Laptop for Poker...

fatguy

Though does it have a DVi port I can't see it in the spec - that'd be a deal breaker if it didn't I think.

It has HDMI and VGA, not DVI. As do all the other ones, it seems. I think Lenovo do DVI as an option, but at this point you're stretching my knowledge. You'd be better off asking in a proper hardware forum.

Here's a good place to look at it:

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=5&l2=74&l3=763&l4=0&model=2415&modelmenu=1

SuperHans

Will be getting a new laptop myself and may wish to use external monitors with it at some point. Is HDMI not enough for this or is DVI required too? What exactly is DVI and why is it needed on top of HDMI?

ITT-Pat

Can anyone recommend a cheapish laptop with high resolution and a decent amount of RAM?

green123

ITT-Pat wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a cheapish laptop with high resolution and a decent amount of RAM?

the high res are not cheap but

green123 wrote: »

i am half thinking about selling my 1900 x 1200, you interested in buying 2nd hand ?

fatguy wrote: »

Looking around, it seems that 1920x1200 is rare and expensive. Cheapest I could find was £1k+.

luckylucky wrote: »

the whole point of the 1920x1200 is the ability to multi-table more smoothly. Specifically you can 4 table 4 full-sized tables with either little or no obverlap depending on whch site. For me the difference in cost is worth it

jimbling

Hey guys. I'm thinking of buying one of the new Studio XPS 13 machines.
This seems to have a pretty high spec on it. I just want to make sure it will be capable of what I may (in the future) have as a set up.

Initially I will want to hook it up to a 32inch TV/Monitor (1920x1080). I doubt it will have any problem with this, but I may later on wish to hook it up to a further two 20inch monitors...either side.

Even though I work in the computer industry... I don't know that much about computers :rolleyes: and haven't a clue what I need to set that up.
The graphics cards (it has two ) are as follows:
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9400M G
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9500M - 256MB

The fact that it has two graphics cards would lead me to believe that it must be possible, but want to make sure.


Also, if any of ye know anything about the machine, I'd love to hear it. There are very few reviews on it as it's so new.

RedJoker

I ordered a new desktop over the weekend for poker. I'm going the self build route, it took a tonne of research because I'd never bought a computer before, let alone built one. Most of the stuff I'll recommend is going to be expensive since, if you're playing poker at anywhere above small stakes, you'll quickly recover the costs from not being stressed out due to your computer lagging or locking up. I know I get stressed out and tilted whenever it happens and I'm never able to put in long sessions, the improved hourly should easily cover the costs.

So here's some stuff you need to know:

Most computer enthusiasts are gaming enthusiasts, they're building computers to improve gaming performance. So if you ask a computer guy for recommendations they'll frequently recommend parts for an optimal gaming build that are bad for a poker build.

In a gaming pc the hard drive is the least important part of the computer, for poker it's the most important. I got two hard drives, the primary one is an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD, this is pretty new technology. It doesn't have the moving parts that a normal hard drive does so there's less wear and tear. Which means that you can put as many hands into HEM as you like and it should never slow down. HEM is bottlenecked by the CPU but the SSD should still give you twice the speed of a regular hard drive. I'm going to put the O/S and HEM onto this drive and everything else onto my secondary hard drive. There's a 160GB version of the X25-M which has recently been released, if you really feel like splurging.

For the secondary hard drive I'm getting a Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB. If you don't want to shell out on the SSD then you could just get 1 of these or maybe a VelociRaptor or some 1TB hard drive.

For gaming the most you'd ever need would be 4GB of RAM, on a poker pc the more RAM the better. I got 8GB of RAM, two of the G.Skill 4GB DDR2 1000, although any generic RAM will do.

For gaming a dual core processor is better than a quad core, for poker a quad core helps a tonne with lag. I got the Q6600, which will overclock to about 3.6ghz to improve your HEM write speeds. If you really wanted to get it even higher you could get Core2Duo E8500 which will overclock to about 4.5ghz. However, the quad core is better for lag and multitasking. There's also a Q9550 but there's very little performance increase compared to the Q6600 and it doesn't overclock any better so save your money.

The cooler I got was a Noctua NH-U12P which has a really sick heatsink and should be able to handle anything you can throw at it.

For a gaming pc you're going to want the best graphics card you can find, which afaik is the ASUS EAH4870X2 at the moment. For poker all you need is the cheapest card with two Dual-link DVI outputs, supporting 2560 x 1600 resolution. I got the ASUS EAH3650.

The mouse mat I got was the Razor Exactmat/Exactrest. If this let's you play even 10 minutes more a day and you have a decent hourly it'll be worth the cost in no time. If you really wanted to shell out you could get a razor destructor as well and use it with the rest. I got a Logitech Illuminated Keyboard as well.

I got Vista 64bit for system builders. If you're using less than 4GB of RAM then a 32bit will do fine but over that you'll need 64bit.

The rest of the parts aren't a huge deal for a poker pc, you can get more expensive ones but the money is better spent on other stuff like improved hard drive, RAM, monitors, chair, etc. The motherboard I got was the Gigabyte EP43-DS3L, I got an Antec P182 case and a Corsair HX520 poker supply.

It's also worth getting an anti-static wrist band as well. The risk of blowing one of the parts is a bit exaggerated, just grounding yourself every now and then should be enough, but for the sake of a tenner at most you might as well get it.

For those who aren't familiar with buying computer parts, you'll frequently see things like Retail/Boxed vs. OEM/Tray. The OEM/Tray parts are generally cheaper but they have a much shorter warranty and don't come with instructions. The retail will usually be a fiver or so more expensive but have much longer warranties and have instructions. If you're an experienced system builder than you can probably go OEM on everything. If not then you should get retail hardware. For software, like Vista, you can just go OEM though.

As I found out to my frustration newegg don't deliver outside the US. I checked the Building and Upgrading subforum on boards. The main retailers that deliver to Ireland are

http://www3.hardwareversand.de/home.jsp?lid=2

http://www.dabs.ie/

http://www.komplett.ie/k/k.aspx

http://elara.ie/

http://itdirect.com/

http://www2.computeruniverse.net/

There's been a few horror stories about some of them, I suggest reading the stickies in the forum first.

After checking prices I found that hardwareversand.de had the best prices although a lot of the horror stories were about them. They have a flat fee of 30 euro which is pretty nice if you're getting a lot of stuff but you can't use credit cards, bank transfer only. They didn't have everything though, the hard drives and vista I got from computeruniverse.net.

Hopefully, everything will arrive soon enough and I'll let you know how it went. The whole system, including shipping, cost about 1400 euro fwiw.

dangerousdavid

Thats some piece of kit, sir.

Did a bit of messing about building pc's when I was younger, not actually that difficult if you have some clue what your doing and works out alot cheaper.

digiman

@redjoker, how did that PC build of yours go?

My laptop is giving me trouble and I don't think its up to the demands of having HEM, 4 poker clients firefox all running anymore because it's starting to overheat and its out of warranty from Dell so thinking about buying a new one.

Did you find any desktops that would have been suitable on dell for poker?

Actually if you are on MSN will you give me a shout, ty

RedJoker

Hasn't arrived yet. The stuff I got from computer universe arrived but I'm still waiting on hardwareversand.de. The hard drives didn't have any cables with them though :mad:.

I didn't check dell tbh, I was pretty set on going the self build route.

RedJoker

Computer arrived last Wednesday, took a lot of time to build it. So much stuff went wrong, the SSD was too small for the hard drive holders so I ended up having to tape it down.

The heatsink I got had the wrong mounting on it, the version I got was for the new i7 processor from intel. So I had to use the stock heatsink instead, no harm really. I took the fans off the heatsink and screwed them into the case instead so at least I got some use out of it. If I ever upgrade then I could use the heatsink I suppose.

They didn't include any cd drive which I assumed would come with the case or vista or something. Had to go out and buy one.

Wires for the harddrives came with the motherboard so that was fine.

The keyboard has German lettering on it but most of it's fine and easy to use, just takes a little time to get used to.

Overall the system is really good; I had holdem manager importing, 8 or 9 files downloading and I was installing a program at the same time and I didn't notice any lag. Imported just over 3.5 million hands into holdem manager in a few hours, ~5-6 I think.

I was playing a session today and SpadeEye crashed on me a couple times and Party froze as well. I was doing a lot of datamining in the background though.

[nicK]

got the new 17" unibody macbook pro recently myself, the ssd drives are well worth the investment for poker players if you're messing around in you're holdem manager databases much.. shockingly fast..

digiman

Are you having any issues with Windows 64bit? I would like to get 8GB of RAM if I upgrade and I hear you need 64bit to run more than 4GB but I have also heard that there are a lot of compatibility issues with it and software that you run.

RedJoker

digiman wrote: »

Are you having any issues with Windows 64bit? I would like to get 8GB of RAM if I upgrade and I hear you need 64bit to run more than 4GB but I have also heard that there are a lot of compatibility issues with it and software that you run.

Yeah, you need 64bit if you want 8GB of RAM.

I'm having no troubles with it, everything's working perfectly so far.

digiman

RedJoker wrote: »

Yeah, you need 64bit if you want 8GB of RAM.

I'm having no troubles with it, everything's working perfectly so far.

Cheers, I took the plunge and splashed out on this today.

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB cache, 4.8GT/sec) 1
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 64Bit - English 1
Microsoft® Works 9 - English 1
1Yr Premium Warranty Support 1
Display Not Included 1
1.2 TB (2x 640 GB) Serial ATA (7200 Rpm) Dual HDD Config Raid 0 Stripe 1
8192MB (4x1024,2x2048) 1067MHz DDR3 Dual Channel 1
512MB ATI® Radeon® 4850 Graphics card 1
Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write) & DVD ROM (DVD, CD read) 1
Logitech MX3200 Cordless Keyboard and Laser Mouse - Leading edge design, one-touch media controls 1
No Mouse 1
English Documentation with UK/IRL Power Cord 1
D03SX04 1
XPS Desktop 430 Order - Ireland 1
1 Year Premium Warranty Support 1
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English 1
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio 1
No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) 1
19-in-1 Media Card reader with Bluetooth 1
Internal Enhanced Wireless 802.11n PCIe Card - Europe 1
Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers) 1
No Accidental Damage Support 1

Bought a new 24" 1920x1200 monitor to match my existing one so looking forward to getting this setup, I just need to buy a set of speakers and I will be set!!

RedJoker

Nice, should be well worth the investment.

Yeah I didn't get speakers either, luckily I have a couple of headsets so there's no rush.

Tight Ted

Building computers sounds like good fun! But tricky.

Tar.Aldarion

Nah you just slot it together. Just make sure parts are compatable and then it's lego.

The above is not built, looks like a normal order.

digiman

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

The above is not built, looks like a normal order.

Yeah, I just ordered it from Dell.

72over

Get this badboy...



You can 12 table, browse the forums, watch porn and listen to your favourite tunes all @ the same time.

Grafter

Nah! Teeny little monitors and no fridge

FuttBucker

digiman wrote: »

Cheers, I took the plunge and splashed out on this today.

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 920 (2.66GHz, 8MB cache, 4.8GT/sec) 1
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium SP1 64Bit - English 1
Microsoft® Works 9 - English 1
1Yr Premium Warranty Support 1
Display Not Included 1
1.2 TB (2x 640 GB) Serial ATA (7200 Rpm) Dual HDD Config Raid 0 Stripe 1
8192MB (4x1024,2x2048) 1067MHz DDR3 Dual Channel 1
512MB ATI® Radeon® 4850 Graphics card 1
Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write) & DVD ROM (DVD, CD read) 1
Logitech MX3200 Cordless Keyboard and Laser Mouse - Leading edge design, one-touch media controls 1
No Mouse 1
English Documentation with UK/IRL Power Cord 1
D03SX04 1
XPS Desktop 430 Order - Ireland 1
1 Year Premium Warranty Support 1
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English 1
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital Audio 1
No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system) 1
19-in-1 Media Card reader with Bluetooth 1
Internal Enhanced Wireless 802.11n PCIe Card - Europe 1
Resource DVD - (Diagnostics & Drivers) 1
No Accidental Damage Support 1

Bought a new 24" 1920x1200 monitor to match my existing one so looking forward to getting this setup, I just need to buy a set of speakers and I will be set!!

pics or it's all lies imo

Macspower

Just got this Dell M2010 from work..

Upgraded to 4 Gig Ram and reinstalled XP instead of vista and it's really an impressive piece of kit... Even if it costs more than an average Irish home!




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6466321248804965194

meathman 007

^^ very nice. Ive heard it weights a ton as well

Macspower

she aint light.... carried it over a 15 min walk yesterday and hd to keep changing hands

but only a minor drawback.. excelent overall package despite it's semi portability.. it does fold nicely into a briefcase style and is fine from car to office to home kind of thing

Tar.Aldarion

i want it

CourierCollie

Lol, if I had my home heating oil and laptop stolen. And me dog kidnapped, I wouldn't be advertising possession of that nice piece of kit anywhere. Tis nice though.

Tar.Aldarion

I'll give you your home heating oil for it?

CourierCollie

I am slightly joking. But its only a while back Flipper got mugged in Tallaght after posting his travel route here. Think people should be a bit more careful in general. So Maspower is leaving a certain hotel at a certain time tomorrow with that piece of kit on him. Too much information freely available imo.

Hitman Actual

FuttBucker wrote: »

pics or it's all lies imo

Why? It's a nice system and all, and fairly high-end, but there's nothing particularly ground breaking there.

Hitman Actual

RedJoker wrote: »

I ordered a new desktop over the weekend for poker. I'm going the self build route, it took a tonne of research because I'd never bought a computer before, let alone built one. Most of the stuff I'll recommend is going to be expensive since, if you're playing poker at anywhere above small stakes, you'll quickly recover the costs from not being stressed out due to your computer lagging or locking up. I know I get stressed out and tilted whenever it happens and I'm never able to put in long sessions, the improved hourly should easily cover the costs.

So here's some stuff you need to know:

Most computer enthusiasts are gaming enthusiasts, they're building computers to improve gaming performance. So if you ask a computer guy for recommendations they'll frequently recommend parts for an optimal gaming build that are bad for a poker build.

In a gaming pc the hard drive is the least important part of the computer, for poker it's the most important. I got two hard drives, the primary one is an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD, this is pretty new technology. It doesn't have the moving parts that a normal hard drive does so there's less wear and tear. Which means that you can put as many hands into HEM as you like and it should never slow down. HEM is bottlenecked by the CPU but the SSD should still give you twice the speed of a regular hard drive. I'm going to put the O/S and HEM onto this drive and everything else onto my secondary hard drive. There's a 160GB version of the X25-M which has recently been released, if you really feel like splurging.

For the secondary hard drive I'm getting a Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB. If you don't want to shell out on the SSD then you could just get 1 of these or maybe a VelociRaptor or some 1TB hard drive.

For gaming the most you'd ever need would be 4GB of RAM, on a poker pc the more RAM the better. I got 8GB of RAM, two of the G.Skill 4GB DDR2 1000, although any generic RAM will do.

For gaming a dual core processor is better than a quad core, for poker a quad core helps a tonne with lag. I got the Q6600, which will overclock to about 3.6ghz to improve your HEM write speeds. If you really wanted to get it even higher you could get Core2Duo E8500 which will overclock to about 4.5ghz. However, the quad core is better for lag and multitasking. There's also a Q9550 but there's very little performance increase compared to the Q6600 and it doesn't overclock any better so save your money.

The cooler I got was a Noctua NH-U12P which has a really sick heatsink and should be able to handle anything you can throw at it.

For a gaming pc you're going to want the best graphics card you can find, which afaik is the ASUS EAH4870X2 at the moment. For poker all you need is the cheapest card with two Dual-link DVI outputs, supporting 2560 x 1600 resolution. I got the ASUS EAH3650.

The mouse mat I got was the Razor Exactmat/Exactrest. If this let's you play even 10 minutes more a day and you have a decent hourly it'll be worth the cost in no time. If you really wanted to shell out you could get a razor destructor as well and use it with the rest. I got a Logitech Illuminated Keyboard as well.

I got Vista 64bit for system builders. If you're using less than 4GB of RAM then a 32bit will do fine but over that you'll need 64bit.

The rest of the parts aren't a huge deal for a poker pc, you can get more expensive ones but the money is better spent on other stuff like improved hard drive, RAM, monitors, chair, etc. The motherboard I got was the Gigabyte EP43-DS3L, I got an Antec P182 case and a Corsair HX520 poker supply.

It's also worth getting an anti-static wrist band as well. The risk of blowing one of the parts is a bit exaggerated, just grounding yourself every now and then should be enough, but for the sake of a tenner at most you might as well get it.

For those who aren't familiar with buying computer parts, you'll frequently see things like Retail/Boxed vs. OEM/Tray. The OEM/Tray parts are generally cheaper but they have a much shorter warranty and don't come with instructions. The retail will usually be a fiver or so more expensive but have much longer warranties and have instructions. If you're an experienced system builder than you can probably go OEM on everything. If not then you should get retail hardware. For software, like Vista, you can just go OEM though.

As I found out to my frustration newegg don't deliver outside the US. I checked the Building and Upgrading subforum on boards. The main retailers that deliver to Ireland are

http://www3.hardwareversand.de/home.jsp?lid=2

http://www.dabs.ie/

http://www.komplett.ie/k/k.aspx

http://elara.ie/

http://itdirect.com/

http://www2.computeruniverse.net/

There's been a few horror stories about some of them, I suggest reading the stickies in the forum first.

After checking prices I found that hardwareversand.de had the best prices although a lot of the horror stories were about them. They have a flat fee of 30 euro which is pretty nice if you're getting a lot of stuff but you can't use credit cards, bank transfer only. They didn't have everything though, the hard drives and vista I got from computeruniverse.net.

Hopefully, everything will arrive soon enough and I'll let you know how it went. The whole system, including shipping, cost about 1400 euro fwiw.

Nice balanced system, RJ, just a couple of points to watch out for going forward:

1. As you say, SSD's are fairly new, and the technology isn't really 'nailed down' yet. They don't have moving parts, so are more reliable than traditional hard-drives in that way, but there is a limit to how many writes/erasures can be done to a particular block (something like 2 million cycles). I'm not sure how this will play out with poker DB's, but you should probably back up your important data regularly.

2. At 520W, that power supply is just about borderline for those specs, particularly if you're over-clocking that Q6600, although it's not a good idea to overclock it using that stock cooler anyway. If you find any weird unexplained shutdowns occuring, the PSU may be the cause. Just something to think about going forward.