Gaming on a Budget: Good Laptop?

[Ericmopar]

It's only clocked at 2.4 Ghz and this sim likes a faster clocking. 3.4 or higher.
The Nivdia 755 will run this sim, but the sim won't take advantage of the SLI.
And then there is the question of how effective is it at cooling the CPU and GPU/s.
The in game settings would have to be run pretty low.

Based on what I've learned over the last two years, I'm surprised most latops don't come with a processor no more powerful than an i3.

[GSkid]

I don't own an Nvidia....but on AMD with crossfire ON, it will only use multi-GPUs if there is an application profile that supports the game. If not, it uses only one GPU by default unless you go in and try to force it into crossfire mode through a manual tweak of the graphics settings.

[DrewG]

My Y580 has turbo boosting from 2.3 to 3.3 but the turbo boosting doesn't work while playing games. The processor speed is locked to 2.3 while playing games so keep that in mind.

[DrewG]

Depends on the route. My frames range from 30 to 5 on the New Heaven - New York route.

[buzz456]

After all this time I am still a bit confused about all this conversation about frame rates. I don't really care about this unless I get stuttering. Is one a function of the other or is this independent. I with my present rig only get a stutter once in a while going from one tile to another and that's loading a boatload of scenery when it does that.

[arizonachris]

Since frame rate drop and stuttering (on my PC anyways) happen at the same time, it's basically the same thing. BUT, low overall frame rate is a different issue.

Low overall frame rates are due to a slow CPU, a low end graphics card, or both. TSX off along with low quality settings can get a reasonable frame rate overall, but to me it looks like ........ So a fast CPU (over 3.5Ghz stock, dual core or quad core) and a mid- range to high range GPU gets the best results.

Frame rate drop/ stuttering is due to high resolution/ high poly count assets/ scenery on the next bunch of tiles loading into the game from the hard drive, as Professor Buzz said. Some have minimized this issue with a fast SSD hard drive, others say (along with my own testing on my rig) that an SSD doesn't help with gaming per se, just the initial load of a game or Windows. My hard drive is not huge (500Gb) and is kept clean and optimized so I don't get stuttering too bad.

And what I always say, about a new purchase/ new build/ upgrade, PC or lap top, is don't do this just for Railworks. Do it because it's really time to have nicer, better "stuff" that will be good for a while longer all around.

[peterhayes]

Buzz
Be aware technogeekspeak approaching.
IMHO FPS/frame rates (The frame rate describes how many complete images the card can display per second - but it does NOT indicate smoothness) are a relatively poor indicator of PC performance as you say you can have a smooth experience at low fps and a stutter at high FPS.

The better indicator (but hard to measure) is frame dwell times where you want 99.9% of frames to be less than 20 milliseconds (no stuttering/jerkiness) and no frame dwell time to be more that 50 milliseconds (start of stuttering, etc). When I first measured this, at tile boundaries in TS2014, I was seeing a FDT of 500 milliseconds for about 0.2% of frames - definitely a stutter. On Slopes Corner on the NEC there is a massive spike of 1 to 2 seconds,

How to overcome a lot of stutters- use an SSD for TS2014, get a good video card with enough VRAM to run the monitor(s) you are using coupled with, fast RAM, good mobo, adequate psu, and a cpu that can run effortlessly over 3.2GHz (INTEL) (4Ghz even better) in other words a balanced system.
There is a newer measure of graphics card performance but I have lost the reference to it but it looks promising.
My advice turn off the frame counter and if its a smooth experience that's all you need.
I rarely see stutters these days - the only major one being slopes corner on the NEC,
Just an opinion.
pH

[GSkid]

My Y580 has turbo boosting from 2.3 to 3.3 but the turbo boosting doesn't work while playing games. The processor speed is locked to 2.3 while playing games so keep that in mind.

That's shocking. The main reason for turbo mode IS gaming. My processor's normal boost is from 2.7GHz to 3.2GHz. It does this automatically when it detects a game that uses 3-D graphics. I don't play 2-D games, so I don't know if it boosts them automatically. But I can go into my power settings and FORCE my processor to play 3-D games at 1.4 - 1.7 - 2.0 - 2.4 - 2.7 GHz respectively.

I'd do some research if I was you as to how you might turbo it to 3.3GHz for games. Either from tech support or from CPU tech forums. Over-clockers are a good source for such tips and information.

[Ericmopar]

Here are the specs on that i7 CPU. It's an oddball verson. It's an i7 thats been castrated.
I just found out that i3 may not turbo boost in a laptop. At least no i3 powered laptops that I have looked at, have a turbo boost feature. Maybe I've been missing something and the i3 just don't turbo at all.

http://ark.intel.com/products/75117/Int ... o-3_40-GHz