovo?

my previous rig was a lenovo ideapad. ran nicely. really friggin heavy, though, at over 7 lbs. didn't run as loudly, but the fan blew right onto my mouse hand, which was super fun. it also had...overheat issues (as in, 90+ C when gaming). and at the end of its lifespan, blew a friggin capacitor.

I'm good with ASUS. They've never given me trouble.

Lenovo used to be IBM. They're usually considered business laptops instead of gaming laptops, but they're robust enough.

Intel currently outperforms AMD but for a gaming workload (which is, as mentioned, primarily GPU-constrained) you're not likely to notice a significant difference.

Probably my favorite thing about mine is that it not only NEVER gets hot, but it does so completely silently unless I, like, decide to run two demanding games simultaneously (which it still handles pretty adequately, which is.... nice, I guess, albeit impractical).

I don't know if the awesome cooling system carries over to the lower-end ROGs, though. I know it's part of why mine is so insanely heavy.

Hm... One of my friends just recommended this Acer rig, which looks nice...?

Oh, wow, that IS a good one. I would have liked something better than a 1050 for a dedicated gaming machine but that's no slouch and the price tag is really good for what it does.

What GFX card do you prefer?

And, hm... How much better than a 960M is a 1050? (I'm a little sore that I bought this current rig a couple months before the 10 series was released...)

A 960 and a 1050 are REALLY close. Benchmarks have the 960 doing marginally better in some games and the 1050 doing marginally better in others. Like I mentioned before, I've got a 960 (desktop, not M) and I can run Overwatch at high/ultra settings.

I'm finding myself moving back to the ROG series as I look around more. There are a bunch of different models on the STRIX it seems. I'm currently looking at the HERO edition, which is advertised as a MOBA rig (as opposed to the SCAR edition for shooters. Not sure what G-sync is, but that seems to be one of the differences. The STRIX HERO is a $2000 computer (CDN) but as said, I've decided I'd rather overspend on good computer, than underspend on one that's not quite good enough.

As a note, nearly everything I look at seems to have (or have upgrade options for) the 10 series video cards. I have to go out of the way to find a 9 series. Older laptops are usually sold out or "no longer available."

...That rig that Espy's friend recommended is a goal for me now. Though i'm not sure whether I want the beefier rig or the 256 SSD one...

Well yes, the older laptops you'll have to find refurbished because nobody's keeping them in current stock -- they went on clearance for Black Friday.

G-Sync is a new display technology that's part of the monitor itself that allows a dynamic display refresh rate. Basically it means that whatever FPS your GPU can push out, that's what the monitor shows, instead of being stuck at 60fps and sometimes drawing the same frame twice.

If you've never noticed a problem with frame rate fluctuations or horizontal tearing, you aren't going to care about G-Sync. Yeah, it looks nice and smooth, but you're used to not having it, so you won't miss it.

The reason it's more important for FPS than MOBA is because competitive FPS games have a lot more full-screen rotations that really make FPS fluctuations more visible and they're more sensitive to input lag because a few milliseconds can mean the difference between a headshot and a miss. That said, you have to be a super-high-end player for that difference to come across as anything but feeling like it's just a hard shot to make in the first place.

So... yeah, don't waste the money.

Just the difference in price between the Scar and the Hero made me think there was something particular about it.

Went with the Hero Edition ROG Strix. There's about to be a big hole in my bank account now, but I'm pretty okay with it. (The purchase, not the hole. That will have to be fixed by the end of the year.) Ordered it through Newegg, which is a Canadian online distributor that apparently my brother has dealt with before. I bought this laptop from NCIX which went belly-up not too long ago. The Amazon link from Asus itself seemed to be for a different computer and we didn't trust it. Too many RoG's with similar number strings.

All in, unit, shipping, and taxes puts it at $2200, which is the same price I paid for my current one. Minus the keyboard issue that I had to ship this thing out for, my Stealth has been pretty good. Not sure if the new ones are of the same quality though, from what my stepbrother is telling me. He's the one who helped me find this.

Now comes the task of cleaning up this thing for my sister's birthday. She already knows she's getting it, but I'm going to put a bow on it anyway. ;)

Newegg isn't specifically Canadian. I bought some of the parts for my current gaming machine from Newegg. :P (The rest came from Amazon or Fry's Electronics.)

Hey Quiet, toss me a link for that laptop?

Ah. Well if they ship from here and deal in CDN currency than I'm happy. I could actually have driven to the store it's shipping from, it's only 40 minutes from me, but since we used my brother's card and he'd be the one to have to go get it.

Link is here, Espy, if you don't mind ASUS' loud and obnoxious scroll down page.
https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Laptops/R...-Hero-Edition/
I got mine with a 1060. There appear to be a pile of different possible set-ups. When I looked it up again on Newegg, I got several hits but all over what I paid.

So I'm streamlining my files and such to get my comp ready to transfer and I recall being told ages ago that doing a lot of moving/deleting/etc. would leave little phantom gaps and such that defragging what supposed to take care of. Is this still a thing? I'm still running on the assumption that a fresh install is better than moving stuff from one drive to another, so I'm trying to minimize what I move over.

If you're moving stuff across then fragmentation is a non-issue. The move process treats files as singular entities so their organization on the source disk doesn't matter. They'll wind up non-fragmented on the destination drive.

A clean install usually is better, yes. It does require the effort to reconfigure all of your settings, but it also means that you're not moving stuff that's specific to the old computer and it means you have a chance to get rid of stuff that runs in the background that you don't use anymore.

As far as disk fragmentation is concerned...

Moving files doesn't cause fragmentation because the file itself isn't changing places on the disk; it's just rewriting the directory structure to find the same data in a new place. Deleting files leaves gaps but unless it's a bunch of tiny files scattered over the disk (or if the file you deleted was already really fragmented, see below) it generally isn't a problem because new files can just fill in those gaps. The real cause of fragmentation is when files are frequently added to; if there's NOT a gap on the disk for the file to grow into, that file will have to split up so its data is in two or more places on the disk. That's where the performance issues come in -- the spinning disk has to physically move around to get to the other parts of the file. (SSDs don't have that problem, so fragmentation is even less significant on them.)

The huge defrag operations that you used to hear about in the late 90's-early 2000's are counterproductive on modern drives -- pushing all of your free space into one big block doesn't help you at all. Modern defrag mostly just detects files that are split up really bad and rewrites them into the free space on the disk so they're all in one piece. It's a much faster operation that focuses on the important parts.

Quick q before I read that (i’m in class), how’s a 1050 compare to a 1060?

I got a big box from Newegg! I wonder what it could be?

It's not as good. :P

The 1060 is VR ready, while the 1050 isn't. The 1060 supports more VRAM and more GPU cores, and it its normal operating speed is slower than the 1050 (which means less power consumption, but more cores means that its total throughput isn't any worse) while its boosted speed is higher (which means it can crank out heavy workloads faster).

The upshot is that the 1060 can push out around 1.5x-2x higher FPS than the 1050.

EDIT: That is, the cheapest 1060 is that much faster than the cheapest 1050. Higher-end 1050's can close the gap but not catch up.

Hm...a 960 gives me about...20-25 FPS in Mass Effect Andromeda on high settings (not ultra; ultra is like...9 FPS). Do you think a 1050 would do okay for most AAA games on high settings for the next couple years?

A 1050 should pull roughly equivalent FPS to your 960, with about as much staying power. So... no. You'll probably have to back down to medium in a year or so.

Eeerrrrgh. Figured as much.

Hm, took a look at the Predator Helios 300. Looks... kind of decent? I'm not so sure about that 256GB SSD, though.

There's also a 1T HHD Predator Helios, but that one's 17 in and >6 lbs.