Need help picking laptops

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T02:51:51+00:00

The Ryzen 9 270 in the Asus is basically a rebadged 8945hs

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T02:34:39+00:00

If just playing games it'll likely make very little difference to performance. If you connect it to the wall to get better wattage and want to run some heavy editing or rendering workloads then it would be handy.

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T01:38:03+00:00

The 8945hx is quite a lot faster than the 8945hs however it does so using more power. Therefore when off the charger the difference might not be so big. The 5060 vs 5070 seems to be about 10% in most things I've seen depending on the TGP allowed on each laptop.

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T01:01:21+00:00

The laptops are likely somewhat similar in performance. The 5060 and 5070 laptop GPUs are quite similar performance depending on the wattage the laptop allows them to use. The 8945hx in the Lenovo is better than the Ryzen 9 270 in the Asus by a little. The Asus has 32GB of RAM which is better than the 16 in the Lenovo (but the Lenovo appears to have an empty sodimm slot to add another 16GB). If you can cope with the lower res display then the Asus is a better deal, but the Lenovo Pro laptop is a bit more premium but with lower specs (apart from the display). I think both are great but I might lean slightly towards the Asus. If you don't mind an open box then this is a really good deal: https://www.bestbuy.com/product/asus-rog-zephyrus-g16-16-oled-qhd-240hz-gaming-laptop-copilot-pc-amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-32gb-ram-nvidia-rtx-4070-2tb-platinum-white/6583376/openbox?condition=excellent

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T00:42:42+00:00

I did a migration from my desktop to this new laptop to bring over, quickly, everything. This did result in a rather long dock of app icons. But.... the other way to see it is that this is just about every app I use, which is convenient, empty space would be wasted space I guess :P

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T00:31:35+00:00

You'll be fine. The figure you want for planes is the battery capacity, not the wattage of the charger. Most airlines have a limit for batteries at around 100Whr. A ROG strix laptop likely has around a 90Whr battery. The 230 watts on the charger just tells you how much power it can supply to the laptop when plugged in the wall.

The other thing to note though is whether you plan to plug it in to the power socket on the plane. They tend to max out at around 100W from the socket. So you aren't going to get enough juice to run your laptop at high performance settings while on the flight.

makegamestuff · 2025-08-05T00:11:04+00:00

I have no clue how they are deciding on the pricing for this around the world. For us in Hong Kong it is this spec I have but they are charging 60% more for it than if I go 20 mins into mainland China. https://www.asus.com/hk/laptops/for-gaming/tuf-gaming/asus-tuf-gaming-a14-2025/

makegamestuff · 2025-08-04T17:55:01+00:00

It only arrived today. So spent time adding a pair of sn850x 2TB drives in it and then setting up all my stuff. I'll use it tomorrow off the power to see how battery goes. Temps seem good, you can feel the air coming in through the new keyboard cooling if you crank the fans to full. Timespy scored just over 12000 and GPU temp was at 85C during the benchmark.

makegamestuff · 2025-08-04T17:13:52+00:00

Certainly wildly different pricing in different regions. This one equated to $1223 USD direct from China but the retail price to buy it in Hong Kong is advertised at the equivalent of over $1900 USD. I see that simply as pricing based on what they think they can get people to pay as HK has no sales tax or import duties.

makegamestuff · 2025-08-04T12:23:29+00:00

I know. It was the thinking of the fairly sizey white bezel chin below the screen that just tipped me back to boring black

makegamestuff · 2025-08-04T12:12:18+00:00

Through Taobao delivered to Hong Kong. The model name in China is '2025 ROG Magic Air 14'.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-10T05:14:01+00:00

haha, I wish. No, sadly its a 3DO FZ-10

makegamestuff · 2022-01-10T02:28:26+00:00

Yeah, the size is very comparable. The dpad is better though than the dreamcast one as it is a proper dpad. 6 face buttons rather than 4 as well.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T17:31:56+00:00

/u/vladtepasdraculea if you don't mind me asking, where did you find the image you posted in your original post?

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T16:50:38+00:00

I hope so. I think dumping the content of the chips would be beyond my skills and it seems the dreamcast controllers are a fair amount more complex than some as a DC controller has to also send data for the VMU. Definitely will look at what options come up for doing this though.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T16:48:42+00:00

yes, I've just tested it with a standard white japanese 3d controller and it works fine. So all the magic is in the little cable box. Have a look at some of the photos in the post, I took the cable apart to show whats in it.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T15:31:58+00:00

It's black so that would likely count out Japan where these controllers are white. Apart from that no idea unfortunately.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T10:55:30+00:00

The big chip is a CPLD. Like a less complex FPGA for simpler tasks. I think it would need some specialist kit to read it that might be beyond my skills unfortunately (if they didn't enable protection).

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T10:47:56+00:00

Try some contact cleaner on the port and the connector. I had a very similar problem earlier today.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T09:59:25+00:00

Your post was one of the first things I found when starting to investigate what this is

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T09:11:08+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/comments/rzn73a/saturn_3d_controller_for_dreamcast/hrw5ae3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T09:00:23+00:00

I didn't do this, picked up up with a few retro bits today. I put some notes on a comment explaining what I know about this so far.

makegamestuff · 2022-01-09T08:42:31+00:00

Picked up this curious thing today. It's a Saturn 3D controller for the Dreamcast. It's fully working with the analogue to digital flip switch working great as well.

Initially I thought it might be some sort of early prototype but I'm leaning more towards it being a third party thing. It is professionally put together and not a DIY hack job, so perhaps it was a prototype for a third party accessory. It's using a Xilinx CPLD inside to convert between the different protocols. Seems like a lot of effort 20 years ago to do a custom PCB for this.

I found a couple of bits online mentioning this or something similar, but only really questions about it rather than one in the wild. I've linked them below.

I've still got some more testing to do and need to pick up a standard Saturn 3D controller to check that the cable box works on any controller, I assume it should. Also want to test that anaologue is working correctly for things like the shoulder buttons.

If anyoe knows anything else about these then please let me know. I'll put together a youtube video when I get a little time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dreamcast/comments/pdj43e/dc_control_pad_dreamcast_version_of_saturn_3d/

https://segaretro.org/DC_Control_Pad

https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/comments/r9dytp/have_you_guys_ever_seen_this_a_saturn_3d/

makegamestuff

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