Thread on basic laptop myths with answers along with a Plethora of other information.

OK.

I've only been looking around this section of the forum for about a week and after just a short time I'm rather disappointed with how little information there seems to be available to people on both specific laptops and the two most talked about components, the CPU and GPU. Others have linked to it in specific responses expecting that to help someone who likely will not read it. That said I think it deserves to be give as a general source of background that people should read from and then ask questions. So without further ado the source of good information on the world of laptops,

http://www.notebookcheck.net/

I really hope that more people read the information off of that website because in the notebook venue it seems like the industry knows just how uniformed the customer is and therefore refuses to give use viable price/performance buying choices. I hope this will answer more general questions without repetitive "which is the better CPU for performance" and "a GTX460m is like the desktop GTX460 right?" or similar questions.

Further I'd like to offer this thread as a base to tell people that YES you can game on a laptop given you are willing to ask questions, have the right hardware, and are willing to compromise the graphics settings if needed.

Also, links to good gaming laptop sellers such as xoticpc or recommendations of good gaming laptop models are also welcome here.

EDIT/DISCLAIMER!!!!! (12/04/2010):
For the sake of trying to tie everything together I'm going to throw this in: in the most simple of terms it should be known that for "mobility" and the reduction in power requirements/need to provide battery life the parts in laptop are not going to compete with the parts of a desktop at the same price in terms of performance.

GPUs:
In the world of mobile computers laptops/notebooks/netbooks it should be made very clear that the naming system for mobile parts is to create a false sense of getting equal performance to desktop parts. A perfect example is the GPU world in which AMD/ATI and Nvidia both engage in calling their mobile parts by desktop parts names. So the uniformed would see a laptop with a HD5870m and think that they're getting a HD5870. WRONG! What you're really getting is the best they could fit in a laptop sized card which sadly is at best close to a desktop HD5770 in performance. So if you're looking at a laptop with a GTX460m thinking that you're going to get GTX460 performance you are sadly mistaken. What you're really getting is something similar to the GTS450 but likely with still worse performance. Also, just because a card has a larger framebuffer/VRAM amount does not mean that it is a great card! The bus-width must also be taken into account since that is what will bottle neck performance. You may have a 4GB GPU but if the bus-width is 128bits or less then you're not going to have great performance.
ALSO: While this is mostly an Nvidia tactic, ATI/AMD is not immune to doing the re-branding and renaming game. What this means is they will do nothing more that change the name on a part and claim it's new tech that you now have to pay extra for. I witnessed someone being convienced that the 9800mGTX was much worse than a GTX260m. The truth is that outside of a die shrink and a slightly higher clock speed the two were identical. They ended up buying the extra $200 for essentially the same performance since that was the only difference between the to laptops they looked at. As strange as it sounds look at the Nvidia or ATI website and read up on your parts.

CPUs:
For CPUs Intel and AMD have the decency not to use the same names so that fortunately prevents the great scam of making people thinking they're getting something they're not. That said, even if you read up on the basic specs given to you by retailers for things like clock speed, cache sizes, FSB, and core count what they don't tell you is that they assume you're either smart enough to know that performance will suffer by default when you use the laptop on battery power or dumb enough to assume that's truly what you're getting all the time. WHY? Because they don't want you complaining about how terrible the battery life of your machine is or that it is overheating...ext. Why do these parts not perform as well for similar specs? It has to do with architecture design which is more than I can cover and power/heat limitations. Essentially, unless you are using tools like SetFSB, ThrottleStop, and at the very least setting power profiles through the OS then you are letting the CPU/mobo decide and most of the time it makes poor choices.

Throttling and other things:
To prevent overheating, low battery life, these CPUs/GPUs are designed to run as much as they can at a much lower speed then what they advertise. This is known as throttling and it also affects performance badly because the CPU will spend time switching between clock speeds giving inconsistent performance because the CPU will try to stay at the lowest clocks possible and this also happens with GPUs when they too fail to recognize a GPU load increase because the program/game you're using isn't part of the default recognize list. This isn't as great of a problem as it used to be but it is still there and can still cause problems.

Further, the CPU will often be given far more voltage than needed to run at it's stated clock speed. The irony of this is that it defeats any powersaving designs made by the manufacturer and increases the heat problem. HOW TO COMBAT THESE THINGS? Throttlestop has been rather good for me as it can allow you to lock the processor at its highest clock speed while giving you voltage control, essentially allowing you to run at full power without so much heat. It can also allow you to go the other direction in going down to SLF(Super Low Frequencies) with very low voltages when you need less power and less heat.

LINK FOR THROTTLESTOP: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownloa...ad-163602.html

LINK TO THE GUIDE ON HOW TO USE IT: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hard...top-guide.html

Another big thing for gaming is the HDD. Most laptops are usually 5400RPM or they don't list speed. Now it's not a absolute rule; but if you want to game a 7200RPM speed is recommended.

Also just some further info from Unacceptable to remind you to READ WHAT THE SETTINGS ARE USED WHEN SOMEONE POST FPS RESULTS; EVEN FROM notebookcheck: Oh and give the guy some REP if you agree.
I hope this helps out people and I will be more than willing to add in more information as requested on other topics here and if I can't come up with the answer myself I will insert the information/guide in quotes from the person who can. Again the goal is to get the most basic and most important aspects of laptop parts, gaming help, and some guides on general tricks in one area.

EDIT/UPDATE (12/30/2010):
More detailed information on GPUs and things to consider when looking at them.

EDIT/UPDATE (3/26/2011): At the suggestion of a new member (mutantmagnet) I'm including this website
http://www.laptopmag.com/
as a secondary source to gather more information from. They're a bit more general and "mainstream" so I don't like viewing them as a primary but using them as secondary perspective is just another way to be more informed.

EDIT/UPDATE (3/30/2011): IMPORTANT BATTERY INFORMATION
Source
REP and thanks go to LOL_Wut_Axel on this one. IF YOU THINK IT'S USEFULL REP OR THANK THE GUY.

EDIT/UPDATE (5/25/2011): An explanation on ODM and OEM along with some "true" pros for Macs provided by reflex99.

If anyone has more to add to those topics of; the "true" pros for macs; explanation on the difference between ODM and OEM; feel free to share.


Sections to come; the difference between a "pad" and a tablet.
Edited by Rookie1337 - 5/25/11 at 3:02pm

That's what I think and I'm hoping to spread it because it truly covers everything in a pretty straightforward and in depth approach.

LOL, with your laptop I would certainly hope so.

May I bump this just to keep it within view? Thanks.

Um...look at my sig and then look at your post. Not to be mean but seriously you can't make a blanket statement like that. For the office machines that most people end up with that statement fits but for truly gaming based machine it should not. For the CPU I see mostly minimum gains from the OCing I've done with it but the GPU has turned out better.