Casual Gamer's M17x with a 460M

My first PC after being a Mac-only guy -
i7 2630QM 2.0GHz
6GB RAM
1920x1080 60Hz WLED
GTX 460M
640GB Raid 0 (7200RPM)
Windows 7 Home Premium
Stock DVD and Wireless
3 year warranty with accidental damage service

But then the 6990M came out yesterday, and I ordered on the 9th. Try as I might, they wouldn't let me cancel my order or change it. Even tried to sneak into the business side of Dell to see if I could speak reason to them - I'm trying to give them more money here!!

No luck. My question:

For casual gaming of RIFT, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Portal 2 (and future-wise 3), Mass Effect 3 (future-wise), Witcher 2 and the like... and the ability to plug the laptop into a 2560x1600 monitor for Netflix streaming goodness and DVDs... will the 460M card last me the next three+ years? No, I don't want 3D (otherwise I would have gotten the 120Hz screen).

Should I eat the $300+ dollar restocking fee and pay an additional $300's for the 6990M after returning the one I just bought?

I'm considering, in a year or so, just buying a replacement video card (either the 6990M or something similar), but I don't really want to spend more than $300 on the upgrade.

I'd love any and all feedback!

 

You could always just go for the 6970 instead of the 6990. It's still a pretty good card. And save some money.

 

First of all congrats on the new PC and congrats on upgrading from a godawful Mac. I think you should try your best to return and get at least the 6970m if not the 6990m. Tell Dell that you want reorder with upgrades and they should waive the restocking fee.

 

1) Here are the benchmarks for the 460M, so you be the judge of whether it can play those games or not:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

In most cases, ultra settings are going to run around 30FPS for the 460M, which is the bare minimum for smoothness. But, you definitely will not be able to run games like Crysis 2 on ultra at >30FPS

2) The 460M will not last you 3+ years, and I can tell you that for a fact. The 460M is already starting to show its age with current games, and will most likely be outdated by the beginning of 2012. In a few years, you can only hope to run new games on medium/low if you want to maintain at least 30FPS.

My question to you is, why didn't you research the 460M before plopping down money in the first place? It sounds like you made an impulsive buy and didn't even look at the performance of the 460M. Also, the 6970M should have been available when you first ordered your M17x. That should have been a red flag and made you wonder about the performance difference between the 460M and 6970M. The 6970M is in the same league as the 6990M and 580M. The 460M is definitely not anywhere near that of the 6970M/6990M/580M.

3) If you are still unhappy with the 460M, you always have a 21-day return period, and Dell will most likely not charge you any restocking fee. Just say that you are unsatisfied with the quality, and they will refund you completely.

 

The only game in your list that I think will run fine is Starcraft II. Everything else will require a stronger gpu to play on relatively high settings.

As many people have said before me, the 460m is already having trouble running some of the games now and is not expected to perform well for games in the future. I would recommend returning your laptop and repurchasing one with the 6990 or 580m.

 

Do what I did, got my rig with the 460m about 2 months ago. Called Alienware Support NOT DELL support and the dude told me to call back in a week cause they will have the 6990m and the 580m as replacement parts in laptop. So it's either I'll have to pay for the new GPU or I'll get it for free.

 

They've got a 21 day return period. If the reps aren't allowing you to return, remind them of that.

Quite a lot of people manage to return without a restocking fee if they re-order at the same time.

 

Let us know if it will be free, that's going to be crazy.

 

I got the Radeon 6870m, because on the canadian site it's all they had (along with the 460m). Now, a month later they have all the new cards listed as well. I've already waited almost a month for my laptop (and it's sill "in production") so the idea of cancelling and re-ordering is not an option for me (I need the laptop soon anyway).

I'm hoping that the Radeon 6870m will be ok for now. My experience on the net is that hardcore gamers (many that you will find on these forums) are obsessed with every single fps... and a casual gamer might not even notice it.

 

First off - thank you all. It seems that a great deal of you are much more hardcore than I, but your concerns are extremely helpful.

I hadn't seen all of the benchmarks, and it was an impulse buy. But the 6970M wasn't even an option when I ordered - simply because that was the weekend right before the launch of the 6990M. I believe the 6870M, the 460M and the 580M were my only options at the time. I wasn't going to spend the extra $600 on the 580M.

Thank you Juanderful for the link. Seeing those benchmarks actually gives me hope this card may indeed work, if only for a 2 or 3 years playing at high or sometimes even medium settings. And I'm not above lowering the resolution either. I put the "casual in Casual Gamer! I even can live with 25FPS at times.

The 6970M upgrade might work for me, especially if it drops in price due to the 6990M being out. Anyone have any experience swapping the video cards in an R3?

The waived restocking fee is tempting, I won't discard the possibility. Especially since my impulse purchase was over the web and I didn't get any promotions or deals on it. I'm not used to haggling!

And the possibility of a free or discounted upgrade? Yes please! Please do let us know what you find out Insightful.

And dethmanrulz - thank you. I was hoping to find someone with your viewpoint as well.

 

Thanks to a current promotion (15% off base model of the M17x if you spend $2399 or more) and with an excellent sales person, I just got my restocking fee waived and got a 6990M for less than it was going to cost to get the 460M... I save $50, get a better card, and all I lose are up to six additional days for my laptop to arrive.

Honestly, I didn't really want to spend the extra $300 or so dollars for the new card and still go through the hassle of the return and additional wait, but when I found out about the promotion and got in writing confirmation that my restocking fee will be waived by a contact in Dell's Small Business department, I couldn't help it. NOW the laptop should last me 3+ years... especially since I won't mind if I have to play on less than ultra settings for Crysis 3 and I get 25-35 FPS!

I could probably still plug this bad boy into my 30 inch monitor and game at decent resolutions!!! Again, thank you for all you hardcore folk who made me doubt the worthiness of the 460M... even though I didn't need the upgrade, it will certainly make this purchase a way better investment.

 

Congratulations! You definitely will be able to play at 1080p res for any game out there now, you just might have to lower other settings a bit for games like Metro 2033 or Crysis 1/2(DirectX 11). Did you also upgrade the processor to the 2720QM?

 

I thought about the upgrade to the 2720QM, but everything I read said that the 2630QM will perform very similarly in games. It seemed that if I were doing 3D animation renderings it would be useful, but a negligible increase for the cost. Except for some virtualization features I won't be using, the feature list didn't seem that compelling.

Plus, then I couldn't say they paid me $50 to upgrade my video card! Of course, there could be a conspiracy afoot where people on forums say the 2630QM is great for gaming, only to weed out the gullible... if that's the case, I accept my shame!

 

The 2630QM is a more than capable card and you will not notice and performance differences in games. I merely got the 2720QM due to the performance increase to price value, to help my computer last a little bit longer and just to get something better than the stock option. I guarantee you will be very happy with the 2630QM for gaming and everyday use.