That processor with only 8g of ram I’m not thinking would game very well.
This is wrong. Read on.
It’s barely any better than my laptop minus the 1050 2g laptop gpu it has.
For 569.00 it’s probubaly a good deal but I’d like to see it have at least 12g ram.
Why? What games use more than 8GB of RAM right now at a 1080p resolution unmodded? What percentage of the Steam library does that represent? Understand what your specifications are doing for your gaming before arbitrarily setting a RAM number.
The reason 16GB is a standard recommendation right now is because RAM demands tend to inflate somewhat rapidly, and finding matching sticks from an older standard several years later can actually prove
more expensive than buying the additional RAM now, so gamers opt for the convenience of buying above their needs in the now. It's one of the few areas where a bit of future proofing usually makes sense, but RAM is at its worst pricing in years, currently, so it's a great strategy to take 8GB now, and wait to upgrade his RAM down the road when pricing will likely be more favorable. If it turns out he
needs it right now, because he does run one of the incredibly rare games that's exceeding 8GB atm, there is nothing preventing him from purchasing another SODIMM stick immediately.
I was concerned because the retailer advertised only a single RAM slot, but that's wrong, because MSI's own manufacturer page (and several others like Hardware Info) report two slots for that precise model. This is common: for retailers to get that stuff wrong. This means the RAM can run in dual channel although it only comes with a single stick right now. With 2 slots, he can cheaply upgrade to 16GB by simply purchasing an identical RAM stick running dual channel should he need it, or even ditch the stick it came with, and upgrade to 2x16GB RAM sticks for 32GB total in dual channel down the road.
My laptop has the i5-8250 in the cpu benchmark compare below and 8g ram.
I had to build a pc because it struggled like fuck to process video rendering pushing to a big monitor.
The physical size of the output monitor has nothing to do with the stress to the GPU and CPU. That is determined solely by the resolution, and then potentially bottlenecked by an insufficient display connection, or software calibration (i.e. if you only turned off your laptop screen, instead of appropriately calibrating to output ONLY to the monitor, then your laptop was running dual displays, even if it was dark, and there was your problem).
I can’t imagine trying to game on it.
But I’ve been looking at a travel laptop myself lately, if they had one in that range with 12 at minimum and prefebly 16 at that price point I’d be on it.
Wife has taken over my “new laptop “ since I built my pc
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8250U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7300HQ/m338266vsm223877
You're still developing your understanding of UserBenchmark. That 8250U is an
i5-class processor from the 8th Gen of Intel processors, and yet it still loses the effective speed race because it's one of the lower power "U" variants. In fact, the i5-7300HQ is only 40% inferior by effective speed to the
most powerful gaming laptop processor that exists (which is rare and you simply won't see in laptops under $2k)
:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-8950HK-vs-Intel-Core-i5-7300HQ/m486215vsm223877
It's one of the Top 10 most powerful mass produced gaming laptop processors ever manufactured. Pay attention to sample sizes on UserBenchmark. That tells you the processors which they actually mass produce and sell. For example, here is Coffee Lake i5/i7 processors. It's 31% inferior to the i7-8750H which is the most powerful laptop processor widely available ever made:
- i9-8950HK = 977 samples
- i7-8850H = 534 samples
- i7-8750H = 24,199 samples
- i7-8559U = 26 samples
- i7-8265U = 0 samples
- i5-8500B = 0 samples
- i5-8400B = 0 samples
- i5-8400H - 26 samples
- i5-8300H = 5,822 samples
- i5-8269U = 0 samples
- i5-8259U = 33 samples
- i5-8265U = 0 samples
- i5-7300HQ = 43,471 samples [Kaby Lake]
--- MAJOR COMPONENTS---
- CPU = Top 10 mass produced gaming laptop processor ever made
- GPU = Current most popular GPU on Steam (developers cater to this standard)
- RAM = 8GB DDR4 (adequate for 99% of games in history)
- Storage = SSD Class
To opine that the above is not a strong gaming class laptop is ignorant. He has found an outstanding price for a Brit, too, when they tend to pay a 15%-30% markup on electronics relative to us (which the tariffs will end soon). No better example than the 2017 version of the Acer Predator Helios with the i7-7700HQ in it:
USA Version = $1049
UK Version = $1445 (£1099, +38%)
This is probably the best deal I'm seeing on the Amazon UK if he wants to step up the overall power, but it adds 37% to his cost, equivalent to +$368 US, and he's in the same situation with the RAM:
ASUS FX504GM-EN150T 15.6 Inch 120 Hz Full HD Wide-View Laptop (Metal) - (Intel Core i7-8750H, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD + 256 GB SSD, Nvidia GTX1060 6 GB Graphics, Windows 10)
- £1039
- 15.6" 1080p 120Hz Display
- i7-8750H
- GTX 1060 6GB
- 8GB DDR4 RAM
- 256GB SSD
- 1TB HDD
- Backlit Keyboard
