What's a decent rig?

[JQuinn1980]

I've heard lots of bad things about Dell here, which is where I went for my last laptop, which I was fairly happy with. My question is: where can I do better? I like gaming, although I'm not hardcore. My other purpose in using a computer (and why I'm still considering a desktop) is number crunching. I've heard here that quad channel RAM isn't that much better than dual channel, though, and mobility is nice.
Any advice given would be appreciated.

 

[ingtar33]

oi.

you're right, quad channel shows no appreciable performance increase over dual channel. There is a structural bottleneck somewhere in Intel's extreme lineup cpus that prevents quad channel from working properly.

Ok... simply put, the most powerful 2000-3000 $laptop isn't in the same ballpark or conversation as the compute and graphic power of a similarly priced home pc.

A $800 laptop would be lucky to match a 5 year old $200 desktop in both graphics and compute power.

A $300 tablet doesn't even have the compute power of a 6 year old dirt cheap Pentium 4 e-machine

mobile systems are so under-powered for the money you spend it's like you're having a different conversation all together.


Making your own system has the advantage of guaranteeing yourself quality and the parts you want. Buying a prebuilt exposes you to all the cost cuting and deceptive marketing of the major computer manufacturers... as well as the insane price gouging they participate in when you start to request quality parts. OEMs like dell tend to skimp on the motherboards, gpus or psus... which in the end only hurts you in the long run.

 

[JQuinn1980]

Thanks, Ingtar. I was aware that there was a differential, but I wasn't aware it was that large. Unfortunately, I am all thumbs when it comes to building complicated things. Fortunately, I have a stepson who's really good with this stuff.

Mobility is nice, but I guess it's not that important.

 

[ingtar33]

the high end laptops can match a low end current day desktop... in graphics they can even come close to a mid level desktop. but where the high end mobile gpus are fairly strong, the mobile cpus are really under-powered (even the high end ones).