tl;dr - New laptop, ready to get back into things, I'm pretty much as active as a chipmunk again. Not really that big of a deal since CSGO servers have been about dead lately, but other than periodically checking the forums, for the last month or so, I have been fairly inactive, mainly due to my old shit dell with an integrated ATI card finally giving up the ghost. It's still usuable, but almost everything is broken. The right hinge, the touchpad, sound card and ports, a couple usbs, network card, I could go on forever. Not to mention I got about 25-35 FPS on lowest possible settings on CSGO and not much better on source. So, I've been saving up for a while, and shelled out on a cyber monday sale on an HP dv7t quad, the highest performance laptop HP offers (Would have gone custom, but just too expensive), It was about a $2600 laptop that I got for around $1800. Why a laptop, you may ask? Because not only do I like the convenience of being able to use it anywhere, I am at a university and need it to go from class to class. So far, it's amazing; it's taken everything I can throw at it so far; Ran at about 110-120 fps on GO with full settings (8x anti-alias, 16x anisotropy, full textures, etc). I then decided to turn triple buffered v-sync on to reduce the horizontal tearing, and that limits it to 60 fps, but that's fine; most displays (including mine) only have a 60hz refresh rate (which is what vsync tethers its speed to; the refresh rate), and on top of that, the eye can only percieve about 58-62 fps, depending on the person. For those of you wondering about the specs, here: 1 TB 5400rpm HDD (Faster rpm really doesn't do much, so I really dont care that its only 5400) i7 3rd gen cpu, @ 2.7ghz base, can safely and automatically overclock/boost up to 3.7 ghz. 16gb DDR3 RAM NVidia GeForce GT 650m GPU, with 2.0 GB DDR5 video RAM Fancy HD or whatnot Webcam Stereo Mic Beats audio with 4 speakers and 1 subwoofer (Really could care less about the beats brand logo all over my laptop, is really overrated; just came standard) Backlit Keyboard 4 USB, 1 HDMI 1 RS232 Ethernet, Headphone/micport, and a Bluray player and writer. Fingerprint scanner Full HD anti glare 1920x1080p display Windows 8 (D: Virtually unusable without buying Start8; if you are looking into an upgrade from win7, STAY WITH SEVEN. That's pretty much it; hope to see you all in game.
Alright, sounds like a good plan bro and congrats with your new laptop. Though there's a few problems I see with this concerning how much hardware you get for that price tag. Now obviously I wouldn't need to care because it's your money, but I'm trying to help the others to decide and for you to be more wise about your next purchase in the future. - On how many FPS the human eye can see or whatever, there's plenty of discussions about that so I don't see why you would just toss out a number you found out around the web, neither do I want to go into deeper discussion of that since there's probably other forums for such. - "(Faster rpm really doesn't do much, so I really dont care that its only 5400)" Dead wrong my friend. If it wasn't that important like you just said then why do people go out and buy 10'000RPM Veloci Raptors or even SSD's for their gaming computers regardless of it being a desktop or laptop? - That 650M might do the drill for you, I understand but for the price you paid you could have easily gotten yourself a GTX660M or even for 100$ more a GTX680M, that's right a 680M. More on that later though. - Last but not least, Windows 8. Yes I know, maybe you didn't have the option to choose but at least it's better to get 7 than having to deal with an interface made for tablets. Everyone has their opinions on 8 but for me 7 is the king and will still be unless Steam is fully working with Linux at some point. I like that you have a 1080p screen at least since it looks amazing compared to something like a 1336x768 that my DELL has. (I don't use laptops anymore). Mind you that I am by no strecth of the imagination a tech expert or computer professional, all I want is to simply help out. Here's two laptops you could of bought that's in my opinion way better than what you have bought and not even that much difference in the price and mind you that one of them is actually cheaper even when it wasn't on sale since: Newegg: Newegg.com - ASUS G75VW-DS71 Notebook Intel Core i7 3610QM(2.30GHz) 17.3" 12GB Memory 1.5TB HDD 7200rpm BD Combo NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M BestBuy: MSI - 15.6" Laptop - 12GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Black - GT60 0NE-403US Also, just to make sure I don't spread hate towards HP, I'd like people to know that I have gone through 4 HP's and three of them being ones from the same product line (two dv9000's and one dv6000). Now to tell my experience with those HP laptops, long story short.. HP is terribad. The one dv9000 had it's motherboard replace twice under warranty and broke yet again because of the GPU burnt to hell so that's how they sent a second one for free so technically I have had three of them since the other one that isn't mentioned is still functional but had it's screen replaced. So they all last for about a year or two but in the end just get's too damn slow over time and breaks apart. I must say that I was impressed over the dv6000 that's been with me for a good two years without any issues but ending up having it's GPU dead, expecting that it played all games I threw at it. Fingerprint sensors didn't even last that long for me but hey, maybe HP has improved over the years since this was 4 years back. My DELL that I got after the HP laptops still function perfectly after two years of rough use meaning I carried it in a school bag like all the time and even dropped it on the floor like three times. Not to say that DELL is superior but it's been a better experience for me than HP. Most important of all though, nice to have you back and wish you a great new year along with fun on CSS and CSGO. Here's a picture just so I don't lie about all of this:
