Weighing upgrade options - xfire / cpu / ram

I currently have an R2 with single 4870 card, the 820QM cpu, and 4GB DDR3 1066 memory.

I probably will need to upgrade the memory regardless (I do a lot of work using virtual machines).

I believe my options are (not necessarily exclusive):

1. Buy a second 4870 for xfire
2. Buy a pair of 5870 for xfire (unclear if I can actually get these yet)
3. Upgrade cpu to ??
4. Upgrade memory to 8GB 1333

Of those, which is likely to be the greatest bang for the buck? And roughly how much should I expect to have to pay for them?

Right now I am very pleased with the performance of my system. But I know how things go and before long this machine will start becoming obsolete and the longer I wait to fully upgrade it, the harder it will likely be to get the parts.

 

for virtual machine i would get RAM

 

+1 for RAM upgrade especially for virtual machines. Why are you upgrading if everything is fine, btw? For games? Cash burning hole in pocket? You mention availability, but prices will drop...

 

Because I like to have enough horsepower to not worry about whether my system can handle whatever I throw at it.

I know I need to put 8G in the machine - I would have done it when purchasing the machine had it been an option (Dell did not offer the 4G sticks back in February when I built this config out). For that I guess I mostly want to know if there is anything special I need to watch out for when shopping for RAM sticks... I think it will handle 4G 1333 sticks (although I only have 1066 now), but no idea if I should be worried about specific vendors/etc. In the past I recall having to select memory from a short list of recommended products, because not all products were manufactured the same and most would not operate correctly especially under load.

And my understanding was that the video cards in particular (but also mobile cpus to a lesser degree) simply become hard to find after a while?

 

RAM is definitely going to give you the most benefit immediately, especially for your VMs.

For the video cards, the supply of 5870s seems to be very short. People have reported that they've been waiting months for parts supply on these cards, and some have cancelled their orders out of frustration. Some people have also had problems upgrading from 4870s to 5870s, so that may not be your best option.

You're better off ordering a second 4870 card if you want the extra gaming horsepower. They're not a lot slower than the 5870s, and the only features you won't get are DX11 support and Eyefinity. You probably won't miss either of these.

 

I went ahead and placed an order for the memory since it is fairly cheap (under $200 for a pair of OCZ sticks, which had the best CAS rating of any of the 1333 memory I could find).

Regarding the 4870 - what options are there for buying one? Are NBR classified forums the only way really, or is there another channel such as a specialized retailer etc?

And similarly, what exactly are my options for CPU upgrade? I have seen comments here on these forums mentioning 9xx flavors of the mobile i7 (920qm and maybe 940qm I think?)... but have not actually found any retailers who offer anything of the sort for sale.

 

You should be able to order the secondary 4870 card straight from Dell's service arm. I'm not sure of the process, but if you do a search in this forum I'm pretty sure that there are posts that mention how to do it.

If you do get one, make sure that it's the secondary card with the heatsink and Crossfire cable attached to it. If it doesn't come with the cable then it's a primary card and won't work.

Your choices of CPU upgrade are the 840QM, 920XM and 940XM. The 840 isn't worth it because it just runs a little faster than your current one, but with no other changes. The 9 ?0XM chips enable overclocking in the BIOS (up to 5% over standard), which lets you get a bit of extra speed.

Your best bet for buying one of these chips is something like eBay. I've heard that there are OEM and ES versions of the chips, although I don't know quite what the difference is (others may be able to point this out). I do know that the OEM chips usually sell for a bit more.

 

I might have one 4870 with heat sink and cable for sale shortly

 

what is the best brand for memory or does it even matter. i am upgrading my ram after i buy school books with the left over cash.i went to crucial.com

 

Personally, I would be happy with your 820QM and here's why--look at the specs of the 820QM and the 920XM. Practically identical with regards to the actual hardware in the CPU. Most importantly, same cache (8MB) as the 920/940XM chips. That is where you see the most performance gain from. The clock speed difference in turbo mode is negligable (3.06 vs. 3.2Ghz) and you won't really notice it. The 820/840QM are the only i7's with the same cache as the Extreme chips. And, like was already said, the 840QM is too small an increase to make it worth your while...not even sure why they came out with it!

The overclocking is very minimal on the M17x. What you wind up with is a heat making machine with fans running wild, and possible power problems with Crossfire and Extreme CPU's (which, granted, Dell seems to be trying to figure out now). Those Extreme chips are 10W more power than the 820/840's. Why put up with all the heat and noise for an extra 5% speed? You won't notice 5%.

For the price difference of the CPU's, I just cannot justifying the huge cost of that Extreme chip when you already have an "almost Extreme" chip in your 820QM!

See for yourself here, with this comparison chart

Take the $600+ you'd spend on that 920/940XM and get the fastest and largest SSD you can. THAT will give you the biggest performance boost!

Seriously.

 

Pray that Joker, Scook and the rest miss this post... Oh my....I smell fresh blood

 

Well, I didn't say anything that isn't true. Joker and the rest are very technically inclined, adept at overclocking, and live to eek out the last few Mhz on their CPU's. Others are more into stabilty and keeping their rigs quiet, yet at the same time, getting the most performance possible out of them (I fall into this latter category).

My point was that there are other options to gain massive amounts of performance without going to Extremes (pun intended). There is nothing wrong with them, but for the hefty amount of money they cost ($600-$900+), I think Easirok could make better use of that money, especially since he doesn't claim to be an avid gamer, etc...I could be wrong!

 

No offense, I totally understand (and share) your point of view.
It's just seeing the level of performance increase achieved by the guys is mind blowing...

Seriously, I'd only recommend to go for more RAM and SSD. Wouldn't even bother going for CF at this point. Most games will run @max on a single 4870 paired with 820QM.

 

Oh, no offense taken at all! I thought your response was witty! Just defending myself a bit before the slaughter!

 

Actually, I am an avid gamer. Although I must also use this machine for work (my company actually bought it for me - we are allowed to buy a new laptop every 3 years, whatever we want as long as we expense no more than $3500 for it).

"Avid gamer" currently means (for me) heavy 25-man raiding in World of Warcraft and a fair amount of Starcraft2, and I am also alpha/beta testing a few un-announced titles too.

"Work" currently means software architecture consultant, often dealing with very large and complex products for very heavy customers. Running multiple concurrent virtual machines (with heavy workloads) plus the standard "business productivity" stuff on the host system is a regular occurrence.

And there are times when I am doing both at the same time. I might still have a virtual machine running in the background while doing some WoW raids or while doing a few sc2 skirmishes.

The ideal for me is very high performance, but able to operate quietly when not gaming.

I also already have dual SSD drives. I could possibly replace the 80G one so that I would have matching 160G drives... but I am not running out of space yet and the performance difference between 80G and 160G SSD is very small.

I am not scared of overclocking or anything like that. Heck, I lapped the chips and heatsinks in my Sager a few years back. Changing a few bios settings is nowhere near as scary as wet-sanding and hand-polishing the heat transfer components (which made a huge improvement in heat dissipation by the way). But if the 9x0 chips aren't that great of an upgrade then I won't do it... at least not until the prices on them come down to earth. I am not trying to burn money for the hell of it... I just like to keep my system in top shape.

I have already gone and done about as much configuration tweaking as I can short of overclocking. I have disabled core parking, disabled tcp nagling, etc. I have even gone through the trouble of setting core affinity for my games so that they aren't competing with the operating system or with other software.

 

For some reason, I did not realize you already had SSD's. Did you just add your signature recently, showing the Intel SSD's, or was I asleep at the wheel when I wrote that?

In any case, then, I think you already have a pretty powerful notebook, and apart from more, and possibly more, faster, RAM, I cannot see much more to do. The Extreme chips are one avenue, but again, I think the price/performance ratio is too small to make it worth it.

A bit further down the road, hexa-core mobile CPU's may be in your future and help out your multi-tasking.

 

I actually had the SSD drives in hand before I had the laptop

I did just update my signature though after upgrading the memory. I guess my next upgrade will be to the GPU... not sure if I want to get a second 4870 or just go for one or two 5870's.

And once that is done I will look at CPU upgrades again. The main benefit being that apparently I cannot overclock the 820 chip, but a 920 or 940 will allow me to do so in bios?

 

I see nothing wrong with the second 4870 upgrade. They are good solid GPU's and the drivers work. Would also free up a lot of money for that 920 or 940 cpu. You can use the Trubo Boost and the 5% OC with and still do the work arounds for more.