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Hey guys, so I am looking to buy a new laptop coming up, and I've basically found the base specifications that I'm looking for in the Acer Aspire series. I hit f5 on a newegg thread after about 3 hours of not refreshing, finally deciding to put in my payment and buy it, but it sold out.
Option #1: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115987
Question #1: How long roughly, is the wait time on Newegg to restock a laptop
After finding myself wallowing in frustration over my sold out laptop, I found that they added a few new options
Option #2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215003
Now if you notice, the 2nd link here is identical to the first product except it has a 640 GB hard drive (irrelevant to me) instead of 500, and an i3-380M instead of i5-480M
Option #3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152251
This third option has a worse graphics card which bothers me, and also costs the most, 100 dollars more than the 2nd option and 50 more than the 1st option. But it comes with 6 gb memory.
I know that for about 70 bucks I can actually upgrade any of the laptops to having 8 gb memory so I don't know how much that would help me, so option #3 seems really...well...not viable for me.
I'd like option #1, I'm not in the biggest rush to buy my laptop, but if the wait for newegg to restock is generally several weeks or a month, then well, I don't know.
What I want to use my laptop for
Well, quite frankly I am a gamer for several esports, I like playing competitive games, this means Starcraft 2 and Counterstrike 1.6 mostly, and I play on all lowest graphics settings for performance. That said, with this new laptop I want to be able to stream, 480p would be ideal, I'm not looking to have some gosu HD stream. So I was wondering for all the stream experts, would these computers (mostly talking about option #1 and #2) be able to stream Starcraft 2 at 480p while running a constant 25+ fps?
The other reason I would like to use my laptop for is running a VM to run the snow leopard OS so that I can work on iPhone app development, from what some friends have told me, these computers should be just fine for that since its only programming, and its not like I'm running anything super intensive on the snow leopard OS.
So, now I turn to Team Liquid.
tl'dr Recap
1) How long is neweggs wait time to restock on laptops
2) Will these computers be able to stream at 480p, Starcraft 2 on lowest settings.
3) Will I be able to run VM Mac OS to do iphone app development
4) How big of a downgrade is the i3-380M compared to an i5-480M
Any and all opinions relevant or irrelevant to my questions are welcome, please do help
Love,
Zlasher
 
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United States4053 Posts
2) Option 1 should have no trouble. I think the CPU might throttle Option 2. edit: blah i had these two swapped
4) I think it's a pretty significant downgrade. For streaming purposes, I'd take the i5.
However, I recommend looking around for a laptop with an i7-2xxx processor. It's a massive upgrade over old core-i processors, and I remember someone said SC2 is a very processor-heavy game.
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Can you explain what you mean by the CPU might throttle option 1? Do you mean that the Turbo-boost might hurt the CPU for the i5? My friend told me that I can turn off that option, if it does hurt my computer.
i7's seem to worry me since laptops running a quad core might cause my computer to vastly overheat which I despise (my current Dell has that problem, and its just running a core 2 duo), and any computer with an i7 comes with a much worse graphics card and costs more. If you have any suggestions though feel free to post the link, that would REALLY help me out.
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United States4053 Posts
On March 09 2011 14:29 ZlaSHeR wrote:
Can you explain what you mean by the CPU might throttle option 1? Do you mean that the Turbo-boost might hurt the CPU for the i5? My friend told me that I can turn off that option, if it does hurt my computer.
i7's seem to worry me since laptops running a quad core might cause my computer to vastly overheat which I despise (my current Dell has that problem, and its just running a core 2 duo), and any computer with an i7 comes with a much worse graphics card and costs more. If you have any suggestions though feel free to post the link, that would REALLY help me out.
I mean that in option 1, the i3 CPU isn't as good (and truth be told I don't know how good it is exactly), and SC2 performance is supposedly limited more by the CPU than the graphics card. Turbo boost won't hurt.
I don't know of any good laptops with new i7s, although I don't think overheating issues are usually due to quad-core CPUs.
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1.) usually a couple weeks from what ive seen.
2.) probably
3.) yes
4.) Not a massive downgrade but you will want to choose option 1 for streaming + starcraft2.
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Alright I'll keep that in mind and look at some i7's later, I guess I worry about the price as well, since the graphics cards with the i7 laptops run low SC2 at like 80 FPS and medium at 20, whereas thsi 540M runs low at like 180 and medium at 50, and I feel like with a streaming program running in the background as well as being on low settings, that might shoot my FPS down to under what I really might consider playable :x
If anyone has links to laptops they suggest though I'll definitely take a look.
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On March 09 2011 15:13 xmShake wrote:
1.) usually a couple weeks from what ive seen.
2.) probably
3.) yes
4.) Not a massive downgrade but you will want to choose option 1 for streaming + starcraft2.
Alright got it, and by a couple weeks do you expect 2 weeks? 3 weeks? or is that like 5-8 weeks D:
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You should be a normal person and use a desktop.
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I would def prefer option 1 for the i5 and GPU.If you are running VM(s) another GB or so wouldn't hurt, but I suppose you can upgrade that. SC2 is more CPU intensive than GPU, and streaming is very CPU intensive as well, so I wouldn't settle for anything less than an i5 personally.
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On March 09 2011 15:28 hellokitty[hk] wrote:
You should be a normal person and use a desktop.
see, now obviously I have a reason for needing a laptop, otherwise I wouldn't be doing the research on this.
I'm a college student, I change rooms and dorms with my computer as a need a few hundred times a year. When I settle into one place post-college, obviously I will be getting a desktop but for now with all the moving around I do, a desktop isn't viable.
On March 09 2011 15:31 Grobyc wrote:
I would def prefer option 1 for the i5 and GPU.If you are running VM(s) another GB or so wouldn't hurt, but I suppose you can upgrade that. SC2 is more CPU intensive than GPU, and streaming is very CPU intensive as well, so I wouldn't settle for anything less than an i5 personally.
Yeah, I'm going to wait for option 1 now I think, just because I'm not in a dying need for the new laptop RIGHT AWAY, and I think for those specs its best to just wait, ideally less than 3 weeks is what I'd like to wait for at most.
I'm also going to consider just paying like 70 bucks for 2x4gb DDR3 so that I'm running 8gb total, then I can always ebay/craigslist off the 2x2gb that comes in the laptop lol.
I'll also be streaming other video games, not just SC2, plans are whatever I do, as well as just regular stuff like browsing TL and what have you. So is the goal. But right now I'm definitely thinking of just waiting for the 1st laptop to come back in stock.
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1) i have no idea never ordered of newegg
2) this should stream starcraft 2 in fact i can see it playing starcraft 2 on medium or even high and being streamed (depending on your upload speed as well)
3) yes it should run it fine
4) the i5 is better and this http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is a good website for comparing CPU's
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
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I'm looking to avoid dell/hp lol, I saw that hp the other week as well actually. Will keep it in mind though.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On March 09 2011 16:32 ZlaSHeR wrote:
I'm looking to avoid dell/hp lol, I saw that hp the other week as well actually. Will keep it in mind though.
It's fine to avoid Dell/HP consumer lines for higher quality laptops like the Thinkpad, Vaio(Debatable), Dell/HP Enterprise lines. But Acer? That's worse than Dell or HP, that's a bargain bin brand.
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Well, I guess I'm avoiding it more just because the past few years I've just been frustrated with Dell and their service, and HP because well, I'm from cupertino and just have had a bad history with them as well. I haven't heard that Acer was considered bad though :x anyways, like I said, I'll keep that one in mind but am quite intent on leaning away from those two brands.
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United States17042 Posts
acer laptop has died on me 4 times in the past year - just one anecdote, and they have replaced whatever keeps breaking (video card? screen turns white, no video data, 4 times in one year so far).
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i think if you think about playing and streaming i3 should not be even considered.
i5 is a must, i7 is great (remember DJwheat always said i7 is best for streaming) 4gB ddr3 and all you should care about is what is the graphic chipset. I was consulating some of the biggest hardware nerds i know on facebook and they said there are clearly some problem with the 450M chipset and below.
Another aspect you should think of the the native resolution of the laptop screen since it will affect streaming resolution a tons.
Brands: I swear i heard terrible stuff about acer. Most gaming laptop atm are Asus or MSI... if you hv money go for alienware and such. my advice is try to get Asus G53J or N43 smthing ~_~... HP are for normal student who cant keep their stuff safe. Vaio are over priced.
Conclusion: try to focus on CPU + GPU instead of RAM. Avoid acer. Check the LCD resolution and the rest of the money should go to RAM upgrades (minimum 4Gb)
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Alright well, weighing the pros and cons, I'll probably make a decision in the next few weeks, thanks though.
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EPT
