Spec Suitability / Comparison?

[RobMeade]

Hi all,

I'm considering the following purchase and would like to get a second opinion before clicking the "Buy" button!

The laptop will primarily be used for game development, 3D modelling/rendering, Unreal Engine etc.... plus, if I find some time I might even play the odd game.

My current laptop, now 7 years old has an Intel Core i5 running at 2.3Ghz, and its this I'm specifically uncertain about.

There are laptops on here with a high Ghz, but the prices start going up quite dramatically. Whilst I would like an i9, with 3+Ghz, it isn't going to be affordable. What I'd like to know though is that I'm likely to see a very significant improvement over what I have.

I couldn't find the exact spec of my current laptop online, it looks like Samsung released a few further improved units with the same model number since I bought mine... but here's something fairly comparable..

Product Description	Samsung RF711 - 17.3" - Core i5 2410M - 6 GB RAM - 500 GB HDD + 500 GB HDD
Product Type	Notebook
Operating System	Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Processor	Intel Core i5 (2nd Gen) 2410M / 2.3 GHz (2.9 GHz) / 3 MB Cache
Memory	6 GB DDR3 (1 x 4 GB + 1 x 2 GB)
Storage	500 GB HDD / 5400 rpm + 500 GB HDD / 5400 rpm
Optical Drive	DVD SuperMulti DL / Blu-ray
Display	17.3" LED backlight 1600 x 900 / HD+
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
Video Memory	2 GB DDR3 SDRAM

The main differences between the above and what I actually have, my laptop didn't come with 6Gb of ram, but I since upgraded it to 8Gb. The graphics card is the same, although I'm 100% confident I only have a 1Gb graphics card.

Again, the processor Ghz is the thing I'm focusing on... below is the spec of what I'm considering...

Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 9750H (2.6GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA 2.5" SSD, (upto 560MB/sR | 540MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
Defiance Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (62WH)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 x USB 3.1 PORTS (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS
Keyboard Language
RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Supplied on DVD
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Chassis
Clevo P970RD (6GB RTX-2060, i7-9750H, 144Hz)


Any thoughts/insight would be truly appreciated, thank you for your time

Rob

 

[Oussebon]

The GHz of a CPU means genuinely nothing at all on it's own. Ignore it completely.

Also, the GHz PCS list (not unreasonably) is the base clock of the CPU. But all modern CPUs feature boosting technology that will see them run above their base clocks, at varying frequencies depending on thermal and power constraints.

In reality you've only got 2 choices for the CPU.
1) The i7 9750H which is a 6-core, 12 thread 45W TDP part (an -H series CPU). Pretty much every mid-high end laptop has this, it's kind of the default.
2) an -S series CPU in the Octane such as i7 9700k or i9 9900k, which are

Also TDP numbers are, in reality, pretty meaningless too especially with Intel CPUs.

What's the budget? What does that spec cost? Why the Defiance chassis versus any of the other chassis with the same hardware?

 

[RobMeade]

Hi,

Thanks for the response, appeciated.

"TDP" ?

No specific reason for that chassis, I needed to start somewhere so picked one that was "initially" a reasonable price, knowing that by the time I'd added a few bits it would go up. Whilst not listed on the spec here, I searched for the specific chassis to check things like HDMI output and so on.. from what I can see it will cover my needs.

The above was about £1600.

Budget is set in stone, I'll be using a chunk of my student loan, but don't want to just throw money away. When I first posted in the other forum, I just picked what seemed to be the "best" / "latest" of everything, it got to about £2800 from memory... I don't really want to spend that much, £1600 seemed reasonable.

I read, briefly, an article online which compared the i7 9750 to it's predecessor, begins with an 8... the article suggested there was only a 6% increase in speed, and if you wanted more performance then to go for the i9. "6%" felt a bit arbitrary though, as I can't really compare that to anything. It's not tangible. Not like someone saying, "when you open the lid, your laptop is ready to use in less than 2 seconds" - that would be tangible.

Because I won't be in a position to get another laptop for a number of years, most likely 5 I would suggest, a little bit of future-proofing would nice. Not something I really thought about when I bought the current laptop, but I've been feeling its "age" now for a few years. Less and less things run well on it. Something don't run at all on it. I thought I was going to have to call the emergency services after I installed Photoshop on it... feels like it flatlined!

There was another model on here which seemed quite good spec wise, but the chassis seemed quite chunky, e.g. tall, I wasn't sure how well I'd get on with that when typing, this one seemed considerably lower...

oh, and what was the last bit of number 2 above you were going to write? Looks like it got cut out.. I'm in suspense!

 

[Oussebon]

TDP = thermal design power. Often used to give an indication of power consumption (which is less and less accurate) it means the max amount of heat the thing is meant to put out.. under whatever conditions specified by the manufacturer. But in very general terms, the bigger the TDP, the more power it uses, and - compared to a product of the same architecture - the more powerful it is.

If the budget's £1600 and set in stone, you can't afford the Octane.

Which leaves you with the i7 9750H. The Defiance is one of the most expensive chassis PCS have that offers it. The Recoil and Optimus are both less expensive and generally better value.

I read, briefly, an article online which compared the i7 9750 to it's predecessor, begins with an 8... the article suggested there was only a 6% increase in speed, and if you wanted more performance then to go for the i9.

That's the kind of comment that was probably directed by the author at owners of the 8750H. i.e. "if you do X for a living reliant on CPU horsepower and you own an 8750H, don't get the 9750H as an upgrade, maybe get the i9 9880H"
The kind of purchase where it's okay to upgrade for each new generation of CPU as it's your business and time spent rendering = money lost. i.e. that's not you. The i9 -H series CPU would be an extremely niche purchase anyway.

Re thickness:

Your current laptop is, apparently:
height x width x depth (in mm): 32.25 x 414 x 274 ( = 1.27 x 16.3 x 10.79 in) according to Notebookcheck

Which is thicker than any of the PCS chassis:
Optimus: 395.7mm x 260.8mm x 30.05mm
Recoil: 395.7mm x 260.8mm x 27.45mm
Defiance: 398.6mm x 268mm x 19.9mm

Thinner laptops can struggle to get rid of the heat as effectively, and Intel's current CPUs run pretty hot. Not many people seem to buy the Defiance (and then post about it, anyway) so it's hard to get a sense from the forums of how nice it plays with thermals.

With an RTX 2060 specced, the Recoil is about the same price as the Defiance, and the Optimus is ~£100 cheaper. if the Optimus has what you need, and something a bit smaller than your current laptop is okay, then consider going with that and saving £100.

The spec overall seems fine. And as discussed you can't really get anything more powerful CPU-wise for the money anyway. For the RAM, it is only worth buying 1 x 16gb if you are certain you will need 32gb and are leaving 1 slot free to upgrade. Otherwise RAM should be bought as 2 x 8gb so that it is in dual channel, which will improve performance somewhat due to the increased bandwidth.

 

[RobMeade]

Thanks again for the reply, that should have read "not set in stone" btw... typo on my part!..

I've had a look at the Octane, with the same components, its about £500 more, but that's with the i9... I have also just noticed the differences between USB ports too... the type C are not likely to be of any use to me, however the type A are...

I'm looking at my laptop now and it doesn't seem anywhere near as tall as the Octane looks, its looks huge... are these sizes with the lid open/closed?

Ref the memory, yeah I had assumed the one stick would be better, e.g. can upgrade to more later... I didn't appreciate there was a performance gain by having separate sticks... that's really useful to know... and by the time I would probably want/need to add anymore the prices of ram will have probably dropped a bit again and make swapping it all out not really an issue...

So, here's the comparable spec for the more expensive Octane... would you say the extra £500 is worth while, from both a performance perspective now, but perhaps a longevity perspective also? It's quite a chunk more cash, but I wont be doing this again for a few years!


Chassis & Display
Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 Eight Core Processor i9-9900K (3.6GHz) 16MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA 2.5" SSD, (upto 560MB/sR | 540MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3200MB/W)
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x Slim USB 2.0 External DVD-RW
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 330W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Battery
Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 2 x USB 3.1 Type C Ports
Keyboard Language
OCTANE SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Chassis
Clevo P775TM1-G (6GB RTX-2060, 144Hz, G-Sync)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Price: £2,102.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[Oussebon]

I'm looking at my laptop now and it doesn't seem anywhere near as tall as the Octane looks, its looks huge... are these sizes with the lid open/closed?

Lid closed

The octane is a lot bigger than the others and is closer to being a portable workstation than just a laptop:
Dimensions (w x d x h): 418mm x 295.3mm x 40.9mm
Weight: 3.9Kg

The Octane's i9 is an i9 9900k. This is a way more powerful desktop part. You can see benchmarks of the 9900k vs 9750H vs your old 2410M here:

Mobile Processors - Benchmark List

This is a benchmark list of mobile processors like Turion, Pentium M, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, sorted by performance.

tinyurl.com

The Octane does have other features like gsync (great for gaming) and thunderbolt, but unless the extra performance is essential, it's unlikely to be worth the expense or size/weight.

Ref the memory, yeah I had assumed the one stick would be better, e.g. can upgrade to more later... I didn't appreciate there was a performance gain by having separate sticks... that's really useful to know... and by the time I would probably want/need to add anymore the prices of ram will have probably dropped a bit again and make swapping it all out not really an issue...

I wouldn't necessarily gamble on that, RAM prices are expected to start rising again later this year. As 2 x 16gb 2666MHz is "only" £65 more than 1 x 16gb it could be worth buying now if you are sure you will need it for your work. It will also save potential hassle of extra RAM you buy not playing nice with the existing stick - which can happen even if the RAM appears to be identical.

 

[RobMeade]

Hi,

Thanks again for this.

I'm quite torn now.. lol.. originally I was reasonably happy with the £1600 cost but having then looked at the higher performance model, its hard to not want that... its really hard to know which is the best choice to make as until I experience either of them and compare them to my current laptop its hard to know how much better either of them will be.

Interesting about the ram, too, its too easy to keep adding things to the configurator!!!

Thanks for all of the replies and your time, very much appreciated. I will give it some further thought. Only put off with the more expensive model, other than the extra £500, is the height... but then its only 9mm more than my current model... gaaah!

 

[Oussebon]

Well, one way to look at it is that the 9750H is a huge improvement over your current laptop for processing power. Massive.

3 times as many cores and threads (6/12 vs 2/4 in your old laptop), higher frequencies (more 'Hz'), as well as several generations of IPC improvements (IPC, instructions per cycle/clock, i.e. how much gets done with each 'Hz').

Perhaps therefore a Recoil / Defiance / Optimus with the 9750H and the 32gb RAM is the best hedging of bets? Keeping £500-600 in the kitty for whatever else one spends these kinds of sums on.

I don't think I've seen someone buy a 9750H on these forums and complain the CPU was too slow for them yet.

Plus if you want a laptop, you want it to be relatively portable, right? Maybe the 4 kilo Octane is best skipped! It will also have a bigger/heavier power brick than the others I think

 

[RobMeade]

Ironically, the weight isn't so much of an issue. I would have preferred to have got a desktop PC, but, due to some logistics, this wouldn't really work for me...

My lad spends half of his time with me, half with his mum, when he's with me, he has the bedroom - as such, if I had a desktop PC in there all setup, I'd not be able to use it once he'd gone to bed - so, the laptop works for me as I can use it in that room until he goes to bed and then take it downstairs. It doesn't typically leave the house that much, so the weight isn't too much of a problem for me, not when compared to packing up a desktop pc and monitors and carting them down the stairs

Gah, my procrastination has hugely kicked in now... I'm not sure which way to go and find myself unable to got in any direction, as I don't want to regret my choice... yet I know both will be so much better than what I currently have.

The more expensive one feels like it might be better for "future proofing", e.g. get to that 5 year point and still have a reasonably good spec device, with the potential for a ram upgrade.

 

[Oussebon]

Buying overkill hardware that you don't benefit from now as a measure to try to 'futureproof' later on usually fails because by the time you really get a difference, if you ever do, newer and much faster hardware will be out by then anyway. And £500-600 is a third of a high end laptop.

So, would your current uses benefit from a 9900k over a 9750H?

 

[RobMeade]

I'm not 100% certain how I could tell.

Unreal Engine is probably the most resource hungry development software I'm using on my current laptop where everything starts to grind. Frame rates with a very empty level can be less than 10...

Laptop in general has been even slower since recently installing Adobe Photoshop, I'm guessing many processes running in the background even when its not actually active.

Maya doesn't seem too hungry at the moment, but then I'm only using it for 3D modelling and some animation work, not really rendering from it at the moment.

Invariably the £1600 option would be much better than what I have now, and would "do"... although I do want those type A USBs!!

I'm not really sure how I can measure how much of something I do not yet have does or doesn't get used with my current workflows.

I just want quick, fast, pretty...

 

[Oussebon]

Ordinarily you'd look at your existing hardware to work out where the bottlenecks to performance are, but not being funny your laptop is so old that you wouldn't be able to tell :/

Having a look through the Unreal forums, the additional cores of the 9900k, not to mention sustained frequencies, could be an asset for Unreal.

As apparently could 32gb RAM.

The answer is probably that it depends on your workloads and that nobody can say for sure.

 

[RobMeade]

but not being funny your laptop is so old that you wouldn't be able to tell :/

LOL... that's very true, and also very funny, that gave me a good laugh... I suspect if analysed the bottleneck would be me!

Thanks for the Unreal info... you really have gone above and beyond in these replies, and that's hugely appreciated.

Aside from the £500, I can't think of a good reason to not go for the more expensive of the two. I watched a review of the chassis online last night, it was branded up differently but from what I could tell was the same model (had the RTX2080 inside instead) - there was a mention of the loudness of the fans when it was under load, but I think I'd get that with anything high spec these days...

I think I'm sold on the more expensive one and I'll review the configurator to see about the additional ram, that pushes the price up a little more invariably, but will mull it over.

Thanks again for all of the help, it has been really useful