And yet another, another post about finding good SL laptop specs

[Eirynne Sieyes]

Ouch! This alphabet soup is giving me a headache! Open GL, Closed GL, SL uses mostly GPU or is it CPU, or mostly RAM? Whichever, I understand just a little.

Please help me identify specs for a relatively high-end laptop for SL that's not a heavy, lit up gaming system - and which will still support SL graphics in a year or two. All I use now is a 14-inch ThinkPad with an 11th gen i7, 16 DDR4, and no video card. Though it works pretty well, there is lots of room for improvement! 

So far I know to look for:

• at least 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM
• 12th gen Intel i7 (now there are letters after the i-7?)
• some sort of NVIDEA RTX card that won't sound like it is taking off (fat chance) - or Quatro?
• in a relatively light weight body (4 or 5 lbs?)
• with which is the fasted SSD now, M2?
• 16" (preferably) or 17" brilliant screen whose native resolution may be higher, but that can be run at 1920 x 1080 for better performance.  Does anybody make non-OLED brilliant screens these days - like MSI used to years ago? 

Any suggestions are very appreciated.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Eirynne Sieyes
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[Love Zhaoying]

35 minutes ago, Eirynne Sieyes said:

SL uses mostly GPU or is it CPU, or mostly RAM? Whichever,

 

[AmeliaJ08]

I would say the specs listed in your post are great but arguably a little excessive for an SL user!

Depends what you value, much cheaper machines will be able to maintain 30-60FPS+ even in busy scenes (with all graphical bells and whistles turned on) though.  Really given the power of most (almost all) modern CPU's used in laptops the GPU is the deciding factor and even the lowest end 'current' gen Nvidia GPU - the 1650/ti - is sufficient for a smooth (as smooth as SL gets, ignoring the streaming nature of how the world loads) experience in SL, particularly at 1080P resolution.

32GB of DDR5 is also very nice but... not necessary for SL, 16GB of DDR4/DDR5 would be sufficient and most lighter users will struggle to hit swap with 16GB of RAM and Windows 10/11 running even with some other apps open at the same time, I know with Blender and Gimp running at the same time as Firestorm I still haven't used more than 16GB. 32GB is nice if you can afford it though and if you have the spare slots then filling a laptop with as much RAM as it can handle is a good strategy from the point of view of extending their already very long lives.

So yeah, if it says RTX on the box you'll probably be just fine but it that is out of your price range there are other options, 1650/1660 laptops are still out there and despite their limitations they work just fine for most SL users today and I can't see anything in the near future that would change that.

If you really want to get more bogged down in specs start considering VRAM, 4GB is about the minimum VRAM you should consider for a modern laptop to run SL well but increasingly it is becoming clear that this will probably be the limitation in the future, ideally you have 6+ GB of the stuff and if you're doing other gaming you'll find that 4GB graphics cards (GTX1650/RTX3050) might be why your machine becomes less able to play modern titles.

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Jackson Redstar]

22 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

 

32GB of DDR5 is also very nice but... not necessary for SL, 16GB of DDR4/DDR5 would be sufficient and most lighter users will struggle to hit swap with 16GB of RAM and Windows 10/11 running even with some other apps open at the same time, I know with Blender and Gimp running at the same time as Firestorm I still haven't used more than 16GB. 32GB is nice if you can afford it though and if you have the spare slots then filling a laptop with as much RAM as it can handle is a good strategy from the point of view of extending their already very long lives.

 

 

 

 

with win11 and just SL running I am often using 14-16 gig or more of ram. Stick with the 32

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

with win11 and just SL running I am often using 14-16 gig or more of ram. Stick with the 32

That seems odd, even accounting for Windows 10/11 allocating and reserving RAM (since 'free' RAM is RAM wasted) but opening it up to other apps as needed?

I can load up Firefox with five open tabs, Blender, Gimp and Firestorm and still only hit 8.8GB memory usage in Windows 10 (no images or models loaded in Gimp and Blender though) and I know Windows 11 memory usage isn't any different.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Kathrine Jansma]

With the Cool VL Viewer i frequently hit 10+ GBs of RAM usage in texture/mesh heavy areas with a large draw distance.

More RAM doesn't hurt usually. Windows will use it for filesystem caches and other things.

 

 

[JeromFranzic]

On 3/16/2023 at 7:27 AM, Jackson Redstar said:

with win11 and just SL running I am often using 14-16 gig or more of ram. Stick with the 32

My laptop uses about the same amount, especially when I'm in a large Sim like Mount Campion. Doesn't matter which OS I run SL in, Win11 or Linux. Definitely stick with 32. Also helpful to have that much on if you have a few extra apps running. I sometimes prefer my own music vs SL streams, Chrome is on and maybe a VM of some sort.

(OK, not the VM, that can slow down SL.)

[Toothless Draegonne]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BL9FG4RY

Description: "ASUS TUF A17 FA707RW 17.3" 144Hz Full HD Gaming Laptop (AMD Ryzen 7-6800HS, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, Windows 11)"

Recently got for running SL and being  a "yellow" (AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU) testbed. Actually pretty good, will run ultra with some caveats (which tbh is the same as most hardware), and definitely runs high. Cost isn't too ridiculous and pretty good for what it is. If anything the GPU is a bit overkill for SL, but once PBR/GLTF becomes a thing you'll probably see it used a bit more. Doesn't get excessively hot, unlike the thin-and-light I use for work that turns into an egg-fryer when it's under load. It's okay in some very busy regions if you tame the draw distance a bit. Just you and a few friends just hanging out somewhere that's reasonably made, you'll be anywhere from 60fps to ramping right up against that 144hz refresh rate unless everyone's wearing crash-me-harder avatars.

Monitor is nice, decent brightness and colours as you'd expect from IPS. Not glossy, not incredibly matte either. Er, "satin" maybe? It's definitely not what you'd call a "high end" laptop, but it's also roughly a quarter the price and you'd only get marginal improvements for the amount you'd spend anyway.