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Will this meet my gaming needs
Hello
A while back I posted about getting a laptop.. well I got one, I think I made the right choice.. Can someone give me opinions please.
Dustin
Comments
if you've already bought it, then dont look back:) it's too late to ask about something AFTER the fact:) good, bad, ugly, it's a done deal. live with it and enjoy the choice:D
Ugh. Why do people do this? A search through your old forum posts found that you had indeed asked for help. But that was in May, and a lot has changed since then. First you're supposed to figure out what you ought to get, and then only after that should you go buy it. You're going in reverse, saying that you bought something random, and want to know if it's good.
There are at least two things about the configuration that are flagrantly stupid.
"12GB DDR3 1333MHz"
Sandy Bridge has a dual channel memory controller. That means that your memory capacity should be a power of two. 12 is not a power of two. Therefore, you'll be able to improve your memory bandwidth by pulling out one or more modules to leave 8 GB, as two 4 GB modules, and throwing the rest in the garbage. So you're paying extra for worse performance. Now, the processor might not be fast enough for that to make a very big difference. But it's still paying extra for worse performance.
"Nvidia GTX 560M Graphics with 3GB GDDR5"
You know what the difference between 1.5 GB and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory on a GeForce GTX 560M is? Power consumption, and price tag. And 3 GB is worse in both ways. Anything that can actually make use of more than 1.5 GB of video memory is sufficiently demanding that the GF116 GPU chip will completely choke on it and it will be unplayable. So you paid extra for an inferior product.
And then $1500 for that? You could have gotten a rebranded Clevo P170HM with a Radeon HD 6990 and nearly double the graphical performance for under $1600.
I am not completly agreeing with you Quizzical.
I had 6GB DDR2 in one of my PC's, not dual channel and performances weren't bad at all.
IMO that more memory is better than frequency they are working on or even dual-triple channel type installed in PC.
8 GB of memory isn't going to do better in Photoshop or AutoCAD then 12 GB, thats for sure. In video games ofc, no game requires that much, except maybe Metro2033...
I agree that Clevo P170HM is much better option for that range of money, HD6990 is a killer
"OGame has no bugs, only features" - Muhawia, Gameforge Group Leader Community Manager
Thats because that old DDR2 system you had is completely different from how a SB works with duel channel. Quiz is correct about the SB working better with 8gigs, plus anything over 8gigs is a waste (i made this mistake by getting 16gigs, but currently upgrading my pc again and dropping all the ram and getting 8gigs of better ram)
Actually 8GB will be worse, in both of those programs. I frequently use photoshop to process 15MP RAW image files (CR2), and that doesn't even use my system's now-paltry 4GB. Just a few days ago, I stitched together nine 15MP JPEGs into a panorama, again, not even going past my computer's 4GB of RAM.
My dad has been a mechanical engineer for over 20 years, using programs from Autocad to NX, and I think 12GB would easily hold a dozen of anything he does.
As for Metro2033, it's a 32-bit executable, so it's not going to use more than 4GB. In fact, it would crash the moment it tried to use more than 2GB by default, because Windows limits the RAM per 32-bit user process at 2GB unless you override it. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx
The only game I know of that regularly exceeded that 2GB was the first Surpreme Commander, and only under absurd conditions.
On the other hand, cutting one's memory bandwidth in half is not going to help.
Mismatching the memory channels usually won't completely cripple performance. It's not like you lose 50% of performance in real programs. Maybe you lose 2% here and 5% there. Some programs won't notice the difference at all. But going from 8 GB to 12 GB gains you basically nothing for the overwhelming majority of users. Paying more for inferior performance is a bad idea, even if you want to argue that it's only slightly inferior performance.
If you're doing something heavy-duty with AutoCAD or Photoshop that needs more than 8 GB of memory, then get 16 GB, not 12 GB. But why would you do that on a laptop in the first place?
VirtualBox, VMWare and virtualization takes more then 8GB ram, my co-worker has 24GB DDR3 and most of it is used all the time ( no page file and 256 GB SSD ). I mentioned PS and CAD as reference programs to compare. Metro 2033 is probably as you say 32-bit executable application but please see loading scenes with 2-4 GB of ram and then compare it to 8-12 GB, it is noticable. Of course, this amount of ram memory isn't needed in a lap top IMO.
"OGame has no bugs, only features" - Muhawia, Gameforge Group Leader Community Manager
It's not that there's no way to require more RAM than that, it's just not probable for the typical user, or any user unless they do one of the half-dozen highly specific niche things that use a lot of memory (servers, running a ton of virtual machines at once, maybe encoding video at like... 2560x1600, something absurd like that).
As you say, there's just no reason to get 12GB of RAM in a laptop. I won't be too harsh on the OP for making a simple mistake like that, as it's perfectly understandable, but Quizzical is right about one thing: the point is to seek help and make sure a machine is good BEFORE buying it. If you do it afterward, then any advice we give is useless, because the machine has already been bought.
that makes even less sense:D nobody in their right mind would use a laptop as a virtualization server:D virtualization servers are usually server boxes with 24 cores and 64 gigs of registered ECC ram hooked up to a SAN fiber loop etc...
the moral of the story is just because something is "possible" doesn't mean it's efficent or should be done that way.
+1
As far as this goes - Virtualbox and VMWare in and of themselves take next to no RAM. Hypervisors are pretty resource efficient. Most of our virtualizing servers at work are small and only intended to run a couple of specialized virtual machines - and they get by on 4G of RAM running OS X and two instances of Windows.
Virtual Machines require basically as much RAM as they would if they were real machines: and if you are running multiple Virtual machines on one machine, you have to have enough RAM to support the host, plus each virtual machine.
Some operating systems take a lot of RAM. OS X uses a lot. Windows uses a lot. DOS does not use much at all (and yes, I have some VM's running DOS). Linux CLI doesn't take much at all - I have several Linux applet servers that chug along just fine on 256M of RAM a piece.
So while VM's are a good example of one way to use a lot of RAM, it isn't exactly a requirement that you have a lot of RAM to take advantage of a lot of the benefits of virtualization.