PC issues and thoughts on Lenovo

[Agent Gibbs]

So my current laptop was a gaming laptop, now its more of a passable laptop and its going very odd but its 5 years old.

 

Its an Acer Aspire 6930G - 2.0ghz intel core 2 2mb l2 cache, Nvidia 9600m GT card with 1gb dedicate graphics (and can steal 1gb of the ram according to the spec) 250gb hard drive, 4gb DDR2 Ram

 

It used to idle with 2% cpu and 29% Ram, but over the past 3/4 weeks its been idling at 40-50% ram usage (by idling i mean sat at the desktop with nothing open) As i write this its having one of its better days and is at 45% ram usage on the internet with Chrome. Last firday it seemed to have only 8000kb free of the 4gb ram in her and the only thing running was an update from AVG

 

So i think something relating to the Ram or the slots themselves is off

in addition to that the battery is dead and only ever has 5% it needs replacing which will cost about £30 for a knock off or £100 from Acer (assuming they are still available since it was a while since i checked), so its basically a desktop too since it plugged in next to my bed all the time

 

So to repair it i at least would need a new battery and a new Hard drive given i've filled it bar 20gb, and god knows what i can do about the ram, it feels wrong replacing it on such an old laptop and thats assuming its not a motherboard problem....

 

So i've been looking at laptops and THIS one caught my eye, especially the option of adding a second graphics card in SLI which according to many review sites places it up their with the high end graphics cards

It would be nice to PC game again, as i just haven't been able to run anything effectively for some time now on mine, and this should future proof me for quite a while

 

So thoughts on Lenovo? opinions on weather to do anything with my laptop i have?

Edited May 17, 2013 by Agent Gibbs

[Choze]

So my current laptop was a gaming laptop, now its more of a passable laptop and its going very odd but its 5 years old.

 

Its an Acer Aspire 6930G - 2.0ghz intel core 2 2mb l2 cache, Nvidia 9600m GT card with 1gb dedicate graphics (and can steal 1gb of the ram according to the spec) 250gb hard drive, 4gb DDR2 Ram

 

It used to idle with 2% cpu and 29% Ram, but over the past 3/4 weeks its been idling at 40-50% ram usage (by idling i mean sat at the desktop with nothing open) As i write this its having one of its better days and is at 45% ram usage on the internet with Chrome. Last firday it seemed to have only 8000kb free of the 4gb ram in her and the only thing running was an update from AVG

 

So i think something relating to the Ram or the slots themselves is off

in addition to that the battery is dead and only ever has 5% it needs replacing which will cost about £30 for a knock off or £100 from Acer (assuming they are still available since it was a while since i checked), so its basically a desktop too since it plugged in next to my bed all the time

 

So to repair it i at least would need a new battery and a new Hard drive given i've filled it bar 20gb, and god knows what i can do about the ram, it feels wrong replacing it on such an old laptop and thats assuming its not a motherboard problem....

 

So i've been looking at laptops and THIS one caught my eye, especially the option of adding a second graphics card in SLI which according to many review sites places it up their with the high end graphics cards

It would be nice to PC game again, as i just haven't been able to run anything effectively for some time now on mine, and this should future proof me for quite a while

 

So thoughts on Lenovo? opinions on weather to do anything with my laptop i have?

 

Lenovo are great. For your current Laptop I would suggest a clean resinstall of Windows.

 

I would wait for the Haswel Intel Chips for better battery life. They are technically out but expect models to be announced soon regarding laptops with the new chips. Performance wise not much difference though so your choice.

 

Regarding SLI. For a Laptop I would go for a straight up more powerful GPU. GT650 is entry level. You can just get a flat out better card that will trounce the SLI setup being offered here. Asus are also a good brand out of the non typical types.

[flameboy]

Lenovo are really good...never heard anyone say a bad thing about them. I'm actually looking at new laptop to replace current dying samsung nc10!

[bob]

I am also in the market and was considering a Lenovo....or a Samsung.

 

I can't decide if i want something light and sleek or just something that will play games well....

[Agent Gibbs]

Cheers for the advice guys!

 

I might reinstall windows and see if it can survive a bit longer, and i think i might look around more with regards to Laptops, as after checking up on the SLI ultrabay graphics card its a further £200 and for £1200 i could get some better laptops.

 

its just deciding, currently i use my laptop for typing, the internet and managing my phone etc, i rarely game on it.....but thats because of how bad it is to game on it sometimes

 

The ultrabay in general that Lenovo do is an awesome idea, to allow interchangeable laptop parts, if all laptops did that so you could plug and play graphics cards like a desktop then it would be awesome.

[Agent Gibbs]

Does anyone have any recommendations on Gaming rigs, and retailers that sell them?

Its really difficult to find anything decent these days for sale in the UK that isn't a ridiculously over priced ultrabook with a piss poor graphics card

[Shorty]

It has to be a laptop? It's more difficult to get gaming rigs for a good price because they're pretty much all the equivalent of buying a pre-built tower. If I was going to make a great games machine I would buy all the components from case to graphics card to power myself. I would never buy, say, an Alienware system or whatever.

 

With laptops you're almost universally stuck with buying it all as a package.

[Agent Gibbs]

Technically no it doesn't have to be a laptop, but i like the portability a laptop brought.

Before when i bought a high end laptop it was for Uni and Gaming and i got very used to the portability, just taking it everywhere and not being tied down to one room, so even now when i won't have Uni to use it at, i think i'll just go for a laptop again

 

So i've decided pretty much on what Laptop i'd buy - the Lenovo one is too awkward, to use the ultra bay you must remove the disk drive and put the second graphics card in the bay, and if you want a disk in you have to switch, which isn't too complex but requires removing the battery and detaching parts....i can see it becoming annoying, i could combat it with an external drive on USB but that kind of defeats the object of an all in one solution, Plus its £1000 for the laptop and another £200 for the second GT650, and for £1200 i can get better laptops

 

such as

15.6" MSI GT60

or

17.3" MSI GT70

 

i'm leaning towards the 15.6" one, lately i've been fixing my sisters Toshiba laptop and my parents Hp laptop (they both are tool bar installers and i'm fighting a swarm of malware every damn time they break) and the change in size from my current 17.3" laptop is not noticeable, the only noticeable difference i see is they have non number pad keyboards on them,

 

so i think i could live with the 15.6" MSI one and buy an additional lot of 16gb Vengeance ram and have 24gb of RAM in it for less than the 17" one, but its only £49 cheaper to do that than buy the 17" one and have 16gb ram

 

so my further question (given my choices) 15.6" or 17.3" for gaming?

My current laptop has a far lower resolution so either display will be a jump up, and one option will be cheaper with more ram.....

 

 

 

but those graphics cards....mmmmm 4gb DDR5 in a high end graphics card