hmm new laptop? What brands do you like?

Gamble

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May 23, 2015
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I think it's time to upgrade. My near 5 year old dell is still working great but I need more processing power for multitasking and 3d cad/cam.
I have an entry level HP that I can't wait to throw out the window. Was thinking of sticking with dell since bloatware is minimal. But considering others. My laptop has been on pretty much non stop for 5 years used daily. I just can't get into the desktop thing

Found an ASUS but never owned or touched one. Not sure, what do you guys think?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076QGSPY8/?tag=tcg21-20

I've heard MSI is good too but no experience with them.
Requirements:
17" screen
Full number pad (would love a full 0 key, not the half size if I have to split hairs)
Windows only, no mac.
Intel i7
Around $800

asus seems to check all the boxes (aside from the number pad) and it's on sale but wanted to see what you guys think before I do it. I'm sure some others will be on sale next week and but not sure if it's worth waiting and this one goes back to full price.
 

importcrew

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I was going to say the Dell Inspiron 7000 series but then the price point changes that. I have the 7737 (17.3" 1080p display, 2gb GeForce gt750m graphics card (as well as on board graphics as well), 16gb DDR3 ram, 1tb HDD, full keypad (albeit half size "0" key).

I use this as my primary business computer. Works great, but did cost around $1100 at the time.
 

Gamble

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May 23, 2015
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I found this one (may be discontinued hence the price)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0778SBRD2/?tag=tcg21-20

but from what I read the amd radeon 530 isn't much if any better than the onboard intel graphics. Any thoughts on that?

It is a entry level graphics card according to one site and I don’t game but with cad/cam, multitasking and maybe one day of wanting to play games idk. I want it to last me 5 years like this one
 

Gamble

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May 23, 2015
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Well F me. I think I made the wrong choice.
I got a dell 5750. i7-7500u, 8gb ram, 1tb 5400rpm, Radeon m445 video. It was under 600 to my door.
After ordering i compared my current cpu i5-3337u to the i7-7500u. To my surprise they are pretty damn close. The i7 has a faster base speed of about 900mhz and 1mb more cache, aside from that benchmarks are pretty close. I was expecting a huge different but I guess not
So anywho it showed up and I have been playing with it today
It is DOG PISS SLOW. I have literally forgotten at how terrible mechanical hard drives were.

old setup: dell 17r, i5 3337u(22nm), 1.8ghz dual core. 8gb ram DDR3 (2 4gb sticks @ 1600mhz), samsung evo 250gb ssd, shit intel 4000 onboard video
new setup: dell 5000 series, i7 7500u (14nm) , 2.7ghz dual cord, 8gb ram (1 stick at 2133mhz), 1tb 5400rpm. Onboard intel HD 620 graphics and switches to radeon m445 video when needed. Weird setup

I have them side by side. The old one I had the battery setup for max performance and it's plugged in, the new one is running on the battery and balanced power. It shouldn't make that huge of a difference. I rebooted both at the same time and hit enter at the same time to open up fusion360....my old one had it booted and ready in 20 seconds... and then I looked at the new laptop and waited and waited and counted and counted. After 4 minutes I just stopped counting. The task manager is always at 100% when opening an application. And after it rolls between 75%-96%

I did a novabench benchmark just for shits and giggles
old laptop results:
Total score: 780
CPU: 394
Ram 186 - 14269 MB/s
GPU: 115 - Direct3d11: 5FPS - OpenCL: 213 GFLOPS
Disk: 85 - write 499MB/s read 459MB/s

New laptop: Gave me an error saying it could not finish but 2 minutes later it posted results.
Intel HD graphics 620. Not sure why it didn't switch to the Radeon but I still have to dig a little deeper into how that works exactly.
Total: 854
CPU: 498
Ram: 168 - 9145 MB/s
GPU: 163 - Direct3d11: 11FPS - OpenCL: 0 GFLOPS
Disk: 25 - write 70MB/s read 103MB/s

New laptop on performance settings: Still gave me an error
Still showing Intel HD graphics 620
Total: 913
CPU: 543
Ram 176 - 11572 MB/s
GPU: 163 - Direct3d11: 11FPS - OpenCL: 0 GFLOPS
Disk: 31 - Write 118 MB/s read 117 MB/s

So here are my thoughts and someone please chime in and tell me what you think:

1: my 5 year old laptop with SSD and 4gb ram upgrade is grossly under rated. I think I paid $400 -500 for this back in 2013 as a refurb. Then a few bucks for ram and SSD. Only downside is the lack of balls on the GPU.

2: Even with slower ram the dual channel ddr makes a HUGE difference. It may be worth to do drop my new one from 1 8gb dimm down to 2 dimms at 4gb each and get better performance. However another 8gb stick is only $80

3: the new i7 (7th gen) 7500U is pretty disappointing. They claim it can ramp up to 3.5 and it did on the novabench but the i5 is rated at 1.8ghz and always sitting around 2.2 - 2.4. While the i7 is idle at 1.0ghz. Guess I just expected a lot more out of what is classified as an i7.

4: i forgot how loud and SLOW the mechanical drives are since I have been using SSD for years on all my equipment. So either my old i5 is just a badass or if I swap in an SSD into the new laptop it 'should' and hopefully blow the i5 out of the water

I'm honestly debating if I should waste the $200 for the ssd and ram on this or if i should just eat the $100 restocking fee and get something better. I was leaning towards the new G3 17", that has an 8th gen i7, 1050 video card, 8gb ram and 16gb intel optane for just over $1k
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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Upgrade to a SSD and reinstall a fresh copy of windows without all the garbage applications that comes with newer computers. The bottleneck is your hard drive and the adware software that comes with new laptops. I personally wouldn't of bought a laptop without a ssd too.

The i7 being idle at 1.0ghz is BETTER then the i5 because it will use less power when not needed.

Id try that first and then run the test again before buying RAM.
 

Gamble

TCG Elite Member
May 23, 2015
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Upgrade to a SSD and reinstall a fresh copy of windows without all the garbage applications that comes with newer computers. The bottleneck is your hard drive and the adware software that comes with new laptops. I personally wouldn't of bought a laptop without a ssd too.

The i7 being idle at 1.0ghz is BETTER then the i5 because it will use less power when not needed.

Id try that first and then run the test again before buying RAM.

I wanted one with an SSD but it didn't have the option and the ones that had it were $300 more for 500gb ssd when I can do it myself for half the price. The one reason I really like the dells is the bloatware that comes on it is very minimal. Comes with a year of mcafee but i already turned it off.

Ha guess I forgot to add some details it was late last night. the 1ghz at idle I'm very cool with since mine sits at idle all day while i'm at work, just the overall benchmarks I had higher hopes for. They claim the 8th gen i7 are supposed to be roughly 40% faster than the i7 7th gen. I'm on the fence of returning it still. I'm still installing all my software and will play around and see. I really dislike the case being all plastic. I like the aluminum feel of this older one but I don't think any of them now are all metal, at least from dell
 

Gamble

TCG Elite Member
May 23, 2015
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Set up dyndns and RDP into your desktop to work. Change the port to something other than 3389 or you'll get scanned like a bitch.

I have been using team viewer for logging in to my laptop from work but just started to play with chrome Remote Desktop. Seems ok so far.
On my list of things to do is reset the router and have a more secure encryption but didn’t want to fart around with changing passwords on 20 devices yet. Once I do that I will change the ports. I can’t for the life of me remember wtf I set the router password to.

I had a thought but haven’t had time to play around yet. I use desktop version of quickbooks. I am almost wondering if I can have it point to my file and store it on Dropbox or a NAS so any pc I use can all access it without having to do a remote login. Anyone ever try this?
I let someone borrow my disc so until I get it back I have to just sit back and wait.

Oh and other things that suck! I bought office 2011 from one of my old jobs, they gave it to us cheap like $20. Apparently Microsoft keeps track of how many times you activate it (which I knew) but they don’t keep track of how many times or if you deactivate it. So I upgraded the drive on my mac to ssd and put it back on and had to activate it again. Then same with my wife’s MacBook and it said oh shit you used it too many times. Buy a new one! Even tried calling and it didn’t work. So that’s awesome.. ?
 

Gamble

TCG Elite Member
May 23, 2015
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Ugh sometimes. Dell literally doesn't let you upgrade everything so it's a little annoying. I got them to return this one with no restocking fee due to the 100% disk usage all the time

So the new one that will be here in a few weeks.

The new dell G series. G3 17"
They have a g5 and g7 but those are only a 15" which sucks for me

its gen intel i5 8300h
4core/8thread/2.3ghz - up to 4.0ghz (or so they claim)
8gb ram (no option to upgrade)
128gb ssd w/ 1tb 5400rpm drive. Not sure how I feel about this yet. I like the idea of one drive and not having stuff scattered over both places. They had some laptops with the intel optane but after looking into it, it seemed that was geared for the mechanical drive; I'd rather have an SSD. So we will see how this does. Not opposed to just putting in another ssd in place of the mechanical for a backup

17.3" display, 1920x1080 IPS blah blah
Nvidia gtx1050 4gb ddr5

$750 ish shipped.

I think this will be a much faster setup. So now I just have to wait
Debating on a 13" 2-in-1 touchscreen just to keep with me on the go. Outlet has them for $437 but may wait for the next price drop
 

bikrboy128

Some say.....
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Ugh sometimes. Dell literally doesn't let you upgrade everything so it's a little annoying. I got them to return this one with no restocking fee due to the 100% disk usage all the time

100% disk usage was likely windows update doing its thing. i ran into this last night with my razer blade. i was gaming so had high cpu and gpu usage...perfect time for a feature update :picard:
 
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