New Computer Advice

[madcat1090]

I bought an Toshiba Satellite A665-S5170 about a year and a half ago. Currently I'm disappointing with it. It is functional, but slow and unable to play many games at all (even has trouble with minecraft). I was considering purchasing a new computer because HP has pavillions on sale (specs below) for about 800$. I only use a laptop for school/casual games/netflix...you know, an average amount of usage. I understand that this computer is more than what I need, but it appears to be a good price and I assume it will last a least a few years. Any thoughts on upgrading? Pros/Cons of this model? Or should I just deal with my current laptop even though it is underwhelming. Any advice would be very helpful. Thanks.


HP Pavilion dv7t-7000 Quad Edition Entertainment
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM Processor (2.3 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 630M Graphics with 1GB GDDR3 memory [HDMI, VGA]
8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
NO mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery - Up to 5.75 hours of battery life +++
17.3-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit Display (1600 x 900)
Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
HP TrueVision HD Webcam
802.11b/g/n WLAN
Standard Keyboard with numeric keypad
Included 2 Year Warranty

[Lilfrier]

I'll just throw out that "a few years," is often a stretch with a laptop, unless you're very careful and don't move it much. My aunt has a Dell that's about 4 years old, and it can't even run Minecraft because it uses up the whole CPU. So it's possible that 3-4 years might be a stretch, depending on what you plan on playing.

$800 seems like a rather nice deal on that, though.

[Riavan]

My main worry is that we're nearing the next-gen console cycle, after that technology and system requirements will prob jump to a bit higher than that, then settle there for a while.

My 4 year old dell with no dedicated graphics card has trouble with minecraft, but can run wow on low and guild wars 1 on high. I think minecraft is a bad example because it's so badly made, java is not a stable platform for video games.

[Lilfrier]

My main worry is that we're nearing the next-gen console cycle, after that technology and system requirements will prob jump to a bit higher than that, then settle there for a while.

My 4 year old dell with no dedicated graphics card has trouble with minecraft, but can run wow on low and guild wars 1 on high. I think minecraft is a bad example because it's so badly made, java is not a stable platform for video games.

My aunt's laptop can't run Minecraft well at all, either. It's VERY chopy. Her grandson plays it on there occasionally. Anyway, I watched the Task Manager running while the game ran, and it was all OVER the CPU, haha. It showed CPU usage up over 80% almost all the time. I wonder if, beyond bad coding, if it's partially because Minecraft creates MASSIVE worlds (claim is, they are 8 times the size of this planet, though I don't believe that). Maybe the crazy amount of rendering it has to do for the size of the world is a problem.

---------- Post added 2012-07-04 at 02:36 AM ----------

Oh, and about the console thing. There's not going to be a technological leap because of consoles. That is, I don't think there will be. Consoles run on old hardware. The 360 runs on a GPU architecture so old (that of the Radeon x1800) that Windows 7 won't even support it. Consoles aren't going to be the reason technology jumps.

What should cause a jump is the upcoming Unreal 4 Engine. The next Xbox is allegedly to be 6 times more powerful than the 360 (according ot a random article I saw on the Internet, haha). The Unreal 4 Engine allegedly needs hardware 10 times more powerful than the 360 (I'm wondering if the optimization of consoles changes that).

[madcat1090]

Thanks for the input guys, I guess I will have to keep searching!

[Terranullis]

In most cases with laptops I've seen, the battery life they say it has is usually just when it's browsing the web etc, it will be much shorter when playing games.

[Riavan]

My aunt's laptop can't run Minecraft well at all, either. It's VERY chopy. Her grandson plays it on there occasionally. Anyway, I watched the Task Manager running while the game ran, and it was all OVER the CPU, haha. It showed CPU usage up over 80% almost all the time. I wonder if, beyond bad coding, if it's partially because Minecraft creates MASSIVE worlds (claim is, they are 8 times the size of this planet, though I don't believe that). Maybe the crazy amount of rendering it has to do for the size of the world is a problem.

---------- Post added 2012-07-04 at 02:36 AM ----------

Oh, and about the console thing. There's not going to be a technological leap because of consoles. That is, I don't think there will be. Consoles run on old hardware. The 360 runs on a GPU architecture so old (that of the Radeon x1800) that Windows 7 won't even support it. Consoles aren't going to be the reason technology jumps.

What should cause a jump is the upcoming Unreal 4 Engine. The next Xbox is allegedly to be 6 times more powerful than the 360 (according ot a random article I saw on the Internet, haha). The Unreal 4 Engine allegedly needs hardware 10 times more powerful than the 360 (I'm wondering if the optimization of consoles changes that).

I didn't mean so much that consoles are the driving force behind technology, more that buying a computer that is at/just above their specs when they are released, will prob have a much longer life, as it will play all the games which are primarily console ports nowdays, till the next console generation after that.