Too late to purchase a G55VW?

So a local outlet just shashed the price on these and I can pick it up for about $1400 AUD.
That's extremely cheap for a Asus G series in Australia.

I currently use a G73SW which really isn't cutting the mustard anymore. It's fine for some games
(Borderlands 2) but terrible in others (Planetside 2, Battlefield 3).
What is everyones thoughts on the G55VW? Personally, I'd prefer the G46VW, but we don't
get that model over here, and out dollar just took a huge hit, meaning importing is less desirable.
Will the G55VW play Planetside 2 etc at very high settings over 30fps? Or is there something else
I should be looking at?

Basically, I really want a quiet gaming laptop. I have been set on grabbing a Clevo/Sager, but
the noise emission reports from these have well and truly scared me off. I hear the new MSI's
are better, but then I read that these machines are literally cooking their internals. Temps closing
in on 100 degrees sounds shocking.

Before anyone recommends the G750 models, I'll just say that I really don't want another 17 inch
lappy.

 

Is ASUS your only choice? G55VW has 660m and 660m isn't really a good GPU for gaming especially for FHD. But, yes, even 660m should be able to run the games you mentioned above 30 fps if you lower some of your settings.

 

Just something that runs quietly, around the 15" mark, with real exhausts. Slim pickins!

 

I don't know laptop situation in Australia, so I can't really make recommendations.

What I can tell you is that I'd avoid 660m if possible. If you can find a cheap Asus one with 670mx, that card should serve you well for few years.

 

660m isn't bad by any stretch, but it's going to depend on resolution... if you are wanting to game at 1080p, you'll be running medium(some high) in new games to get a nice framerate. 768p you can run high/ultra in most games. I just upgraded to the 900p screen and it's not much slower than 768p.... 1080p is where it starts to slow down a bit in BF3 when hooked to external monitor without lowering settings.

 

GTX 460M > 660M is not a huge improvement, maybe 20%. I think you'd be disappointed. Since the G73SW has a great cooling system, you could probably make up the difference just through overclocking and overvolting.

There is no laptop on Earth that will run PlanetSide 2 at 1080p Ultra and stay above 30 FPS in Zergs. You would need an i5 or i7 overclocked to 5 GHz to do that. PS2 has extremely poor optimization and multithreading and is completely CPU-limited in big fights.

Even my 650M SLI system overclocked to 1120/2250, which is more than twice the GPU horsepower of the stock 660M in the G55VW, was regularly dipping below 30 FPS in large battles. This was at 1080p Medium settings too.

I think if you want a significant improvement in gaming performance you should get a laptop with at least GTX 675MX or 770M, or GT 650M/750M SLI along with an Ivy Bridge or Haswell i7. That should allow you to run most games at 1080p medium to high settings. I don't know what prices are like in Australia so I can't recommend any specific laptops but that's the hardware I'd be looking at.

As far as BF3 is concerned, my Lenovo is running it beautifully at 1080p High. I'm pegging 60 FPS most of the time in 64-player multiplayer games except for rare dips into the 30's and 40's in CPU-bottlenecked situations.

Before this I owned a G73Jh, which as far as gaming performance is concerned is nearly identical to your G73SW. I've experienced a massive boost upgrading to the Lenovo, easily 2-2.5 times the performance in games. I'd expect you to feel the same if you upgraded to something with the specs I mentioned.

 

Yeah, ended up opting for the Clevo P157sm with 780m. Incredible value - though I'm a bit concerned about the fan noise. A huge part of me thinks I should have grabbed the G750jx (except its less powerful and costs $500 more ><)

 

I found Clevo units to be pretty ugly. I'd know since I own P151. But performance is quite unmatched for its price. I just couldn't bare looking at it for any more and chose aesthetics over value this round.

 

Not to mention it's a tank like your G73. I thought you didn't want another heavy 17-incher? My back is thanking me for moving to the Lenovo Y500 after using the G73Jh for a few years.

 

The CLEVO P157SM is only a 15" laptop, yeah it's still pretty big and heavy but a great value for the hardware you get.

 

With a higher graphics card comes higher heat concerns and cooling so all the high end cards will come with beefier cooling.