The boss doesn’t know: play, work and palites

Gaming laptops take a look — it’s a fact. High-performance hardware, great cooling and “readiness” for work to the limit often helps in workflows where ordinary laptops can’t handle the pressure. Some routine tasks are not allow to do anything socially useful — but we have a strong hrabok, and therefore can be quick to kill a round or two. See how iron can handle a hardcore task and dynamic entertainment.

To conduct the simulation of different conditions and will do the optimization on ASUS ROG G752 — 17-inch gaming buke with an optimal set of iron inside. Intel Core i7-7700HQ (the best Prots that can now be found in laptop) is paired with a pre-high-end graphics card NVIDIA GTX 1070 and 16 GB of high speed DDR4 RAM. System fast NVMe SSD for game and files the classic notebook terabytes at 5400 rpm. In General, the filling is decent.

As a test take the tasks that do not require direct user interaction, but seriously load a particular hardware module, the processor, RAM, hard disk in varying proportions.

Tasks for programmers

In itself, the programming requires no special resources: sit, write code — then the netbook can handle it. But the Assembly of the finished project and testing new features easily consume gigabytes of RAM and loads of modern computers to the full. Sometimes the compiler performance lies not in the computational capabilities of iron, and the amount of available memory and speed of hard drive. Anything useful in the compilation process not to engage, unless you Run some simple toy, not demanding in real time and wait until the program will finish its work.

Hearthstone, Magic Duels or Faeria have a relatively short play session (as well as singleplayer mode, where you can pause) and will run even on very modest hardware — the simultaneous operation of the compiler complications have emerged. In addition, all card games require you to think ahead, develop logic, to be able well to consider and to anticipate possible difficulties are just the thing to distract from work and to train the brain of the programmer.

The average hourly load Hearthstone single core Core i7-7600HQ by 15-20% and the RAM usage hovers around 350-450 MB: toy simple, resources are not so much. The Internet and viewing videos on YouTube is a system approximately to the same extent — especially if you have Google Chrome with its exorbitant appetites of RAM and lots of separate processes for each tab.

Work with photo

Modern hardware copes with all the tasks in Photoshop, and a huge desktop is for giant panoramas or frames with super-cameras. We have a much more common scenario: batch processing of images from one event. Basic color correction to groups of similar images in similar conditions, saving as TIFF for further retouching and parallel to create a small JPEG preview that the customer can quickly choose the necessary.

Pumping 16GB of RAW files with a little “a” picture Canon 6D 24 MP every — a serious burden for all the subsystems: the processor engages decoding, applying gamma curves to the channels, modification of the raster image, graphics card — quick transformations during resize pictures, RAM Packed with working data from the disc constantly being read and written. Just wait to watch VIDOS on YouTube, read 4PDA or… to run Overwatch? Quite a good option. But the work did not suffer, and the rounds are not merged due to a sudden slowdown, we applied a bit of computer magic.

The meatballs separately, flies — separately

On most gaming computers today from 4 physical cores (and in the case of the i7 — so also 8 threads). There are, of course, and the only ones who have “bakeries” with a dual-core Pentium — budget, in the end, everyone is different, but in General these machines focus on fast job with one task. The owners of the same kosher multi-core processor can spread tasks on separate computing units: open the “task Manager” (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), choose the desired program, and go to its advanced properties.

And then the magic right mouse button allows you to leave photoshop 2 cores and 4 threads:

Remember that for the system between the real cores and the logical view, which gives Hyper-threading — no difference, so if your Quad suddenly drew 8 cores — it is necessary to allocate them in pairs (0+1, 2+3, 4+5, 6+7). From the division on the principle of “odd/even” nothing good will come of it.

In the case of the same photos Photoshop spends a lot of time opening the file and loading it into memory, and a raster operations and save the changes. But at the same time your fashion Core i7 most of the time will be idle and not doing useful calculations, so you can safely load a couple of cores to give the game, and a couple of”photoshop”. The program will no longer compete for CPU time, the kernel will be loaded more evenly and it will go smoothly.

Appetite control

To limit the memory consumption is quite difficult: almost all the working software switched from 32-bit to x64, and is able to take almost all available RAM. The Adobe in the settings you can allocate the allowable amounts of RAM (CTRL+K, tab Performance): since batch processing does one file at a time, 4GB will be the head, and Overwatch and many do not.

Accounting bottlenecks in the system

If you have one large hard drive, any parallel tasks will become a real torture for iron. Fortunately, ASUS ROG G752 has a built-in NVMe-SSD: with its extremely high speeds to read and write, you can just forget about lags in the software and games, and work files to place on slow classic drive. Unfortunately, to give advice except to “choose separate SSD and load” will not work: conventional HDD is hardly waiting for a breakthrough in productivity, and the “old” SSD on the SATA interface has crept close to the limits of its capacity. Truly free from all these problems with data access can be considered only SSDS with NVMe interface, which put in the most modern PCs and laptops.

However, the cost of such devices, able to accommodate the average library Steam and or Origin but, alas, upsets even the most wealthy users. So the owners of classic HDD and laptops just need to keep in mind another limiting factor, and either play something non-critical to the joists, or to pacify the anger when “plugging” the fault of slow disk will cost you the duel or the game.

Test results

Back to our scenario: batch resize and save images in two versions at the same time running Overwatch. As the amount of available RAM for Photoshop and we are limited to 4 GB and the processor put only 2 cores and 4 threads, allocating a network shooter in the second half the CPU, tasks are not fought for resources system. FPS, of course, was slightly lower due to underload the GPU commands to the render. But is it so very important 100 frames per second or 120 at maximum settings if you don’t ride in rating the toys, and I went to have fun until I’m “useful”? Match successfully played, you fire in team chat… and all the photos are already sorted into folders in the desired format.

Run the same task in Photoshop e foregoing limitations and without them leads to the difference in execution time at 5% — level indicators of errors, i.e., the working task is not in any way affected the speed of execution, and only indirectly the toy lacked the resources CPU — it was underload the GPU, which draws not 120+ fps, but only 100.

Save files

Notebook “hard”, of course, designed with the expectation of increased vibration loads, but no one is immune from sudden death boxes with magnetic pancakes: but the data on it can cost you more most hardware. It would be a shame to lose an almost completed working project mounted a video clip or huge photo archive, and therefore backup our choice. Send to storing uncompressed data by simple copying is possible, if they will be needed very soon, and in all other cases it is better to trust a special software, he will not multiply unnecessary entities, will shrink that shrinks, check the condition of old files, and will take all the routine. The construction of the first backup 500 GB of data takes a long time — the easiest way to throw a typewriter at night. However, this option is not always available, so try to pass the expectation for playing GTA V.

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Leave one core “bacapella” not to climb in the gameplay, appointed her work tasks: folders with photos, music, a bunch of different file types that are specified network NAS as a datastore, and… precious bytes flowed over the network, loading Wi-Fi adapter, hard drive and CPU. We watch as police officers of Los Santos engaged in improper conduct in the workplace and pose a threat to others and themselves.

Well, help them, if possible. GTA V is one of the masterpieces of gaming optimization, and the impact of the backup in the background, noticeable only in flight on the “Laser” (very fast plane) over Vinewood. The game is big, is on the same HDD that reads makapili, and the drive simply doesn’t always manage to give the game the necessary data during the transition from the desert region to the saturated life of the metropolis.

Dope to dope

The current hardware is more than capable of dealing with multiple games at the same time. In the end, look at the console there and the processor is useless, and videos from the past, and everything goes without problems. Modern laptop, bristling with their cores, megahertz and the low level API is in no way inferior glands, whose main task — run game. Moreover, it can cope with two, three, even four at a time. Only one question: “Why?”.

For example, to start the third Witcher on maximum settings, and between quests to sell on the auction house in WoW? Breeze. Core i7-7700 QM will provide enough computing resources and the GTX 1070 with its 8 GB of on Board even unload resources will not.

In addition, you have 16GB of high speed RAM and NVMe storage device, which is able to almost instantly suck all the excess into the swap file and return data on the first call OSes.

3-4 gigabytes of RAM, which consume high-end games in FullHD resolution, will fly to the disk and a half-two seconds and recover for one. Drown in the ecstasy of racing the festival of speed, quality graphics and stunning weather effects in Forza 3, and in the intervals between the network-to chat with friends a game in beta Guinta? The most.

In the end, it can be easy to forget that the simulator you’re running and minimized, and after another victory to go to restore order on Mars and in Hell — well, DOOM so DOOM, iron to you and not say a word. Here is a collection of your magic cards, that’s a shotgun, a sports car, and a diverse team of specialists, leading a relentless struggle with the enemies. All start running simultaneously and not creating problems to each other, thanks to modern technology. Except that Windows will not switch so quickly between browser tabs.

Logic and common sense

Remember that the developers and so are fighting for possession of the resources of your computer, trying to get the maximum possible. Their task is to make sure that everything worked smoothly and did not fail in difficult moments. But to start setting up the compatibility of their offspring with other resource-intensive programs, and especially with the works of the competitors is absolutely a lack of time. Power ASUS ROG G752 enough for even the most demanding games running in parallel, and the system installed on a fast SSD is not experiencing resource starvation. And how do you deal with the needs of multi-tasking and maintains your iron such tests? .

Author: Ivan Krylov

Source: 4pda.ru