New Dell Inspiron 17R 7720 Laptop

CyrixInsteadCyrixInstead Stoke-on-Trent, England Icrontian
edited February 2013 in Hardware
Hi guys, long time no speak. I have been a loosely connected Icrontian in recent years, only viewing the stories on the main page and not dipping into the forum. Work, family, child, play, you know how it is :mullet: .

Anyway, life has been good this Christmas and I am now the proud owner of a Dell Inspiron 17R 7720 laptop :rockon: . I got it for £550 off the UK Dell Outlet, it's the same model as the £749 one on their main page. I'm going to get an SSD for it, the HDD is only 5400rpm so that's the only thing letting it down.

I have been waiting for Black Mesa for a few years now so the time was right to get myself a new computer as I've been using my company laptop for the last few years and didn't do a lot of private stuff on it.

I want to get into folding for T93 again, I have an i7-3630QM processor (up to 3.40 GHz,, 6M cache) so that's 4 cores, of which 3 are sat there idle at any one time. I was wondering whether it would be worth also folding with my GPU? It's a 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 650M (130W), what is folding performance like with that and can I do it whilst playing Minecraft on the Icrontic server? :cheers: I finally have some hardware capable of playing Minecraft at an acceptable level. The company firewall blocked the port and they wouldn't open it for me to play Minecraft on my work PC lol.

I did the old 3DMark installs, for old times sake :) It got a crap result for 2001 SE but I think it used the onboard Intel HD 4000. 3DMark 03 fared much better, low 30,000's I think.

I have also downloaded DayZ :viking: which I've been anticipating the most. Cost me £16.99 off Steam and I know I've missed it for cheaper, but what the hey. I will look in the games section, but is there a DayZ community about on Icrontic? I am a billy no mates when it comes to online friends :-/image

Well, I see no reason not to make my presence felt a bit more around here nowadays. Oh, and the site has changed so much that you guys who experienced the evolution probably never gave it a second thought. But I have really struggled getting around the new forum system, progress eh? I will have to learn how it is better than it used to be :werr:.

~Cyrix
primesuspect

Comments

  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    I don't know how the performance of folding while playing MC would be, but you might try limiting the folding usage and playing with the percentage. Make sure you are using the newest folding client from F@H. I'm not sure if the client will be able to force discrete GPU usage (and be aware that this will generate a lot of heat) or not, but you'll have to find out.

    You can get the latest 3DMark for free from their website or steam (steam download the demo, but it didn't work for me). Just have to have basic version and let it run all the tests.

    There are some DayZ players here and I've been waiting for the "real" client to beta before trying it, but the forum posts regarding it seem to have been quite silent since July 2012.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    @CyrixInstead welcome back!
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    Try this: I fold on my laptop at 90% of CPU, no GPU. Reasonable folding, about a 2.4 GHz CPU, 8 simultaneous threads to folding as it is a i7. Performance, not terribly great, I am Straight_Man and with that laptop and an i7 desktop, again CPU/SMP only, get about 200K a week in points.
  • CyrixInsteadCyrixInstead Stoke-on-Trent, England Icrontian
    Good to be back Brian. I'll try just running CPU, don't want this thing running too hot.
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