how's my build?

joined for about a year, finally the first post! lol

i7 620m/720qm
win7 home
5870 CF
RGB LED
6GM memory
256G SSD, single drive. will add a WD 500G HDD later.
blu ray burner

most of my games are racing games and rts games.
Which cpu will be better for me? If I choose 620, will I be able to upgrade to quad when faster and cheaper ones come out? will the chipset support quad?

please teach me

 

Yes, but since they've already updated the M15X with the i7 x40 series I'd say wait until you decide on the 620 or 720 for the moment.

 

Nice build very nice, yes it is a quad core 4 cores with hyperthreading means runs like it has 8 cores. Will do just about anything you will need to do. The 6 gig ram is plenty lots of people use 4. And nice choice on the SSd will be plenty fast. Faster than any reg hd out there. Enjoy!

 

The i7 720qm has faster ram capability 1333 Mhz. If you go with the 620m you will have 1066 Mhz as your fastest ram. If found this link I thought you would find interesting.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rmarket-upgrades/450403-i7-620m-vs-720qm.html

Would definately hold off on the HDD until you really need it. Also you could save money and buy a faster HDD and install yourself.

 

What do you plan on using the blu ray burner for? The disks are still really expensive and If you do 1080P video you use a format called AVCHD which records a 1080P format on regular disks. If this laptop will be a tv replacement than the blu ray will be a nice touch.

 

thanks for the link, I've followed that thread, but it seems like no results. I will read it agian.
I'm using the burner purely for storage. I have a lot of videos to save from my in car camera. I think 10 discs, which gives me 500g, will still be cheaper than any 500G HDD. I'm going to get the blu ray reader anyway, so a burner is a small upgrade.

 

so 720qm>620m ?

 

I prefer faster ram so would pick the 720QM

The 620 may give you longer battery life being a dual core. The 720 is better for heavy multi tasking.

 

The 720QM has more cores, but they run at a lower speed than the 620M. This means that if you're running multi-threaded apps (e.g. video encoders) you'll get better performance with the 720, but if you're running largely single-threaded apps (most games, especially older ones) you'll get more juice from the 620.

That being said, games are usually waiting more on the graphics card than on the CPU, and the 720 will run pretty much everything just fine. A greater proportion of new games are coming out with multi-threading support, so the 720 is better for future use too.

I'm lucky that in NZ they're replaced the 720QM with the 740QM, which is pretty much identical except that it runs slightly faster. If the 740QM becomes available by the time you go to order, I'd get it instead.

 

I think the i7 720 is a nice cpu for what your be doing video trans takes a fast cpu and ram the 4 gigs is good but you will get 2x2 gigs so to upgrade you buy a 4 gig 2 and 4 will be 6 to get 8 you would need 6 to start then you would have 4 & 2 = 6 and buy 4 for you 4&4 =8 hope that helps.

 

yep, also as Game Junkie said, 740qm will definitely be a good choice between 720 and 840.
but due to some reasons, I can't wait for too long.
does anyone know when AW started to offer 740 in m15x?

thank, 2x4 is pretty good for future upgrade.

 

wow, it looks like dell just started putting x40s' into m15x this morning.
maybe I should wait at least for a week or so

 

It shouldn't be too far away. The 720/740 switch happened on the NZ site late last week. I don't imagine that the other sites (especially the US site) will be that far behind.

That being said, the 740 is only around 8% faster (in terms of raw clock speed) than the 720. Unless you're running synthetic tests or high-CPU multi-threaded apps (e.g. video encoding) then you'll probably never notice the difference.

 

Agree...
My sugesstion is
Upgrade the RAM to 6GB...
Upgrade the processor to i7-820 (if you cant wait the 740) because the 740 and 820 is the same (1.73 ghz)...
downgrade the blu ray burner to DVD burner cause you're not really using it now...
or if you still want to get Blu Ray reader get the DVD burner with Blu ray Reader not burner...