About to purchase M17x - any bottlenecks?

Hey all, Im waiting on a callback to purchase so i thought id run this by everyone.

1920x1080 screen
core2 2.8ghz <---- supposedly lower clocked quads arent as good for gaming?
4gb 1333 ram
500gb in raid 0
sli gtx280m

i think thats about all the major changes

any issues there that i would come across? so far it looks like it will give me desktop a run for its money heheh.

thanks all.

 

It's a 1920x1200 screen. I only post that in case you are expecting a 16:9 LCD. It's in fact a 16:10.

For quads I would only choose the qx9300 and that's for benchmarking. Everything else I would recommend a fast dual core. Also I used to own the nVidia cards but switched to ATI and I would recomended the ATI cards because of better drivers.

 

Yeah as Mandrake says until quads are better supported in games just go for the Dual Core as you did (you can overclock it on the M17x anyway.) The performance with a quad could actually be worse in certain games that dont know how to deal with Quads or marginally better.. for the money I don't find the actual value. I don't really do benchmarking like drake does so I went with Dual Core.

Go for the ATI's I believe you will have less issues overall as Nvidia seems to love to vary performance with drivers and generally ATI's have proven to be more reliable and stable. Plus the chip comes from a newer generation than the 280's and 260s G92 core.

I'd skip the RAID 0 also but that's just me. I'd get the basic HDD 500gb if you want then buy your own 500gb externally but thats personal preference. I've found RAID on a laptop that has limited HD ports (in this rare case 2) to be more of a hassle than its worth. I prefer to have an independent 2nd drive that I can back up my system disk to because laptop hard disks tend to die.

 

Hey cheers for the replies.

The options in australia are a bit different than US.

The only cards available are gtx260m and gtx280m - so ill have to go the 280's

also the raid is the standard, it's either 500gb in raid 0 or a solid state drive - which i dont see worth the dramatic increase in $$.

 

Solid State is the bomb. Until you experience it its hard to describe other than REALLY fast.

I'd go SSD if you have the money for it. Otherwise Raid 0 is fine.

 

HDD a platter drive is the bottle neck of any of today's computers, go Solid state, it is the future. Buy one from newegg if you like.