Need advice! I'm buying a gaming laptop or desktop!

[djwebb81]

I am currently on an old HP Pavilion 725n with 512 MB of RAM. Yeah I need a new computer badly. I have been doing my research and I'm leaning towards a gaming laptop just because I'd like to be able to carry it to a friend's house to play with him and I also would like to hook it up in my living to a 50 inch plasma. I'm not totally against buying a desktop so if you have a really awesome suggestion for desktop I would definitely consider it. I'm planning on spending around $1000 but I'm a little flexible on that. So far the best gaming laptop that I found was the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500. It has: Intel i7 i7-3630QM Processor (2.4 GHz), 16GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM, 1TB 5400 RPM HDD + 16GB SSD, NVIDIA Dual SLI GT650M (that's right! 2 2GB video cards), USB 3.0 & 2.0 ports, Blue Tooth 4.0, Dolby

 

[NightAngel79]

Hey! No time right now but wanted to post so that I was subscribed to thread.

Give it a few, I'm sure you will get feedback (probably more than you want!)

Welcome to the forums!

 

[djwebb81]

Thanks for getting back to me. I just read the entire thread about SSD's and my head hurts now haha!

 

[djwebb81]

I'm surprised you guys don't have any opinion on this subject. Nobody out there is proud of the deals they got on their gaming setups? I just want to consider more than a few options before I go out and spend over a grand. I don't want to have buyer's remorse a week later.

 

[sdrawkcab25]

For hardcore gaming, I'd go, with a desktop, over a laptop just because desktops are so much easier to customize and add onto later when needing to upgrade hardware.

The laptop does have the convenience of portability obviously, but with online gaming, who needs to leave the house anymore? lol

I haven't looked at prices of PCs or laptops in a long time as my hardcore PC gaming days are behind me for the time being. But I have always gone by the mantra of spending the most money on the RAM, video cards, and processor, and taking it easy on HDD size.

As to what manufacturer and type of RAM, video card, processor etc to choose is always debatable; however if you are buying a prebuilt PC, your options are usually limited.

Edit: also since you are specifically interested in a gaming pc, I wouldn't be opposed to moving this (your thread) to our "gaming" forum. You may get more responses there
http://androidforums.com/gaming/

Edit again: and remember building your own PC is pretty darn easy and a lot cheaper. This thread has a lot of examples:
http://androidforums.com/computers/613602-post-your-custom-rig.html

 

[djwebb81]

It's ok me with if you move this thread to a more appropriate area if it will help me to get more opinions. I want to consider both laptops and desktops. Prebuilt and custom rigs. I'm not against building my own or against a desktop but I already have a desktop and I would like to have the portability of a laptop with good gaming ability. I don't own a laptop and I do have a crappy desktop. I was kind of thinking that I would get the laptop now and throw down some real money on custom parts for a desktop later on. Anyway it's an interesting subject to me even if people don't suggest exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[mikedt]

I'm surprised you guys don't have any opinion on this subject. Nobody out there is proud of the deals they got on their gaming setups? I just want to consider more than a few options before I go out and spend over a grand. I don't want to have buyer's remorse a week later.

Could be because we use Android tablets for gaming, and our PCs are Chromebooks?

Myself I don't really game these days, my laptop is running Linux only.

 

[Speed Daemon]

I'm surprised you guys don't have any opinion on this subject. Nobody out there is proud of the deals they got on their gaming setups?

I don't play games. Sorry, but I don't know enough to help. :dontknow:

 

[XplosiV]

Just Google for custom laptops and find sites that have a configuration part, you can usually spec them out as you need and get ideas as to where to get them from. I know a few uk sites but I don't think they would be much help to you in the US

 

[Speed Daemon]

I looked at your specs, and since my new laptop seems to be "made for gamers" (although that's not what I bought it for) it may be worth you looking at for comparison's sake. It's a ASUS G75VW-DH72B with Intel i7 i7-3630QM Processor (2.4 GHz), 16GiB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, 256GB SSD + 750GB 7200RPM HDD, BluRay read + DVD RW, NVIDIA GT670M w/3 GiB GRRD5 RAM, 17.3" 1920x1080@120Hz display, 2Mpixel webcam, 4x USB 3.0 ports (backwards compatible) w/ power-off charge function, Gigabit Ethernet, B/G/N Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, stereo speakers AND subwoofer (ever seen a subwoofer in a laptop). I got mine from Amazon for $1999US.

I'm not liking the Windows 8 much, and still haven't been able to test out the performance much. The video app that's supposed to take advantage of i7 SMP and CUDA...didn't. But taking 2.5 hours to encode a 1.75 hour video to H.264 on a single core w/o any GPU help was a whole lot better than the 24 hours per hour I get on my 6-core Phenom2 box!

And take a look at the backside:

Sexy! Looks like a sports car with a diffuser. :laugh: That gaping maw means great cooling though!

 

[XplosiV]

24 hours to encode 1 hour of video? Ouch!

My 2nd hand dell i5 quad 2.6 does a whole bluray in an average of 4 hours H264 .avi 720p trimmed and cropped. Granted its not the Ferrari of laptops but it was a bargin at just $450 I could invest in an SSD and speed it up quite a bit but time is one thing I'm not short on at work so there's little point.

 

[Speed Daemon]

24 hours to encode 1 hour of video? Ouch!

Yep. The H.264 codec is designed to put all the processing at the encoding end, to be compatible with low-powered embedded devices. It does that well, but requires way more encoding power than MPEG2 because of that.

I'm producing High Profile ("main@high") 1080p60 AVC (.mp4) output files from input that ranges from SD MPEG2 (with some really oddball resolutions) to ATSC to 2K AVCHD Extended Profile camcorder files. Things aren't that bad if I don't have to do any scaling or deinterlacing. But some can take several days to repair the source files, recode to an edit-friendly format, edit, recode and master. I need to speed up my workflow, and am shopping for new software as well. Sorenson Squeeze is looking promising.

What software are you using to rip BluRay?

 

[XplosiV]

Well, I'm assuming we aren't breaking any site rules as the last I knew was your legally allowed to make a copy of discs you own, so thats what I'm doing.

Anyhow, I'm using AnydvdHD, txmuxer(sp?) which is dead easy to use, BDinfo, and nero 12.5 to recode into avi with mp3 audio via the H264 codec. If you want me to elaborate more I'll be happy to. I typically rip one with txmuxer, while encoding another with nero while watching a separate dvd from the dvd drive (br drive is USB salvaged from an old laptop and shoved in an enclosure - meh, it works, but id rather buy a replacement sata br drive)

 

[Speed Daemon]

Anyhow, I'm using AnydvdHD, txmuxer(sp?) which is dead easy to use, BDinfo, and nero 12.5 to recode into avi with mp3 audio via the H264 codec. If you want me to elaborate more I'll be happy to.

Thanks, but as soon as I get the unencumbered AVCHD files, I'm good. I can even live with the MPEG2 transport stream.

Out of curiosity, why do you recode the audio to MP3? IME, using more than one lossy compression algorithm can degrade the audio. Do you have things that can't play AAC? Orban (the name in broadcast audio) has a free AAC codec for Windows, FYI.

I've heard of SlySoft. I'll have to give it a try while it's on sale. IIRC I tried to make a "pure" fair use copy of a commercial BluRay disc by making an ISO image and burning to a BD-R disc. I couldn't get an ISO image though! If I can't make a clone disc, then I'll just have to "settle" for watching my BluRay movies from solid state media. :laugh:

EDIT: Well it looks like SlySoft is a bad actor. This "company" that claims to be in Antigua and Barbuda appears to be a credit card number harvesting site. It just creates endless "errors" trying to think my card was declined, and to try another. Not gonna happen! Now I remember why I remember the name! Thanks for the info nevertheless.

 

[XplosiV]

Thanks, but as soon as I get the unencumbered AVCHD files, I'm good. I can even live with the MPEG2 transport stream.

Out of curiosity, why do you recode the audio to MP3? IME, using more than one lossy compression algorithm can degrade the audio. Do you have things that can't play AAC? Orban (the name in broadcast audio) has a free AAC codec for Windows, FYI.

I've heard of SlySoft. I'll have to give it a try while it's on sale. IIRC I tried to make a "pure" fair use copy of a commercial BluRay disc by making an ISO image and burning to a BD-R disc. I couldn't get an ISO image though! If I can't make a clone disc, then I'll just have to "settle" for watching my BluRay movies from solid state media. :laugh:

Cant comment on the "SlySoft" issue your having, I think I paid with paypal so I had no issues at all. Maybe they are suffering some kind of tech issue

Well, it's something ive just started doing, so im not all too clued up on this codec and that. What I can tell you though, is I got annoyed with things being in AC3 audio and not being compatible with my old DVD player (having been cheap and only supporting common formats, and just a few of them) So for me, im going for versatility, overall, rather than space saving. To achieve that it seems so much easier and simpler to get Nero to recode the .ts into an .AVI with MP3 audio (constant bitrate) Off the top of my head I cant remember the setup options, I know I could use Handbrake to mess about a lot more with what codecs to use etc, but it's all a tad complicated for me, and its not like with the simple MP3 quality whereby if you rip an audio disc in low bitrate it sounds auful loud, and great at 320kbs - thats not my concern as I wont be blasting audio out stupidly loud to begin with, so having nero define my audio as MP3 isnt really an issue.

Going back to the Nero Recode setup, I know I can pick which audio track to use and they are either 2 or 6 channel AAC or DTS, I just find the one I want without the commentary and thats in English and use that.

As titles get duplicated the bluray rips will replace other older copies and I have 1TB free on my NAS before I have to start thinking about uprating/replacing that.

As for your issue with getting .ISO's to work, I'd expect thats down to the protection on the disc. Especially Blurays.


Disclaimer: Following info is intended to help with personal backup(s) only and is NOT intended to facilitate redistribution or any other illegal purposes.

Spoiler

Last week I had to troubleshoot a fair bit. For example: (actual experience)

With AnydvdHD / Nero installed.

Insert bluray - AnydvdHD takes care of protection (you'd think) - load Nero Recode to rip. Wont work. Protection still applies.

However:

Insert Bluray - AnydvdHD takes care of protection - RIP with AnydvdHD to get an image - Nero Recode to recode that image - does work. EXCEPT when you get a Bluray that messes about with playlists and doesn't give you the whole movie on one stream. Then you have to use BDinfo to find the right playlist, then TxMuxer to rip that playlist and join all the streams to give you the usable image stream (.ts) that you then recode in Nero.

 

[Speed Daemon]

Cant comment on the "SlySoft" issue your having, I think I paid with paypal so I had no issues at all. Maybe they are suffering some kind of tech issue

I dunno, maybe the website got hacked. There was no PayPal option or I would have used it. And there were several seemingly identical credit card options. The whole thing had "scam" written all over it, and the guy at the phone number they gave me was only interested in being a PITA. It's all good since I found a FOSS program that accomplishes the same thing for free.

Well, it's something ive just started doing, so im not all too clued up on this codec and that. What I can tell you though, is I got annoyed with things being in AC3 audio and not being compatible with my old DVD player (having been cheap and only supporting common formats, and just a few of them) So for me, im going for versatility, overall, rather than space saving.

I see now. I was wondering because AAC is the official lossy compression format for H.264. I only have 2 ears, so I don't pay much attention to all that multichannel sound stuff myself. I suppose every Blu-Ray disc is going to have it though. When I had similar playback problems, I just pulled an old A/V receiver out of storage and let it decode the difficult things. I was lucky to have held onto it.

Since you (I presume) don't have that option, using MP3 is a reasonable option. You might want to keep the bit rate at 192kbps to keep any artifacts from becoming too audible.

As titles get duplicated the bluray rips will replace other older copies and I have 1TB free on my NAS before I have to start thinking about uprating/replacing that.

I just went through that process. Strange how they always seem to fill up no matter what!

As for your issue with getting .ISO's to work, I'd expect thats down to the protection on the disc. Especially Blurays.

That's what I figured too. They can't say I didn't try to make an encrypted fair use copy!

thanks for all your help!