Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

Looks like my old Van-ruth classic has handed in the towel, she's only lasting a few minutes before total freeze, shut down and bsod. I think it's something to do with my gfx card because of some ambiguous allusions to my graphics drivers in the error text, plus blender is the catalyst for the crash. So my question to you all is this: do I bite the bullet and shell out a few grand for a fresh rig or do I try to get this old babby fixed up? She's 4 years old (imminently 5) and has done me very well. Here's the specs:
T7700 dual core intel at 2.4ghz
3gb ddr2
GeForce 8600M GS gfx card
Probably laughable by todays standards, I bought it for $4,000 back in 08.

The problem may have been caused from a recent drop but I have been having niggling symptoms of age for a month or so now, lines on the screen and bad performance, etc. When I get home I'm going to try a format + reinstall of XP and see how much life I can get out of her.

Any suggestions for a decent rig? I have some cash so price isn't much of an issue, anything up to around $3,000 would be fine, but I'm so far out of the hardware market these days. What would you guys buy? The only real requirement is a 17" screen and a numpad. Blender requires a numpad and my laptop bag is for a 17".

I looked at the exchange rate; 1 Australian dollar = 0.63 British pounds. Over here you can build a perfectly decent rig for £600-£800, and a capable one for £1000 if you're careful with your money. That's about $1500 over there, assuming shipment isn't as brutal and parts are as easy to come by.

I'm no computer builder, but as an example, see the PC Gamer rig.

Laptops offer massive mobility, which is useful, but a rig offers longevity, value and interchangeable parts. And if all you're using is Blender, you probably don't need to spend more than £800/$1200 on a laptop, maximum. So there's pros and cons to both. If I were you, know what you're after. A mapper/designer like me needs raw power in the GPU and CPU, so I'm getting a rig one of these days. A modeller still needs that power, but not so much - you don't have to jump from Source to CryEngine, for example. Just more polys. Therefore, you can scale back a bit.

So what would you rather? Laptop or rig? Rigs, can't help you. Laptops, I can.

Oh I have a desktop, and it is quite apt. It's a good laptop I need. Blender is very ram and cpu intensive, although the later versions are introducing ways to defer to the gpu. I also use udk and source on it, so I need a good bit of grunt. I'm not often far from a power point so draining the battery with beefy components isn't an issue. Give me that laptop lingo, MB

So the old girl came good for a few days, and now she has decided that she likes 64 colours and 640 resolution. I am still yet to try a format and reinstall, so that's still an option. Where's this laptop advice, MB? Cat got your... fingers?

Sorry brah, been busy. Oh, and I need a super-easy model off you, but I'll keep trying to grab you on Steam.

If you're going to format and reinstall, just put in a new HDD. You'll be surprised how much a dying computer can come back to life.

In terms of laptop sheer grunt power, you're limited quite severely in terms of future proofing because you'll have to get an on-board GPU, which is never going to compare to a proper card. My girlfriend recently bought herself one of these, and while I personally find it pretty decent, it's possibly a bit cheap for your price range.

So, go to http://www.notebookcheck.net/ and do what I do; look for the strongest cards. For example, in the search system we can simply select a good card - in this case the GTX560M, then google it along with 'notebookcheck'. Scroll right down and you'll get some benchmarks. Nice! BF3 on High at ~37fps. Not a bad card. The great thing is that we can now go back to the search and plug in a few parameters.

Just like that, I've got 9 ~€1500 laptops.

I'll leave it to you, because while I could pick out some really good ones, nothing is going to beat working through the search options and top-end laptops to find what suits YOU.

Hmmm notebooksearch eh? Thanks for the tip.

Have you checked out newegg or tiger direct? I've not shopped there before, but all my friends do and swear by them.

Newegg doesn't ship to aus unfortunately, and I'm too lazy to organise alternative logistics unless they do an uncredible deal. I'm having a look at tiger direct though, thanks. Any input on good brands vs bad brands? The recently deceased laptop is HP and I liked it very much, it was mostly trouble free right up to the point that it died. Before this I had an asus which was crap, all the features did pretty much what I did not want them to or did not work at all. I want to stay away from asus purely from my interaction with that one laptop, and if you rearrange asus it spells u ass. Is that justified and what brands would you guys recommend?

How does this look?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4938

That's about the performance range I would like, but it could stand to lose a few hundred dollars.

Lawl, my girlfriend has the UK version. It's pretty damn good, and that US version looks even better. Touchpad's a bit shit though, and it hasn't really been put through it's paces.

If your looking at a 1900$ Samsung, you should look at ASUS, laptops are vary nice, i have a 2 year old G73, and it only cost me 1500 at the time i bought it (in Canada)

After two years it is starting to feel a bit of age, but that's due to my own folly (just say ill never drink chocolate milk next to the computer again and leave it at that)

anyways here is the latest model (noticeable price drop) 1400$

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/camp ... asus%20g75

Hmm, there are a few options with that one. Do you think I'd notice a difference between 12gig of RAM and 16? I mean, my PC at home has 4...

I would go with the 15-inch for mobility's sake (personally speaking), and $1500 isn't a bad deal if you have a steady job that can handle the price. If not then I would not go over $1000.

I don't think you will notice a difference between 12gb and 16gb unless you deal with lots of video editing. Or maybe complex modeling and photoshop stuff. So maybe you WILL feel it, during the middle of your workflow when the number of simultaneous projects is greatest. But if you go from 4gb to 12gb I think you will be very satisfied regardless, and will only know how a 16gb feels after you work with 12gb for a long time.

I too have a very old laptop, a Dell Studio XPS 1640. It's got 4gb of RAM and a 2.2 Core Duo processor. I got it new for $1000 back in 2008 and that was right before my first deployment (that ended up not happening after all), so I consider myself lucky price-wise. But it is showing signs of dying and it will soon be time for me to bury it. I've learned as much about modding as I can possibly expect to from this thing and it's time for a new one.

Incidentally, I will be getting a brand-new new Dell XPS 15 next month specifically for my next trip (so it can be "disposable" if you know what i mean), along with a spare charger and battery...and again, it will all be for a smooth $1000. Then when I get back home I can dump some serious cash on an all-powerful desktop like I've been wanting to for the last 6 months. Because after I get the desktop, I will be able to conduct future upgrades for cheap.

Well this is to model on, at any one point I could have blender, GIMP and UDK/SDK open at once, as well as a source game or UDK preview running. So I think I need as much power as I can get across all areas. I'm more about power and useability over mobility, I need that 17 inch screen, man. The extra ram is accompanied by a 356gb SSD drive too so maybe that extra $300 or so is worth it...

if you can afford it then go for it, definitely