What is bottlenecking you? (if the story is more complicated, let me know)
In most cases the bottleneck should be the cpu, because gpus are advancing at a higher rate than cpu architecture currently is .
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Yeah, but software is also going in the direction of taking the load off the CPU to the GPU. Look at DX12. From what I understood, that's pretty much exactly what it does: halving the CPU load so that it doesn't bottleneck the GPU so much.
Then there's Source, just try running a game on the integrated and dedicated GPU on an Optimus laptop, same fps, it only looks different because that's what Nvidia does.
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No, bottleneck will be the GPU after your statistics:
Let's say that you buy a new rig and get CPU and GPU that are fitting at your time. Now the games are all made to run on these GPU and CPU powers.
2 years later the GPUs are far far better than your 2 year old GPU while your CPU is still kinda ok in comparison with the CPUs of now. So, while your CPU will handle most games (because they are made to run on the new CPUs which are not so much faster than yours), the GPU is very bad in comparison with the new GPUs and will thus perform very badly.
As the games are programmed to run on new GPUs and CPUs, your GPU will be the limiting factor.
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My potato has a AMD Sempron SI-42 2.1 GHz(1 core), ATI RadeonHD 3200 and 3 GB of RAM. You name it.
Personally I think is the CPU, but I still lack knowledge, so this is not much but a guess.
But the worse of all is my wallet.
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There is nothing worse than a single core CPU nowadays...
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Its a fine surfing machine i'd wager. Also still good for desktop workloads. Nothing to be replaced in that regard. Of course even an atom class cpu can match yours with a drastically lower power budget. But whatever it should be fine... as long you're not into gaming apart of 2d indies.
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Yes it's fine to work with ms office and stuff. But nothing much beyond that. The thing is that I like gaming and with my potato I'm very limited to either old games or, like you said, 2d Indies. And even tho there are many good old games, you ain't enjoy that much because you've seen better(and mp eventually dies)(still I should try harder).
But heck it. This thing was the best I could get at that time(5/6 years ago) and while it's still running I won't get another machine(mostly because I can't :P).
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Keep it running till it fails you. Just in case you're running into a wall with the limited cpu it might be replaceable into a dual core of the same socket even.
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Your GPU is very poor. Your CPU is way too good and will not reach full potential in most games due GPU bottle necking the games. Honestly I don't see your GPU getting you above 30 fps in modern AAA games without going low on settings. Ofcourse it should run well where CPU is used more and if you only play indie games. Here is a link to benchmarking site to compare your GPU to others in power.
You have a slow HDD though(7200rpm is standard these days on HDDs), would recommend getting SDD at some point if your laptop supports adding additional hard drives. Really speeds up the boot times.
You might also need to upgrade RAM in future, although 6-8 GB is good enough for now.
I read you go for software engineering. Requirements really depend on what you end up coding, so can't really say much what would benefit you the most.
PS: Many can't upgrade their RAM as the old motherboard might not support the new ones due many reasons. Although maybe some also marked it due it being least efficient on heavy duty gaming. Some games like Dwarf Fortress really require a lot of CPU and RAM.
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Well, I had my budget, a GTX x60M would have costed me an extra $200-300 with a worse GPU. Hitting anything above those specs meant double the price, and I wasn't going to do that.
I know 7200 rpm is the standard, but only on desktops, I have a 6 year old PC with a 7200 rpm and an external 1TB 7200 rpm HDD which gets REALLY hot really fast, and I don't want that.
This laptop only has one replaceable RAM slot (still 4+4), but I doubt system requirements will go any higher without the ability to have more than 8GB of RAM with less than 2 chips, since only a few really new CPUs actually support 3 slots of RAM properly and chips bigger than 4GB are hard to find (at least here).
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Ye, sadly that is the way with laptop. And worst is that the GPU is integrated. Most usually has crappy intel HDXXXX and then the other as a support. However even 960M is pretty bad, and won't do too well. 965M would do decently. 970M lets you have 60 fps in most games with high settings.
I would have probably gotten a worse CPU unless you really like CPU intensive games and play them a lot. 7200rpm is standard even on laptops, but they sell many laptops a bit cheaper due putting crappy HDD in it. External harddrives always have problems as they are connected through usb and gives less performance when compared to sata3 connection.
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Intel HD are actually good integrated chip. Coming from 40 fps on mid settings on TF2 and starting it up on integrated graphics on max settings with 60 fps (with a worse CPU) was a really huge shock for me.
But HDDs have no real performance hit via USB, since they are already slow as they are, I had about 10% worse performance on the external HDD, and that was on USB 2.0. USB 3.0 is more than enough to handle the speed.
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Have to remember that Team Fortress 2 is very old game(8 years in fact), and doesn't even have a GPU minimum recommendation besides needing 8.1 directx. It is also a free2play game, which are always made to be available for the most large audience as possible. If GPU struggles with that game to reach 60 fps, it is very poor gpu card.
When you check the benchmark site, you can only find one Intel HD card on the whole "high end" gpu list. Meaning they perform worse than my 7 year old radeon 4870 card that I owned back in the day. Anything that doesn't reach even the bottom of this list doesn't give you good performance in most of the games. And they struggle to reach 60 fps even on low settings. I couldn't get good fps on Planetside 2 with that card for example And if yours benchmarks worse, don't expect the game to perform well even on low settings.
Integrated GPU cards also lose support pretty fast, both from manufacturer and from game makers(some dont even support it from the start). But sadly you can't go around integration in laptops. Nvidia gives way better and longer support though than intel does.
However if you only play games like TF2 that are 8 year old games, or small indie games, you'll be fine.
When it comes to usb 3, it really depends on the manufacturer and how well the drive is made. There can be a small noticeable difference even on HDD when comparing usb 3 to sata 3. Some might use more cpu power than others for example. But it is only 10 % difference at best. Also yours is already pretty bad so it doesn't matter as much. You might actually even benefit from getting 7200rpm 2.5" external drive. xD
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Planetside 2 runs at 45-60 fps on lower medium settings, fully GPU throttled (the CPU doesn't even struggle)
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But when you are in big fights full of action, it goes down to <20 fps. Unless they have really optimized the game by time, must say it's been a while.
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I used to get 40 fps on my OLD rig back in the early beta days... Then it dropped to 5-15... This new one never goes below 40 on fight scenes, it mostly lags when UI comes to fight.
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Intel HD 5000 and 6000 chips are quite decent as far as integrated graphics go though. Capable of gaming on low-res low settings. granted, they are still miles away from AMD APUs, but for everyday and casual gaming use, a simple standalone Intel CPU can be sufficient. Although for low-budget gaming I'd still recommend an AMD APU to anyone.
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My new Laptop (for university and computing stuff in Excel) will have:
I7 5500U 2x2,4GHz
Nvidia 940M
8GB RAM
1080p on 13,3"
256GB SSD
and will cost 1100€ :c
BUT! It also features full metal body, long battery time, light up keyboard, is very small and very light. Because that is what I want my ultrabook for :)
PS: For better gaming performance, close your internet browser while playing. Seriously, this kicks my fps from 40 to 60 in The Crew everytime as Chrome is just greedy as ****.
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Nice but i dislike a "premium" for a smaller chasis with degraded performance over standard price for full size with higher perf. Btw i despise intel for putting a lowly dual core as a i7 moniker which devalues their brands. i7 should be only reserved for high clocked quadcore++. In desktop world this would just classify as an i3.
If you're considering used devices you can get better perf for a less than half of your noted price.
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No, it has to be so small for me as tables and stuff are not that big in universities. Also, older devices (used) are even slower, so that is no choice for me.
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Before you buy read at least reviews about the broadwell you're aiming to get. They tend to throttle alot in thermal restricted environments. e.g. sudden slowdowns which are noticable and disturbing. You might believe you get a fast system but its often just as fast as the designer of the chassis was able to create a good cooling solution. To illustrate here's a chart taken from notebookcheck about the impact of different devices of the very similiar broadwell cpu's(while their baseclock differ their turbo is pretty close and turbo is the only meaningful clock to check if you run benchmarks): http://www.notebookcheck.com/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc2/Broadwell_novabench2_t1612015.jpg
And: old does not mean slow.. The performance / price curve slowly chugs on - to be more precise the cpu your device is restricted to 15w and is hampered alot with that. (+GPU beeing a 25-30W part imho) You are able to get alot more faster things on mobile and cheaply if you go for a 15'' even and though they are older. On 13'' you need to ask wheter you want battery runtime or more performance. Your device tries a dance to archieve both. It surely succeeds in getting some good long runtimes which is a must for university workload but acknowledge that its can sustain good performance just for short periods of time after which its speed decreases.
Bottom line: read reviews about the device you want and compare.
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I did read reviews. A lot :D Cuz I always read many things about stuff I am going to get.
You are right about the cooling stuff, but the Asus has a very efficient cooling system (and moreover it is not that warm in germany in general so that the outside won't heat the device up I guess)
Also, 15" is just too big for university. You cannot put it on the tables in the lecture halls and I know this straight from my brother who is ever since annoyed by his Macbook 15" being too big, so I want to get 13" :)
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Gratz mate!
I similiary upgraded my laptop in the last 2 weeks. Its a big step forward for me. 15'' one with an haswell i5, gtx 760, 8GB ram, dual band wlan radio in a 2x2 configuration, 1TB (feels very snappy) and a extremly good TN display - fullhd of course... coming from a lowly athlon dual core, ati mobility 4570 and 4G ram & very slow 320GB hdd (& ugly 768p display) it feels like coming from middle age to modern time.
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Upgrade from Windows XP to 7 on the same computer with an Intel chip, same hardware, triple the performance.
But 768p isn't bad, 1080p is harder to manage IMO (on a 15" screen)
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Yeah driver issues on xp i guess. A transplanted win7 runs fine but does not recognize usb3 ports. A freshly installed linux mint however does.
Yes the higher dpi of the display is super cool but means larger fonts and higher icon res needed. I found the 125% zoom level very usable and good looking. When i spoke about bad 768p displays its more like a litterally had a lowcost bad model too. I can tell by lookin side by side that color accuracy, saturation and view angle stability (look from different view angles how well picture looks) is lightyears better.
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Yeah, the old one was a Lenovo, and on a low budget, they provide a gigantic quality over any other competitor. Looking at the screen of the new one (Asus), the brightness sometimes feels way too low when at the highest settings, like it dimmed by itself or something.
I think desktop OSes should adopt the mobile handling of resolution (not based on pixels, but on dp). A 1080p screen and a 720p screen look exactly the same on a 4.5" Android display, while Chrome on a 2k display on a laptop isn't even usable (can someone confirm?)
Also, Facebook looks horrible on ANY zoom because it's 90% images everywhere, they just love using their custom emojis and icons that no one notices how 5x5 they are until they join the 21st century...
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Oh yeah pixel stuff is nice if it runs on the intended dpi but this is rising thanks to mobiles and 4k displays. Yes hi-dpi scaling is on the big move. The current way windows is handling this is lacking. I've noticed very ugly upscaled old winapps. I had the very strong urge just to close it because. Some linux desktops & OS-X have started adopting hidpi scaling beyond increasing font sizes. So thats what you basically look for.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI
Dunno about Chrome. I do have an android device with a 2k display on 8'' that is. Never ran chrome on (i use lightning / firefox mobile) but it should work. Or shouldn't it?
Interestingly our experience with brands its absolutely reversed. I briefly used a Lenovo Ultrabook which was overall nice but had a very dim HD+ display and my new Asus is the bright shining (i think its bright enough even for sunlight - even not under direct exposure) thing :)
Did you check power settings btw? Running on dc power? ASUS might have thought it would be a cool thing to limit brightness when on the run. On the other hand thats what i thought when on the Lenovo. It would never worked out when outside. A total fail for usage beyond a classroom / office.
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The problem with HiDPI is that it's meant for retina displays only (320 dpi mostly, any higher DPI makes a solo pixel invisible to the average human eye viewing from >20 cm distance). Not the 140-150 we have on a 1080p laptop screen compared to the standard 90-100.
The screen looks ok on max brightness in the sun, but it sometimes fail to satisfy indoors, but that's just an opinion though.
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I don't really know :
i5-4460 @3.20GHZ
GTX 960
8GB RAM
916GB HDD
1080potatoes
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well rounded, steamy cpu, gpu is a bit low for fullhd gaming, but fine for 30fps+ target. consider replacing it when pascal comes out. Memory is appropiate. HDD space is substandard for the mass of todays games, but should be ok if you're conservative.
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I'm not bottlenecked by anything; it's all pretty evenly bad.
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Too bad i cant select multiple options from poll, because my 10y.o. notebook fits to all of them :P
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my computer is pretty good but the processor is a tad low powered compared to everything else.
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My bottleneck is time and will. My hardware limitation is mainly storage (due to Android's useless way of using an SD card), with the GPU driver being the most serious limitation on gaming (on my Galaxy Tab S).
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Or perhaps the fact that ARM is designed for power saving before performance.
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CPU power was never the issue in games I played. RAM was an issue in one case (Shadowrun Returns) when I played on a 1GB tablet.
In terms of performance, the GPU is the main limitation on Android gaming, simply because tablets tend to have incredibly high resolutions (2560 x 1600 in the case of the Galaxy Tab S) and many games tend to run at the native res. Still, I have more problem with compatibility issues than performance.
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My Moto G doesn't seem to have issues gaming. Mostly just having a quad core on a mobile device is more than enough for the power it needs. But yeah, that is a huge resolution that is very high even for PCs and most GPUs that aren't new can't even handle it right.
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It depends what kind of gaming you do. I assume you're not playing versions of PC games on that. Take something like KOTOR, it not only takes 2.5GB of storage, it also has some demands of the GPU (if you use higher settings) and I assume the UI will be a little too small for a 5" phone.
Anyway, the Galaxy Tab S just happens to be a pretty popular tablet with a shitty GPU driver, at least according to Double Fine, and I tend to believe them. Would have loved to play Broken Age or Grim Fandango on my tablet. And apparently Lollipop on the tablet is even worse, and Baldur's Gate EE and some other games don't work. (I haven't upgraded yet, and don't plan to.)
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Well, mobile devices have integrated chips, so the performance shouldn't be any better than that of HD graphics.
+mobile ports are horrible from a technical standpoint
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Mobile graphics are generally up to the task of playing a 10 year old PC game, certainly if the port is done right. Mobile ports are generally okay in my experience. I played quite a few PC games on Android (mostly adventure games), and they mostly worked well. Even KOTOR, although I play it with low graphics and the control isn't perfect, is certainly enjoyable.
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Specificaly the GPU driver let me choose the Tegra K1 as the base for my tablet, as nvidia is renown to create kickass drivers. They are supporting even full opengl 4.3 (not ES!) on android. I can see what you mean, a pal gotten a Galaxy Tab Pro with a similiar shitty Adreno driver (according to the game developer rich geldreich) Its crushing that ppl never care to inform themselves before buying their hardware although. Here in the special case i suggested the TabPro (was on a strong discount back then like 220€ total) but informed him about the disparity of resolution and rasterizing power of the gpu and the driver. issue
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It's not easy finding information about these issues, because most people don't use tablets for heavy duty gaming. I did quite a bit of research, and didn't know until recently how bad the situation was. I knew the GPU wasn't very powerful, and I was okay with that, but I had no idea there were problems preventing games from running correctly.
As for Tegra, had a Tegra 3 in my Nexus 7 2012 and it was okay, but I didn't go for a Shield tablet because it's bigger and heavier than the Tab S, yet with a smaller, lower res screen. I'm pretty happy with the form factor of the Tab S and I enjoy reading comics on it and even playing, it's just the compatibility problems that kill me (and the lack of storage coupled with Android's inability to use an SD card well).
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Uhum, i see. But that its like the typical way "i don't game so i don't need to take care" -> "buy mainstream mobile" -> "damn shiny game runs bad" -> looking for a better one
Games are usually the most demanding task a computer / mobile needs to do so thats priority when looking for how powerful a device needs to be. I evaluated the Shield too but came to the very conclusion as yourselves. Too heavy and just FullHD & also just 16:9 - bad for heavy web surfing. I did check the TabPro 8.4 too. But it similiary had an unwanted 16:9 aspect ratio and also a small battery. Paired with a pretty mediocre cpu power & poor graphics it did not convince me.
I opted for an MiPad instead. Its a nice 8'' device.. with a gorgeous 2k 4:3 display. Its moderately heavy (a tab s is still lighter) but has a great battery for the weight. Comes with all the commodities you want including sd card slot, top notch graphics (adreno 330 << adreno 420 < adreno 430 < tegra k1 < tegra x1), tons of sensors (just lacking gps, its no issue however, wlan sensing comes close enough), bluetooth, great wlan (probably better than shield even) and is available in a 64GB option. And best: its pretty cheap to be had. <=320$ (depends on model, i picked up the 16GB model for 220€) So ultimately a no-brainer to get.
I can glady tell you: Android can work with SD cards pretty well.. just not on stock Android. For the real deal you need to do some mounting on your sdcard which means you need root. As for myself i just keep it simple and use a Xposed module for rerouting app data access to sd card so i can distribute app data between sd and internal storage. No app2sd support required. Larger apps & games goto SD, smaller & systemlike apps stay on internal space. For filemananging (including access to your home pc via shares) i can recommend TotalCommander 4 Android. Its pretty simple to transistion to it if you know about FileCommanders (lile TotalCommander) first place.
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Unfortunately I've had bad experiences with "no name" Chinese devices, which is why I tend not to go with the lesser known devices such as the MiPad.
Personally I feel that "how powerful a device needs to be" doesn't really matter for most games I play. I have no problem using lower settings if available, and have never had high end cards or CPU's on a PC. I can play quite a few games well enough on my HTPC with a Phenom II X3 710 and a Radeon 5550 and also on my Bay Trail Windows tablet. Sure it limits my choice, but typically not in a way that really matters to me.
The driver bugs were something I wasn't ready for probably because they're a lot less common on the PC these days. Even Intel integrated, which was a bug fest some years ago, is pretty decent. It's a real problem that there's no driver update mechanism on Android.
I guess I should root the tablet. Probably will do at some point. Thanks for the recommendations.
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My GPU. My 8800GT is 8 years old and top of the range when I bought it in 2007. But now it's often minimum spec or below for newer games :/
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And it kinda overheated a few months ago and hasn't worked as wel since :/
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Fans need to be cleaned at times. You could pick up a used gtx 275 / 285 for 20-40$ at ebay. Pretty much faster i'm wagering around 100%. It is constrained mostly by its typical 896MB vram though there were rare variants with ~1.5GB vram. Still DX10 class (if that matters), but fast. Your power supply just needs to supply upto 210w for the gpu alone and some variants were a bit louder ;)
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Just about everything. an ASUS T100 is not meant for gaming... xD
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I don't have a bottle neck, but I have problem lately because the SSD samsung 840 EVO, seems like it slower than my HDD.
I bought it because before 850 Pro haven't arrived on my country.
This will be the last time I use any korean device.
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or maybe my overheating issues(20-40 minutes before shutdown in broderlands 2 and tomb raider)
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i5 @ 2.67Ghz. Pretty sure my GTX760 will be considered outdated soon - gotta start saving up for black Friday. After that it would be the cooling, followed by my ancient 500GB hard drive. Once I get all the new parts my case probably won't fit them in (dell studio xps 8000 - I barely managed to fit my gtx in there), so I'll need a new tower. My PSU is either 650 or 700W, can't remember, but that might need upgrades as well.
I had originally voted CPU, now looking for an option that says the entire pc lol.
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I've got a Lenovo yoga 2 pro tho, great specs (i7, 8gb, 256gb ssd) but crappy integrated graphics card (anyone know if those can be replaced?)
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The smaller the form factor the uglier the upgrades. But you can always sell your device and get one which fits your needs.
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yea I mainly use my laptop for office work tho, so probably gonna focus on upgrading my PC
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I'm running an old IBM modified server with a GTX 660 Ti and a bottleneck with my 2 intel Xeon 5160's :(. Still runs some games decently though, battlefield 3 runs at 50-60 FPS
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Yeah two of them (kinda makes a quad core in a sense)
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How about a Xeon 5450 / 5460 then? They are Quads per socket.. so you would get an OctaCore with 2 sockets :)
What wonders me that you claim that its the gpu which holds your games back. Did you measure that? Got positive confirmation that the gpu utilization is <90%? And if so how about a bit of overclocking... the xeon should very well handle 3,6ghz with minor addition to vcore. Potentially peak at around 4,0ghz (or even go beyond) with a serious eye on cooling & temperature.
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Games like GTA 5 run my CPU's to almost 100% and GPU is definitely under that, about 50-60%. I also heard Xeon's don't overclock well and I have a pretty poor cooling system anyways (just a lot of fans). In response to the Quad Core option, I have been thinking about that for awhile, although it seems that windows doesn't like having two quad core's in the system according to my dad who is an IT expert. Even so it might have to work because the way this PC was built restricts the number of different parts I can put in here so those might be my only options for upgrading. Thanks for the suggestions though,I appreciate the help :)
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I don't have one as far as I've been able to tell. I've got a 1TB 7200RPM HDD so that would be my best guess but I've yet to notice anything bad. I built this machine about 5 months ago after using a 2.53 core 2 duo/ 256MB integrated GPU laptop for over a year. An i7 4790K and a 970 makes me a pretty goshdarn happy camper.
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Probably my GPU, it's an overclocked 3GB GTX670, but I don't see myself updating it in the next 2 years.
My PC excluding Motherboard and HDD/SSD (both died at the same time) is 3 years old already and still runs great.
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I prefer turtlenecks. :P
(GPU, the least 'high'-end think in my PC)
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So, I just got a new laptop for gaming, because the old one was limited by the CPU in ALL games and I really need a PC with a good CPU, since I'm going to a college for software engineering, I guess I'll need a good PC for the years to come.
My old laptop never got 100% usage on the GPU, since the CPU always got to 100% and overheated and got even more limited, so everything was a lag-fest.
So my new rig comes like this:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4720HQ (pretty much the best mobile CPU if you don't have unlimited money) From a Pentium B960
GPU: GTX 950M (I could have gone for a 960M, but that came with a dual core CPU, higher price or a 256GB SSD) From a GT 540M
1 TB 5400 rpm HDD (from a 500GB, not a big difference)
8GB RAM (it comes on 1600MHz now)
1080p screen :D (which is worse than 768p because Windows sucks at scaling, but it's ok)
It was about $900 and it's about the specs of the Xbox One, so it can handle all games on decent detail, I think it was worth it. So far, it's bottlenecked my the HDD (the loading times are the same as the old one and it sometimes freezes because of it, but I can replace it if I will). Also, Planetside 2 can't be handled by my GPU when settings > medium, funny how the CPU never goes above 40% on 3/8 cores all the time.
If you want a GA from the <0.25€ games, let me know which one :D I'm cheap, I got the new laptop, sorry.5s2YNPS: @people bottlenecked by RAM, how? It's cheap and it's an upgrade you can do on any laptop or PC.
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