5 Reasons you could keep your G73JH/JW and skip the Sandy Bridge gen laptops

I know at lot of you are on the fence about upgrading. Having recently sold my G73JH-RBBX05 (and immediately regreted it), and then replaced it with a M17xR3 2630 w/6970, I feel I can give an honest assessment of what you will gain by upgrading or not.

So here it is..... 5 Reasons to keep your G73JH/JW and skip sandy bridge.

1) You are already playing most of your games at max settings. The 5870m and 460m are already playing most of the top titles at max res and decent frame rates. Having now gamed with a 6970, the only real difference I see is an increase in minimum frame rates. This translates into a very smooth feeling game. Things seem faster because there are fewer moments when you hit a jitter. This improves immersion somewhat, but at the end of the day the graphics are still the same, just mildly smoother. You are not going to see a huge difference upgrading. The only exception is for those of you on RBBX05s or BST7s. A 1080p screen is much nicer than a 900p one. Games look much more realistic IMHO, also you can see bad guys farther away which is cool. If you are looking at the 560m vs a 5870/460m, then the difference should be even less pronouced.

2) You don't need the extra CPU power from a i7-2xxx cpu. I've played quite a bit of Civ5 on the sandy bridge 2630qm. Comparing it to the i7-720qm is not really as impressive as I thought it would be. Even though the 2630 is equal to a 920xm, I still have to wait a moment for turns to progress. Yes it is faster, but it isn't WAY faster. For those of you playing FPS only, the extra CPU power will be largely unnoticed.

3) SATA III/6gbps isn't really a big deal. If you have an SSD (and everyone should), then the difference between a 6gbps SSD and a 3gbps SSD is pretty small. Even weak SSDs are way faster than any HDD. I now have Crucial C300 64GB 6gbps SSD as my Windows/Steam drive. This SSD is considered one of the fastest if not the fastest random read SSD there is. I honestly can't tell any difference between it and my older Sandforce SF-1222 drive which was 3gbps. In short, a good 3gbps SSD is all you need, the new ones post impressive numbers, but they all kill HDDs regardless.

4) Your warranty. If you have a JW or JH with the 2 year warranty, you are still covered, if you sell, you are giving up warranty coverage you could have used. Sure it helps with resalve value, but you are giving it away to your next owner. You paid for it, why not use it.

5) Resale Value. Right now you can get $900ish for JW or JH on the forum. I sold my RBBX05 for $850, after fees I cleared $800. They go for $1000 on ebay but fees will bring you back down under $900. Now look at where things will be in a year. Your G73 will still be a decent laptop, figure it will be worth $600-700 at the worst. So keeping it an extra year will cost you at most $200-300, compared to the cost of upgrading, that is pretty cheap. What I am saying is that it isn't going to depreciate much in the next year compared to what it already has depreciated. You've already taken the biggest hit (the first year). Keep it for 2 years, and you've made money.

All this is my humble opinion. If you have a RBBX05/BST7, then an upgrade to a 1080p screen is pretty cool. For everyone else on the fence, I hope this helped.

I know money burns a holes into pockets, I've lost money I didn't even have, so if you do upgrade, I won't blame you at all.

Later

 

Haters be hating...

Mr. Mysterious

 

Good information here and people should listen to this advice before jumping ship on to the upgrade bandwagon. My entire setup cost me no more than $850 and my benchmarks show that I have no need to upgrade.

People are too focused on the marketing which is very well done to draw people into thinking they need that model and it will become 100 times better than the previous G73 but what they are not looking at is that actually GPU performance is not increasing that much on the mid range models and they are dropping you in at the entry level Sandy Bridge. I hear too many people say that 'we' G73 owners are just jealous of those getting G74 by critisising but we are able to see past the shiny cover and into what is inside which is not much better than the SW. For us with the JH we still see pretty similiar results because our card was high end at release and now the issues are fixed we have no need to upgrade, an XM and soon a 1080P which is on the cards for me and im done.

If you can hold on a year or two it will be worth it because you end up spending more now than if you waited like I am doing for the Ivy Bridge which if the rumours are true will destroy all other I7 processors.

Quote: '' Intel is targeting a 30 percent graphics performance and 20 percent CPU performance boost compared to Sandy Bridge''

I was still shocked when you sold your JH valkerie and shifted to Alienware as I had to message you and confirm it was not a joke

 

Its like everyday I find more reasons NOT to buy an m18x...

..i guess it all boils down to 6990m xfire benchies...

@ValkerieFire : did you sell your g73 here in the forums?

 

Yeah I want to do the 1080p screen soon.

 

So pretty much you're saying you nabbed your g73 rbbx05 (then) for roughly $450-500 and bought $350-400 worth of upgrades?

 

I bought my JH refurbed out of warranty as it was for $500 added a second HDD for $50 and a 920xm for $300. Works out over here in Britain to be around £500.

Bargain.

 

A g73jh, even refurbed, at $500 about a year back? too good to be true man...

seller desperate for cash or something? lol....

Not trying to de-rail the topic sorry.

Anyway, Valkerie I hope you are right about the resell value of the g73 in a year or two. In the meantime, until the new consoles are out we g73 owners should have no issues playing newer games on med-high.

 

You made some very good points in recommending an upgrade IMO!

I "play" MS Flightsim X, a badly coded hog from 2000, and CPU dependent, NOT GPU, like moderns games..

SSD: Try an OZC Vertex 3, and you´ll notice a difference!

Screen: 1080? Yes of course...

Just my 2 cents, enjoy what you get.

 

Dang, I wish I hadn't written this thread now. I was just trying to give a breif synopsis of how I saw the pros and cons of my old system vs my current one. We all have different points of view, no one is right or wrong. I wasn't trying to put down people who upgrade. I upgraded, and I am glad I did, I love my system, in fact I wish I'd spend $150 more and gotten a i7-2720 rather than a 2630. I just thought people might like to see some pros and cons.

If you have money and want to upgrade, it's your money, do it. Most of all, have fun, and be nice.

 

720QM 1.8-1.9ghz overclocked vs. 3.145ghz on a 2720qm. massive difference.

graphics upgrade = increase in all areas.

come say this when BF3/Skyrim release

 

Not to even consider 15% increase in clock for clock performance and quick sync

But nevermind me. I promised myself not to write in this thread.

 

Woah! You mean 2.2ghz with 4 cores on the 2720qm although SB does have a improvement clock for clock! Single core boost 2.8ghz 720qm vs 3.3ghz 2720qm is a large though. And SB chips bin at 100mhz compared to 133mhz for 1st gen

Intel® Core? i7-2720QM Processor (6M Cache, 2.20 GHz)with SPEC Code(s)SR00W, SR014

Personally I can't justify the cost to upgrade since my 920xm is more like 2720qm/2820qm performance OC'ed. So tiny upgrade for... usb3.0 in my world.

I was tempted in seeing if I could sell and pick up a SB sager not long ago. Hope everyones happy if they do choose to upgrade.


Add: oh heat + power consumption is lower on SB. And don't the newer ones or at least some AW machines allow you to swap to SB built-in graphics for battery? That could be cool

 

Actually the Sandy bridges run really fast on 4 cores, my 2630 defaults to 2.0 ghz but can run all 4 cores at 2.6ghz pretty much indefinitely (so it is really 1.6ghz vs 2.6ghz), the 2720 does 3.1 on four cores I think.

And you are right, the switchable graphics on the alienware are very cool. My G73 never left my portable desk. The other day I took my M17, turned on the integrated GPU and watched movie from the couch while configuring my SSD. I was on battery for 2 hours, and still had over 2 hours remaining when I plugged back in. You can't do that on a G73.

There are a ton of obvious reason to upgrade. I was just trying to point out of few less obvious reasons not to upgrade. Also everything is my opinion, I didn't post any benchmarks, it is all subjective.

 

Yes, shame on all the OEMs that is incapable of including switchable graphics with their high end GPUs. And a big kudos to Alienware

 

Hey Valkeriefire, what is your opinion on g74? If you could start over, would you stick with Asus again and go with your old g73 or upgrade to g74? Or still go with alienware or go with sager/clevo?

 

lol i run ALL FOUR CORES @ 3.145ghz 24/7

 

Perhaps you guys can give me some advice. I bought a G73JH, from best buy though. I only have a 1 year warranty, and if I want another year, I need to pay 300$ before the 13th of this month (july).
I did add IC7 to the GPU which now allows me to hit 810mhz on GPU. Memory however only goes to about 1030mhz (more or less).
I also wanted to buy a 1080p screen for my g73, which on ebay goes for about 180$ ( ASUS G73JH LAPTOP LCD SCREEN 17.3" Full-HD | eBay)

So I am debating, I can sell it, or I can keep my G73JH, spend an addition 200 for a screen, and another 300$ for another year warranty, 400$ for an additional 2 more years. Keep in mind if my system were to break, best buy would replace with a G74SX-BBK7

What would you guys do?

 

That is a lot for a warranty on a model that costs only double the warranty. Are you sure that they would replace it with a G74? I seem to remember a thread a while ago and they replaced a similiar model with a HP make sure this is the case before going for it and check the small print.

Personally I would save my money and pick up a 1080p screen and get it fitted. If the worst did happen you could put that $300 towards a new model but the JH is a tough cookie and you should be ok.

At the end of the day its totally your choice and people will be wary to recommend against/for a warranty in case it breaks shortly after giving their advice

 

The main thing I miss about the G73 is the slopped keyboard, which is very comfortable, and that you can use new video drivers (on the Dell/AW you have to wait for Dell to update them due to the integrated GPU). The G74 is basically a upgraded G73, so I don't see much difference in the two. Honestly I wish I had the discipline to have kept my G73JH and wait for the next upgrade cycle (hence why I wrote the thread). I don't think I would upgrade from a g73 to a G74 since there isn't much difference GPU wise. Price wise the current G74s are overpriced, at $1900 you can get a more powerful alienware for $100 more. Also Alienware is available at Dell outlet for much cheaper, so the G74 looks overpriced from that perspective. I purchased my M17 through the military for a discount, so it wasn't a bad deal, I am glad I did it. I don't have any experience with Cleva/Sager so I cannot comment on them.

 

Doesn't seem you got a good overclocker. Sell it and get a new one.