Why so much disrespect for mobile gaming rigs?

should prob merge this thread with the 680mx benchmark thread

 

The interwebs loves extremes. The interwebs hates sensible compromise. The interwebs loves a Corvette ZR1 and hates a BMW 535i, even though the latter still offers a ton of real-world performance while comfortably seating four adults and their luggage. Likewise, the sheer performance-for-the-dollar insanity of gaming desktops pleases the great interwebs, even though a high-performance-yet-portable rig makes more sense for a lot of people (especially students).

Nobody should sweat it. Buy what pleases you, not what pleases the interwebs.

 

Sensible compromise? What's that then?

 

I'm thinking about getting a W110ER with a 2.8/2.9ghz i5 or i7 IVB dual-core and with the GT 650m @ 835/900 I'd love to take it to a lan party where many of the people I play with are either playing with MSI GX 630's ( Turion and 9600m GT ) or the fastest desktop which has an E6700 wolfdale and 8800GT ( what can I say, my friends are all broke bums lol ). Anyways, they'll look at the tiny 11.6" laptop, wonder why I brought a 23" 1080P LCD until they seem me running higher detail at higher FPS than them which I will then find incredibly amusing.

I was looking at a W150ER and while it is way faster, I play STALKER and TF2, neither of which need a GTX 670MX to run on high detail and for school, an 11.6" laptop will be very preferable.

Also, to the people that see no point in 17" DTR's. It's easier to cram a 17" DTR in a dorm room or barracks than it is an equivalent SFF desktop with a keyboard, monitor, shuttle sized unit with cables everywhere than it is one nice, neat, clean little package. On the same note, it's easier to bring a single laptop bag with a 17" DTR and a mouse to a lan party than a desktop, keyboard, mouse, monitor and headset ( cause you have no speakers built in ).

Laptops have come a long ways and DTR's make more sense now than what they did but then again, they've always made more sense than a desktop to the people they were meant for.

Long story short, setup a lanparty at a friends house and have all your friends tote their bulky systems and setups there and when they ask you for help to carry all their crap in, just reply "Why? You didn't help me carry in my rig . . . oh wait, I DIDN'T NEED ANY HELP LOLOLOLOL! -.-, Thats right, who's laughing now beoch? "

 

i have to say 17 inch is a lot nicer to look at than 15 inch

 

It's a few reasons;

Path 1: Mobile gaming rigs offer poor performance/money ratios COMPARED to desktops. Fully loaded M18x R2 = mega uber gaming desktop, monitors, keyboard, mouse and a few nice meals.

Path 2: People can't afford, so they hate.

Path 3: People don't want a 13 pound laptop with a gigantic AC adapter that isn't really mobile (but wait a mega uber gaming desktop is mobile right?)

I personally didn't like gaming laptops at first, until I was forced to buy one, and now I don't really have a need for a gaming desktop.

 

With my slim alienware brick my machine is actually pretty portable now, certainly not an ultrabook but not near the M18X either.

 

I'd like to know where I could find a "slim" 330W brick for my M18.........the one that came with it weighs almost as much as my M17, at least it feels that way when I'm carrying it.

 

I think not. The 3570k is clocked 50% higher at stock. i7 hyper-threading is a nice feature, but it's not that helpful, and it's not for games at all. You can also OC to 4 Ghz on air and almost 5 Ghz on liquid.

The 3610 doesn't have an unlocked multiplier for overclocking, so you're stuck at approximately stock clocks. Even for similar mobile CPUs with unlocked multipliers, heat and power constraints limit overclocking potential dramatically on air cooling, and water cooling is not an option at all.

It's not a bad CPU (even by desktop standards), but to say that it's better than a 3570k is laughable.

 

Slim and Alienware can never go in the same sentence.

 

I think stating that something is overpriced, and not worth it, is totally subjective to how much ca$h you earn.

A friend of mine always used to say, "you can't put a price on pleasure".

I always felt that that was an accurate statement. Everyone is different. All have different amounts they can afford to spend. My Alienware m18x r2, is a ridiculous waste of cash in the opinion of those that either have little cash, or try to milk every dime they save. I literally couldn't care less what I COULD of purchased if I got this or that, instead.

My laptop works great. Plays everything maxed out. Made zero dent in my wallet. Very satisfied with it.

Prob buy another when its time to upgrade. I have absolutely no interest in going back to a desktop.

 

I don't think anyone here, at least not most people here anyway, are saying that mobile gaming systems like our M18's are a waste of money. I think the primary argument, and quite a justifiable argument too for that matter, is that for the amount that must be spent to get a mobile gaming system to perform on par with an average desktop gaming set up you could build a far superior desktop rig.

Imagine a $4200 M18 with 680's, extreme processor and a couple of SSD's..............then imagine what you could build with that same $4200 in an ATX form factor desktop. That desktop will absolutely destroy the M18 in every peformance category.

I love my M17, no so much the M18 due to its size and weight, but it fits my wants and needs so I paid for it. I needed the mobility. I made the mistake of building a desktop using parts ordered from Newegg while I was in Iraq in 2008-2009. Even with very careful packing it didn't survive the trip home. My M18 has been shipped to Afghanistan, carried home from Afghanistan and then shipped BACK to Afghanistan and has done so with a minimal of issues (the crossfire cable came loose twice) and there isn't a desktop on the planet (that I'm aware of) that I could have done this as easily with.

 

I think the disrespect/dislike comes mostly from how much less it costs to build a comparable desktop specs-wise and that traditional high powered gaming laptops were ginormous and the battery was only a glorified UPS. However, with recent performance increases in mobile components that allow for smaller gaming laptops (i.e Clevo P-150/170em) with decent battery life (Enduro/Optimus) the only real argument is cost now. But like others have said, having mobility is worth the extra cost, and if the cost is paying for something you want or need, than it's not hard to justify. For me, having a gaming laptop was my best option because I love to game, but game in different locations often. My fiance's family has a room with 4 gaming desktops that they game in all the time and it's awesome that I can swing on by with my laptop (which is as strong or stronger than any of their computers) and game with them. While it's fun to do online multiplayer gaming, it's even better to do it while among friends or family in the same room. Having a portable computer capable of gaming makes it so much easier to get together with other gamers. IMO, that's something you can't put a price on.

 

His GTX 680M has less shaders than a GTX 680. So overclocked, the performance is right in between a stock GTX 660 Ti and a GTX 670.

Oh, but there are. You really think 1100/1550 clocks are 24/7 doable with a 680MX? If the 680M is already bottlenecked by power / heat, how would a 680MX reach the same clocks, if it consumes more power and puts out more heat than a 680M at the same clocks?

It bugs me when people say the hardware is just as good or better, when that isn't the case. And who would overclock their laptop, but then not overclock their desktop?

Also to all the people saying that gaming laptops of today aren't the same gaming laptops of yesteryear, yes they are. In 2004 my dad bought his first laptop, an XPS 15 with a Mobility Radeon 9800 (which at stock clocks was almost as fast as a desktop 9800 pro), a 3.2Ghz desktop Pentium 4, and a 1200P screen. When I see my friend's M18x, I see the same laptop my dad bought over 8 years ago.

But don't get me wrong, people have plenty of uses for gaming laptops and mobile workstations. I have nothing inherently against them, it is just when people act like their laptops are so much better.

 

Not to start out on the wrong foot... but can you show an example of such a benchmark? The i7-3610qm is 2.3 GHz Quad, 3.3 GHz Turbo, 6 MB cache. The -5-3570K is 3.4 GHz Quad, 3.8 GHz Turbo, 6 MB cache. i7-2600 is, IIRC, 3.4 GHz Quad, more than that turbo, 8 MB cache, and HT. The QM uses less power, true. But I'm going to have to ask for the benchmarks to back up your statement... it seems quite implausible that the QM will win on non-power-consumption benchmarks.

I've seen both sides of the coin. In July 2007, my laptop had the third-of-fourth best mobile GPU available, behind the 7950M GTX, 8700M GT, and GDDR3 version of the 8600M GT (7900 GS was neck-and-neck). It could handle almost any game with apblomb, and was a huge step up from my old desktop - it showed to me that you really could game, and well, on a laptop. It was respectable. The only caveat was that, yes, Crysis was a bit slow. But for any other game, it was pretty good.

Last year, I built a desktop. Even considering that I bought an extra 2 TB hard drive for backup and got ripped off by Intel on their SSD rebate or lack thereof (caveat emptor), it cost a lot less money than my laptop did. And the parts were a lot more powerful than the late-2011 laptop parts available. An extra GHz on the CPU, even without overclocking. An amount of performance from my GPU that would have cost hundreds of dollars more in a laptop. An amount of storage that only the largest of laptops could offer. And a beautiful 24", IPS screen - all for less money. I would've had to spent thousands of dollars to get comparable performance in a laptop, and even then I don't know who currently sells laptops with desktop CPUs. Simple put, I saw that desktops offered much better value for the money.

And the third side of the coin, I still game on my laptop when having my desktop around isn't feasible. Even versus a 4-year-newer desktop, I'm taking my laptop on the road if at all possible. I'd rather limit myself to small maps when playing Chivalry with my slightly-under-minimum-specs laptop than drag around a desktop and external monitor.

So I can see where someone who's only ever used desktops for gaming would dismiss mobile gaming rigs, be it for absolute performance or for value-per-dollar. But on the other hand, I know that they can also be quite respectable - even relatively modest ones than don't have aliens on the lid.

 

I agree that the enormous 18" laptops like the M18x are similar to earlier gaming laptops that featured desktop components and massive power draw, but I don't remember there being anything like the medium to large sized laptops we've seen recently (MSI, Clevo, Asus 15-17' variants, etc), especially those of which have switchable graphics. I suppose that is as much of a software development as hardware, but either way, we didn't have that option in 2004. Obviously, when gaming you're always plugged in, but having an extra hour or two of battery life definitely makes these computers more versatile. I won't say this is better or worse than a desktop because everyone's requirements for what they need out of a computer determines what is "better". It also bothers me when people act like their laptops/desktops are so much better than mine. It's not that their computer may perform better than mine, but that they aren't taking into account that what I have is the best for me personally and fills my needs the best.

 

The i7-3610qm has hyperthreading with 8 threads vs the 4 threads of the i5-3570 without hyperthreading. Although double the threads doesn't equate to twice the performance, it does give a performance boost.

 

It really depends. If you are running photoshop, compressing movies, or whatever like that, it will give at most about a 30% performance improvement. If you are talking about gaming, hyperthreading on vs off with four cores is irrelevant.

 

Not in games.

 

i guess that depends on what games, like BF3 is optimized foro 8 threads while some games arent, and thats where i5-3570k will far outstrip the 3610qm

 

I think you managed to both get this backwards and be wrong. The 3570k can't run 8 threads simultaneously (and neither can the 3610qm, really). In the best case, hyperthreading can give about 30% improvement, and BF3 is definitely not the best case (show me a benchmark for improvement, my guess would be 0%, maybe 5%).

Meanwhile, the 3570k is clocked 50% highert at stock. The 3610qm is toast in a head to head.

 

I agree there masterchef341. BF3 is a unique beast, it's very thread hungry. It enjoys more threads than it does CPU speed. But desktop 3570 will destroy the 3610QM in any CPU heavy task. Although for MOST games the 3610QM is far from restricting.

 

If you are worried get a 3740qm and run it at 3.9ghz and you wont have to worry for some time.

 

desktops>laptops for performance
laptops>desktops for portability

now what's this thead about?

 

I find it funny how people start comparing a super-overclocked(probably only stable for running some 3dmarks too) mobile GPU to a desktop GPU at stock and claim their cards are "better". Desktop GPUs totally destroy their mobile counterparts in terms of performance, when both at stock or overclocked(now that's a fair comparison).

There's so much disrepsect for gaming laptops simply because they perform A LOT worse than a desktop configured at the same price, the huge premium you pay for a mobile gaming rig is for the portability a laptop gives. If you have little to no need for portability+performance at the same time, it makes a lot of sense to go with a semi-capable laptop and a powerful desktop than a $3000+ 18'' laptop, if you can still call that a laptop. Laptop+desktop route wins in performance, portability and cost, unless you really want to play demanding games at full details on a tram, in a library or something, in which case, the gaming laptop wins.

 

I don't even think people disrespect them... it's not an insult to understand the tradeoff between portability, performance, and price.

 

I'd like to point out by the way that I am game stable at 1140/1283 at the moment

 

You don't think when someone laughs when you say you are gaming on laptop or reply, get a real machine is not insulting?

It still happens frequently for me. Even when the game is not difficult to run, which is funny.

 

Yeah I know that feeling too especially when people who don't even know anything about PC`s tell me to get a desktop...

BTW Meaker what voltage are you running? I can't seem to get past 1020 MHz without something crashing (temps aren't a problem)

 

A whopping 1.087V so I am not going to run that long term, something a little closer to 1100mhz and at 1.075V is more likely for that.

I did need to add a little cooling to make 1.087 stable for games and prevent clock bouncing at 93C.

 

I just hope that amd and nvidia can produce gpu's that are less behind from their desktop counterparts. Sadly 8xxx series won't be a improvement on that side because the mobile gpus are mostly rebranded 7xxx's. Let's hope the green team's 7xx series does better, but I am afraid they won't.
Why can't it be more like mobile cpu's? Entry level ivy bridge mobile i7's like the 3630qm beat the desktop i5-2500k (at stock clocks off course). Am i wrong or are mobile cpu's not that far behind?

 

The 3630qm doesn't beat the 2500k.

 

It can be I missunderstood this, or this isn't represantative:

I got this from notebookcheck.

 

Cinebench R10 can be benched via single thread and multi-thread modes. This one looks like a multithreading benchmark, which should allow the 3630QM to close the gap as it supports Hyperthreading and the 2500K doesn't. Look at the big gap the 3960X gets even though its base clock is the same as the 2500K.

 

Cinebench (multithreaded) CPU test is not a game and does not even emulate game computations.

It is highly threaded and uses Hyperthreading, unlike pretty much every game on the market.
Even the few games which use hyperthreading, don't use them anywhere near as well as Cinebench will.

The chart really only proves the 3630qm is 13% better at stock at Cinebench.

The stock 2500K runs at 3.4GHz when properly cooled(Sandy Bridge 4 cores, no hyperthreading)
The stock 3630qm runs at 3.2GHz when properly cooled (Ivy Bridge 4 hyperthreading cores)

Given the fact the 3630qm is only a few hundred MHz slower when all is properly cooled, it has a small boost due to being ivy bridge instead of Sandy Bridge (roughly 5%) and hyperthreading which allows it to catch up in a highly threaded synthetic benchmark; this isn't really an unexpected result.

I will say it once more... no one runs a 2500K at stock. Anyone willing to put even $20-25 into any desktop cooling system better than the retail heatsink/fan will get well over 4GHz on all four cores without even the slightest heat problems. Most will get 4.4GHz or close to it. At those clocks, no amount of tricks will let the 3630qm even get close in games, or really anything else.

The chart is misleading because it ignores the dose of reality I and the other regulars have been trying to point out.
Once again, this doesn't mean the 3630qm is bad for games, its just not as nice as the run-of-the-mill 2500K with air cooling, getting a decidely-average and pretty-well-expected OC result.

As for the big mobile gaming systems, I put it simply... If you have to ask if you need an SLI laptop, you don't. If you know you need/want one, then you know you need/want one.

 

Laptops can max out all games, and perform exceptionally well at all other tasks. Desktops the same. But they are bolted to the floor. Sure they perform better, but right now it's like having a bugatti veyron in a school zone, there's not much out there that demands more power then what an m18x can provide. And so.. For those who like being able to take their computers with them, the laptop wins. Who cares if a desktop cpu can clock to a billion ghz? You'll never use it.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

I understand. I just posted what I read, sorry. I really don't know a lot about cpu's, I'm trying to learn, thanks for the info.

But I don't really get what you said in the last paragraph? What do you mean with that?

 

He means that getting SLI or just Crossfire for that sake (2x GPU's/graphics cards) is only strictly necessary if you KNOW what you are doing, if you don't there's absolutely no reason what so ever to get dual GPU's

 

OK, wait a minute, my desktop isn't bolted to the floor.

Let's face it... that m18x is very nice... but it weighs almost as much as a smaller desktop with a 24" LED monitor.

And yes, people can use the headroom above the m18x. Higher resolutions is the biggest reason to have multi-gpu desktops.

 

i didnt only mean the 3610/3630, i mean mobile hardware in general, maybe like 3820? which could probably compete with the i5 with a bit of overclocking

 

Well, mobile rigs do use less energy than a desktop and the come with a built in UPS (aka battery). So there's that. At least.

 

Hardcore Gamer, always has to have the latest stuff - desktop is your best bet.

Gamer who wants performance, who may want to game at a friends house - laptop.

I've seen people carry around their desktop computers like a purse, don't lie to yourself, you look like a damn fool.

 

That's why ITX form factor is becoming popular for gaming desktops. One case such as the Coolermaster Elite 120 can be had for $50 and fit a full size video card and power supply, and is a little bigger than a shoe box.

 

That's a cool little box. And it can be had for less than 50 bucks (around 40 on a few sites)

 

Well the NBR forums are way better than the Desktop Review counterpart. NBR has like 350,000 threads vs 10,000 or so in the Desktop Review forums. That has to count for something.

 

It doesn't even matter. No one here is about to talk anyone who's dropping coin on a laptop with a top tier GPU on switching to a desktop. We buy them for our own reasons, whatever they may be.

 

I had a small gaming desktop (Phenom II X6 @ 4ghz (liquid cooled), 2x HD5850 @ 1ghz core) in a uATX case before it became cool.

Every machine has it's place is all, but I kind of got bored of desktops, they were too easy....

 

No, it doesn't. Because out of the dozens of buzzing computer forums on the internet, only NBR is the one dedicated to laptops. The rest are all or primarily focused on desktops.

A desktop will not cost much more for electricity. I did the math comparing my old desktop to my light gaming laptop I replaced it with. It was like $2 monthly savings.

But Micro-ATX gaming desktops were cool 10 years ago with Athlon XP's, Pentium IV's, Ti 4600's, and 9800 pro's.

 

Yeah, I was just being facetious.

I remember having an awesome Athlon build a decade ago and loving Quake and CS. Ah, memories.