Notebook Gaming

With all the discussion and opinions on gaming between laptops and desktops Id like to know some opinions on what would make gaming better with notebooks/laptops.

There already is a large portion of notebook users that use there laptops exclusively for gaming. There seems to be an general consensus that desktop gaming is far superior to notebook but what could bridge the gap between the two as a notebook fan Id like to know because having the ability to compete with powerful desktops is something that I want especially in new games like Call of Duty Black Ops.

I have thought a bit about this subject, personally I think there should be some type of enhanced ability to bump frames up with laptops to desktop specs though software or specifically designed hardware to do this task. Optimizing games to appear as if there playing the same with standard hardware/software only to get enhanced performance to desktop levels. Software like gamebooster does this to an extent and technology similar to onlive that actually uses a virtial network

With inovations like ViDocks the performance gap between the two has dimished somewhat but ViDocks are cumbersome and not portable at all.

Some of my thoughts on what can make laptop gaming better, please share if you have one.

 

The best part about notebook gaming is the portability, you can play anywhere you want. You're not stuck at a desk.

 

I know whats best, but I'm asking what can make it better.

 

What can make it better?

I wish that it was as easy to build a notebook from the ground up as it is a desktop, I would like to be able to buy a case, keyboard, display, motherboard, Cpu, etc and build it into a completely custom notebook. That way gamers could save money and laptops would last much longer if all you had to do was a motherboard swap to support a new socket or RAM.

Also, hopefully companies will start implementing a water cooling solution into their laptops, this would be the best form of cooling for a laptop due to its small form factor and lack of airflow, I would give up my 2nd HDD bay and some space under my palmrest (nothing is there except for the hdd bay) for a 240 radiator with three fans. A loop could be made to fit within the laptop and run to all the hot areas. Then there could be some exhaust holes out the top of the palm rest so that a push pull setup went through the radiator.

 

Cloud gaming will come and all that will matter is how fast you can receive and interpret your wifi.

 

Cloud gaming would be cool, but with the rapidly declining prices of storage ( I could have 2 TB internal storage in my laptop for about $200) I would rather have games stored locally. The internet infrastructure isn't fast enough in most areas to support cloud gaming.

 

Vidock is great

honestly any inovation in power saving feature can make it great if the desktop cpu or GPU had a better low consumsion mode we could get desktop part in our laptop without sacrificing batterie life

heck my gpu are 4850 with the exact same core as a 4850/50 from a desktop but it consume way less and it can be clocked just the same (cooling in mine is not good enoug but i reached 650 and it was stable until the thermal shutdown) so imagine you simply have a low performance mode and when you plug in bang it unleach the full power of a desktop

of course psu would have to be improved but it could be done
the clevo frankeinstein with a desktop x980 and 480m in sli was close to it so if desktop hardware is ever cramed in a laptop form factor without having 20sec of batterie life i'm buying no mather the weight or size


full scale implementation of the MXM standar coudl eb an other thing to help if mxm ever becomes truely used by every one (reversing the blug don't count sorry asus) and they stop blocking certain GPU from being used by the system that would adrealy be an awsome jump

what a great idea until you go offline ....... that's why i don,t get any game with a crappy DRM that need always on internet connexion or steam game that get useless quite fast when offline mode crash so not being able to run my games here when ever i wan no thanks it's the best way to kill gaming all together

 

Shuttle launches push for notebook motherboard standards

 

Yes, MXM standardization would be great, pretty much all I can do with my laptop is swap in another 260M or downgrade to a 9800M

 

same here even if my laptop has a true MXM thanks to bios GPU locking all i can do is downgrade hell even my gpu is no longer availible to buy if anything hapens it's Bye bye notebook

i'm getting one of these

 

Me too, if that seriously takes off I will strongly consider not building a desktop as my next rig.

 

You want to know what will make notebook gaming better? It's quite simple and obvious - we need to have the same or better experience than on the consoles. Steam is a decent....ish friends list/games platform but is really more of a good storefront and UI than an actual Xbox live competitor. On top of that, being able to just drop in a disc and go would be nice. Or perhaps a "partial" install where we can do some single player while the rest of the game is installing and only wait for 5 minutes or so for that part to download and get going while the rest of the game is done in the background.

To improve the experience on the hardware level - the ability to detach the screen on some of these notebooks would be nice. It would be like the old Dell XPS 2010. Or how about a removable keyboard w/ a backlight? This would further blur the line between desktop and laptop but definitely push laptop further. Imagine being able to just remove the keyboard from your heavy 17" DTR laptop while you browse the internet and watch movies from a couch and the laptop proper sits on the table. No extras needed, it's all still self contained. The keyboard has a battery pack in it for about 10 hours or so. Not much compared to dedicated wireless keyboards but really, will it be detached for 10 hours?

But that's just my two cents.

 

themanwithsauce brings up so good points, I still think though that having a software/hardware specifically to gain performance to desktop levels would be the easiest way of bringing the endless debate some closure.

I'm not talking just frames per second, I mean more so with multiplayer over the net and giving the ability for an 11 inch notebook to compete with a sli desktop rig.

If notebooks produced some type of virtial machine like vmware that used all the resources just for the game at hand, and shut down all the windows and also was able to bump up the frames and netcoding to that of desktop levels threw some type of extra silicon board internally that would allow notebooks to achieve desktop levels. It could be like physicsX was except be called notebook plus Slogan:game like a desktop would. Simple stuff really.

The main thing I'm getting after though is as many programmers as there is out there and software out now that enhances things, there has to be away for notebooks to have a software written for them specifically in mind to enhance there gaming/multiplayer abilities to desktop levels with no noticeable degradation in how the game looks.

There's many things in life that looks the same but isnt. I eat soy products cause I'm a vegetarian(hamburgers,sausage links,bacon,etc...) but it tastes just like the real thing. I think the one thing that holds notebook gaming behind desktop is the lack of being able to be competitive with desktops for the simple fact of performance. If that gap of performance was equaled through means of virtually/mechanically/software/extra silicon then laptop gaming would benefit.

 

I actually disagree with the notion that laptops are inferior performance wise to a desktop. The problem is more relative to price and the definition of "portable". I am willing to bet that $4000 dollars and one trip to a sager retailer later, I can have a laptop that will perform at or above the level of 95% of all desktops out there. But do realize that it's performance will be able to be matched by a machine that costs half that much when desktops are considered. Also the battery life will be horrid and the machine will have the mass and footprint of a small town. In this case, is it truly a laptop or is it more akin to an all-in-one? But to get to the point - The notion that laptops are inferior to desktops is wrong and has been for a few years. Outright maximum performance is not yet at that level but all new gaming grade laptops are capable of medium settings on new games with ease. Anyone who still clings to the notion that because a 3k+ desktop can outdo any laptop somehow makes laptops inferior is wrong. Mostly because most gaming desktops are between 1 and 2 grand. And from my experience, the people that say its impossible to game on a laptop have a desktop inferior to even my gateway.

I think that the future will be cloud computing and processing. But I also think that we are a ways off. I also think that at that point - Xbox/PS(X)/Nintendo will be software suites and will be competing against steam for our virtual enjoyment dollars. Do realize that once it comes down to "Hardware doesn't matter, all numbers are crunched not at your location, you just download the results" All consoles have become obsolete. Why would we have a dedicated access point to the data when a laptop type device can do the same thing and more?

 

I think a standardized vidock would be ideal. No you won't be able to take the power with you, but even if you could have something reasonably powerful enough it would be more than adequate for on the go. Then at home hook up to a higher resolution display or just have a much more powerful GPU not to mention additional storage, heck maybe even additional CPU power.

I always thought a dockable solution would be best. Dock your laptop into your desktop more or less for increased CPU, GPU, and Memory. Even nicer would to have a mini netbook or PDA or something that could be removed from your notebook for true portability.

 

I wasn't saying laptops were inferior and you misinterpreted. I really like the performance of laptops and all the software specifically designed for them.

The standardized ViDock idea I don't like at all though. I Want to take the power with me internally. Cant we have a Gamebooster for laptops that automatically gives every laptop with a dedicated video card the power of desktop level performance. Thats all Im asking for, its really not that hard of a task.

Its like when your on a desktop and you change the resolution from 2500x1900 to 1280x768. All that performance shoots though at the lower settings that you didn't have before. If there was a notebook booster software that could make are video cards in laptops render games minus some of the useless desktop features that bog down performance for desktop video cards both would be on equal playing fields finally.

 

well, someone was.

Well, It could be standardized and portable.


All we really need is a VIDOCK system for MXM cards and decent ~10mm coolers to fit in DVD drive slots.
it ALMOST exists.
Anyone got an HP server to hack their mezzanine interface?? HP Quadro FX 770M - 256 MB GDDR3 For WS460c 580135-B21 - eBay (item 370450002110 end time Nov-25-10 07:04:11 PST)

 

I would like a 10mm cooler for my dvd drive slot, Wouldn't be too hard to make one if you could find the right type on fan.

 

i think the main advantage of desktop gaming/computing over notebooks has to be upgradeability.
the problem with most notebooks is that if you want to be at the cutting edge, you will more or less have to buy a new notebook to get the new components. because of this, notebooks become more expensive, not only because of their starting cost, but also because the upgrade path is much more expensive.
if we could have a standardized system as shuttle is proposing, it could make notebook gaming much much better than desktop gaming, all things considered.

 

LOL @ Red text, sorry. Not that hard of a task? There's a reason they don't exist. Too much power and heat. The only way you'd achive it is if you added an extra few pounds to the laptop by attaching and additional bay or module to manage the GPU and cooling system separate from the rest of the laptop. A powerful desktop GPU can consume in excess of 200W. Even a powerful desktop replacement laptop may utilize only about 150W for the entire system. So you'd require a massive external power supply, or an additional one just for the GPU. Sounds kinda like the ViDock to me.

"Useless desktop features" do nothing to "bog" down a game. That's all held in system RAM and when you go full screen in a game full attention is given to that game from a video card.

The GTX 480m is the most powerful notebook GPU out there. That consumes 100W of power alone and is still a far cry from a GTX 480 desktop card. You're never going to get that "turbo" mode unless you add the required power and heat dissipation hardware.

 

Jeffreybaks, read back your green text "....the lack of being able to be competitive with desktops based on performance." This is implying that laptops are not competitve w/ desktops. If english is not your native language please take careful note of the use of negatives and phrases like "are able" or "can/to be".

Getting back on the topic of a video card booster - its not easy at all. If it was, there would be no reason for desktop cards to be as monstrous as they are. I do agree that it is possible but do realize that a single one of these cards could retail for thousands. And that does not factor in the cost of the rest of the laptop. The motherboard and chassis would need to cope with tremendous power and heat and beb able to dissipate it. This fantasy part would need to work at an absolute breakneck pace to achieve these goals. This idea is a ways off.

Remember - any technology gains for laptops can be more easily achieved and tested in desktops first. Every die shrink, every additional level of density, every extra core, all will be done on desktops before laptops. This will mean that at the very top end, a desktop will reign supreme. But since the gap is minimal at the mid range, it is hard to notice. To restate my previous opinion - to improve portable gaming, performance is not the issue. We have the performance and have had it for a while. The biggest hurdles to overcome are the same for pc gaming in general.

 

I don't think a 11" notebook (or similar) can have the raw power of a high-end desktop just through software. I believe that all the software tuning in the world won't make a hardware load-out something it actually isn't. You can squeeze all the performance you can from it, but to have more juice you'll just have to get more oranges .
There is a limit and it's the hardware specs. If you want to have the power of a 5970 CF setup (or whatever), you'll need a 5970 setup. It will have to physically be in the notebook (cloud systems not considered). I believe it would already be difficult to just fit the physical hardware into the chassis, but it's not the end of the problem. You now have to power and cool it. Two things that aren't that easy to do considering the space you have to manage. You'd end up having a notebook the size of a desktop...
Technologic advancement will enable notebook-sized components with desktop-like performance, but those same developments will enable desktop hardware to be more powerful than before (thus still having a leg-up on their notebook counterpart).

Hope this helps to the discussion .

Cheers!

 

I think standardization would be great, but one of the reasons I think manufacturers wont go for it is because once you buy one of their notebooks, you in essence get locked in to the brand. If you need warranty (or out of warranty) service, you have to go through them.
I'm willing to bet they make a lot of money on out-of-warranty service. Using proprietary components also helps them to design notebooks the way *they* want. It's then possible for them to design specific thin and light systems, or specialized gaming systems. In such a small package it would be hard to standardize it I think.
Heat in such a small package is also a concern. Companies can design their own cooling system which are more appropriate to the given notebook design.
I really don't think things in that area are going to change for notebooks any time soon. I think the closest we will have for some time to come are whitebook kits. That's probably the closest we will have to a build-your-own notebook for quite a while.

 

* an external x16 link into the notebook
* an input HDMI/DVI port into the LCD

I prefer to run a gpu externally. That way I can upgrade it as I wish and I'm not carrying extra weight/bulk for the cooling system. The space occupied by a pci-e card giving it far more processing power.

Having x16 desktop graphics capability would of course mean no 2-yr cyclic notebook system upgrades by gamers due to the built-in redundant gpu. Something perhaps manufacturers are profit addicted to.

 

unless we as user buy and decide to promote the shuttle system if it takes off they could be cornered into accepting the standar

 

The issue I see with external video cards is the removal of portability. Yes, we can attach external hard drives, video cards, speakers, peripherals, and everything else into our laptops but why? You basically double pay when you do that since you pay for one gpu when you get the laptop then you buy another on top of it. Same goes for external keyboards - Why can't they just put better ones on the machine? My biggest problem with that concept though is the loss of portability. It is no longer a laptop if half of it is external. At that point, your laptop is a very expensive keyboard and screen so why spend the premium in the first place just to pay more? In the long run, with such logic it is probably about the same price to just buy a new laptop (or at least a significantly smaller price gap).

Also, just had to point out something here -

So you'd rather have to remember and carry around and plug in an external video card and dock rather than just having a slightly larger laptop power brick and an extra pound of weight? I will most definitely grant you that it is a much faster system but that is only when it is all hunkered down and plugged in.....like a desktop.....And when you go to move it around to have it act like a laptop you have a ton of extra space and bulk to consider because of the video card, docking station, and psu for the whole thing. Or if you choose to forgo packing and carrying that around for trips and whatnot then it is no longer a gaming laptop and my internal gpu is superior.

Don;t get me wrong, I think the external GPU is a great innovation and a very useful and practical idea....I just don;t think it's a revolution for gaming. I see it more as a shift for researchers and businesses. I see them better used to make a CAD or Rendering Station where each researcher's individual laptop with their own data and programs on it can be boosted to the power of a desktop in terms of video rendering when they need it but then unplugged and taken to the lab for taking notes. Then another researcher can come in and do the rendering while the first is out of that area. Although I think a better phrase for this idea is "The more practical and more cost efficient use of this concept is...."

Instead of external graphics becoming standard, I'd rather see money and time spent on a completely unified social platform. This platform should entail
-Facebook/linkedin/other social network site friends and information
-Steam account management capabilities
-Game launcher
-Friends list both globally and per individual game
-Ability to instant message and voice/video chat with both "social" friends and "gaming" friends
-Instant matchmaking for common games like CoD or MoH. Ability to schedule gaming sessions (it would remind you and automatically launch it if you wanted) for mmorpgs or strategy games or even FPSes if there's a tournament or something

Once PC gamers can get their hands on this, there will be a glorious second coming of PC gaming as a whole and gamers shall rejoice. Notebooks with epic levels of graphics power and cpu speed will fly off the shelves as people can now just bring one unified system to wherever they may go and have access to everyone at their fingertips. Just imagine it and I think any gamer who has ever been frustrated about the disparity between Xbox Live or PSN and our lack of a true unified platform will agree it's the next big idea. ANd I do not count steam as our answer because blizzard games have their own network with battle.net. That is the problem we face - too many divisions. Microsoft should develop this so that it is almost a neutral ground to actually get all these developers to go in on it.

 

you don,t seem to get it all of these require being pluged in with an internet connection wich is not vailible every where for every one especialy when you use your laptop when traveling what hapens if you relies on the cloud and oups no net connction your games are not on your laptop you can't use them

 

With the advent of 3G and other forms of wireless internet, that will soon be a thing of the past. I can get internet on my laptop anywhere there is a 3G signal thanks to my droid. The best part is that yes, I can game on it. Now granted my laptop is not an external needing monster so all I need is the internet connection. Streaming that much info for cloud gaming might not work over cell-phone wireless just yet.

But with wireless distribution becoming more and more important, the cloud computing concept makes more and more sense. Again, the hardware arms race is not nearly as important as the online features and networking abilities.

 

Cloud gaming, and cloud computing in general has tons of obstacles to get over before becoming a reality. First of all more and more internet providers are providing caps on customers' internet connections. Cloud gaming means tons of streaming. PC Gamer recently did an article on it and found that after a month's worth of Onlive (which is only 720p compressed too) for average 3 hours per day, it consumed well over 200GB of bandwidth. Comcast, one of the largest ISP providers in the midwest, caps connections at 250GB.

Secondly, pings need to improve greatly. The lag with Onlive is unplayable to me. You can have the fastest internet backbone in the world, but until the home routers, modems, and PC networking equipment gets considerably faster, which means more expensive, it won't improve any time soon.

3G/4G whatever, has a ton further to go. It's a super pokey connection. Maybe in some major metropolises it's ok, but for the most part it passes as useable, barely. I would never use 3G/4G over a Wi-Fi hotspot any day.

Hell, I still can't stand digital cell phones. I get more garbled voices, dropped calls, and bad reception than I ever would with analog.

 

the 360 gts from the g60 will fit.

Im not positive its an upgrade though. Its more modern.

 

software developers can only go so far as to making a computer a viable "console" like development - you still have to consider, windows operating system hogging all the resources or not, that you're using multiple sets of hardware.

console games achieve this by locking the frame rate and detail settings on the console to usually something low but relatively fluid.

laptops would destroy desktops if notebook manufacturers could allow for modular laptop development. standardize everything.

some sort of "ATX" motherboard which can be swapped out, some sort of generic case design dimensions that allows for such motherboard. standardized MXM would allow for MUCH better upgradability. find some sort of standardized method for powering the device. even if they could just provide direct power and skip the battery would help out with this development.

it isn't the software side that is keeping notebooks back - it's the strict grip on patenting manufacturer designs and models that are killing notebooks. nobody would be willing to risk allowing for modular development for notebooks since it could possibly mean economic loss due to increase of competition.

if i could build a notebook, i would do so. you could insert a type of keyboard you wanted, insert a track pad, insert a screen, insert a motherboard, put on all of your onbaord chips, insert harddrives, etc.

i really think that a modular notebook is perfectly feasible at this moment in time. i don't think that cloud computing for gaming is at all possible right now. i sometimes remote connect to my desktop to retrieve particular files that i may have left at home. but there is no way i could run a game due to the insane lag. not only would you be tearing your computer apart from resources from allowing that kind of remote access, but running the game at the same time with the burden that you put onto a network by using up volumes of bandwidth doesn't make it very possible right now.

i say that someone just needs to grow a pair and take the plunge into modularizing laptops

 

Yet windows works basically the same on every computer it runs on. Sure on the older systems it runs slower than on a newer system but windows is windows. I personally feel this should be something baked into the OS, hence why Microsoft needs to spearhead the effort. Now the game framerates and settings I do understand that they will be volatile between different systems and I am fine with that, that is the cost we pay for having individual systems that we can use to express who we are as computer enthusiasts. But I don't think we should also have to sacrifice such a simple thought of organized communication between our networks. That is very achievable since it would basically entail combining all of these existing features into one program.

I fully agree with this statement from the enthusiast standpoint. I couldn't agree with you less from the general market standpoint. I base this on the following - for the better part of the past two decades, who has been the ones building their own systems? Enthusiasts and gamers. Do realize that the act of building your own custom desktop is very simple and easy to do. The parts are large and robust and instructions pretty easy to follow. Yet all of the major retail players struck it big with pre-assembled boxes. Now shrink everything down for notebooks. Will the average person want to build their own? Hell no.

There is no rush to modularize because there is no benefit to do so, you are correct in saying that. But their only loss in profits will be at the extreme ends where we build our own anyways. And even then, companies like falcon northwest, alienware (for a while), Vigor, Hypersonic, and others were all existing as desktop builders and were independent of the retail builders. All of which have since branched out to notebooks and are (mostly) still around. The thing is just they won't gain any profits either from developing modulrized laptops and also selling their modular parts alongside completed systems....If anything, they will lose because there won't be enough people building their own notebooks to justify the additional cost and logistics of having both preassembled notebooks and then also being just a chassis or just a gpu or just a screen manufacturer. Case in point? Desktops. Barring MSI and Asus, who do everything, can you list another company that makes just one or two individual components as well as a complete system? Last I checked, I can't get a western digital laptop. Nor can I buy a pre-assembled XFX desktop. Or a PNY system. Or an Antec system.

Before anyone cries out "OCZ NOTEBOOK!" - Who bought it? Oh that's right, no one until it was branded by alienware as a prebuilt.

Sorry for my somewhat aggressive posts but I've been going on about this amongst my friends for a while now and I've heard most of these arguments before "Oh if only I had more power..." or "If we only had the ability to upgrade...." when really, we play MW2 at almost max settings just fine. The problem comes when I go to play LoL and one of my friends is off playing MW2 and another is off playing NFS:Shift or F1 2010.....we can't communicate with any form of elegance when compared to consoles. And that's saying something considering neither console has a keyboard and alt tab.... But if we as a community stand up to these publishers and start making a fuss about this sort of thing, they ill listen. They have to if they wish to survive.