new Laptop

[HannibalBarka]

Hi,
I want to buy a new laptop. I usually play Civ 4 mods esprcially Realism Invectus, RofMK, etc.
The one I have now is this one, bought in dec 2010.

http://www.fnac.com/Asus-G73JW-TY103V-17-3-TFT-Sacoche-et-Souris-Gamer/a3095603/w-4#ficheDt

It is too slow on Big and huge maps, especially the world map scenario of Realism Invectus.

I am looking to this one now:

http://www.lesnumeriques.com/ordinateur-portable/asus-g750-p16529/test.html#test-complet

or here

http://www.laptopspirit.fr/136732/a...m-i7-haswell-16-go-1-5-to-7200tr-blu-ray.html


I was wondering if that is a good choice?

Sorry the links are from french sites

 

[tokala]

If it's specifically for Civ4, it's unlikely that you will notice much of an improvement. It can't use more than one core and 2, at most 3 GB of RAM. Video card in you old system is more than good enough.
You will be lucky if turn times get 30% shorter.

If anything, you might want to get a SSD or hybrid disk, it would at least cut down on loading times and game startup.
And you will very much notice it in everyday use of the notebook.

 

[Quintillus]

I agree with tokala - neither one of those is going to be much better, because Civ4 can only use one core, and the other specs on your current laptop are already more than enough. I'd skip the quad-core, and instead look for something with a high-speed dual core, such as the Core i5 4700M (without the Q). Its extra per-core speed means you're more likely to be able to notice a difference than with the 4700MQ.

Really, though, to see a noticeable improvement you'd have to go to a desktop processor. Assuming this is just for Civ4, I don't think it would really be worth the upgrade otherwise. Even with a 4700M, a 30% reduction in turn times is about the best you can hope for - 15% is as good as I'd expect with a 4700MQ.

 

[Zelig]

Agreed that you won't see much of a speed increase.

I'd skip the quad-core, and instead look for something with a high-speed dual core, such as the Core i5 4700M (without the Q). Its extra per-core speed means you're more likely to be able to notice a difference than with the 4700MQ.

Not really the case with turbo on modern processors. (Though I assume you mean the i7-4600M, it's Intel's fastest dual-core mobile processor.)

The 4600M will run a single thread at 3.6 GHz, while the 4800QM will run easily run a single thread at 3.7 GHz.

Here you can see single-threaded behavior on an i7-4930MX, it's pretty much at a constant 4.1 GHz. (The weird bouncing is just the process getting bounced around to different cores automatically.)

Spoiler :

You're probably looking at a 30% speed improvement from IPC increases between Westmere and Haswell, and another 30% from clock speed increase.

 

[HannibalBarka]

I agree with tokala - neither one of those is going to be much better, because Civ4 can only use one core, and the other specs on your current laptop are already more than enough. I'd skip the quad-core, and instead look for something with a high-speed dual core, such as the Core i5 4700M (without the Q). Its extra per-core speed means you're more likely to be able to notice a difference than with the 4700MQ.

Really, though, to see a noticeable improvement you'd have to go to a desktop processor. Assuming this is just for Civ4, I don't think it would really be worth the upgrade otherwise. Even with a 4700M, a 30% reduction in turn times is about the best you can hope for - 15% is as good as I'd expect with a 4700MQ.

Thank you all guys, i really appreciate your help.
OK. So I need a desktop processor, can you give me some tips on what kind of desktop or proessor I'd need to look at?

 

[Zelig]

I don't know that a desktop processor will help much, top single core turbo on a desktop processor is only 3.9 GHz vs 3.8 GHz on a laptop processor.

 

[tokala]

It's a question of how much you value marginally lower turn times.

For one, Civ4 isn't pure numercrunching, where any nominal CPU clockspeed increase proportionally speeds up the application.

And I have doubts that software as old as Civ4 will profit much from the architectural improvements of the latest intel chips, and you might end up with not much more improvement beyond the clockspeed ratio.

The fastest intel chips go just below 4GHz in single-thread mode, your old one to 2.8GHz.

Another potential pitfal is the hyperthreading on the i7s, it certainly won't help and might even hurt.

I would suggest an i5, preferably overclocked, if going desktop.
Another option would be a system with the fastest i3, which will be at worst 10% slower than a non-overlocked high-end chip. You can build a fairly cheap desktop
with it that will still be as good a the fastest halfway affordable laptops.

On a laptop, you can't get a fast CPU without hyperthreading, and fast i5s are rare, so you are probably limited to i7s.

It is correct that there isn't much of a speed difference between the fastest laptop and desktop chips, but for comparable (high-end) performance a laptop will be much more expensive.

 

[Zelig]

Civ4 turn time calculations are pretty pure numbering crunching, I'm pretty sure - it's easy to check, just open up the task manager between turns and see if it's pegging a thread at 100%, if so, you'll see pretty much perfect scaling from clock speed increases. (I'm at work now, otherwise I'd check myself.)

And IPC improvements in newer architectures apply pretty much across the board irrespective of software updates, newer architectures are much faster clock-for-clock than older ones for identical tasks. (Compiling for newer SSE instructions can give you a nice boost depending on calculations, AES-NI will give you orders of magnitude boost)

Hyperthreading can be disabled.

 

[HannibalBarka]

Civ4 turn time calculations are pretty pure numbering crunching, I'm pretty sure - it's easy to check, just open up the task manager between turns and see if it's pegging a thread at 100%, if so, you'll see pretty much perfect scaling from clock speed increases. (I'm at work now, otherwise I'd check myself.)

And IPC improvements in newer architectures apply pretty much across the board irrespective of software updates, newer architectures are much faster clock-for-clock than older ones for identical tasks. (Compiling for newer SSE instructions can give you a nice boost depending on calculations, AES-NI will give you orders of magnitude boost)

Hyperthreading can be disabled.

Ouy ouy, you guys start to talk greek to me
If I understand it correctly, there is few chance i'll improve my turn time by much, well at least not double digit number, so I may just keep my laptop.
thanks for your answers and help, you may haven't save me turn times, but you did save me a lot of $