M17X Dual video cards

Hi Guys,

In the process of speccing up a new M17X and was wondering about upgrading to the Dual - 1GB ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4870 cards. Most of the use for this computer will be gaming (WoW mostly) and pictures, some video and music.

Is the performance increase worth the extra $400?

Thanks

Peter

 

Not for WOW. But for some games like crysis, yes.

 

Dual video cards is the only real reason to buy this system.
The performance increase will be more than 50% in certain games. So if you're into gaming ->> go CF/SLI , don't settle for a single card. Also get the RGB LED screen.

 

Thanks for that. The screen is 17.0" WUXGA 1920 x 1200 - Beyond HD (1200p) - RGB LED no option for anything else.

So in the end the spec will look like this -

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7-820QM Processor (1.73GHz,4 Cores/8 Threads,turbo up to 3.06GHz, 8MB Cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit (English)
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee® Security Center™ 30-day trail OEM
MEMORY 6GB (1 x 2GB + 1 x 4GB) 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
HARD DRIVE 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive (500GBx2)(Raid 0)
OPTICAL DRIVE 8X DVD + /-RW Drive with DVD + R double layer write capability
VIDEO CARD Dual - 1GB ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4870
BLUETOOTH Dell™ Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal mini-card

A$4447

I like my notebooks to last me around 3 years before upgrading. Am I missing anything here.

Cheers

Peter

 

Your specs are fine. I'd debate between the 820 and 620, but that's my personal opinion.

 

yeah its a waste to get the quad if your just playing WoW, it hardly handles the dual core proc's.... id go with the 620 over the 820 for sure.

 

In dual core mode the 820 still hits higher clocks than the 620 doesn't it?

 

Here, 620 ->3.33GHZ, 820->3.06
Plus the better temps, plus the better battery life, and with HT you are set. WOW is a CPU hungry game

 

No option for the 620. Only 720.

So new spec is

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor (1.6GHz,4 Cores/8 Threads,turbo up to 2.8GHz, 6MB Cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit (English) edit
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee® Security Center™ 30-day trail OEM edit
MEMORY 6GB (1x4GB/1x2GB) 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM edit
HARD DRIVE 1TB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive (500GBx2)(Raid 0) edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 8X DVD + /-RW Drive with DVD + R double layer write capability edit
VIDEO CARD Dual - 1GB ATI Radeon Mobility HD 4870 edit
BLUETOOTH Dell™ Wireless 370 Bluetooth Internal mini-card


A$4030

Look better?

Cheers

Peter

 

isn't the 820 around 2.7 or 2.8 in dual core mode versus 2.66 for the 620?

 

Yes, for one core the 620 beats the 820 by 0.27GHZ.
There are few threads on this forum with complaints about low FPS in WOW with the 720/820s. I think there's something with how the game is optimized for these CPUs.
Anyway, the decision is yours. You won't regret either way.

 

IMHO, between the 720 and 820, I'd go with the later but how come you don't have the 620 as an option? What site are you looking at?

 

http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/SL/SLBPE.html

an 820 maxed on two cores does 2.8ghz. A maxed 620 does 2.66ghz on two cores. On a less stressful two cores a 620'can hit 3.066. So an 820 should easily keep up if a game handles two cores and if it handles four it blows it out of the water. At least in theory.

 

Dell.com.au

 

Don't forget that you can't easily force the CPU to always run at 2 maxed out cores. It'll change it's clocks dynamically and since it can drop to 1.73GHZ, it will do so at times and not always will switch back without a delay. That's the biggest problem, the FPS can fall too low every now and then.

 

NO

WoW is VERY CPU DEPENDENT

Get the quad core. You do NOT want a dual core if your into heavy raiding and such

Save the money on the RAM and get a 720 or 820 and Dual cards. WoW does like crossfire in game just not SLI.

A member here named electrosoft prooved the D900f got better frame rates then the Asus W90 just due to the CPU....

 

Get dual video cards cards if you get the M17x. That's the main reason to go for this system (although I'd personally wait with my order until high-end DX11 dual video cards are available in the system if I'd be in the market to order right now and it wasn't urgent - M17x order delays are quite massive at the moment anyway, so urgency won't really be satisfied anyhow). If you ever decide to switch to an upcoming MMO that requires a beefier computer than WOW you'll be thankful you got two cards.

If you don't want two video cards, a different system may be the better choice. There are some nice systems with a single Mobility Radeon HD 5870 on the market right now, albeit not from Dell/Alienware.

Also note that the extra 2 GB RAM likely won't help your gaming much (unless you run a game with a 64 bit executable - I don't think WOW has that, as there are actually very few games that do) and it might even hamper performance as you'd be sacrificing dual channel mode and thus memory bandwidth for the RAM (6GB configuration in the M17x comes with one 4GB and one 2GB stick, two RAM sticks with identical sizes are required for dual channel operation).
And RAM should be rather easy to upgrade once the prices go down for 4GB sticks to more affordable levels as well.

 

Peter, read through the link in my sig. It may help getting a better deal. Also if you don't need 6GB of RAM or don't know if you need 6GB, then 4GB should do just fine.

 

The i7 720 seem to run as good as the i7 920. The lag I get is due to Hard drives. So a ssd drive is a good idea.

Wow is a old game so it at the age of Ghz means everything. Boy where they wrong.

 

Lol, have you tried or seen someone run WOW with 620M and complain?

You don't need more than 4 threads.

D900F? C'mon.... What you can't do is compare the desktop and laptop i7s for that matter.

 

As of right now, getting dual graphics will not help playing WoW at all. I play and it only uses one graphics card whether you have crossfire enabled or not. WoW just isn't designed to use SLI or crossfire so one GPU works great already. Plus the game is more CPU intensive than it is GPU. You definitely want to get the 720 or 820 CPU. 4GB of RAM is plenty too. I never see my RAM usage go any higher than 2.5GB while playing.

But with that said, I am hoping that when the next expansion for WoW comes out that they will take advantage of SLI and Crossfire. I read that they are upgrading the graphics engine and I am keeping my fingers crossed. With that in mind it might be worth getting dual GPUs plus you never know, you might want to try some of the other games out there that are GPU intensive.

 

Not true. With all the cores unparked, WoW does use multiple cores. It will use one core for the main part of the game then route other tasks like sound to other cores. With the virtual 8 cores running (Hyperthreading) I see at least 4-6 of them being tasked while running the game. They have improved the game to run on multiple cores better than it use to in the past. They even made it so you don't have to put 'SET processAffinityMask = "255"' in the config file. It is set to use multiple cores by default now since the last patch.

Stick with the 720 or 820. I think your laptop will love you for it when the expansion comes out later this year. Blizzard is going to do some upgrades in order to keep people playing. They realize that technology is moving fast and if they don't try to use some of it they will lose customers in the long run.

 

You may even see all 8 tasked, that doesn't mean the game will run better than with 4 threads. If you run WOW with the 820 and it's fine - it's good for you and should be like that. It doesn't mean the 520/540/620 will run the game worse
Initially I thought the 520 is gonna be a bottleneck in games, but heck, I won't upgrade other than to 620.

 

The point is it uses more than just 1-2 cores. This does help improve the game because your computer is running more efficient. Wow depends on your CPU more than anything and if you can run it with a quad vs. dual then you are better off. Especially a true quad core like the i7. When you are in a 25-man raid it shows. I had a T9800 before I got my R2 and I see a huge difference when I am raiding. I never lag or see any slowing down on boss fights like I use to. My fps is always above 30 during the most intense moments on boss fights when it use to drop to 10-20 and the game would lag a bit. Another big plus is I can now play the game without having to kill processes I don't need running like I did in the past. I just start up my computer, logon the game, and start playing. It's a beautiful thing.

 

You can't compare dualcores to quadcoreS

If he wants to raid the 620 will not work very good

I've been here to long and seen to many wow nits fail


The bridge between desktop and laptop i7's is small so yes you can; )

 

Like I said, if it's fine for you? -> perfect
My friend had to upgrade from C2D to C2Q for WOW, but then he downclocked it from 3 to 2.4 and 4 threads is enough for him for any raid.
And he is in WOW from the day 1 and 6hrs per day on average since then.

I'm not comparing the cores, all I'm saying is you don't need more than 4 threads.
Well, I personally, think that comparing the benches of the OC'ed like crazy ASUS (920XM) to stock scores of the 975 is irrelevant here.

 

I agree WoW can run on the 620 fine. No arguing that. But the OP stated he wants to use the laptop for 2-3 years and I am making the suggestion it may be best to get at least the 720 CPU. It is rumored the expansion may better utilize newer technology and he will already be prepared for it. Plus I am just giving my opinion since I use the 820 and can say by experience it runs perfectly and I am very pleased with the results. As of right now though, no matter what he gets he will be happy I'm sure.

 

Totally agree. The 620M is just my personal favorite CPU (after the 980X) though

 

and there is thr problem


RAIDING will hog the whole CPU and the expansion will hog even more.... So a quad core is optimum

 

It doesn't hog my friend's [email protected] and 4 threads.
But I agree, future updates can help utilize multiple threads better.

 

Its heavy RAID like 25+ man raids or 12 man raids

Normal stuff a single core could handle ...

 

C'mon, stop doing it again.
The guy is one of the most crazy members of the Blizzard community. There are only a few others in the whole world with more hrs put into this game. He's got all of the characters at 80lvl and lately he ONLY plays HUGE raids. It's boring otherwise according to him.

 

but that is a core2duo that has actual 4 cores.... not 2 hyperthreading cores piggying off 2 other cores

 

820QM -- 4GB Ram -- Dual 4870 CFX

Will last a long time and serve you well -- if it ever gets delivered.

 

Hmm.., I'm tempted to install WOW and see if my 520 falters. There's a risk of losing the job with that game. Have to be careful

 

Thanks Guys.

I really appreciate all the input.

I am fairly hard core WoW with much of my time spent in 25 man raiding. I also like to run addons to monitor raid performance as well as using Ventrilo during raiding. Boss fights in ICC with AoE and combatlogs certainly taxes the current setup.

I think I will probably go with the 820 and drop RAM back to 4gb RAM (or max it out with 8gb). Also go with dual cards. Hopefully this will give me some decent milage out of the setup. I'm never too sure what I will be doig with it next.

I do have a massive amount of photos that need sorting and arranging and I am also working on a movie and music library. I have found my current XPS1710 really struggles with these areas at the moment so I assume I will see much better performance here.

Regards

Peter

 

You can't go wrong with any of the i7s. Getting those options will work great for you. I have the 820 and running WoW with all the addons for my 25-man raids is very nice now. I am only using 4GB RAM, but if you do get more definitely 8GB over 6GB is the best option.

Getting the dual cards is a good idea too. Let's pray Blizzard does udate their graphics engine to uutilize SLI and Crossfire.

Except, as someone noted in another thread, the RGB display is no longer an option on the US sites. Let's hope that is only a temporary set back.