Comfy Café #13

Doesn't DLSS help save on VRAM? So 4 GB would still be sort of future-proof if the game in question supported DLSS?

Note: Not sure when the game is coming out. It was planned for a release window of end of 2023 or early of 2024. But the game dev, which is based in Frankfurt and also has a branch in Kyiv which does half the work, has postponed it indefinitely (because of the Russian invasion).

I know for sure it's going to be crazy demanding. I'm talking GTX 1650 Ti or may be even RTX 3050 (without DLSS) for 1080p low settings.

Cost difference with this gaming laptop is a bit more than the business laptops.

This gaming laptop:
Ryzen 5 5600H + RTX 3050 + 16 GB RAM in dual channel + 512 GB NVMe SSD + extended warranty for 1 year + kickass laptop bag
INR 70,000/-

Acer Aspire Vero (is surprisingly bulky for a "thin and light" work/student laptop, but also surprisingly tough in build)
i5-1155G7 + iGPU (comparable to a dedicated MX330) + 16 GB RAM in dual channel + 512 GB NVMe SSD + extended warranty for 2 years + 1st year accidental damage protection
INR 59,000/-

Acer Aspire 3
i5-1235U + iGPU (comparable to a dedicated MX350) + 16 GB RAM in dual channel + 512 GB NVMe SSD + extended warranty for 2 years + 1st year accidental damage protection
INR 63,000/-

Acer Aspire 5
i5-1240P + RTX 2050M (roughly comparable to GTX 1650M, but 65-70% as powerful as RTX 3050M) + 16 GB RAM in dual channel + 512 GB NVMe SSD + extended warranty for 2 years + 1st year accidental damage protection
INR 67,000/-

Asus Vivobook X15 (without touchscreen)
i5-1235U/i5-1240P + iGPU (comparable to a dedicated MX350) + 16 GB RAM in dual channel + 512 GB NVMe SSD + laptop bag + wireless mouse?
INR 68,000/-
INR 78,000/- for touchscreen

Note:
The Iris Xe iGPU on all those i5 CPUs listed above is capable of running Witcher 3 at smooth frame rates. So Age of Empires, which is all the wife plays, should be no ******* problem.

I am not 100% sure? Ryzen 5 5600H is going to help for gaming for long periods, and is certainly a future-proof CPU. My main doubt is about the RTX 3050M.

That . . . is actually solid reasoning. But she will use a good laptop till it literally ******* dies on her. She's that type of person. And I want to give her something brand spanking new instead of a hand-me-down (even though she herself is more than okay with a hand-me-down). The only reason I am considering a hand-me-down of my Aspire 7 is because it is more powerful than all the work/student laptops I listed above.

Am I making sense to you here?

 

I have been going through some benchmarks.

So the 12th gen i5 CPUs I listed (the i5-1235U and i5-1240P) actually stack up rather well against my Ryzen 5 5500U (especially in the Acer and Asus laptops, as they're configured to the higher end of their cTDP spectrums). They both seemingly outdo the 5500U by 20% in single core benchmarks, while the 5500U wins out a little in multi-core benchmarks (by only like 10% though) and in terms of running cooler and consuming less power. So... They're actually in the same ballpark (even better in single core optimized apps). And their iGPUs are roughly comparable to the Vega 7 on my 5500U and can apparently even trade blows with the Vega 8 on the Ryzen 7 5000 series (which is actually quite impressive).

So, in the case of the Aspire 5, we'll be paying reasonably well for comparable specs overall to my Aspire 7. Only downside would be the shitty speakers, which is a huge negative for her (though we do have a good bluetooth speaker which she can connect to the laptop via bluetooth or USB-A to micro-USB cable).

But this Aspire 5 configuration is INR 67k (INR 63K for the 8 GB RAM version). For only INR 3k more, the RTX 3050 model is probably more worth it? I don't know, considering the Aspire 5 gets us a 3 year warranty with 1st year accidental damage cover.

By comparison, the RTX 3050 laptop gets us a kickass laptop bag, as mentioned prior, but it seems only 1 year warranty is there. Extended warranty is extra INR 6.5k, which brings the total cost to INR 76,500/-

My bad.

https://www.croma.com/lenovo-ideapa...MIw62sht6_-QIVlcEWBR0NdQaQEAQYASABEgLVxPD_BwE

^ That is the laptop.

My main issue is the only 1 year warranty and issues with Lenovo laptops' hinge quality. Another issue with that one is seemingly heat generation. Battery life is another complaint but that is no issue for me, as I stated earlier.

Side Note:
Even the i5-1155G7 is seemingly no pushover. It's a "refresh" of the 11th gen CPUs (essentially 11.5 gen). It outdoes the Ryzen 5 5500U by 20% in single core benchmarks, while the 5500U does 30% better in multi-core benchmarks (thanks to two extra physical cores and four extra logical cores) and in terms of - again - running cooler and consuming less power. The i5-1155G7 is apparently sitting half-way in-between the Ryzen 3 5300U/5400U (laptops with which are rare in the west and non-existent in India) and the Ryzen 5 5500U (which isn't rare but also not common). Aspire Vero with this CPU is the cheapest, and we're still getting 3 year warranty with 1st year accidental damage cover with 16 GB dual channel RAM.

Yeah. This is why I have been on the look out for an affordable RTX 3060 option.

 

Right? Now you can see why I'm confused as ****.

Amazon India and a local store here have a Dell G-series gaming laptop for INR 70K with Ryzen 5 4600H (which is only 15% weaker than Ryzen 5 5600H and still manages to match or even slightly outdo i7-10750H in gaming) paired with Radeon RX5600M 6 GB GDDR6 (which is apparently superior to GTX 1660 Ti Mobile and slightly below RTX 2060 Mobile) and 8 GB DDR4 RAM (which I can upgrade to 16 GB for another INR 4K or even just 3K).

My only issues with this model:
1. How good is driver support for the RDNA GPUs?
2. Display is apparently not bad, but has PWM. I am a migraine sufferer, so this is a huge issue.
3. Build quality feels cheap.

I have no issues with the customer care. We have used two Dell systems in our office previously and have had good customer care experiences with Dell.

So... What...? The image/video will display as if 1080p but the performance impact will be as if running at 540p or 720p?

 

Surprisingly: Yes.
Also Surprisingly: They're somehow selling for WAY MORE than RTX 3060 laptops.

Example:
Asus TUF with Ryzen 7 4800H and RTX 2060 = INR 120,000/-
Asus TUF with Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX 3060 = INR 90,000/-
Asus TUF with Ryzen 9 5900HS and RTX 3060 = INR 99,000/-

That's nonsensical. And way out of my budget.

Worst offender is Dell Precision 15 7540 Work-station laptop with i7-9850H and RTX 2060 (also available in Quadro RTX) which is still going for well over INR 200,000/-

Eh... No worries.

Indeed.

So it basically is as if the game is running at 540p or 720p but the image/video is upscaled to 1080p. And this is if we select 1080p DLSS performance mode?

 

Man, I remember when I first got into PC gaming, I was playing games with recommended requirements of Pentium 4 1.2 GHZ, 128 MB RAM, 64 MB GPU VRAM, DX8, 1 GB free HDD space, Windows 98 minimum and XP recommended.

Now we're sitting here with games that won't run on a system literally ten thousand times as powerful.

 

No matter how much one shits on console gamers, but once they get one they're set for 5-7 years at least

 

Yeah. This is why I genuinely considered a brand new Xbox Series X/S at one point.

 

At one point I also considered building a desktop with Ryzen 5 5500 and RTX 3060. Have a spare 1080p monitor, keyboard, mouse lying around anyway.