PC Sherdog Gaming Laptop & Review Thread (OP Updated Apr-2019)

[sverre054]

People were never really "paying up" for the Intel name, not in the same way gamers continue to pay an "NVIDIA tax" on GPUs according to a subjective perception of their greater value relative to their raw performance because of opinions about driver stability, celerity of patches, and other software features. It was just that Intel dominated AMD for so many years in terms of raw performance.

That flipped when AMD took the gaming crown, and it was funny for me to witness, personally, because it actually took a few years before the world woke up to what had happened, and suddenly you'd see kids who didn't really understand much voicing very strong negative opinions about Intel on forums like Reddit.

Either Intel or AMD make great processors, so it just comes down to what build will get you the most for your money. Tom's Hardware has always maintained a regularly updated section devoted to this.

Tom's Hardware: The Best CPU for Gaming in 2024​

Although I think Techpowerup's latest test roll will always have the most actual game benchmarked, with a focus almost purely on that, so I suggest using it if you are calculating values. It's what I always link. The i5-13400F, i5-14400F, Ryzen 5 7600X, and i5-14500 offer the best value among really strong current offerings.

Intel Core i9-14900KS Review - The Last of its Kind

The Intel Core i9-14900KS reaches impressive clock frequencies up to 6.2 GHz, which yields remarkable performance in applications and gaming. However, this comes at the cost of serious power consumption, especially if you go beyond stock, where we saw over 500 W during testing.

www.techpowerup.com

Lenovo Slim Pro 9 16" Touch Laptop i9-13905H GeForce Rtx 4050 32GB 1TB SSD W11H | eBay

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6. You’ll enjoy seamless creator workflows, multitasking, collaboration, gaming, graphics work, and more. 32GB Soldered LPDDR5x-6400. 16" 3.2K (3200x2000) Mini LED 1200nits Glossy / Anti-fingerprint, 100% DCI-P3, 100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, 165Hz, Eyesafe, Dolby...

www.ebay.com

Any opinions on this? Seems like a pretty good deal. With promo codes it just under 1000

 

[Madmick]

Lenovo Slim Pro 9 16" Touch Laptop i9-13905H GeForce Rtx 4050 32GB 1TB SSD W11H | eBay

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6. You’ll enjoy seamless creator workflows, multitasking, collaboration, gaming, graphics work, and more. 32GB Soldered LPDDR5x-6400. 16" 3.2K (3200x2000) Mini LED 1200nits Glossy / Anti-fingerprint, 100% DCI-P3, 100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, 165Hz, Eyesafe, Dolby...

www.ebay.com

Any opinions on this? Seems like a pretty good deal. With promo codes it just under 1000

Those 13th gen i9's just generate so much heat. That's my main concern. Median 140W pull in the Prime95 test I was talking about in my earlier post:

Intel Core i9-13905H Processor - Benchmarks and Specs

Benchmarks, information, and specifications for the Intel Core i9-13905H

www.notebookcheck.net

I overlooked we're in the laptop thread, here, in my most recent post before this. You're after laptop CPU comparisons. For a master list, here is notebookcheck's:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmark-List.2436.0.html

Unfortunately, Notebookcheck don't supply a single table showing all of their Prime95 power consumption results in one neat roll. But you can search Google "notebookcheck" and any individual processor to find the link like the the first one above, browse to power consumption, and expand the "comparison chart". This is because heat and power consumption are so closely linked. Unfortunately, this link isn't as linear as it once was, because of the how CPUs ramp across cores these days, but it's still useful. The latest Intel CPUs tend to consume much more power, but they're also much better at managing heat with these dynamic overclocking schemes, so it makes up for that a bit. However, the Ryzen 8000 series mobile CPUs are most desirable in this context.

Fortunately, Nanoreview does offer this nice table that attributes an "Energy" score trying to rate this. As you can see, the i9-13905H scores a mediocre 71. The Ryzen 5 8640HS scores the best among Windows x86 CPUs with an 89.

Laptop Processors Ranking List [2024] - NanoReview

Ranking of the best laptop CPUs based on real-world tests, benchmarks, power efficiency, iGPU performance and other factors.

nanoreview.net

 

[avenue94]

Lenovo Slim Pro 9 16" Touch Laptop i9-13905H GeForce Rtx 4050 32GB 1TB SSD W11H | eBay

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 6GB GDDR6. You’ll enjoy seamless creator workflows, multitasking, collaboration, gaming, graphics work, and more. 32GB Soldered LPDDR5x-6400. 16" 3.2K (3200x2000) Mini LED 1200nits Glossy / Anti-fingerprint, 100% DCI-P3, 100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, 165Hz, Eyesafe, Dolby...

www.ebay.com

Any opinions on this? Seems like a pretty good deal. With promo codes it just under 1000

Is it for gaming or what do you want to do with it? Price isn't bad, but i9 paired with an RTX 4050 doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to game. For reference, the lowest price for a new Slim Pro 9 with those specs is $1,499. It's been a while since I've checked tags at Costco so don't remember if it's clearance or not right now.

TLDR: Good price for that model if you trust the buyer, but not a very good price for those specs or most use cases.

 

[sverre054]

Is it for gaming or what do you want to do with it? Price isn't bad, but i9 paired with an RTX 4050 doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to game. For reference, the lowest price for a new Slim Pro 9 with those specs is $1,499. It's been a while since I've checked tags at Costco so don't remember if it's clearance or not right now.

TLDR: Good price for that model if you trust the buyer, but not a very good price for those specs or most use cases.

I decided to pull the trigger on it. It's already shipped. It comes with a new 1-year Warranty from Lenovo, and it comes with an additional 3-year warranty from all state insurance. Its honestly probably way over kill for what I will do with it, but ju

Is it for gaming or what do you want to do with it? Price isn't bad, but i9 paired with an RTX 4050 doesn't make a lot of sense if you're trying to game. For reference, the lowest price for a new Slim Pro 9 with those specs is $1,499. It's been a while since I've checked tags at Costco so don't remember if it's clearance or not right now.

TLDR: Good price for that model if you trust the buyer, but not a very good price for those specs or most use cases.

st seemed like a good deal, and I need a new laptop.

 

[avenue94]

I decided to pull the trigger on it. It's already shipped. It comes with a new 1-year Warranty from Lenovo, and it comes with an additional 3-year warranty from all state insurance. Its honestly probably way over kill for what I will do with it, but ju


st seemed like a good deal, and I need a new laptop.

Hope you enjoy it. I'm of the school of thought that a lot of the time pulling the trigger and not spending hours trying to save a little more is the best bet.

 

[Madmick]

I decided to pull the trigger on it. It's already shipped. It comes with a new 1-year Warranty from Lenovo, and it comes with an additional 3-year warranty from all state insurance. Its honestly probably way over kill for what I will do with it, but ju

st seemed like a good deal, and I need a new laptop.

If it holds up as long as you were expecting it to last it's a pretty freaking phenomenal deal in terms of components for the money, and the all-aluminum build is really nice. Looks like the biggest issue in reviews was battery life.

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i review: A fantastic laptop with one major flaw

Lenovo Slim Pro 9i’s big miss is a huge problem

www.laptopmag.com

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-slim-pro-9i-16-inch

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Slim-Pro-9i-16IRP8-laptop-review-The-Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-alternative.736688.0.html

Hopefully it holds up for more than a few years under the heat stress the CPU generates, and continues to perform as it should right out of the box. Fortunately, there's a really efficient, relatively low-powered GPU paired with that CPU.