Laptop for mobile work (and COH)

[Astralock]

33 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Well... no. It's not nVidia bound.

 

Old Intel integrated graphics were awful, granted. (Haven't tried the newer ones.) But that doesn't mean you're stuck with nVidia - AMD's Radeon cards work decently.

For that matter, I've got an "htpc" (well, that's what I say I use it as...) running a Ryzen 5 5600G which runs COH - not all the shinies are up on it, but it does all right, and that's more a limitation of how much of the system RAM it can steal.

 

.. hmm, I should see how it runs on the i5-13600's built in graphics...

 

Newer (within the past year) AMD Radeon cards don't actually work decently with CoH.  Number Six has said on Discord that the AMD Radeon RX7000 series of graphics cards uses a special OpenGL driver compared to older Radeon graphics cards, which causes random crashes on old OpenGL-based games (including CoH), with no workaround.  There's also been a ton of complaints by AMD Radeon card users over the past five months or so on the Homecoming forums, Homecoming Discord server, and Rebirth Discord server with various graphics oddities and outright crashes.

 

For CoH, your best bet is a Nvidia graphics card by a country mile.  If you absolutely must go without a graphics card, then yeah, AMD integrated graphics is your best bet, but considering the issues people have been having with CoH with recent AMD hardware and graphics drivers, I wouldn't bet on it not having issues.

[DoctorDitko]

For that matter, didn't Intel actually remove OpenGL support a few years back?

 

[Astralock]

2 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

For that matter, didn't Intel actually remove OpenGL support a few years back?

 

 

For integrated graphics, yep.  Their new Arc graphics cards supports OpenGL, but I have no idea how well.

[Nightwatch]

Got to say, I'm so glad I updated this conversation.  Lots of food for thought in all your helpful comments.  Not a computer person - and far too old now to catch that bus - so probably only understand about 30% of what's being said but it's all still helpful.  Currently hoping I can identify a LIGHTWEIGHT laptop with NVIDIA and camera (for work meetings).  I would continue with my Dell XPS 15 if it weren't so damn heavy!

[Hyperstrike]

Okay, I'm a screen real estate junkie.  Be forewarned.

But there are some definite limits on how high of a resolution you'll want to run on 14-15" screens.

If you're plugging into a larger desktop-class monitor or a large format monitor/TV, feel free to ignore.

If you're gaming on a 14" screen, you do NOT want to try pushing a 4K display, or even a 1920x1080.
The details are simply way too small, resulting in a nearly unplayable experience.

With 15", stay below 4K.  1440p is probably all you want to do when gaming on a laptop screen.

With my laptop, I basically will use it for maintenance functions in game, but trying to actually mish is an experience in pain and poor control.

I didn't realize how bad it'd gotten for me as my main machine was down for a couple months and I was using my laptop with an external monitor.

I also rediscovered how much I LOATHE 16x9 as an aspect ratio.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Hyperstrike

[Hyperstrike]

1 hour ago, Nightwatch said:

Got to say, I'm so glad I updated this conversation.  Lots of food for thought in all your helpful comments.  Not a computer person - and far too old now to catch that bus - so probably only understand about 30% of what's being said but it's all still helpful.  Currently hoping I can identify a LIGHTWEIGHT laptop with NVIDIA and camera (for work meetings).  I would continue with my Dell XPS 15 if it weren't so damn heavy!

Take a look at the Inspiron 16 laptop.
Large (for a laptop) 16x10 format monitor.
1920x1200
1TB SSD
16GB RAM
AMD or Intel.  The AMD is running a Ryzen 7 8/16  chip
Radeon graphics.

4.6 lbs.

Yes, it's a laptop class processor.  But 16 threads (not differentiating between Performance/Efficiency cores) is some decent "grunt" for actual "work".

And it's under $800.
The best-comparable Intel version is $1100.
 

Edited March 21, 2023 by Hyperstrike