Ranking laptops based on their GPU

How'dee people! This is my sequel to my last video "How to choose a laptop." I felt the GPU section was a bit vague for newbie buyers. So I went onto NotebookCheck.Net to get my information concerning mobile GPUs and then produced a simple graph to rank 30 laptops which are available for purchase over the web (as at 1st May 2011 or 2001/Q1). It's quite different perspective when you rank laptops based on their GPU. For instance, only then can you see that Sony Vaios sit at the back of the queue.

I think that ranking laptops can take many guises. For instance, whose got the best CPU or screen (contrast ratio + viewing angles), most quiet, etc... Only a good technically assessed laptop will stand the test of time. You might not want to play a 3D game or learn 3D animation right when you first buy it i.e. year-1, but what about year-2 or 3? That's the time when you've settled down with the software & browser you use and now want to add a tiny bit of fun in your life.

If you bought a Class-2 GPU now, then 1 or 2 years from now, you'll have to spend another $1000+ on a new laptop and for what, a cool & trending $50 game? Very disproportionate how a $50 game can control a $1000 expenditure. But it's not just the game that's to blame. Don't forget Windows which will definitely make matters worst i.e. making your current laptop feel like a piece of junk as time passes. Now it'd seem browsers are at it too. The inefficiency in HTML, Java and Flash rendering, means that browsers require a lot of RAM, CPU and GPU resources to display the information you requested on-screen. (The jackass who made the website is mostly to blame though. He/she overloaded it with features without a care as to how this will impact on your laptop or smaller device). This large resource-requirement problem is present in both Firefox and IE means that with time you'll feel that your laptop is no longer top-notch. If you don't believe me, go try right now a webpage overloaded with Flash adverts & video players and whilst all of them are playing simultaneously, check the CPU spikes in Task Manager :: Process-tab.

Here's an experiment I did myself. UK Channel4's News video player. They do such a bad job with the Flash that it sucks 94% of  my 2.13GHz dual core CPU. And obviously, at that level my CPU fan also goes mad and I'm now in a noisy environment. Youtube videos only suck about 52-64% of my CPU which I believe is fine. Playing a video from my hard-drive (i.e. offline video, traditional avi) is much less than that. I'm attaching a picture of that Channel4 experiment, I told them to fix but they did absolutely nothing, so here's it is:

HTML5, new CSS and new crappy Flash are all in the pipeline, expect more abuse by noob 'developers' who shouldn't be using such technologies in the first place!

Anyway, without any more delays, i present you my video: "Ranking Laptops based on their GPU."




If you have any questions, post them below. Thanks for watching.

How to Choose a Laptop?

Big decision right? Lats of maney right? Too many variables and you get lost in the details and go for something that you'll regret? Well fear not, I created this video for fun but mostly to show laptop buyers that:


BUYING A LAPTOP = ELIMINATION PROCESS

It's as easy as that. In my video, the elimination process is only 4 steps long:
1. Graphics Processing unit (GPU)
2. Hard-Drive (HDD)
4. RAM Memory (RAM)
3. Central Processor (CPU)

I did it this way because of the future upgrade options. With hindsight, I'd swap the hard-drive and CPU positions. It's way harder to find a faster & compatible CPU than finding a larger & faster hard-drive. Even if lots of eBay sellers now sell mobile CPU from $50 to $250, it's a real pain to upgrade the CPU -- but not impossible. I know this because this is how my 4-years old laptop has managed to keep up with time. A $120 CPU injection. Unfortunately you can't upgrade the graphics unit (aka GPU) in most laptops. Even if you could, you'd need to fork out $300 to $600 (for new items), do precise soldering work with equipment that you don't have... at this price, it'd be wise to consider a brand new laptop. The GPU scene has changed a bit though, I believe Dell, ASUS, Sager and MSI sell easy to upgrade GPU. They will cost $200-$600 but are PCIe cards that are easy to slot in. Ask customer care before buying and factor that in your budget.

Most times, the laptop will run fine for years. Screen will lose some brightness but which can be repaired using the Gamma settings of your graphics driver. The laptop will definitely feel sluggish though and that's to be expected -- it's Windows fault! If you do online shopping & banking, then security must be important to you and unfortuantely, the updated firewall+antivirus (over time) will also add to the sluggishness. So double or triple layers of burden each time Windows or Antivirus Update runs.

If you ask me, it's a big price. I happened to re-install Windows after a crash. It was 2.5 years after purchase. Without antivirus-firewall and Windows service-packs, that machine booted in 20 seconds and programs launched and ran really fast. What a change! Maybe it should be a rule to re-install that crappy Windows every 2-3 years, that or install PC Tools Registry Mechanic (don't forget to set it to create Restore points before cleaning up the Registry! That's important 'coz I've seen this Registry cleaner make software stop running after cleanup).

If I had to buy a new laptop now. First thing I'd want to check is the screen. I look at that thing 98% of the time, so the screen has to be a solid investment -- both comfortable to the eyes and a rich depth of colors.Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to go in-store and check... maybe buy online at a cheaper competitor. Who makes the best screens? I have no idea, that's a good question. As for the other 4 technical aspects to consider, watch my 3-minute video :

If thanks to this clip, those greedy laptop makers sit on a pile of unsold crap (e.g. 5400 rpm hard-disks,  crappy Intel integrated Graphics, 720p screens), then my work will have been accomplished.

Happy shopping! Post your tips or rant below. :)