920xm r2 vs 3630qm r4 both with 7970m

I recently purchased an r2 and put in a 7970m and 920xm. Doing so I've came along some unexpected hiccups that have kind of turned me off to the modded laptop option. I'm now at the point where I'm trying to decide if I should cut my losses and sell the 7970m, 920xm, put the laptop back to stock and sell it. Then go get a 7970m r4 w/ 3630qm processor.

I assume the 3630 is faster than the 920xm stock for stock (no oc'ing). What about with overclocking? I know i'll lose the 1200p RGBLED but i've read the brighter 1080p is no slouch.

Pretty much at this point I just want a fast gaming laptop that I don't have to mess a whole lot with. Seems at this point with the r2, once I fix this motherboard bios issue, I may be where it would last but I just don't forsee not having problems that I have to diagnose with this modded laptop. Versus buying an r4 already with the 7970m and could pretty much keep it stock and run new games no problem.

Any thoughts?

 

The i7-3630qm should smoke even an overclocked i7-920xm. The screen on the R2 will clearly be better looking but the 1080p on the R4 isn't bad either. I would go for the R4 myself.

 

If I'm guessing your hiccups correctly, I'm going to assume that it consumes more power than your power brick provides when you try to OC. Correct me if I'm wrong. In that case undervolt the GPU and don't overclock too much.
The ivy bridge is much more powerful than the XM (around 20-30%), and runs cooler, but tbh i have yet to encounter any game that needs that much cpu power. Personally the 920xm/7970 rules for me.

Anyway, the whole point of getting a r2 is to use the crossfire.

 

Agreed that one of the main reason to get R2 is the ability to use Crossfire. I think your alternative is viable only if you can sell R2 + 920xm + 7970M for 90% of what you paid for. The R2 may be able to use 330W brick if I remember correctly. May try that too if you decide to call Dell for warranty.

 

Picked up the r2 for $700 so I think I could sell it stock for more. Then lose a little on the 7970 and 920. Overall prolly get back 90% or more.

Just bought my r4. 1080p, 7970m, 3610, 2x256 m4 ssd's, 32 gb crucial 1600 ram. Got it for $1800 shipped overnight with a backpack, mouse, and some other goodies. Looking forward to it.

 

So thats why you have not responded to my PM's. Is simple hey I bought another computer and am all set with yours really that hard?

 

I haven't received any PM's from you. I have only received 2 PM's since becomming a member here and both are from "Rachid@Dell"...

Sorry

 

No the ivy CPU is about 90% faster in terms of raw firepower. In Vantage the Ivy CPU scores around 23k vs the 920XM scoring only 12k.

 

I'm the one that's sorry I confused you with another member and apologize!

I have an R2 with the Core i7-940 Processor and it scores 16312 in Vantage

Core i7-2670QM Scores 18687

My Core(TM) i7-3630QM scores 22552

Unless you crunching numbers or encoding video's all the time you would not notice a difference.

 

I like the R4 screen over the R2 screen personally. They are both nice but the R4 screen is much brighter.

Here's my comparison

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-comparison-m17x-r4-m17x-r3-m18x-m17x-r2.html

 

No worries! Thanks for the comparison. After playing around on the r4, I have to say of seems to be as nice to my eyes. I'll have to wait to get the bios deal fixed on the r2 before I can do a side-by-side but either way I love the way the r4 runs.

I also appreciate the soft touch. I just hope I don't have wear issues with it. But the biggest jump I've noticed is having the ssd. Going from a physical drive to ssd is night and day. Games save and load faster. I can do updates and restar without taking forever. I love it.

Thanks for all the help everyone!