Buying a new laptop

[Berkut]

Looking at the performance difference between the 960 and the 970, it is pretty huge. Hmmm.....might need to re-evaluate.

Maybe I should not be so dead set against the HP...

[Berkut]

Pulling the trigger on this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8S13MM7865

Eluktronics PRO15RE3 Premium Gaming Laptop PC -
Intel Core i7-6700HQ Quad Core,
Windows 10 Home,
3GB 970M GTX GDDR5
15.6" IPS screen
512 GB SSD
16GB 2133 RAM

$1300 for that seems like a smoking deal, and the company is getting great reviews for customer service and such.

[Barrister]

Eluktronics

But aside from a stupid name, looks like a nice rig.

[DontSayBanana]

Pulling the trigger on this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8S13MM7865

Eluktronics PRO15RE3 Premium Gaming Laptop PC -
Intel Core i7-6700HQ Quad Core,
Windows 10 Home,
3GB 970M GTX GDDR5
15.6" IPS screen
512 GB SSD
16GB 2133 RAM

$1300 for that seems like a smoking deal, and the company is getting great reviews for customer service and such.

It's a good deal, but mostly for the big SSD and huge heap of RAM- it's still a 15.6", not a 17", and that's about what I'd expect to see in terms of price range for an i7/970 rig (lots of people pricing this out as it's the minimum recommended spec for Oculus Rift usage).

[Berkut]

I actually don't want a 17" screen.

[Norgy]

I have a laptop with the 15.6 " screen, and just Intel graphics. It's got an i5 4xxx something processor, and it plays "Banished" and "Cities: Skylines" well enough.

My desktop is so overpowered it's silly even at 4k.

I stayed away from AMD's laptop line-ups of processors, but since I mostly write and play a few games on it, I am sort of wondering if the current range wouldn't have been a better choice.

The computer was cheap, though. $400 or something in that range on sale. After a Win 10 upgrade, it's rather fast but tends not to be great for multitasking.
I like HP.

Lenovo's Gxx series do look much better though. One of my clients in IT showed me his Lenovo, and it had dual graphics from AMD and a top-notch i7 processor. It was a desktop in all but name.

[grumbler]

I like HP.

HP.    The only think shittier than their computers is their customer service.  They were good, once upon a time, but that time can only be measured via carbon-14 dating now.

[Berkut]

Yeah, I've been burned twice now by them.

I bought a very nice 17" laptop from them several years ago. I recently upgraded the OS to Windows 10.

Now I can't get the upgraded video card to work. It has a dedicated GPU, and the shitty onboard graphics as well, and it is supposed to switch from one to the other.

Well, since upgrading, it won't ever switch to the good GPU. Turns out that the switching is done via a AMD northbridge, and the GPU is NVidia, and the mainbaord/CPU is Intel. Which doesn't actually work, except that HP customized the BIOS to make it work.

And now it doesn't work anymore, and HP is like "OH WELL YOUR WARRANTY IS UP SO SOLLY HAVE A NICE DAY!"

Fuck them.

[MadBurgerMaker]

HP.    The only think shittier than their computers is their customer service.  They were good, once upon a time, but that time can only be measured via carbon-14 dating now.

That was back when they made things like those 4200 model printers that are just bulletproof.  I have a bunch of them in my department that were bought when they first came out (wiki says 2002) and the things are still truckin along.  They're that old equipment yellow color now though heh.

[Norgy]

I like HP.

HP.    The only think shittier than their computers is their customer service.  They were good, once upon a time, but that time can only be measured via carbon-14 dating now.

I'll refrain from the obvious joke about when you and Abraham worked at HP customer service. But just this once.

[Norgy]

Yeah, I've been burned twice now by them.

I bought a very nice 17" laptop from them several years ago. I recently upgraded the OS to Windows 10.

Now I can't get the upgraded video card to work. It has a dedicated GPU, and the shitty onboard graphics as well, and it is supposed to switch from one to the other.

Well, since upgrading, it won't ever switch to the good GPU. Turns out that the switching is done via a AMD northbridge, and the GPU is NVidia, and the mainbaord/CPU is Intel. Which doesn't actually work, except that HP customized the BIOS to make it work.

And now it doesn't work anymore, and HP is like "OH WELL YOUR WARRANTY IS UP SO SOLLY HAVE A NICE DAY!"

Fuck them.

That sounds like the weirdest setup of apples and oranges and AMD northbridges ever.
And one of the reasons I want to build my own desktops.
With a laptop you kind of just get what someone found was a good idea at the time.

Unless you've already pulled the trigger, MSi make some killer gaming laptops nowadays.

[viper37]

Yeah, I've been burned twice now by them.

I bought a very nice 17" laptop from them several years ago. I recently upgraded the OS to Windows 10.

Now I can't get the upgraded video card to work. It has a dedicated GPU, and the shitty onboard graphics as well, and it is supposed to switch from one to the other.

Well, since upgrading, it won't ever switch to the good GPU. Turns out that the switching is done via a AMD northbridge, and the GPU is NVidia, and the mainbaord/CPU is Intel. Which doesn't actually work, except that HP customized the BIOS to make it work.

And now it doesn't work anymore, and HP is like "OH WELL YOUR WARRANTY IS UP SO SOLLY HAVE A NICE DAY!"

Fuck them.

is there a BIOS update on HP's site for your model?  Latest AMD drivers?

EDIT:

I found this thread with a very helpful HP representative (that was sarcasm)

[Berkut]

Nope, I did a lot of searching, found lots of examples of my problem, and the response, if there every is one, is basically "HAHA YOUR FUCKED! THAT IS WHAT YOU GET FOR UPGRADING!"

[viper37]

Nope, I did a lot of searching, found lots of examples of my problem, and the response, if there every is one, is basically "HAHA YOUR FUCKED! THAT IS WHAT YOU GET FOR UPGRADING!"

this is what I found for people with your problem, when official drivers won't work:
http://leshcatlabs.net/

The download is here:
http://leshcatlabs.net/downloads_unfil/
these are modified AMD drivers designed to work with your type of chipset, among other things.
More explanation here:
http://leshcatlabs.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=1

And it's supposed to wok on Win10 too:
http://leshcatlabs.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=999

[Berkut]

Hey, thanks viper! I will try that out.