@Braiam years ago. Prolly didn't know how horribad those recovery spammers were back then

Got a Clevo or Alienware laptop with an MXM video card slot(s)? Canadian Clevo system builder Eurocom now sells MXM upgrade kits: eurocom.com/ec/vgas%281%29ec

Note, not affiliated with Eurocom.

@DragonLord Mine is soldered on (860M) :\

Then again, it's not worth upgrading the GPU, IMO

New MXM cards have always been hard to find. There's finally a major Clevo vendor (and I believe Eurocom is Canada's largest Clevo reseller) selling these cards so it's finally possible to upgrade these laptops.

@DragonLord Eh... while not officially listed, I'm pretty sure the local resellers here wouldn't mind selling the card if you asked.

(unfortunately, one of them closed down a couple months back)

It's not cheap. A GTX 980M that will fit my machine costs CA$980 or US$891.

Reasons to prefer gaming on desktops.

^

I don't currently have the resources to build a new desktop.

I don't even have the desk space to set one up.

I built a desktop with money I got for my birthday last year.

@DragonLord If you have the resources to purchase a GPU upgrade, you can probably afford a desktop for around the same price with similar performance.

Better yet, said desktop wouldn't be maxed out and would be further upgradeable for cheaper.

GTX 980M performance is comparable to GTX 960 (~$250)

The only reason to use a laptop for gaming is if you don't have space for a desktop, or you move around a lot.

@Bob It's one unified system for school and play.

@DragonLord I'd say it's suboptimal.

Budgetary limitations means that only one system can be purchased. At least for now...

Jack of all trades, master of none and all that.

The size and cooling requirements of a gaming laptop simply means it's not portable enough to be optimal for school/work.

@DragonLord Thing is, though, if you have the space and don't mind swapping between two machines for different uses, it would actually be cheaper to get two specialised machines.

Yeah.

@Bob It's a 15.6-inch system, with the weight and thickness right at the limits of what I can carry.

Less flexible, sure. But cheaper.

That decision was made 18 months ago.

A 980M by itself costs close to $1k. A 960 is $250. Plus a i7-4970k, and other supporting components, and you end up with a $1k desktop. Better if you don't go for the maxed out CPU.

When Skylake comes out, I'll look into it again.

Be back in a bit.

4790K.

If the funds can be procured, I might be able to select a GTX 980 Ti or R9 Fury X.

... and there you have it. A build that will easily outperform my laptop (by 2x or more under gaming workloads) for less than half the cost of this laptop and aftermarket upgrades.

Then again, this machine is 18 months old.

(Either of the above cards would add about $500 to the build, after accounting for the larger power supply required.)

@DragonLord: do you have an existing desktop?

Yes, but it's very old and would need a lot of work to upgrade

@DragonLord: define very old

2007, Socket AM2.

Ahh

Might still be a decent starting point for incremental upgrades, assuming you can put aside a little money every month

(and my current box started off as a low end c2d about that age, and I upgraded it to a modern box with a nice case and a core i7 over 9 or so months)

I'm actually starting on my next round of updates soon, tho, most of the parts I intend to replace will be moved to other systems or kept.

(and I'm still budgetting about 400 a month total, with only about 100-150 in actual spending. Packing lunch tho, which saves a bit ;p)

Man we are chatty today

My current home server is a C2D.

I'm scrapping the results of pretty much every damn college in my state ^_^

scrapping or scraping? Cause one of those is probably not a good thing...

ugh. Apparently my country is blocked from anonymous uploading to imgur

Also, they think I am in china

Palindromic rep!

@MichaelFrank my secondary/shared system is a c2d. Amusingly I built my current box cause I was fed up with getting kicked off that PC.... And nearly no one uses it now.

@JourneymanGeek nope

thatd be 76167

Also. Dyslexia.

laughed my ass off at that

I very rarely downvote, but this just got one from me.

I hate it when people spread bad practices.

That actually makes my 6th downvote ever... o.o

@DragonLord If you want to outperform a laptop, you don't even need the highest-end desktop GPU, and multi-GPU configs would just be overkill :P

@allquixotic reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3c0kgk/…

In all seriousness - if you only use your computer for basic office tasks (checking emails, stuff with Excel, light web browsing, etc.), a c2d is perfectly fine.

It would be about equivalent to a modern Celeron or Pentium - the modern one would use less power, sure, but that won't necessarily offset the cost of the new machine ($300-$400?)

If they told me they wanted to play games on it, then... yea, I'd say they need to upgrade

but the question was more "hey I just got this video card for free, is it worth swapping in?" and "I just use MS Office"

!!meta

@HackToHell Please don't ask to ask; if you simply ask your actual question, we will help you if we know the answer or can help you find it. This is much faster and simpler than asking if it's OK to ask. As a rule, it is always OK to ask in this channel. Please go ahead.

o.O

Why would you !!meta yourself?!

@Bob: Try asking on meta.

I just imagine a parent finding a pile of LiveCD's like they would a pile of drugs.

Suggestions for that old laptop of mine?

First idea that comes to mind is a storage server.

Wow, FreeNAS needs 8 GB of RAM

That's surprising

Thought it would be okay on 2 or 4 GB memory

I do have the hardware to support it, but this came as a surprise

@allquixotic See... for me I get to week two and go "x is broken? Fuck it, I can live with Windows."