HP EliteBook - Suitable Laptop for KSP?

[Allen Snowdon]

[FONT=arial]KSP was running "meh" on my HP-g6 2090ca which recently died. Been stuck on my economy Satellite C850D which is close to intolerable (but still fun to build and test ships on rainy days)[/FONT]
[FONT=arial]
Thinking about buying a used HP EliteBook 8740W. Specs look good: intel core i7 @ 2.67Ghz, 8Gb, [/FONT][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Arial][FONT=arial]nVidia graphics board with 1-GB GDDR3
[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][FONT=arial]
Would appreciate any thoughts before I squander(?) my limited $
[/FONT]http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03198799[FONT=arial]
Thanks[/FONT] Edited November 20, 2015 by Allen Snowdon

[Agost]

Wait

What's your budget?

That's a 2008-ish pc .-.

[Allen Snowdon]

Thanks Agost. Don't know where you got that date, another planet perhaps?

[url]http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03198799[/url][COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial]

They're selling for ~cdn$500-600 used.
Never been into gaming much so don't know if it's worth it or wha
[/FONT][/COLOR] Edited November 20, 2015 by Allen Snowdon

[Majorjim!]

[quote name='Allen Snowdon']Thanks Agost. I realize the vintage, but reading about their performance on other gaming blogs seems it's still up to snuff because of the video:
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial]PnP-Monitor (Standard) (1920x1200@60Hz)[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial]1024MB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M

They're selling for ~cdn$500-600 used.
Never been into gaming much so don't know if it's worth it or what...
[/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

In my experience laptops are not worth the extra cost. Any reason you cannot buy a desktop PC?

[Allen Snowdon]

Posted in Tom's Guide April 7, 2015:

"[I][COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial]IMO, that laptop, although dated a bit is still a viable machine (especially considering the Quadro FX 3800m graphics) and the price seems good for the hardware. The only cons I noticed are that the webcam has been removed and it still sports a rather "small" 320GB HDD. I might look into an SSD to put in there which should make the whole [/FONT][/COLOR][URL="http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2599913/1st-gen-elitebook-laptops-worth.html#"][FONT=inherit][COLOR=#009900][FONT=inherit][U]system[/U][/FONT][/COLOR][IMG]http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png[/IMG][/FONT][/URL][COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial] feel snappier.[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial]The biggest drawback is that during any intensive tasks, you'll need to use the power [/FONT][/COLOR][URL="http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2599913/1st-gen-elitebook-laptops-worth.html#"][FONT=inherit][COLOR=#009900][FONT=inherit][U]adapter[/U][/FONT][/COLOR][IMG]http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png[/IMG][/FONT][/URL][COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial] since the graphics alone can eat up to 100W (that's a lot of power and heat for a laptop!). I'll recommend looking over this article [/FONT][/COLOR][URL]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376739,00.asp[/URL][COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial] to see if it mentions anything you find particularly undesirable.[/FONT][/COLOR]
[/I][COLOR=#070F14][FONT=Arial][I]Considering it cost ~$2000 when new, and I feel the hardware is still viable, I'd say that seems to be a pretty good deal[/I]""

source: [/FONT][/COLOR]http://www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-2599913/1st-gen-elitebook-laptops-worth.html

[Agost]

Quadros don't have good drivers for games, especially older ones.

Again, what's your budget? Do you really need a laptop?

[Zephram Kerman]

I searched KSP forum for "benchmark" and found this thread:
[URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25004-KSP-Unofficial-Official-Computer-Building-Buying-Megathread-%28All-Questions-Acceptable-%29?highlight=benchmark"]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25004-KSP-Unofficial-Official-Computer-Building-Buying-Megathread-%28All-Questions-Acceptable-%29?highlight=benchmark
[/URL]

[Allen Snowdon]

I have a really nice desktop, a few in fact. Just like portability (we're rural with a very big lot and nice weather)

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Thanks for sharing that, Zephram. A more sensible choice eh?

[Goddess Bhavani]

I'm currently using a Acer V Nitro 15" budget gaming laptop for all my casual gaming and KSP youtubing needs - basically it's a computer that can run X-Com Enemy Within, Tomb Raider, War Thunder, Mass Effect series and various other games of similar vintage without bogging down; it can handle Witcher 3 too albeit with some compromises on resolution.

Specs:
Core i7 4510U 2 ghz (turbo 3.1ghz)
nVidia 850M
8mb RAM
1TB HDD

You could get such a computer for about a thousand USD these days. There are other much better gaming laptops in the market today, take a look at the [URL="http://www.asus.com/us/site/g-series/"]ASUS ROG series[/URL]. Basically, take my specs above as the bare minimum for a gaming laptop of December 2014 which is exactly what I wanted; nothing fancy, something inexpensive and light enough to serve as a mobile desktop replacement to spread the love and joy of Kerbaling amongst various RL communities.

[Thunder_86]

Well juste to give you a point of view:

My laptop:

i7 2.4ghz (quad core)
NVidia 770M
12Gb of DDR3
Windows runnign on a SSD
Game running from a 7200RPM HDD

Everything is fine, but rockets with a lot of parts tend to lag a bit, and building a base gets aweful really fast as the first base module is fine, but adding more it starts to lag like mad. Space stations seems not too bad so far, but when they get big, it does start to lag a bit...

I'm currently saving for a new machine... And my laptop has only 3 years... If you are looking at a laptop from 2008, I can tell you right now it won'T be any good in the game. sure you'll lauch 10 parts rockets... but you won't be able to do anything big...

I would advise against that...

[Allen Snowdon]

Those are pretty impressive specs, and I certainly get it re: ship complexity. My HP G6 (much lower specs) was okay for the starter rockets and thought I had the ultimate computer...you know the rest.

The HP EliteBook was first manufactured in 2011, in the USA. The 8740w model was and is still considered to be their top-of-the-line. The particular machine I found on eBay originally sold for $3950USD, and the warranty is also being legally transferred.

For fooling around designing and testing stuff with a notebook is damned convenient to me. I can do the ultra-high framerate and screen capture on my good gaming computer.

Before passing judgement PLEASE read: [url]http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c03198799[/url]

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Thanks for the encouraging remarks :)
That's all I want too, I can do the fun-flying on my watt-eater at home. Edited November 20, 2015 by Allen Snowdon

[Thunder_86]

From what I can understand, KSP isn't so hard on the GPU, but its REALLY, REALLY demanding on the CPU... Laptop CPUs are a lot slower... even with the turbo (at least in my experience). to give you an idea of my next machine, I'm buying it from a friend of mine who's got his own company. He's got machines (way) faster than that, but prices gets ridicoulous really fast when browsing his website lol. the one I want is that one:

[URL]https://www.gamingpc.ca/best-desktops/thewarrior.php?pcID=4[/URL]

He is the king of overclocking, he doesn't use the automatic overclock features, he plays with voltages and stuff... I'm a programmer myself and I have no clue how he does that, I did buy a machine from him a few years ago, and I swear I've never had a machine that fast for the price I paid! If you think you know everything about overclocking, well he stills knows more lol. That guy is litterally a magician!

We are in canada so keep in mind his prices are in canadian dollars... so that 2600$ machine is like what... 2000 USD? And you get a 4.6 GHz quad core CPU, 16 Gbs of killer ram, overclocked to 3000MHz (yes, you can overclock RAM!!!), and a GTX 970... overclocked as well of course! Everything being watercooled as well to make sure everything runs cool and silent... This thing is gonna rock! (water cooling nowadays isn't that much better than fans as far as temperature goes as fans are getting extremely performant, byt the water cooling is more quiet. You have much fewer fans, and if you put the radiator outside the case, its easy to keep clean, and clean fans means silent fans! The watercooling to me is all about noise reduction. Systems using fans are silent at first but gets noisy over time as fans gets dirty... With a water cooled system its easy to keep cleaner as there are fewer of them and its easy to make a watercooling system where the fans are super easy to access, and even replace once in a while if they get more noisy)

I understand that gaming laptops are fun... but in my experience, its a pain in the backside more than anything. They are expensive, they get outdated extremely fast, they tend to break (they are super bad with heat, they have super powerfull parts, in a very, very limited space, everything gets hot, and hot parts wear out fast. As a matter of fact, my laptop ws suposed to have a GTX 675M, but it blew up after 2 years, they replaced it with a 770M, and I'll be dead honest, it hasn't even been a year since I had the card replaced, the 770M is starting to do free games, I think its gonna blow up soon... I also had to have 2 memory DIMMs that also blew up...

In the end its your descision, I understand why you'd want gaming laptop, as 3 years ago I really wanted one too... But now I really regret it. If I had gotten a desktop back then, I wouldn't be swearing at my computer every single day, and it would still be good for a few months to a year or two... But now I can't get newer games because it just won't play them... I lag a bit in GTA V because my GPU isn't powerfull enough, I lag in KSP cause my CPU isn't fast enough... So to me, gaming laptops: never again

[ve7oko]

Well folks, I went ahead and purchased the EliteBook 8740w...$600CDN total and it's a very nice machine. Built like a tank, hardly a "laptop" indeed it's labelled as a 'mobile workstation'.
You be the judge: https://youtu.be/IPHYUmI75iA