Best Laptops for FG?

[Rick Ace]

Hey guys. It's me. I don't know if anyone remembers me. I certainly don't see a lot of my friends here lol.

What are the best laptops to handle FG? I checked on the wiki, but those laptops are rather old. Any known to work in the current market?

[Omega]

Hey rick, (yes I know you lol)

I will take this thread as "I'm willing too buy a laptop, please tell me which one you recommend" .

I have recently bought a HP pavilion dv7-6163cl for $830 (including tax) - with the following specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7-2670QM
RAM: 8GB
Screen: 17.3 inches (widescreen)
HDD: 450 GB
Weight: 7.4 lb (3.3 kg)

It also has 2 graphics cards so you can switch between them either manually (needs edit in BIOS settings) or automatically:

AMD Radeon HD 6770M

& Intel HD Graphics 3000


I'm not using FG anymore so I haven't tested it there yet, but it runs at 60-100 fps in X-plane (which also uses OpenGL) at medium settings. So it should work with FG as well.
Keep in mind that whatever laptop you buy, make sure you have a cooling pad if you are planning to use FG on it many times/week. Make sure to also monitor the temperature of the CPU and GPU using apps like speedfan because laptops can get 'burned' easily .

Lastly, do not let the price trick you, if you bought a desktop with more or less the same specs, you'd have to pay about the same price but that won't include a monitor+webcam&mic+portability+speakers+keyboard .

[Rick Ace]

Hey rick, (yes I know you lol)

I will take this thread as "I'm willing too buy a laptop, please tell me which one you recommend".

Omega, how have you been? I missed you lol!

And lol, I'm willing because my school is forcing me to buy a laptop. So I thought I might as well, put in some extra, and get the maxed out ability with this laptop. But you got the idea with the "I'm willing too buy a laptop, please tell me which one you recommend" thread.

Thank you for your input. I'm definitely considering an HP Pavilion. It may be a month or two until I choose, I love all the input that I can get.

And you've included great tips too. lol Thanks again!

[stuart]

Hi Rick,

Welcome back!

The general advice remains to get one with a discrete graphics card rather than an Intel accelerator chip, which doesnt tend to support OpenGL properly. The old advice to just get Nvidia no-longer applies - ATI cards seem to have good OpenGL support these days.

A lot of the advanced graphics features use shaders these days, so you may want to check that, of you are digging into graphics card specs.

I run an Alienware M17X with an Nvidia gt240M card. It's now more than two years old but fine for FG. However I haven't been impressed with some of the build quality (especially the keyboard) and don't think it is worth the extra. Also, the GT240M card isn't running at full power on Linux due to some NVidia Power saver options, which is a bit dull.

-Stuart

[Omega]

If you are actually going to use it at school then I guess you will have to carry it around a lot, so I won't suggest the M17x because of the weight which is 18 lb!
I also suggest to not buy anything from Best Buy, I bought mine at Micro Center , they have very good deals there, especially the open box ones .
Or you can buy one from an internet store like Amazon, ebay etc. they have very good deals there as well .

[Rick Ace]

@stuart

Thank you! Well, I'm not sure about the quality of alienware. And I'd prefer to get a newer version of a laptop. (It's actually required.) But thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind when picking graphics cards.

@Omega

Unfortunately, there's no Micro Center near me. I'm not too concerned about weight, as I'm used to carrying 200 tones of books. It'll just be a big book, at worse.

[Omega]

Alienware laptops are not bad, they are actually tougher and more customizable than HP since you can change the color of the backlit keyboard etc. - it looks cooler .
Although, Alienware laptops are expensive, so buy one if you do not care much about the price .

[Rick Ace]

It's a bit pricey. And price does matter to me lol.

Although I plan on spending a decent amount to get a great laptop, alienware seems to be very expensive. At least $1000 O.o

[Sweetgrapes]

I aint no IT expert, but I can tell what laptop is good for what. I recon that in order to run FG at high graphics with decent fps, you´ll need:
Core i3 atleast,(some might argue that core i5 or core i7 is better, but core i3 has hyperthreading, and the i5 doesn`t. Hyperthreading allows for better multitasking, so in certain situations the processor acts as a quad core. But with an i5 you lose hyperthreading but you gain Turbo Boost. It speeds the processor up in certain situations. But if you don´t have a real budget then an i7 your way to go). And AMD`s mobile cpu`s just don´t deliver the raw power.
4 GB RAM atleast(DDR3 of course)
A sort of "will do the job" graphics card would be either an AMD Radeon HD6650M or an Nvidia GeForce GT520M. But a Radeon HD6770M or a GT540M or GT555M would be great. The stuff above those is found pretty much only in gaming laptops like the Alienware.
The rest is pretty much down to your own preferences. If you wan´t a certain manufacturer, then my reccomends are Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, HP and Samsung. Don´t get a Dell(crappy build quality), Apple(well if u like macs then so be it, I just don´t like them) and for safeguard: Sony. Sony isn´t crap but they had some heat problems.

[Omega]

FlightGear needs a good GPU and a lot of RAM. However, I'd suggest getting an i7 which is hyperthreading also, with 4 cores and 8 threads (2 threads for each core). Because, you might need it in the future for handling different applications or your favorite video game .

Here are some of my recommendations: Lenovo, HP, Toshiba.
Asus, Acer and MSI are not my favorites but they are still good.
Dell laptops are good but only a few of them like the Alienware.
Sony and Apple are the most expensive ones .

You should also have a look at Google shopping which shows the prices for a product at each store, so you can find the cheapest.

[Rick Ace]

Well this isn't an i7, nor is it one of your favorite brands, Omega. But what do you think about this? xD http://www.compusa.com/applications/Sea ... 180-173122

And another possible candidate... http://www.compusa.com/applications/Sea ... A50-156115





Comments?

[islandmonkey]

FlightGear needs a good GPU and a lot of RAM. However, I'd suggest getting an i7 which is hyperthreading also, with 4 cores and 8 threads (2 threads for each core).

Slightly unrelated, but is that why Ubuntu says I have 8 cores when I only have a quad i7?

[Sweetgrapes]

Because some applications think that processors with hyperthreading have more cores than they actually do.
EDIT: Rick Ace, I can´t access the links you posted. Firefox just says you´re not getting in.

[Rick Ace]

The links load for me.

[Sweetgrapes]

Ok they work now. It was some sort of server problem.
My comments: The first one is the best. Mainly because it has the best graphics card of the three(btw the Dell has integraded graphics, witch are by far the worst). But I noticed that the Acer is larger(17.3 inches) than the other ones(15.6 inches). So I´d suggest choosing your prefered size too.