On 31/01/15 16:28, Mark Rogers wrote:

I'm in the market for a new laptop, primarily because I'm fed up with my existing one using loads of CPU doing things the GPU should be doing (compiz being the main culprit). The existing laptop has an AMD graphics chipset which is apparently well supported but reality is less kind...

My usage as far as graphics is concerned is nothing special; I'd like the laptop to be able to run VirtualBox comfortably and handle several (outbound) remote desktop sessions so having memory and CPU available matters more than GPU, as long as the latter can do everything expected of a "modern" distro (Ubuntu 14.10 currently). I don't turn on extra graphics effects but don't want to have to turn off the basis either.

My instinct is to look at Intel GPUs as they seem to work well with FOSS drivers. I don't have a strong position on proprietary drivers but my experience is that if I want to still be using the laptop in 5 years time then relying on AMD to keep supporting it is unwise.

But it's a long time since I looked at graphics chipsets so any comments welcomed. I'm undecided whether to get a cheap laptop (~£200) or go for a better one (say £400) but I'll take some convincing to go beyond that.

The NVIDIA graphics have gotten a lot better lately with NVIDIA keeping the drivers well up to date, as long as you're comfortable with terminating x-server sessions to install it (the ones stored in repositories are normally hopelessly outdated) although they have a bit of a tendency to break with some kernel changes.

What sort of distro will you be using? You say you're using ubuntu 14.10 at the moment, are there any plans to change that with a new laptop?

I took a long time setting up my xubuntu 14.04 LTS with my NVIDIA graphics card on my PC and accidentally broke it a couple of times trying to be clever but the LTS nature means that most of the libraries I use stay solid for ages. Every so often I check the NVIDIA website, grab the most recent driver, install it then grab the most recent repo-based kernel. It's been working pretty reliably since April last year. If you're using Debian then even better - I eventually got fed up of xubuntu on my laptop and replaced it with Debian 7. I spent about an hour configuring things when I fired it up and nothing has broken (or even changed how it behaves) in almost 6 months. Naturally if you're planning on using something like Arch or Gentoo, then it's entirely up to you to keep the drivers on a relatively stable version.

Low end gaming laptops have crashed in price recently - you can get some with 1GB dedicated graphics cards for about £350 (Intel i3 or better (up to 2.2-2.4GHz) processors, 4-8GB of RAM depending on the make etc) so it might be worth utilising the gaming build styles: graphics and processing power as top priorities.

If there's a computer shop (normally independent) near you that does laptop repairs, check out to see if they do any refurbished gaming laptops. There's a shop near me that has ordered me in a 2.4GHz, 2GB NVIDIA graphics card, 8GB RAM 500GB storage laptop for me for just over £300. The snag? It was owned by a gamer for two months before they needed a repair under warranty. For reference, my current laptop - 1.7GHz, AMD E2 Vision GPU (no dedicated memory), 6GB RAM 750GB storage - still costs upwards of £270 brand new.

Hope this helps.

Cheers