New laptop

Post by **Ishtass** » Tue Jan 02, 2018 12:14 am

Ylyrra wrote:I may increase the budget.. we'll see.

This is why I haven't given any real advice yet... "budgets" and I aren't on speaking terms...

Post by **Faeodorus** » Tue Jan 02, 2018 12:58 am

something like an msi gx63vr is close to your budget and will be able to run 2 extra 1080p monitors in addition to its own. You will need to turn the settings down for gaming on 3 monitors but gaming on 1 1080p monitor should be completely unconstrained. 1070 is still a very powerful gpu.

Post by **Rapitiss** » Tue Jan 02, 2018 2:51 am

The MSI has 1070 vs 1050 which should be a nice boost. Tomorrow at work I'll do some further digging to look at how much GFX difference there is. If we're talking just EQ don't think its too much. Of course the M.2 is over kill as well

Post by **Ylyrra** » Tue Jan 02, 2018 2:18 pm

Ishtass wrote:
Ylyrra wrote:I may increase the budget.. we'll see.
This is why I haven't given any real advice yet... "budgets" and I aren't on speaking terms...

LOL

Ok, let's go at this a different direction then. I'm not in any rush - I still have my 5 year old pc laptop I bought when I went back to school, plus I was able to grab all my files from my desktop in safe mode. The laptop is not really up to snuff for any type of gaming, but is just fine for day to day use even though it only supports the laptop screen + 1 monitor, but that's okay as it's a 17" laptop screen. I also have my 15" macbook pro that I love for surfing and stuff while I'm watching tv because it's so light. It's only 3 years old.

The multiple monitor setup is only important to me for coding / gaming and I'm not going to be doing either for a while. Once I leave this job and recover from burnout, I do want to keep my skills at least somewhat current (just in case), so at some point, I'll still be coding / learning new stuff which is when multiple monitors will be useful.

Since I already have a new job starting immediately after I leave the current one, I don't have to use my severance for the usual needs of paying bills. Therefore, my plans are:
1) Pay off a couple bills
2) Put some in savings
3) If I don't buy something now, also put that in savings and add to it until I'm ready to buy (which will include part of my tax refund once I file my taxes)

That being said, short of a cutting edge "dream machine" (I'm not going to spend $4k -$5k on a computer), is there anything coming out that will cause a price drop in the next couple of months on the higher end (but short of cutting edge) components? What specs would I be looking at for a "great" option? If one of you were looking to buy in a couple months, what are a few options you would go with?

Post by **Rapitiss** » Tue Jan 02, 2018 8:05 pm

Ylyrra wrote: What specs would I be looking at for a "great" option? If one of you were looking to buy in a couple months, what are a few options you would go with?

As far as I know there is nothing major coming from intel, amd, or nvidia that are going to cause a major price drops. AMD released Ryzan but that was several months ago and any prices drops should have already happened. You've missed the black Friday / after Christmas rush.

The biggest thing you are going to notice every day is how fast things load which means moving from hard drive to either SATA SSD or M.2 SSD. If you are interested I can link some articles/benchmarks about it.

The hard part for picking a machine is knowing what YOUR tasks are and what they strain.

EQ is single threaded and consumes about 1GB of ram. If you run with all the GFX candy (so you can see what is going on) then it really doesn't need a cutting edge video card.

If you plan on playing other games that story changes.

The same is true of programming. It depends on what stuff you are doing. Doing some web server stuff? Game programming? Working with virtual machines?

#1 Fast storage for boot drive and applications ( M.2 SSD > SATA SSD > Hard drive )

#2 Good internal GFX card. ( 1080 > 1070 > 1060 > 1050 )

#3 Enough RAM to run your applications with space left over. ( 16 GB > 8 GB )

#4 Enough CPU to handle your tasks. ( i7 > i5 )

Post by **Ylyrra** » Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:03 pm

Games - If I start gaming again EQ would be in the picture, but I would also want to explore others in the fantasy / rpg genre, no shooters, I've always hated them.

Development - no game development - I've never been interested in that, no VMs. I've enjoyed the object oriented languages (C# / Java) the most working with web / desktop apps. I just don't like working with a massive Enterprise sized application like I've been doing the past 2.5 years. So Visual Studio would certainly be in the picture and maybe other IDE's geared toward other languages.

Post by **Ishtass** » Fri Jan 05, 2018 10:07 pm

I don't think I knew you were a dev Yly, cool to find folks on here that do that

I like C# / Java the most too. Luckily my current project is all greenfield so not too massive yet.

If for some reason EQ isn't doing it for you, I'd suggest swtor as a fun mmo that I play sometimes as well. If you decide to try it let me know

Post by **Ylyrra** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:30 am

After the economic meltdown and I lost my job in banking, I went back to college for my BS in Computer Science. I've worked the past 2.5 years on a large application in C# / Asp / Javascript / HTML / etc etc etc. They announced in October that all dev jobs were being relocated to Florida (I live in Georgia). I opted to not relocate, so Friday 1/12 is my last day. My new job is not as a developer and I'm fine with that as I am not a huge fan. I'm okay at it, but I miss the people interaction I had while in banking. Plus, it's the main reason I haven't been playing EQ. After spending all day doing software development, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was more stuff on the computer.

My new job will be at the University of West Georgia working with the eCore department (which is actually under the University System of Georgia as it has students in it from all over the state enrolled in various schools under the USG). We facilitate and coordinate for students and faculty taking or teaching online core classes. I will specifically be working with students, faculty, and vendors associated with the proctored exam system.

This new direction is more in my wheelhouse and I'm really looking forward to it. It has the added perks that my salary is equivalent to what I was making as a dev, after 6 months, I get free tuition to further my education, and the retirement plan is fabulous. All good stuff!