Some upgrading advice M17x R2 - 7970m bottlneck?

Hi guys, great forum!

I've done quite a bit of reading and have decided that it's time to do some upgrading of my M17x R2 after owning it for over 2 years now!

These are my current specs
i7 820qm
4gb ram
500gb HDD
2 x 4870m in crossfire

I've already gone on ebay and purchase a RAM upgrade to 8g (2 x 4gb) and I've bought a 7970m kit from upgradeyourlaptop, whom I've heard many good things about since reading.

My main question would be whether the 7970m would bottlneck my 820qm? Would it be advisable for me to upgrade to a 920xm in that case?

I use the laptop for gaming (like BF3 and such), but I like to play in windowed, as I run a lot of stuff in the background like 2 separate browser windows, word/excel docs and my email microsoft outlook app. I don't do any graphic design or video editing, just a pure gamer in conjunction to work stuff running in the background.

I guess I should ask whether an SSD would be worth an upgrade too? Though I'm thinking not as much for gaming other than loading it significantly faster.

Many thanks in advance =)

 

7970m bottleneck? You must be joking it's a beast. Most games depend more on your graphics card but there are the odd few that are CPU dependant. If you are running so many things at once and playing in windowed mode then the CPU upgrade should be useful for you

 

OK I'll do the upgrade to a 920xm. I found this listing on ebay however it is used condition.

Intel® Core.

Free postage for me (I live in Aus), however I've heard you can get a 920xm for much cheaper than that listing price. Where would be a good place to look for good prices shipping to Aus?

When i searched for "i7 920xm" that was pretty much the only item where the seller has listed Aus as one of it's shipping destinations. Might not really have a choice, but perhaps a fellow aussie might know better

 

OK, so I got the 920xm as well from upgrademonkey and now I'm looking for an SSD. Money isn't much of an issue right now so I'd like to go cream of the crop. Currently I have my eye on the Plextor M5P 2.5inch 512gb SSD, it's quite new on the market, but according to the benchmarks, it's doing great.

Plextor M5P 512gb SSD

SSD Update Featuring the Corsair Neutron GTX & Plextor M5P Solid State Drives NCIX Tech Tips - YouTube

It's a little slimmer than the typical SSD's which are 9mm or so and the Plextor M5P is 7mm. Will I have difficulties installing the SSD because it is slimmer?

 

Nice to see you got your 920XM already. This will do really well matched up with the 7970M beast!

 

Keep in mind a Sata III SSD in the R2 will only operate at Sata II speeds.

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