Hi everyone, I'm new here and I hope this is the right forum for my question,
since it concerns both desktops and laptops I one way or another.
If it's not, then I'm sorry for the trouble.
I'm here because I need two things: First, I need a stronger machine than my current one, since my old baby here is already well past three years old;
second, being able to work with Photoshop (yes, specifically Photoshop) when I'm not at home will soon be a necessity for me,
so I need a laptop of sorts. The question is, if that stronger machine and the laptop I'm looking for are going to be one and the same device or two separate ones.
I have some criteria:
- I want to be able to play the games that will be coming out in the near future without them looking like some sort of interactive flick book.
I'm not really the kind of guy that gets off at ultra high resolution textures or crazy amounts of antialiasing but I do enjoy some graphical fidelity if it's an option.
However, since I know this is one of the things I would have to pay the most for,
I may happily consider myself satisfied with mediocre graphics settings instead of the very high ones if need be.
(as long as I can just play and enjoy the game).
- I only really need to play games at home,
I don't consider it to be necessary to play games when I'm outside anyway.
- My Laptop will have to be able to run smooth when working on fairly large Photoshop files with many layers
(I don't actually know what kind of hardware Photoshop feeds from, RAM?).
Other than that, I won't be needing it for any computing-intensive tasks
(just browsing the web, office, movies, music etc.)
- The laptop will mostly have to work in an environment where there is a power supply,
so a very long battery life is not really necessary. It wouldn't hurt though, you never know.
- I won't be carrying it around to much I guess, so it doesn't need to be extremely lightweight,
as long as it's not some kind of gaming anvil that I have to carry around; again,
wouldn't hurt if it was lightweight.
- It needs a good display with a nice viewing angle, brilliant colors and good contrast values.
I'll be using it as a canvas
.
- I love my setup at home, my two monitors and my peripherals -- I want to continue using them.
So if I actually just buy the laptop and not a new desktop, it would have to be able to be attached to two additional displays.
I don't know if that's even possible and if it is, I figure I'd probably need an external device.
On top of that, I think the laptop would need to be quite a bit more powerful than it would otherwise.
- I assume that if I would actually buy a new desktop it would be the best thing to build it myself,
even if I have never done that before. My current system is a premade Dell PC,
I don't know if it's actually possible to use some of the parts for the new rig, but just in case it is,
and I wouldn't want to try it without being absolutely sure, here are the system specs (if I remember right):
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4850
RAM: 4GB DDR3
HD: 750GB Sata 2
Would anything of that be worth reusing?
- My friend very generously offered me his "old" GPU, which is a Nvidia GTX 560, if I remember right.
That's one argument for buying a desktop and a laptop
.
- And lastly there is the money. I know giving you an exact budget would make things a lot easier.
However, how much I am willing to pay sort of depends on what I could get with that money.
Suffice it to say that I really don't want to spend money on performance I won't really need.
My question is:
If I just buy a laptop: Which laptop, and how do I hook it up to my two monitors (if possible)?
If I buy a laptop and a desktop: What parts should I buy and which laptop?
I would rather have both a laptop and a desktop, but I'd also rather spend as little money as possible.
I am sorry for the long post (for all the tl;dr guys here) and I know it's not self explainatory that you would take your time and try to explain to me what I should buy and what not. I would really appreciate it a lot and thanks in advance to all of the people who bother even reading this.
PS: If I buy a desktop... I need a new case. This Dell thingy is hideous!
since it concerns both desktops and laptops I one way or another.
If it's not, then I'm sorry for the trouble.
I'm here because I need two things: First, I need a stronger machine than my current one, since my old baby here is already well past three years old;
second, being able to work with Photoshop (yes, specifically Photoshop) when I'm not at home will soon be a necessity for me,
so I need a laptop of sorts. The question is, if that stronger machine and the laptop I'm looking for are going to be one and the same device or two separate ones.
I have some criteria:
- I want to be able to play the games that will be coming out in the near future without them looking like some sort of interactive flick book.
I'm not really the kind of guy that gets off at ultra high resolution textures or crazy amounts of antialiasing but I do enjoy some graphical fidelity if it's an option.
However, since I know this is one of the things I would have to pay the most for,
I may happily consider myself satisfied with mediocre graphics settings instead of the very high ones if need be.
(as long as I can just play and enjoy the game).
- I only really need to play games at home,
I don't consider it to be necessary to play games when I'm outside anyway.
- My Laptop will have to be able to run smooth when working on fairly large Photoshop files with many layers
(I don't actually know what kind of hardware Photoshop feeds from, RAM?).
Other than that, I won't be needing it for any computing-intensive tasks
(just browsing the web, office, movies, music etc.)
- The laptop will mostly have to work in an environment where there is a power supply,
so a very long battery life is not really necessary. It wouldn't hurt though, you never know.
- I won't be carrying it around to much I guess, so it doesn't need to be extremely lightweight,
as long as it's not some kind of gaming anvil that I have to carry around; again,
wouldn't hurt if it was lightweight.
- It needs a good display with a nice viewing angle, brilliant colors and good contrast values.
I'll be using it as a canvas
.- I love my setup at home, my two monitors and my peripherals -- I want to continue using them.
So if I actually just buy the laptop and not a new desktop, it would have to be able to be attached to two additional displays.
I don't know if that's even possible and if it is, I figure I'd probably need an external device.
On top of that, I think the laptop would need to be quite a bit more powerful than it would otherwise.
- I assume that if I would actually buy a new desktop it would be the best thing to build it myself,
even if I have never done that before. My current system is a premade Dell PC,
I don't know if it's actually possible to use some of the parts for the new rig, but just in case it is,
and I wouldn't want to try it without being absolutely sure, here are the system specs (if I remember right):
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs)
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4850
RAM: 4GB DDR3
HD: 750GB Sata 2
Would anything of that be worth reusing?
- My friend very generously offered me his "old" GPU, which is a Nvidia GTX 560, if I remember right.
That's one argument for buying a desktop and a laptop
.- And lastly there is the money. I know giving you an exact budget would make things a lot easier.
However, how much I am willing to pay sort of depends on what I could get with that money.
Suffice it to say that I really don't want to spend money on performance I won't really need.
My question is:
If I just buy a laptop: Which laptop, and how do I hook it up to my two monitors (if possible)?
If I buy a laptop and a desktop: What parts should I buy and which laptop?
I would rather have both a laptop and a desktop, but I'd also rather spend as little money as possible.
I am sorry for the long post (for all the tl;dr guys here) and I know it's not self explainatory that you would take your time and try to explain to me what I should buy and what not. I would really appreciate it a lot and thanks in advance to all of the people who bother even reading this.
PS: If I buy a desktop... I need a new case. This Dell thingy is hideous!
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