My pc's been acting up the past few weeks; the GPU has been overheating. I reapplied thermal paste to it to no avail. I found the GPU idling at 105C today...it got up to 124C after I watched maybe 15 minutes of youtube videos. Shit's not good, son. It's been above 80 degrees just surfing the web. It's ridiculous.

I think it's time to upgrade.



http://www.circuitcity.com/applications ... No=6471592
I'll be getting this bad boy to replace it.

Don't buy that computer. I wouldn't say you should buy this in particular, but: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834230016

It blows that out of the water in my opinion. You probably don't want a 17" laptop, unless you're some video editor in which case you should get a desktop and be paying more than $500. 15" is way solid.

The Intel Core 2 Duo is nearly dinosaur technology now. The Intel i5 is current, and superior. Larger HDD on this one. 6GB of RAM is maybe a little overkill for now.

Pick any of these instead:

http://www.apple.com/mac/

Pick anything that's not a laptop instead.

[quote="Spike"]Pick anything that's not a laptop instead.[/quote]

This. Get a desktop unless you really need your computer to be mobile.

[quote="GoldenRhino"]Don't buy that computer. I wouldn't say you should buy this in particular, but: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834230016

[b]It blows that out of the water in my opinion.[/b] You probably don't want a 17" laptop, unless you're some video editor in which case you should get a desktop and be paying more than $500. 15" is way solid.

The Intel Core 2 Duo is nearly dinosaur technology now. The Intel i5 is current, and superior. Larger HDD on this one. 6GB of RAM is maybe a little overkill for now.[/quote]

[quote]GPU: Intel gma hd graphics[/quote]
lol.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Grap ... 065.0.html
vs
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeF ... 559.0.html

There's more to purchasing a computer than just considering processing speed. (which really, I have a Centrino duo right now, and I don't recall ever experiencing issues with cpu speed.) I also have an external 2TB Hard Drive as well as my old 320gb from my current computer and 80gb from an older computer. So storage isn't an issue either. My current pc is a 15.6, and I didn't want to downsize to a smaller screen. I managed to find the computer I linked for a steal at $489.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I truly do appreciate it.


I WOULD get a desktop; unfortunately, a desktop is just a bit too big and bulky for where I am right now. Until I get to a point where it's not impractical for me to own a desktop, (I'll custom build a gaming rig) I'll have to stick with gaming laptops as a compromise. Naturally, gaming laptops can be hella expensive, so I'm sticking with refurbished products for now.

I'm still open to others' research though. It's absolutely ridiculous trying to find the "perfect pc" for me, so to speak, on the web without wading through a huge pile of bullshit. I wish it were easier to search for computers via gpu performance.

[quote="Blank"]There's more to computing than processing speed. (which really, I have a Centrino duo right now, and I don't recall ever experiencing issues with the cpu speed.)[/quote]
Well, it's not just the processor. One of the biggest factors in terms of your computer overall "feeling" fast will be size/speed of the memory you've got installed. 6GB is nice, but it's [i]DDR2[/i]. Even my laptop, which is over two years old and isn't super fast anymore, has 4GB of DDR3 memory. If you're hell-bent on performance, don't settle for anything less than DDR3.

(Hard drive speed is also an important performance bottleneck, but pretty much everything I've seen (including your refurbished one) is at around the same speed, so I think you can largely ignore that for now.)

Some of the more recent integrated graphics systems aren't [i]that[/i] horrendous for gaming, but I'll see if I can dig up any steals…

Integrated graphics eat all the ass at gaming, every time, period.

[quote="Blank"]I WOULD get a desktop; unfortunately, a desktop is just a bit too big and bulky for where I am right now.

I'll have to stick with gaming laptops as a compromise. [/quote]

Welp. Gotta compromise. If you're gonna spend $500 on a PC laptop, you're gonna be portable, but you're not gonna be gaming. A desktop is what you want. Get this. I should ass, you won't be gaming much this way either. http://www.macofalltrades.com/Apple_iMa ... 20l06a.htm

Or you could eat ramen for a few months and step up the plate: http://store.apple.com/ca/product/FC508LL/A

If you want to game, you can do it in a PC desktop for your budget. That too is possible.

[quote="Orochi"][quote="Blank"]There's more to computing than processing speed. (which really, I have a Centrino duo right now, and I don't recall ever experiencing issues with the cpu speed.)[/quote]
Well, it's not just the processor. One of the biggest factors in terms of your computer overall "feeling" fast will be size/speed of the memory you've got installed. 6GB is nice, but it's [i]DDR2[/i]. Even my laptop, which is over two years old and isn't super fast anymore, has 4GB of DDR3 memory. If you're hell-bent on performance, don't settle for anything less than DDR3.

(Hard drive speed is also an important performance bottleneck, but pretty much everything I've seen (including your refurbished one) is at around the same speed, so I think you can largely ignore that for now.)

Some of the more recent integrated graphics systems aren't [i]that[/i] horrendous for gaming, but I'll see if I can dig up any steals…[/quote]

I edited the fuck out of my post, so you may have missed out on me elaborating a bit more. I'm not hell-bent on performance, per se, but I'd like to be able to play some newer games with stable (50+) frames per second...which just isn't going to happen with most gpus. I mean, if I was [i]really[/i] hell-bent on performance, I'd get a SSD to go with a better processor, but I'm just not willing to shell out that kind of money quite yet.


[quote]Welp. Gotta compromise. If you're gonna spend $500 on a PC laptop, you're gonna be portable, but you're not gonna be gaming.[/quote]

Not true. It's possible to game on a laptop for 500 if you know what you're looking for and if you get a good deal. If you mean game 24/7, then yeah, you're right. No arguments there. However, if you want to game moderately, it's not completely out of reach.

Well, I dug this up from a quick Newegg search: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834246153

Yeah, $100 more, but the graphics card seems comparable (based on that site you linked; I'm not that savvy about the latest and greatest snazzy graphics cards). Plus, the DDR3 memory, Core i5 processor, and the fact that it's not [i]Vista[/i] preloaded make it more attractive in my mind.

Also, Lenovo makes rock-solid laptops.

But I can also understand if that's out of your price range. (Also currently out of stock lololol; this was more of a proof of concept, anyway)

[quote="Orochi"]Also, Lenovo makes rock-solid laptops.[/quote]

I still rock a Thinkpad when I need to use the laptop.

Note: Low HD speed won't throttle your gameplay. HD speed will only affect loading times, which shouldn't present a substantial problem. My operating system is on a sleek SSD, but all my games are offshore on a second 7200 RPM HDD.

I don't own a computer. ):

[quote="sheerheartattack"]Note: Low HD speed won't throttle your gameplay. HD speed will only affect loading times, which shouldn't present a substantial problem. My operating system is on a sleek SSD, but all my games are offshore on a second 7200 RPM HDD.[/quote]

Oh I know this, but a true performance whore would get an SSD for their OS and shite.

[quote="Orochi"]Well, I dug this up from a quick Newegg search: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834246153

Yeah, $100 more, but the graphics card seems comparable (based on that site you linked; I'm not that savvy about the latest and greatest snazzy graphics cards). Plus, the DDR3 memory, Core i5 processor, and the fact that it's not [i]Vista[/i] preloaded make it more attractive in my mind.

Also, Lenovo makes rock-solid laptops.

But I can also understand if that's out of your price range. (Also currently out of stock lololol; this was more of a proof of concept, anyway)[/quote]

That's actually $210 more than what I found, but it is undoubtedly a solid machine for a great price. OS isn't a big deal--I can upgrade to Windows 7/XP pretty easily.