General computer talk/advice

I looove this phone sooo much...

 

This'll be the 4th time I've said this on this forum: You can enable the iGPU in your motherboard's bios. Then install the Intel HD drivers and you're good to go. Keep in mind: You can only use the second monitor for other things that aren't your game at this point.

If you want to game on both of them, BombBoy, you should have invested in a faster GPU (remember when I originally said you should have invested the $60 you wasted in an i3 on a GPU? Yea, this is why).

Source: Ran 2 Dell P1911's off my HD4400 for literal years using the above method.

 

That's not what I said at all. I said, is there a way I can have 2 monitors, my main one that I game on on my RX 460, and my secondary one that juat has music and browsers on the iGPU. I don't care about SLI. I just want to use the iGPU to ease the load off of the 460 by taking a monitor out of the mix.

 

Yes. Just plug it in. As long as the iGPU is turned on in the BIOS, Windows will autodetect the monitor.

 

You must be blind, so I'll post an easy to read little snippet of what I said.



I know, reading is hard.

 

all this multi gpu multi monitor stuff, im gonna put in my two cents. I have run 3 nvidia gpu, 1 amd gpu and 1 intel gpu all AT ONCE. worked perfectly. As said above, for intel gpu to work, just make sure its enabled in bios and you installed the drivers and you are all set.

 

What's a better bet for light gaming for when I'm on holiday (not buying, my parents have these laptops)
This one:
http://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c04372331
Or this one:
http://support.hp.com/hk-en/document/c04372528
The A8 may be a better bet over the i5 as it is a true quad core, but the i5 may be faster as that seems to be the case about Intel VS AMD quite a lot, and the A8 has better graphics but as I said before possibly the i5 could perform better in the CPU department...

Also, I cannot use my laptop as the measly AMD E2-1800 refuses to perform as well as it used to.

 

For beamng.drive, go with the i5. For anything else, the a8 might be better.

 

I'm assuming older Valve titles like Half-Life 2 would run just fine, too.

It's a 17-inch laptop so it will be better for media consumption also, and it has Beats audio that genuinely sounds decent, so I might pick it over the other one.

 

My laptop has an A86410, and it runs these games on lowest settings:
BeamNG.drive at 20 FPS
Rocket league at 40 FPS
CSGO at 50 FPS.
So I'd go with that one.

 

Do some more research yourself. I'm sure you can find benchmarks of the CPUs themselves, as well as the integrated graphics for them.

 

I'd avoid going with HP if at all possible, they're terrible laptops, they die after a year and just feel cheap and flimsy.

 

I thought i5 is true quad core, what it lacks if hyper threading, but it has 4 real cores, while i3 has 2 cores + 2 'hyper' threads.


Need to find better video editor than VSDC, which has too laggy UI and rather difficult to see exact time for overlap/transition etc.

 

I'm quite certain that Beats audio doesn't actually do anything other than change the eq, so it's just a marketing scam thing. I've used an HP desktop with Beats audio, and to me the software was quite a painful experience. Of course you can still adjust the eq yourself, and not use the preset "beats profile" or whatever. Unless you're a bit of an audiophile like me, this probably wouldn't bother you in the first place, so that's just my two cents. I wouldn't let the Beats audio affect the decision of which laptop to buy.

Just keep in mind that HP laptops are generally built very cheaply and have awful cooling.

EDIT: I'm just going to throw in some more.

I have a HP laptop from around 2011 that is currently dead, due to overheating. I always thought it was built flimsily. A month or two ago, I was at London Drugs and I saw a new HP laptop. It was the flimsiest thing I've ever felt... Just by applying some pressure on or around the keyboard, the entire thing flexed, and the plastic felt very cheap, etc. I can't recommend HP, although from what I remember around 2011 and 2012, they had good performance for the price.

 

That's the way desktop chips are. Many mobile i5's are 2C+HT. And some mobile i7's are as well.

 

I agree that hp's are crap because this year we are using hp laptops and desktop aios in school, however I have a 504 that means I had to use a laptop I provided with special software the school provided. I got my laptop before they added the computers in class so I got to buy my own, and I picked a lenovo g50 which is flimsy but nowhere near as flimsy as the hp craptops the school is using, every time I have to use one for tests I am all the more thankful that I bought my laptop.

 

HP laptops used to be ok when they had not killed Compaq in them, that is their business models, HP home models have always been something to stay away from. However these days HP is something like Acer, better stay far away.

Those are for light use and not to be moved, they are so flimsy that constant moving breaks them and in case with HP poor thermal design kills it if used anything more demanding than Excel (without graphs or other demanding features).

There are top of the line models then, which are bit better, but not very good, fashion for thin laptops is not helping.


About audio, I did not really get what is the big deal about all the amplifiers and such and why the hate towards software EQ stuff, then I bought real amplifier, designed my own speakers after studying that from the interwebs, nothing crazy, just 2ft tall cabinets that gets help from 10" subwoofer.

Amazing thing was that I can actually understand words of the songs now, before I could not make up what words were, another bit was that I don't need to play with loud volume to get solid thump.

It is like going from 8 bit graphics to 4K or something, everything is more clear and more easy to pick up by ear, it is not huge difference in sound, but subtle things, same way like in graphics or in video, many subtle things make awesomeness, overdo and it won't work.

I can honestly say that any laptop speaker system or speaker sets sold for computer use are useless crap that sounds horrible, but to know that I had to build system that makes somewhat ok sound, certainly not good by standards of hifi freak, but certainly above level of computer speaker systems or usual home audio system level which I had before this current setup.

Amplifier makes a difference in some cases.

For BeamNG, I often use speakers on my display though, it is about the same with default sounds, but for future it is worth to get headphone amp (USB DAC thing) + quality headphones if speaker system with amplifier is bit too much, that is much better audio quality than any computer speaker system by Logitech or Creative for certain and not necessarily much more expensive.

Laptop audio systems tend to be quite crap, so even with decent headphones laptop audio won't be very good.

Then someone could explain to me how it makes sense to have somewhat hifi system for listening music from old MSX which I use it mostly, makes no sense?

 

I haven't had a problem with Acer products. While I don't consider them for high end stuff, in my experience, they produce quality products for reasonable prices.

 

I actually second this. I just replaced my grandfather's Acer laptop with a desktop I built him, but that laptop does just fine still. Sure, it has a couple quirks (like a completely shot trackpad... for some reason, because it was literally never used), but it's been pretty reliable. They make really nice gaming displays, too. I almost bought one, but then decided to go with my current setup.

And let's not forget that Acer is the only reason that Gateway still exists. Yea, remember Gateway? Ahh, the 90s...

 

I have experience from hundreds of Acer, Asus, HP, Toshiba and Fujitsu laptops from business world and Toshiba was most reliable while Asus came close behind, Acer did fail consistently after warranty period was over, always within a month. From manufacturer point of view, Acer were perfectly made products.

Their video projectors were fine, nothing spectacular in features, very cheap and low maintenance costs, can't remember any of those failing either, so they did have some good ones too.

Also from year to year, it tends to vary which brand has poor product, but from my experience it is a gamble with HP and Acer.

Never had an issues with Compaq either, it was sad day when HP took over them.