Laptop spec help required please

[esme]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, please feel free to move it or merge with an existing thread

I'm looking to get a new laptop, my desktop is fine but struggles with graphics in some TDM missions plus it means locking myself in the spare room

One obvious requirement is it needs to play TDM

Another is it's going to run Linus but that's my problem

I've found a machine that looks reasonable & won't break the bank, but will it play TDM ?

Specs are :

Acer Nitro 5 AN517-55-7366 17-inch - Core i7-12700H 2.3GHz - 16GB 512GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6Gb, QWERTY - English

 

[freyk]

I think so, but Im not a hardware guy.  here is a list you need to run TDM. https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php/FAQ#What_do_I_need_to_play_The_Dark_Mod?

Or To promote TDM a bit, ask the seller if he want to install tdm on that system and play some missions.

 

[Dragofer]

The Acer Nitro series isn't well built for getting rid of heat, which is essential for a gaming laptop to stop it from a) getting very noisy as the fans try to cool it, b) throttling its speed and c) scorching your lap. This is made worse by the fact that recent Intel CPUs consume significantly more power and produce more heat in order to match the performance of AMD Ryzen CPUs, because Intel's technological progress has been stagnating due to mismanagement until recently.

I think a question to ask here is whether you really need a dedicated graphics card (Nvidia RTX 4050), or whether a modern CPU that contains an integrated graphics chip would be sufficient for the games you play. Ryzen laptop CPUs (i.e. Ryzen 7840hs, 7940hs) carry a Radeon 780M that imo should easily handle all TDM missions (unless you want to play in i.e. 4K resolution with high-detail soft shadows) and even recent games (i.e. Baldur's Gate 3) at modest graphics settings and framerates. Intel CPUs also have integrated graphics, but they are better at specific things like video transcoding while being significantly worse for gaming.

Now should in fact be a good time to look for deals for a laptop with a Ryzen 5000 or 7000 series CPU, because their 9000 series was just released some days ago.

[chakkman]

@esme Does it have to be a laptop? You get more power for the money with a desktop PC (and better performance from the components, due to a laptop's necessity to save power/produce less heat). Not to mention that you can also surely get a better display for games like TDM.

And, if you want to run Linux, you get yet another advantage: The ability to choose components which are supported by Linux.

Edited August 9 by chakkman

[Zerush]

I have an old cheap laptop with 8GB RAM +2GB GPU, and TDM run flawless in it, without excesive heat (~50º) in good graphic settings (Win10). I think that TDM is very well optimized.

Certainly a good gaming Desktop PC would be better, but at least not needed in this case.

Edited August 10 by Zerush

[datiswous]

20 hours ago, esme said:

Acer Nitro 5 AN517-55-7366 17-inch - Core i7-12700H 2.3GHz - 16GB 512GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6Gb

Could be overpowered?

[nbohr1more]

I think the specs look good. The lower end GPU’s tend to have less raster hardware ( ROPS ) so you might need to change the “Render Scale” setting if the  screen resolution is higher than 1080p but otherwise it should be pretty smooth ( don’t forget to uncap your FPS )

[esme]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Could be overpowered?

That'd be a first for me

1 hour ago, nbohr1more said:

I think the specs look good. The lower end GPU’s tend to have less raster hardware ( ROPS ) so you might need to change the “Render Scale” setting if the  screen resolution is higher than 1080p but otherwise it should be pretty smooth ( don’t forget to uncap your FPS )

Thank you

Thank you all, I think I've got enough to go with now

Edited August 10 by esme

[jaxa]

9 hours ago, datiswous said:

Could be overpowered?

It certainly is. Maybe ~40% faster than my GTX 970 (real mobile performance depends on TDP/thermals) which was perfectly fine for 1080p60, the best display I had available.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4050-mobile.c3953

I still need to test it on the 5700G iGPU-only in the future. But it's easy to run TDM these days. Landfill systems + $150-200 GPU will yield a good experience, or a ~$400 7735HS or better APU mini-PC. Go used/refurb and find a good deal, and the total cost could be driven down more.

9 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

( don’t forget to uncap your FPS )

Are you reminding to match the refresh rate of the laptop (not specified) or is there a technical reason?

[nbohr1more]

3 hours ago, jaxa said:

Are you reminding to match the refresh rate of the laptop (not specified) or is there a technical reason?

The original capped FPS mode that Doom 3 ships with ( and which is still part of TDM ) has an intrinsic timing bug that doesn't play well with modern operating systems and drivers. Setting FPS to uncapped in the advanced menu ( com_fixedTic 1 ) will make TDM run much better even if you set the max FPS value to 60

[revelator]

hmm doom 3 came out around the time of the geforce 3 though i bet TDM has upped the bar somewhat .

the original idtech 4 code could actually run on a voodoo 2 though it did take some hacking about and lack of shader support ment it looked like a cartoon hehe.

at the time i got it i had a geforce 4 and though it ran i would not exactly call it fast in ultra :).

i think it was around the time of the 6000 series before it ran flawlessly in ultra.

tried TDM on my old 560 ti and runs quite fine with that old geezer

[Zerush]

My CPU/GPU are AMD Radeon 3.1 GHz. Despite that I can't use the max graphic settings without a low FPS,  but >30-40 FPS with a med/high in 1920x1080 screen. As said, pretty decent for an small laptop. But I think it's the minimum recomended for an decent quality in TDM

Win 10 Home 22H2 64bits 

(gutted all the default Windows crap, telemetries and services not needed, gaining ~1 GB Ram respect the default)

Edited August 11 by Zerush

[revelator]

yeah the more modern apu's sometimes fall short of hitting the mark despite being able to sometimes run newer content without problems. strangely despite being subpar for most modern stuff old gfx cards run pretty well with game engines that came from around the same era, apu's from back then are cough! not worth mentioning as they usually sucked. I have one of the older amd A8 APU's  (medion PC) and the built in gfx while not to shabby does tend to balk at some titles. strangely some of the A8 models were hugely faster than the corresponding A9 models cpu wise but the newer models had better gfx go figure , the A8 5600K was around 83% faster than the 9425 despite the latter being somewhat newer, the built in gfx was pretty ok though (based on vega) while the A8 was based on the hd8500 series.

my A8 (6500) is also a quad core while the 9425 is a dual core, i guess they had to cut down on cores to make room for the vega hardware ?, mine got outfitted with a gtx 1060 external gfx card because the built in card while ok for some older games was simply to slow for more modern titles and the psu was only 350 watt .

[revelator]

for a comparison with mine see here -> https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-A9-9425-APU-2016-MSR-vs-AMD-A8-6500-APU/m496441vsm5272

as you can see the old A8 absolutely demolishes the A9 in CPU power, when it comes to gfx id say the A9 wins but it might have some problems due to the cpu not being all that fast (lower resolutions usually needs more cpu power yeah sounds bonkers but true non the less). the vega gfx should be able to handle 1440 resolutions though where cpu power means less.

[datiswous]

12 hours ago, revelator said:

hmm doom 3 came out around the time of the geforce 3

Geforce 3 = 2001

Doom 3 = 2004

The best gpu at the time for Doom 3 was the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.

[revelator]

Of by a few years heh well i skipped the 5000 series and got a 6800 ultra instead. The geforce 4 was about the oldest card i tried doom 3 with. After the 6000 series i got the 8000 series which lasted me for quite some years. The gtx 560 ti was something i got together with the first core 2 at a time where i did not have the cash for a top shelf card, but it impressed me enough that i keept it well i actually got two sli was fun back then.

edit: not the core 2 doh was together with the haswell 4770K, had so much gear over the years i tend to mix up when i got what . was bought around the same time i got the board for the haswell an MSI Z87-GD65 gaming. its paired with a core2 quad now in a retro build i did for fun out of old parts fits better with the old core2 than with the haswell since the 560 ti is pcie 2.0 only.

[Zerush]

Well, my laptop has 3 Years and I paid €350 for it. As said, far away from an high end gaming PC. It has even problems with some shabby Unity games from Steam respect FPS, because of this it's somewhat strange that TDM, with infinite better graphics run smooth on it.

[revelator]

You can get pretty far on less stellar components though in the case of laptops its pretty hard to change stuff. If you need advise on building a cheap desktop able to handle most things i could help though .

My own gamer pc uses pretty old components but handles even the most recent games and the original parts cost me around the same as your laptop. X99 mainboard (used) came with a 6800k cpu and 16gb corsair ddr4, it cost me around 150 euro. The gfx card is an rtx 3070 which was another 150, i had the psu and some spare ssd's so i used around 70 euro on the cabinet (lian li full alu) older one but extremely light and 100% toolless. I upgraded a few things over time (more ram 64 gb) and i changed the 3070 with the older 2080 ti because it runs better in 4k. The cpu was also upgraded to the 6950x which is a 10 core 20 threads extreme model.

So it started modest but even then it kicked butt

 

[Zerush]

Yes. I know that you can build a decent gaming tower with €350 (+monitor+keyboard+mouse), but because of several reasons I need to us an laptop and this one (Lenovo) is enough for what I use it (apart of TDM, there are not much other games I use ocassionaly (most from 2015 and earlier) and for this it works fine).

Edited August 13 by Zerush

[revelator]

not sure why unity runs worse on your laptop than TDM tbh could be any number of things (engine optimization ?) idtech 4 originally was geared more towards a corridor shooter while unity seems to be optimized more towards big open vistas.

a lot of work has gone into TDM over the years to make idtech 4 better suited to a thief styled game, while unity was built from the ground up to be more general purpose hmm ?.

strangely both engines are from around the same time idtech 4 came out in 2004 unity in 2005 though i suspect the unity of today has had as many if not more changes to the codebase as TDM.

could be simply that idtech 4 was the better engine .

[Zerush]

Not all Unity games certainly, only some of those. And yes, I think that the cause is often a bad optimization of the game, not so the engine used. It's hilarious that you find in Steam even crappy sidescrollers with min specs of 8 Gb and above.

[revelator]

well it seems to be a problem for many amd users i see from skimming unity forums, everything from outright crashes to awfull framerates ouch . one user found that running unity in a window made it run flawlessly while fullscreen made it run like alan wake2 on a 1050 gtx

[Zerush]

Yes, most Unity browser games are not a problem, but for desktop it's russian roulete.

[revelator]

8 gb for a sidescroller holy...

[revelator]

i know for a mapper it might seem convinient to do your work in something you know but sometimes it seems detrimental to use a hyper advanced game engine to make something like that when there are better alternatives for this kind of stuff...

godot would probably be a way better engine for a sidescroller or even HPL (amnesia engine). hell even the old idtech 1 would be better sigh.