Purchasing decision help

Hey again, yet another buyers thread. Just wanted to get some opinions on the following choice given the current deal in the UK.

Option 1. Gaming deal,

i7-620m
Crossfire 5870's
4GB RAM
1920x1200p RGBLED
1TB RAID 0 7200rpm
Bluetooth (don't care about but it's included)

Total with student discount and shipping - £1,923.49

Option 2. Standard deal,

i7-740qm
Crossfire 5870's
4GB RAM
1920x1200p RGBLED
160GB 7200rpm (plans to self upgrade)

Total with student discount and shipping - £1,987.89

So pretty much £65 more to get an i7-740qm over the i7-620m and to get the 1TB RAID 0 rather than having to buy my own drives (can get 2x 500GB Scorpio Black drives for about £90). Bringing the difference to around £155 but I end up with an extra 160GB HDD with that cost (stick in the PS3). I don't do any photo or video work but I am inclined to side with the i7-740qm due to some of the calculation based work I will be doing and just so I don't have problems with games, even though few benefit from the extra cores wouldn't it feel bad if one of the games I really want is like GTA-IV lol... Wouldn't be too nice . Thanks for any input I'm pushing to get this done as have been waiting since September 3rd for a new laptop (delivery men lost my Vaio F12 haha so a whole effort followed). Any other suggestions on spec are welcome, I have the standard wifi card as I'll be using ethernet the whole time, an i7-9xxqm QS or ES upgrade is out of the question as cash is tight and I have no real major use for extra RAM, I figure I'll move up to 8GB if and when I need to.

 

Oles chiefs,

Either system would be fine really. So closely SPECed and priced ehehehe. Both would be great. If you are leaning towards the 2nd option then yeh go for that oles. If that comes with only 1hdd you could even get an SSD for the 2nd hdd later on eheheheh lol. However you did say money is tight.

Make sure you get the most amount of warranty you can afford as well. Usually the highest option would be best when purchasing a new notebook like this. If will help you out immensely in the future if you even encounter any problems or issues.

WATTTTT the delivery man lost your Sony VAIO lol lol Bugger ules!

Also with the Core i7 740QM I overclock it to around or over the 840QM settings. It is running awesome for me in games that need just a little higher clock speed. For all other games it just chews it up and spits them out LOL. The game that I needed more clock speed was FIFA11. Its not a multicore engine and therefore needed a little more clock speed on the 1st and 2nd core or maybe it was just the 1st core lol. Anyways its running like on hyper speed now ehahahaahah just the way I like to play it ehehehe .......all the players running like Usain Bolt on the pitch! eheheehe

Welcome to the Alien Clan!

Cheers.

 

Awesome thanks! Yea I'm leaning to the second because even though I get less for my money the i7-740qm would kind of be my choice out of the two but it's very tentative haha. For example FIFA11 you describe, the i7-620m sounds like it's higher clocked dual core would rinse out nicely due to it's clock speed... Yer I'm too tight on cash to warrant an SSD for now as I can't see myself taking a small budget one and the larger ones are ££ hardcore, so I think having around 1TB RAID 0 is my best bet for now. I'd probably get an SSD in 2 or 3 years on my next computer .

Yer I'll see what I can do about the warranty, as a student I might be able to swing a deal on the warranty, don't want to get caught without it haha. And yep the delivery man "lost" (I think stole...) my Vaio and then the company tried to blame me lol then found out it wasn't.. and no apology apart from pretty much being rude and trying to block me reordering sooo left it at that and came back to good old Alienware lol.

Slightly offtopic but how's the heat and so on with that overclock you're running on the i7-740qm? I can imagine it chews out the games lol, and if anything else stupid like GTA-IV comes then at least you can handle it with the 4 cores. I've read the 2 vs 4 core threads here and the 620 vs 720/740 threads and whew boy it's one HUGE contradiction jesus... The basic idea I get is that they're fairly on par for now with the 620 winning on low threaded games at times and the 740 winning in things like GTA-IV and SC2, so considering I want the laptop for the next 2-3 years I'm kinda thinking even though the 620 may be better now, the 740 may work out better over the lifespan. Happy you got some of my fellow Jamaican sprinters running for you in FIFA11 then? lol that's great though I saw your comments in a few threads about FIFA11 being better on your old lappy, so I guess 10.10 worked out well for FIFA11 then! Turned granny into Usain! ATI driver support seems a little iffy eh but it get's the job done I guess.

I will be talking to the sales guy from Dell again on monday and see what he says he can do and take it from there. It's funny the i7-740qm is the cheaper CPU in the UK to the i7-620m but the cheaper gaming deal with the 1TB HDDs comes with the i7-620m why did it have to ruin a good deal!

Ty for the welcome! My old Alien isn't dead yet, 4 year old 17" m9700a

 

ehahaha yeh yeh LOL. 10.10 + the new CAP profiles fixed up FIFA 11. However its running like Usain Bolt with the 740QM is OC. So i'll just OC everytime I want to play FIFA 11 I guess. Its strange though cause I'm not even too sure if the 840QM or 920/940XMs would boost FIFA11s performance all that much. I wouldn't mind giving it a try though oles. Hopefully the next AMD driver will be much better again. I didn't actually see FIFA 11 mentioned in the new AMD drivers. So not sure.

The heat produced by the 740QM is fine. Nothing major or excessive. I max out around 70 degs OC even after running for a few days straight or after gaming. I leave my notebook on 24/7 as well so Oles lol. Oh yeh I also changed out the thermal pads and thermal paste. So its rocking really nice low temps now. Much better than Dells paste and pad job. TADA! eheheh.

Also every other game I have tried. I normally try out every new game that comes out under the SUN as well lol has run awesome on maxed out graphic settings. Some games I lower the AA others its maxed out. So yeh your all good there chiefs.
If you have specific games you want me to test out for you. Just give us a buzz oles.

Yeh so chiefs just got for your 2nd option then and check out what you can do with the warranty. See what kinda deal you can get. I'm sure it will be tip top oles.

Oh wow thats awesome chiefs. The old Alienware is still kicking and screaming ey ehahahaha. I can imagine the fans on that thing sound like a Category 5 storm ey ehahahah LOL.

Cheers.

 

It's funny how a simple driver update or profile update can get you from awful to Usain Bolt haha, and that you had to wait for AMD to bother putting out the mobility drivers eh.. at least the normal AMD/ATI drivers can be used now though that's good. Let's see if someone with a 9xxXM see's your thread and posts back .

70 degrees maxed with OC sounds very nice, I wonder just how much the new pads and paste contributed to that. I also wonder if Dell would care about the change in pads upon return if it was needed, as I know they don't care about you re-pasting but you never know... companies seem to operate a bit more anally in the UK compared to the US . I'll have a look into and the pad+paste discussion thread, might actually go through with it if the thermal reductions are worth it =).

That's something I've lived without for a while haha, maxed out games and AA what's that? lol jokes, that's just how it goes with laptops if you leave an upgrade too long, it's a crying shame a desktop wont work out for me. Ofc it's nice to see the m17x with xfire 5870's keeps up with a midrange desktop that was reviewed on tomshardware, that let me know enough with all the benching and fps quotes I've seen that finally desktop replacement laptops have reached a stage where they aren't obsolete too quickly! Seems a good time to get a decent deal anyway! As far as games go I've seen benches of everything recent that I'd play, and the older stuff will run like a dream! If any come to mind before I order and receive my beast I'll be sure to ask.

Yeap I'll be very much swayed to the second option and just buying the 2 scorpio drives for £90, depends what the Dell rep tells me on Monday he's been awfully helpful with my situation lol quite the patient guy. If I can get the i7-740qm in the first option by some stroke of magic I'll jump on it haha, or if the 1st option is offered with a bit more of a discount, then I can't really justify the loss of 1TB RAID 0 and the price gap just to get the i7-740qm, in that situation I'll just have to chance it and see where the i7-620m takes me I figure if there is still a supply of i7-940xm's out there in a year then I could get one by then .

Haha the fans on this thing are quiet, but ofc due to some issues with the AMD-Turion it's underclocked for now to keep heat down. Everyone I know who got a laptop with a Turion back when got screwed lol, maybe the UK got unlucky idk but they all had overheating problems from like 5 of us I knew who had them ¬_¬ and pasting just kinda didn't do much as I guess that wasn't the problem lol. Anything up from this will feel like a dream and I know it, just want it to stay that way for about 2-3 years . I must say though the nvidia 7900 series was nothing but good seriously... never an issue ever! Certain things with ATI chips always annoyed me but hey I think xfire 5870m's can convert anyone really haha.

Thanks for the post! The i7-740qm looks to be a solid chip low clocks and so on but none the less solid. It's what I'd have had in the Vaio_F, so that + xfire 5870's = crazy good for me and I'll take that set up, that seems to work now on the most part for most recent posters I've seen with the R2. Can't wait!

 

Oles chiefs,

Thanks for the links in my thread.

Yeh for the thermal paste and pad changing. Just make sure you keep all the old stuff that you originally had inside the notebook. Take it out and put it in a safe place for when you need to swap it back in if you ever need to call dell to fix your notebook.

When changing the pads and thermal paste. Just make sure to be careful and not break anything then you will be fine and not void your warranty.

Nice new system specs chiefs oless. We can be brothers now aehahahah olesss!!!

I got the 740QM as my base CPU because we only get 3 choices here down under. The other 2 were insane 500 dollar upgrade for the 840QM and 1500 dollar upgrade to the 940XM back when I got the notebook. Prices have lowered a little however still very expensive.

I'll definitely be watching the 920/940XM cpus float around ebay and here. If one goes for a super duper price BAMMMMM I'll be sure to snap it UP! ATM its still a bit to pricey for my liking.

Cheers.

 

Np for the links I hope they help, hopefully one of the methods will enable you to get the settings you use, although maybe the batch file has to include extra information I'm not sure, the guys in that thread pretty much set the target clock and that's about it, with a little more research I'm sure it's doable eh! Should always be a way to get things done via start up tbh .

Yer I guessed so about storing the Dell pads incase... such an effort why didn't they do a good job of it in the first place! Yer I'll be very careful when I get around to doing it haha probably around Christmas time when I have the time to just sit and do it properly, until then I'm sure the temps will be great anyway .

Haha indeed system spec bro's it seems . The proc upgrade prices are a bit OTT indeed, up here the i7-840QM is like £400 more than the i7-740QM haha and the i7-620M is £110 more than the i7-740QM, so annoying my cheaper deal includes the more expensive CPU lol! The i7-940XM is £880 more than the i7-740QM which is just wow really... that's a laptop by itself! So I'm with you completely on the eBay watching lol, but think you'll be getting yours a long time before I do hope you get a good quality one eh all about luck.. Also I like the pace at which SSD tech is moving, cheaper high storage shouldn't be too far off relatively (probs by next laptop purchase haha).

I enjoy your posts . I've got a list of things to do with the new lappy like Win7 optimisation and applying a good ICC colour profile etc and get a program that works like Sony's batterycare to cap the battery charge at 50% to help extend the battery health. Thanks!

 

Ehehehh Cool cool chiefs. I'm just watching the game here atm with some mates. Its HT now lol eheheh. Do you watch the EPL as well ehehe oles.

Yeh I almost walked out to the stores and picked myself up an SSD. I used to own 2 SSDs actually early last year however I ended up selling them when my XPS M1730 died. I had a firesale lol. Sold like all its innards LOL. ehahahahaha
I actually also bought the Extreme processor; the X9000 CPU which I now have no use for.

So I am very cautious now whether or not to buy the XM cpus. I too am also waiting on SSD price drops. I really need storage space. So a nice 256gb or 512gb SSD would be phenominal and then another 2TB secondary hard drive should see me through ahahah oles. No asking for much ey ehahah lol

I like your idea about battery capping. In my experience every single time I run on battery and let it get down super low or die the battery wear increases straight away and its only a new battery. So thats shocking lol. After a few months the battery is like almost 20% wear LOL.

I did some core unparking as well chiefs. and it seems things are more snappy TOM over here nows. I'll need to do more testing after the games though to be sure to be sure ehehe oles.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/494232-how-adjust-core-parking-inside-windows-7-a.html

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1861804

I wish we could OC the CPUs in the system bios like the R1 is able to do on y any of the CPUs. That would have been awesome.

Cheers.

 

lol I used to but don't quite keep up as I used to, Arsenal supporter here. I only really watch Champions League now, like the bigger match ups still eh.

2 SSD's and an extreme processor? Very nice shame it died though, but firesale got ya back some cash. Yer well when XM processors drop in price a bit it's not as much of a risk if things go to pot. Talking about a 512GB SSD and 2TB HDD sounds perfect, a year or 2 and it shouldn't be too much of an investment to reach that I hope and nicely speedy.

Yep running plugged in with your battery isn't ideal unless it's capacity is capped, because the battery wear is large when the battery is kept at 100%. In my opinion and along with a few sites and the Sony Battycare function, capping the battery at 50% while plugged in will reduce your wear levels and I'd say is better than storing your battery somewhere with 50% charge. Never store a battery with 100% charge. If you have it capped at 50% then when you want the full use of your battery plugged out you can remove the charge cap that the program put in . Problem is I don't know of this working outside of Sony laptops and a few Sagers... so without it the best bet is to store the battery elsewhere at about 50% charge, and use it sometimes to prolong the life.

Yea about core parking I've seen and read many people having many benefits when gaming and in general windows responsiveness. The way core parking happens seems rather random for some users, I mean when you're gaming why should it try park a core lol.. . I didn't know about that with the R1 and OCing via bios, fair enough though, shame it's such an effort on with the non extreme core i chips but hey ho! I wont be OCing until/unless I had an XM chip anyway the 620m or 740qm will be left at stock for now! Good luck with the OCing on start up .

 

Oless HIGH 5 chiefs. Arsenal won 1 nil just before olesss.
I'm a Gunner GOoner too oles ehahaha!!!!!!!! CMONS!!!!

Cheers.