Help me figure out what laptop to get for Stormblood

[flik1234]

Hey so to cut the story short I am moving onto a boat where I will be relying on batteries to charge my laptop so efficiency is important and i am looking for the weakest laptop that can play this game comfortable at the lowest wattage.

My current laptop has 2 graphics cards one discrete, one integrated. I have done the stormblood test on both and it did ok even on integrated.


The discrete card test got around 6k with the 960m gtx

The integrated however scored 3333 on the HD 4600

My Low wattage laptop (40W charger) however has simular specs to my main laptop on integrated settings but only scored 1.5k


Pc specialist (120W laptop)

CPU: i7 4720hq 2.6 ghz (3.2ghz turbo)
Graphics: Intel HD 4600(1200mhz)/ Nvidia GTX 960
Ram: 16GB

Lenovo thinkpad x250 (40W laptop)
CPU: 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U (3MB Cache, up to 2.70 GHz with Turbo Boost.
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5500. (900mhz)
RAM: 4GB DDR3L-1600 PC3-12800 1600 MHz.

Is there something I am not thinking about? The second laptop is only a dual core but I thought this game only used 1 core?

Should I pop more ram and think about overclocking the HD 5500.

Or should I think about getting a quad core laptop with integrated? Im looking for something that has effecient battery life but is just about powerful enough to run this game in dx9 mode and not drop below 30 FPS.

________________________________________________________________________

HD 4600 benchmark

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Stormblood Benchmark
Tested on: 28/05/2017 13:52:41
Score: 3333
Average Frame Rate: 22.652
Performance: Fairly High
-Capable of running the game on default settings. Consider switching to a higher resolution depending on performance.
Loading Times by Scene
Scene #1 32.230 sec
Scene #2 16.767 sec
Scene #3 13.331 sec
Scene #4 17.055 sec
Scene #5 34.171 sec
Scene #6 7.028 sec
Total Loading Time 120.586 sec

DAT:s20170528135241.dat

Screen Size: 1280x720
Screen Mode: Windowed
DirectX Version: 11
Graphics Presets: Custom
General
-Wet Surface Effects: Disabled
-Occlusion Culling: Enabled
-LOD on Distant Objects: Enabled
-Real-time Reflections: Off
-Edge Smoothing (Anti-aliasing): Off
-Transparent Lighting Quality: Normal
-Grass Quality: Off
-Background Tessellation: High Quality
-Water Tessellation: High Quality
-Glare: Off
Shadows
-Self: Display
-Other NPCs: Display
Shadow Quality
-LOD on Shadows: Enabled
-Shadow Resolution: Low - 512p
-Shadow Cascading: Off
-Shadow Softening: Weak
Texture Detail
-Texture Filtering: Anisotropic
-Anisotropic Filtering: x4
Movement Physics
-Self: Off
-Other NPCs: Off
Effects
-Limb Darkening: Enabled
-Radial Blur: Enabled
-Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: Off
-Glare: Off
Cinematic Cutscenes
-Depth of Field: Enabled

System
Windows 10 Education 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (14393.rs1_release_inmarket.161014-1755)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
16268.082MB (RAM)
Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 (VRAM 112 MB)

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GTX 960M Benchmark


FINAL FANTASY XIV: Stormblood Benchmark
Tested on: 28/05/2017 14:21:50
Score: 6562
Average Frame Rate: 44.493
Performance: Very High
-Easily capable of running the game. Should perform exceptionally well, even at higher resolutions.
Loading Times by Scene
Scene #1 13.888 sec
Scene #2 12.529 sec
Scene #3 9.095 sec
Scene #4 10.951 sec
Scene #5 25.566 sec
Scene #6 3.433 sec
Total Loading Time 75.464 sec

DAT:s20170528142150.dat

Screen Size: 1280x720
Screen Mode: Windowed
DirectX Version: 11
Graphics Presets: Custom
General
-Wet Surface Effects: Disabled
-Occlusion Culling: Enabled
-LOD on Distant Objects: Enabled
-Real-time Reflections: Off
-Edge Smoothing (Anti-aliasing): Off
-Transparent Lighting Quality: Normal
-Grass Quality: Off
-Background Tessellation: High Quality
-Water Tessellation: High Quality
-Glare: Off
Shadows
-Self: Display
-Other NPCs: Display
Shadow Quality
-LOD on Shadows: Enabled
-Shadow Resolution: Low - 512p
-Shadow Cascading: Off
-Shadow Softening: Weak
Texture Detail
-Texture Filtering: Anisotropic
-Anisotropic Filtering: x4
Movement Physics
-Self: Off
-Other NPCs: Off
Effects
-Limb Darkening: Enabled
-Radial Blur: Enabled
-Screen Space Ambient Occlusion: Off
-Glare: Off
Cinematic Cutscenes
-Depth of Field: Enabled

System
Windows 10 Education 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (14393.rs1_release_inmarket.161014-1755)
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
16268.082MB (RAM)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (VRAM 2018 MB)

[Merryl]

I used the ps4 specs as a guideline when i bought mine last year.
I only buy quad cores and even though i had wished it had been intel...its amd, been 18 months with no problems playing everyday.

You can see the specifics for yourself here https://youtu.be/ujJkBuwZm_c

That video has been altered for playability on psp and mobil screens.
Recording software bandicam.
No glamour edits from youtube.

[LalaRu]

As rule of thumb, the HD 4600 is meant for a low-power use and you may want run the game on it. Given your score on it (3333), I'd suggest you make sure the graphics settings are as the benchmark ones or lower, and setup to limit framerate to 15fps in order to let the gpu have some "free time" and don't work 100%, making the power savings internals more efficient.

If 15fps are not an option, you can run over the GTX 960M and limit framerate to 30fps.

[flik1234]

I used the ps4 specs as a guideline when i bought mine last year.
I only buy quad cores and even though i had wished it had been intel...its amd, been 18 months with no problems playing everyday.

You can see the specifics for yourself here https://youtu.be/ujJkBuwZm_c

That video has been altered for playability on psp and mobil screens.
Recording software bandicam.
No glamour edits from youtube.

Hey so is that laptop able to run the game properly? Also how many watts does your charger for that laptop use?

[flik1234]

As rule of thumb, the HD 4600 is meant for a low-power use and you may want run the game on it. Given your score on it (3333), I'd suggest you make sure the graphics settings are as the benchmark ones or lower, and setup to limit framerate to 15fps in order to let the gpu have some "free time" and don't work 100%, making the power savings internals more efficient.

If 15fps are not an option, you can run over the GTX 960M and limit framerate to 30fps.

Are there any tricks to make the Gtx 960 use only as much power as is minimally needed. I think its a 50w GPU so is there a way to make it use less say 20w or something?

[LalaRu]

Are there any tricks to make the Gtx 960 use only as much power as is minimally needed.

Limiting the framerate. You can use the game built-in settings (60, 30 or 15), or fine-tune using tools as rivatuner just to mention one of a dozen. The power use depends how much the gpu must work, limiting the frame rate you make it 'skip' some frames computation and you save power at the price of the frames per second.

I've an old gpu that makes my pc hot as lava if i run 30fps, so had limited to 24fps to play without cooking eggs on top of it. 15 is really the "last resort" because feels more like a slideshow and it hurts your vision.

[Merryl]

Hey so is that laptop able to run the game properly? Also how many watts does your charger for that laptop use?

It doesn't freeze or lag out if that's what you mean
Im having a hard time getting the URL to copy.
Asus X550ZA-WH11 15.6-Inch Laptop (AMD Quad Core A10-7400P 2.5GHz processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 1000 GB Hard Drive, Windows 10), Dark Grey
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0158...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ps7fcj73io.jpg

[flik1234]

It doesn't freeze or lag out if that's what you mean
Im having a hard time getting the URL to copy.
Asus X550ZA-WH11 15.6-Inch Laptop (AMD Quad Core A10-7400P 2.5GHz processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 1000 GB Hard Drive, Windows 10), Dark Grey
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0158...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ps7fcj73io.jpg

Are you able to play when not plugged in to the mains? My HD4600 throttles itself to oblivion when not plugged in (300 mhz as apposed to 1200mhz when plugged in)

[Merryl]

Yes. I set mine to never sleep and change the battery settings to medium. It shouldn't affect it if you set it to battery saver.
The only thing i haven't been able to change are the load screen times. I encounter a glitch that makes them longer if the duty finder pops during teleportation.
Its just a minor thing though really.