whats a better upgrade for an m17x?

hey guys

im returning my m15x to get an m17x and I had a question.

Ive read a lot on these forums and a lot of people seem to be having trouble with xfire and games, is that true and if it is would the 920xm be a better upgrade then the xfire 5870s?

unfortunately I can only afford one or the other.

thanks for your time!

 

Crossfire is a better upgrade and will make the most performance difference. The problems people are having are software (vbios/driver) related and not hardware problems and as such these problems are fixable.
I personally dont have any real issues with the cards now and if gaming is your thing the you'll want the xfire cards. Besides that's the main benefit of the m17x - the multi-gpu solutions. That's what it was made for

 

I would go for Crossfire 5870s. 920's are everywhere. People have had a 5870 card or two on order for months without any sort of date of arrival since Dell just keeps bumping them back farther and farther. besides the fact that generally availability of Dell cards beyond warranty service is very low. That said, the driver support is also another factor to consider, currently and quite simply the laptop *only* works correctly with 10.5 drivers. As mentioned, it's generally a bigger performance increase as well, not that a 920 isn't a huge upgrade, it's just Two 5870's is bigger.

 

I also say get the best GPUs you can, and they at covered under the laptops warranty.

CPU's rarley fail, and you can buy the 920 much cheaper elsewhere than from Dell and upgrae it later.

just keep the old CPU for Warranty purposes.

 

Get the CF and go for min with the rest : RAM/HDD/CPU.
As others have mentioned - the rest is cheap to upgrade.

 

hey thanks for all the replies

ok so I will for sure go with xfire 5870s about the processor whats better to go with an i7 620 or the 720? I do run a lot of programs at the same time if it helps

 

Just make sure you get two 5870s and the RGB LED display. Everything else is GUARANTEED to be cheaper after the fact, on Newegg or Ebay. Alienware wants $1,000+ for a 920XM and you can buy an ES 9 40XM for ~$650. There are plenty of people here that will help you and make sure you get the right stuff from a reputable seller. I just bought an ES 920XM for $428, and it is putting down record benchmark scores. Get the lowest CPU.

EDIT: This is of course dependent on your technical abilities. If you've got a problem opening up your expensive laptop, don't listen to me.