Good laptops for HiFi, anyone?

#1

Hi,

I have been trying HiFi with an ASUS X554LD laptop but unfortunately it doesn’t switch automatically between Intel onboard graphics and NVIDIA GeForce 820M, and forcing it does not work either (ASUS confirmed it to me “officially”).

For people like myself who are looking for a beginner laptop (not more than € 1000) for HiFi, could we make some list of some laptops (manuf, model, OS, mem, …) which happen (with you typically) to work out fine out-of-the box (or so) with High Fidelity ?

Thanks in advance from me and from other people who I know have the same challenge but are afraid to ask the question !

-michel (from France)

#2


i recomend 2 of these .

The question is will you be using a vr headset with it? if not Most modern laptops with nvidia graphics shoudl be fine with hifi
if you are using it with a vr headset then you need one carved from gold

#3

You could try this with you haven’t already

and you can try and set the program manually Nvidia Control Panel to

#4

I hate to smash the enthusiasm but stop looking at that price point. What you need for VR mode is a laptop with no less than an NVidia GTX1080 in it. Those are priced around $3000USD. Nothing less will work well enough because High Fidelity demands top performance. I can make the case about its inefficient pipeline but that’s another topic.

For nonVR mode, you can be comfortable with a laptop running a GTX 1060. Do not go for anything less because daily the graphics pipeline gets bigger, so you need the performance headroom to prevent obsoleting your laptop. You can find those laptops prices at $1200+USD. But understand HF nonVR mode is pretty bad. All of the cool things like grabing things and operating attachments is not possible even though it could be. Much of the attention on interaction is devoted on fleshing out VRmode (it is their business direction after all), so much of nonVR mode aka desktop mode is left unfinished and buggy.

#5

Hi Judas, initially only the laptop and sooner or later with a headset.
Thanks
-michel

#6

Hi M.L.,
Unfortunately I already exactly tried that, and when I make the changes in NVIDIA CP and save them, then when I reopen the panel, things are still as if I never changed them !
Thanks,
-michel

#7

Hi Balpien, I want to start with non-VR mode first.

Strange that such power is required for a platform supposed to be for the “mass”, who have mostly light laptops or Macs or tablets …

Actually one main problem I want to solve is that e.g. when the avatar walks, all edge lines are flashing/flickering brightly and continuously. Fyi that also happens with Opensim which tends to tell me that it is the Intel graphics which are operating, not the NVIDIA ones.

Could you recommend one precise model of laptop at minimum price level ?

Thanks,
-michel

#8

First, HF is not for the masses today. It is for the masses several years from now when the very high performance graphics chips get added to mainstream computers. That hope assumes that the power consumption will get reduced too.

Before I recommend a laptop, I need to say that high performance is just one requirement for VR mode. You presently need three USB3 ports for the Vive or Rift HMD gear. You cannot use a USB hub to expand a single USB port. And again, that lower end laptop will not work well if at all on an HMD.

For nonVR mode, here are a couple of nice laptops.
$999USD

$1200USD

#9

Here is a good HMD capable laptop:

$3500USD

#10

Hi,

When I say flickering/flashing/… for edge lines it looks like here:
http://www.lagedetre.fr/capture-1.mp4
I think it is the graphics card ?
-mchel

#11

Oh yes, I am very familiar with that effect. It is a high fidelity bug with their graphics engine. I reported that problem several months ago. Deemed very low priority because it happens on older graphics cards. No one is looking into the problem.

Enable shadows. That usually makes the sparkles go away although doing that will then cause very harsh shadows to happen which another bug that happens on older graphics cards. I have been told by HF developers they “do not support older GPUs”. This is why I recommend getting the latest hardware.

#12

I have my Rift CV1 running with all 3 USB cables plugged into a USB-C port expander (USB 3.1 Gen 1 hub) plugged into a Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C - 10 Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2) port. And though the port expander has an external power brick I’m not using it.

#13

Well, it’s that mega port that makes it work. I don’t think the less expensive laptops have that.
[edit]
Just checked the specs on those two laptops, only USB 3.0 ports. I’m staying with the limits of the original post.

#14

I saw this laptop with a USB 3.1 port but it is $1430, over his budget, and has a GTX1060 which is a bit under-powered for HF VR.

#15

Thank you Balpien, for the specs of laptops. Will pick a choice …

Enabling shadows did not help in my case-- similar effects :unamused:

-michel

#16

If you are looking to use VR, watch out for lack of direct HDMI port connection in some would be high spec laptops. I recently bought a rog strix with Nvidia GTX 970m card, which at the time appeared to meet the minimum hardware spec for my 2014 Oculus DK2 (970 or 980 card), but was gutted to find after much jumping through hoops, the HDMI port is not directly wired to the card, but through some other hardware which is not VR compatible. I already had a 2014 alienware laptop with twin 880m cards SLI, which works fine with the DK2, but it cost about 5 time as much as the strix, and it is massively heavy to carry around. I also did a benchmark test on the two laptops, and found that the alienware had about three times the framerate of the strix, so even if the strix HDMI port had supported VR, the laptop would probably not have had enough power anyway, despite having a reasonably high specced card inside. I think it could be a real struggle to find a VR capable laptop for less than about 2.5K to 3K Euros. Sorry if that comes as bad news, but better to hear it before you buy and possibly get gutted like I was.

#17

P.S. When I said “Works fine with VR”, I should have mentioned that in HiFi, I do have an issue, not sure if it is related to my old hardware or not. It involves being followed around by a sort of shadow, which appears to be formed from part of the surface of whatever objects are in world (It happens in all places). It only happens in VR mode. I would love to know if anyone might have seen before and know how to fix. I’ve posted a video here: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/remmi-uav.com/2017-03-12_22-07-50.mp4