chestermike Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 Hi guys, wanna pick the brains of the techies out there. I am only semi-literate with this technical PC stuff. I have the money to buy a new laptop, I'm currently using a Toshiba Tempro which has 8GB of RAM and an AMD A6-5200 APU with Radeon HD Graphics processor. The processor is quad core with each core having a clock speed of 2Gig, and the graphics part has a Radeon HD 8400 GPU and a single channel DDR3(L)-1600 memory controller. Does anyone know if this can be overclocked at all, and if it can, does the stability fall off a cliff or is it ok? I am aware that the Intel i7 processor is good, but which model would run FM the best? My research suggests maybe the 6500 model, can someone confirm or deny please? If its not the best for FM, what should I look for? I'm also aware RAM plays a part, is more than 8GB overkill, or would 16GB be handy? Think I read somewhere FM uses less than 8GB so I suspect it might be overkill. Anything else I should be aware of or think about? Thanks, Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 The best mainstream non desktop processor for fm currently would probably be the I7 6700hq... Your current apu is at the low low end of the scale when it comes to performance.. and overclocking, even if it was possible, would be almost pointless. Anything over 8gb would be useful for multitasking but not purely for the game iteself. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 7, 2016 Author Share Posted December 7, 2016 Great thanks for the advice. Does anyone know of any good deals? I am looking around myself.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 7, 2016 Author Share Posted December 7, 2016 Hi Welshace, I read that the i7 6700hq is 2.7Gig Quad core. Is that the best? I'm sure I've read of higher clock speeds? Would getting an octocore processor help fm or would it be useless? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomit Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 The Intel Core i7 6700HQ or the Intel Core i7 6820HK are the two "best" mainstream processors for laptops at the moment. Not much between these two, you wouldn't notice a difference - but the 6820HK is overclockable, and the 6700HQ isn't. You can get processors with higher clocks, but then we're into desktop territory. Also, clocks aren't everything. Modern processors will beat the **** out of older processors from a few years back with nearly double the clocks. Now, you can get laptops that has one of these processors meant for desktop use in it - but at a considerable cost. These would be laptops at the very high end, with price tags to match - along with much heat, much noise, and very poor battery life. You have 8 cores in the i7's. Four of them are physical cores, four of them are logical cores. 2 cores pr. physical core, in a way, but all 8 cores perform equally. In FM, you will sometimes have all 8 cores used to 100%. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gawwwdzllla Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Get an Alienware laptop, lol. Best for gaming. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 6 hours ago, gawwwdzllla said: Get an Alienware laptop, lol. Best for gaming. I almost feel inclined to delete this for blatant false advertisement... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
santy001 Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 6 hours ago, gawwwdzllla said: Get an Alienware laptop, lol. Best for gaming. That is some terrible advice... There is no way a little alien head on the top of your laptop is worth the extra several hundred pounds. I can only imagine that is what the extra cost is for, since the parts aren't any different to significantly cheaper laptops. As Thomit has mentioned though, clockspeeds aren't just the important things anymore. Clockspeeds were generally higher like 7-8 years ago, processors have become much more efficient as getting clockspeeds going ever higher just wasn't the best way forward. The general guideline is give or take 10% per generation from the beginning if the i3/i5/i7 releases. FM isn't that demanding a game though, even with a large database my i7 920 D0 (overclocked at 3.8ghz mind) still smashes through and that's almost 7 years old. Finding a good processor & good hardware in general can be the best thing, I budgeted for 3-4 years from mine, but its kept powering on. I actually bought a new PC case, PSU and other peripherals about 18 months ago in the anticipation that my PC had to die soon but its still just carried on. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 thanks very much thomit, great advice. Can I ask why you put "best" in speech marks? so it looks like I'm after an i7-6700 processor or similar, with 8GB of ram??? Santy, thanks for the advice again. So how do modern processors get to be faster than older ones with higher clock speeds? Is it the amount of memory channels? It is the cashe size? Thanks, Mike. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 2 minutes ago, chestermike said: thanks very much thomit, great advice. Can I ask why you put "best" in speech marks? so it looks like I'm after an i7-6500 processor or similar, with 8GB of ram??? Santy, thanks for the advice again. So how do modern processors get to be faster than older ones with higher clock speeds? Is it the amount of memory channels? It is the cashe size? Thanks, Mike. 6700hq is probably the best considering cost also... your question to santy is fairly obvious... newer technology means better and more efficient architecture. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 it maybe fairly obvious for people educated in this stuff pal, but for us that only look into this when buying a new laptop (so I haven't looked at this stuff for over 3 years), we know nothing so it's not obvious. Thanks for all the advice again. From my research it looks like im looking at £600-£800 ish. Anyone know any different? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 It wasn't a slight on you my friend.. just stating it is the same as it is with everything you can buy... generally speaking newer tech means more efficient, and not necessarily more powerful... think car engines... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
santy001 Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 38 minutes ago, chestermike said: thanks very much thomit, great advice. Can I ask why you put "best" in speech marks? so it looks like I'm after an i7-6500 processor or similar, with 8GB of ram??? Santy, thanks for the advice again. So how do modern processors get to be faster than older ones with higher clock speeds? Is it the amount of memory channels? It is the cashe size? Thanks, Mike. It'd take someone far more intelligent than myself to explain fully, but its mostly down to transistors. There's far more transistors, taking up less space, there's a limit to how much current can be put through them without their integrity becoming compromised and without too much heat, which again would affect their integrity. Intel/AMD were able to get like 800 million transistors running at 3.5Ghz, but overall that's a lot less effective than 2 billion running at like 2.7Ghz. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Or put more simply, speed or clock speed is only one part of the story.. consider how many instructions per cycle the processor allows.. what good is a 1000mph delivery van that can only deliver 1 pizza a time? much better to have a 200mph van that can deliver a 1000 pizza's.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 Thanks guys you have really helped me get my head around this. so to summarise.....i want an intel i7 6700 processor with 8 gig of ram? And that will be considerably faster than what I am using now.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 You would be going from very low end to top end so I would expect you to see a quite considerable difference!. Don't forget about the other components though.... storage space (hdd or ssd), graphics card etc. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 great thanks welshace. What's the difference between hard disk and solid state? I've read on the guides I've read that solid state is much better but I don't know why, would it be better to save fm to a ssd? what should I consider with graphics cards? I know very little about these, the only thing I think i know is that the higher the ram on the graphics cars the better. god I sound so thick!!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomit Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 SSD is better because it's faster, it's as simple as that. Quite considerably faster. And with zero moving parts - as opposed to a regular spin disk - quieter too. It will make every operation that requires reading or writing to/from disk faster. And the processor will hardly ever have to wait for data to arrive from the "disk", so it will make the processor operate faster and more efficient too. In fact, the regular hard disk is the choking point in modern computers. It should only be used as storage space for large files that you don't use very often. A SSD won't however make a huge difference in FM, but rather a small one. It will make saving and loading faster, but not as fast as it could have been because FM forces compression of the saves, and there's nothing you can do about that, sadly. In my experience, a SSD will also to a large extent negate the slowdown that sets in with time, when you have played a save for a long time. This is a common issue with regular disks; hardly noticable at all with a SSD. Graphics cards: If you want to view matches in 3D with all bells and whistles, you'll need a capable graphics card. You don't need a high end one - if you're not gaming much except for FM, you'll need something like a Nvidia GTX 950M or 960M to play with FM's graphics settings in the high end. So... Core i7 6700HQ 8 GB RAM Nvidia GTX 950M SSD ... near optimal laptop machine for FM. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 That's brilliant thomit absolutely fantastic. Very much appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomit Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 You're welcome. For any future questions; please use the thread that's already here for stuff like this. Welshace hangs out there all the time Oh, and btw; "the higher the RAM on the graphics cards the better" - not true. A GTX 1060 would be many times faster (better) than a GTX 960M, even if the latter had a zillion GB RAM on it. The architecture and capabilities of the graphics processor (GPU) itself is what makes a card better (or worse), not the amount of RAM - as long as there's enough of it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boydy9 Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 After 9 years of playing FM on the same laptop I've just built a new pc and the game is flying. I had a Dell studio 1735 which could play FM17 fine but I wanted to upgrade just to see the difference. I now have an i5 6400 processor, 8GB RAM and most importantly a SSD and the game is flying. 55 playable leagues running and its almost instant between continues. Also I don't have a graphics card and I get medium quality graphics running nice and smoothly. All of this was just over 400 quid. I'd say if FM is your chief concern look at saving money on the graphics card and put the savings to the best processor and SSD you can buy, you can always add one later. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomit Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 The OP is after a laptop, so that advice wouldn't work. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chestermike Posted December 8, 2016 Author Share Posted December 8, 2016 Thanks for the input Boydy, sadly I lack the skills to build my own PC or laptop, still appreciate the advice. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richieo1979 Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 I get 4 stars on the graphics with an AMD A10 8700p with 4 CPU cores and 6 Graphics cores built in and also a discrete card thrown in.. Dell Inspiron 15 5555 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Welshace Posted December 8, 2016 Share Posted December 8, 2016 Just a correction there from birdy's post.. an SSD won't help anything other than loading the game and in theory saving your game.. won't do anything for actual processing while playing. Edit.. just seen thomit's excellent post above... great advice and sums it up perfectly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
phd_angel Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 On 12/8/2016 at 08:54, thomit said: Core i7 6700HQ 8 GB RAM Nvidia GTX 950M I have a three-year-old laptop ASUS RoG G750JW: i7-4700 @ 2.4GHz; 16GB RAM; GeForce GTX 765M It runs FM17 beautifully on medium graphics. I must note that, unlike the official release, the beta version of FM17 was a graphic disaster. It is important to plan for the future. Your next laptop has to have additional capacity for the next 5 years. So, don't buy a machine just to run FM17 but one that will be able to comfortably run FM 2020 too! When you think long-term, you realize that that it's better to invest in a machine that will be current for years to come... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Preveza Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Should this not be in the laptop thread? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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