New Computer

[Daisonia]

Toshiba - Satellite 15.6" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Ice Silver

 

This computer has 

NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M graphics

 

Is it good or no? Can I get shadows? Will it run okay? 

[Sephy McCaw]

It will run good but not good enough to have shadows on all the time, maybe for pictures only.

If your planning on not leaving the house with it I would suggest you invest in a desktop PC as laptops aren't generally that great for gaming.

You may also want to invest in a 7200rpm drive, it will make running sl better for cache as it will reach the files faster.

[Orca Flotta]

Good lappy from a reputable manufacturer. That i7 is total overkill tho while GPU could've been better (GTX series) for the same price, and, make no mistake, gpu is the most important part of any gaming machine.

[Daisonia]

I travel a lot. This is why I use laptops and not desktops.
I was researchin the Toshiba and people wer sayin that the screen resolution wasn't so good.
I have a Dell Inspiron.. Hopefully it's not worse than that. 

 

So here are the laptop choices again. 

 

VIZIO - 15.6" Notebook - 8 GB Memory - 1 TB Hard Drive and 32 GB Solid State Drive - NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE

Toshiba - Satellite 15.6" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Ice Silver - NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M graphics

 

Acer - 15.6" Aspire Ultrabook - 8 GB Memory - 750 GB Hard Drive - GeForce GT 720M

[iceing Braveheart]

---

Daisonia wrote:

I travel a lot. This is why I use laptops and not desktops.

I was researchin the Toshiba and people wer sayin that the screen resolution wasn't so good.

I have a Dell Inspiron.. Hopefully it's not worse than that. 

 

So here are the laptop choices again. 

 

VIZIO - 15.6" Notebook - 8 GB Memory - 1 TB Hard Drive and 32 GB Solid State Drive

 -

NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE

Toshiba - Satellite 15.6" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Ice Silver

 - 

NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M graphics

 

Acer - 15.6" Aspire Ultrabook - 8 GB Memory - 750 GB Hard Drive

 - 

GeForce GT 720M

---

Toshiba - Qosmio 17.3" Laptop - 16GB Memory - 500GB Hard Drive + 500GB Hard Drive NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M

CyberPowerPC - Fangbook Evo 17.3" Laptop - 16GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Black/Gray NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M

MSI - 17.3" Laptop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive - Black NVIDIA GeForce GTX770M

 

CyberPowerPC - Fangbook 17.3" Laptop - 16GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive + 250GB Solid State Drive - Gray NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M graphics

 

if there is no budget and you wanna game on a laptop get something with a GeForce GTX 780M minimum. most users only need 8GB system ram, ssd's solid state drives are not required they are optional but will increase costs as much as high end video cards

information and documentation is limited on laptops but it does not look like nvidia starts to increase power on the GeForce 700M (7xxM) Series until GeForce GTX 770M so the 770M would be en entrance card for gaming and things would get better as you went up to 775M and 780M

GeForce GTX 770M similar to Desktop GTX660

GeForce GTX 775M similar to Desktop GTX670

GeForce GTX 780M similar to Desktop GTX770

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_700M_.287xxM.29_Series

[Daisonia]

I have a budget. That's why I linked the ones I linked. I don't want a hardcore gaming computer..

Just something I can get shadows on. That's all I am asking for. 

[Orca Flotta]

I don't want a hardcore gaming computer..

Just something I can get shadows on. That's all I am asking for.

 

That's asking a lot, Daisonia. The ability to have shadows without a serious breakdown of fps demands a kinda hardcore gaming lappy. Even on my desktop I only activate shadows sometimes for photos. I guess your best bet would be MSI, they tend to blow alll the others out of the water and their GS series are more budget friendly as well. But you can't expect the best build quality and placing your lappy on a cooling stand is a must. So there goes the mobility aspect of laptops.

I'd recommend a real desktop for serious SLing, it's cheaper and more powerful as well. And for the time you're travelling just try to live with a less pretty SL.

[Qie Niangao]

I don't know why they'd fuss about the screen resolution; it's standard issue 1080p resolution, which is fine for an ultraportable.

Just in passing, all these have absurdly huge disk drives. I mean, who even uses a local disk for much of anything anymore? I suppose maybe if you want to store HD movie files to watch on the plane or something. Otherwise I just don't see why this is such a common configuration. Maybe they're just trying to emphasize that it's a laptop rather than a tablet. Anyway, neither here nor there for your purposes.

A solid state drive will make it feel (much) snappier at starting things, but not such a big difference once applications are up and running.

As others have said, for performance especially with SL, the more graphics card you can throw at it, the better, so I much prefer the Toshiba's configuration to the other two options you list. (But for me, that product page is currently showing as "sold out" online... although maybe some are still in stores?)

You should be able to see shadows for taking snapshots and stuff, but yeah, it's not going to be a terrifically smooth, high framerate experience if you leave them on all the time. Can maybe trade-off other stuff, though, like drawing depth and antialiasing.

[Orca Flotta]

Just in passing, all these have absurdly huge disk drives. I mean, who even uses a local disk for much of anything anymore? I suppose maybe if you want to store HD movie files to watch on the plane or something.

The more the merrier, Qie. :smileyvery-happy: As you might know all our software is growing and growing in space requirements. Remember the days when your whole Windows fitted on 6 * 1.44 MB diskettes? These days are long gone. Nowadays you just need more space on your HD than ever before. And, yes, we store a lot of movies locally. Not owning a TV, we use our main computer as media center as well. We even store our movie collection on external disk so we can take it with us from pc to pc.

Also we use all that local disk space for everything computing related. My hubby's history archive, expansive photo collections, drawings, countless Linux distros ... and putting all that up on a cloud? NO NEVER! The NSA is not welcome on our private computers.

Besides, a upgrade from 500 GB to 1 TB makes a 10 € or $ price difference, so hardly worth mentioning.