Friend just bought a 5 grand laptop, can it run everything?

Just found out my buddy spent $5,000 on a gaming laptop and I was just curious to see if it was ultimatley worth it and what it could run.

The specs are:

• Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz (12MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI® Enabled
• 17-inch WideUXGA 1920x1200 (1200p)
• 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
• 1TB - 2x 500GB 7,200RPM - RAID 0

 

This is a M17x? If so yes it can run everything for years and years

1TB? Thats alot of space what does he download to use all that space?!

 

for those specs i would rather have spent FAR less and gotten a desktop

 

I have no idea, and here is me looking for a $400-$700 laptop... He travels a lot so that is why he didn't get a beefed up desktop.

 

you could ahve gotten a fantastic laptop and desktop for that price.

 

Your buddy could of got a desktop with those specs for much much cheaper. Spending 5 grand on a laptop is insane

 

Yes it can run everything!But then again so can my NP9262 that I got for about $3000 less.

 

Well, that question is relative to time. Yes for today, not for in a few years.

 

Who cares weather he could have got a desktop or a different notebook, whats right for one isnt right for another, im sure your mate will be stoked for years to come, its a beast of a machine. And portable...nice

 

meh, graphics are already so close to real life i bet the dude will get a good 7 years off that laptop. the last 3 being medium/low settings

 

Exactly, now 4890 crossifre where are you?

Remember back in the days when you HAD to spend 2 grand to get a gaming notebook? My oh my how times have changed.

 

ask him fpr some temps if you don't mind, i 've always wondered how much cooler a 200 series card can run compare to a 9800 series

 

Or just ask his friend to join NBR.

Seriously he should join.

 

Well he did say his friend travels a lot so desktop would be useless.

Grats for him, but considering how close Clarksfield is to release... wait nvm, GRATS FOR HIM!

 

In a couple of years, that system would soon being seeing tougher and tougher games being thrown at it.

At the mean time, yeah it'll run everything today. Congrats on your friend's purchase

 

i think he spend 1k just on the ram upgrade... BTW did he need 8GB?

 

My comment was aimed not in the negative sense but rather in a very sarcastic sense. I mean, the guy is just bragging about getting a very expensive laptop, right?

 

His FSB is bottlenecking his expesive RAM...

He's paying a LOT for little extras:

-1200p LCD. In a 17' MONITOR...REALLY... that has to account for $500-$1000 extra.
-8GB of hyperfast (bottlenecked ATM RAM) RAM
-2GB of video memory (uberwaste FTW, yes even at high res)
-1TB of HD space? Really? Is this guy chain DLing bluerays?

You would NEVER catch me spending that kind of money on a laptop. You could buy one that could run games as well for half the price, and then in 2 years when it starts to lack, buy another one with the left over $2500 (although a better laptop would be cheaper by then).

 

Or because i think it uses the new MXM tech he can drop in acouple of new gpu's and extend the life further........its a great machine and he obviously had the money and felt it was worth the investment....good on him i say.....its a beast of a machine.......who are we to critise?

 

Ya, don't get me wrong, its a beast, probably the most powerful I've seen. The thing is, as the price of the laptop increases the return per dollar decreases...

 

The 1200P monitor actually aint that much more. Assuming this is the m17x, its only 150 over the 1440x900.

8GB of ram is definitely a huge waste of 800 extra as well as the qx9300 which is 1000 extra.

The total video memory is not 2GB, just 1 GB. When video cards are SLIed u dont get double the memory, the two cards handle the same information but do so in parallel but overall the GPU memory does not double. Other than that its not a bad purchase (only 600 for the option, whereas a single GTX 280M from RJtech is almost 500, granted it is a barebone part) if he does alot of gaming, which he probably doesn't if he travels alot.

I'm surprised he only got the 1TB option and not the 256GB SSD, seeing how opted for the most expensive option on each page of the alienware website, lol. But no matter yes 1TB is prolly way overkill but only 150 more.

But in the end it was his CPU and his RAM choice gave him away. Much more money than brains.

Am I jealous of this laptop? Not at all.

Am I jealous of his ability to drop 5k without a sweat? hell yes.

 

Lol he could have given all of us on this thread a $100 dollars each and just overclocked a lesser quad and get the ram when it gets much cheaper, would have been better way to spend the cash. In fact 4GB sodimms now go for £100 on ebay; a sign of further price drops to come methinks

 

First things first - nice laptop!

Second thing - waste of money. I'm sorry, but if I had money to throw away I'd throw it away on something else. Just because it costs the most, doesn't mean it's the best.

You can easily configure a machine that will be 95% of that performance at half the cost. But to each their own. It's people like this that eventually drive the price down for everyone else... so spend away and keep the economy flowing!

 

1200p LCD On the Alienware m17x, the upgrade from 1440x900 panel to 1920x1200 panel is $150...with the GPUs to push that many pixels on high settings, I would definitely buy a 1920x1200 panel for that price...

1TB HDD(s) I currently have a 500GB internal drive and a 500GB external USB drive...I'm almost out of space (60GB on the internal and 30GB on the external) and no ripped BluRays or DVDs...mp3s and lots of games (see signature)...I'm a packrat, but that's why I love laptops...my entire game and music collection goes with me in a 10 lb case...I'm waiting for the Western Digital 1TB drives to hit retail or it will be no more Steam purchases for me...

I do think the RAM and CPU were overkill...but I won't swear to that on the CPU...I've been following the Quad Core vs higher clocked Dual Core debate for weeks now, and there is no clear winner from either the professional reviewers or the actual laptop users...in the end, if it's not clear, then the cheaper choice is the better one for me...

 

He payed $800 more for 8gb of RAM that he will never use...

 

he can do whatever he wants.
except print out another 5000 dollars

He could have gotten an INSANE desktop computer along with an AWESOME gaming laptop for that much money.

 

Could have saved a lot of money by choosing 4GB, 8GB is so wasteful and unecessary. He also could have saved a lot more by installing his own ebay-bought QX9300, and learn something new in the process. At 5k, there better be something exotic in the config... and here there's nothing exotic. Like say, an Xeon Server CPU, hehe.

 

woww....my friend popped in a core i7 and dual gtx 295s for less than 3000......and no way that m17 is gonna be that much portable.....probably wouldn't even fit in a bus.....

 

That system is powerhouse.

 

But to answer the question of "Friend just bought a 5 grand laptop, can it run everything?"

No.

Laptops will always be inferior to desktops due to their extremely poor heat dissipation and the sheer physical constraints prompting "mobile" versions of the real deal.

As 1 poster have mentioned already, you can probably build a water-cooled i7/phemon II 955 (OCed ofc to 4ghz+) with GTX 285 SLI or 4890 crossfire (i actually think even in desktop arena, tri-sli and quad-sli are waste due to very poor scaling in performance pas 2 GPUs at this point in time) for about half the cost of this laptop

 

Thing will be outdated in 1.8 years... haha waste.

 

8 Gigs of RAM was a waste, especially for the price.If he really needs 8 gigs, it would be much cheaper to buy his own and install it himself.

On the CPU he could've just gotten 2.26 GHz Quad Core and could've easily overclcoked to QX9300 Clocks,or like others have said he could've went on Ebay and installed it himself.

-GPU seems fine, he could've had the same Performance with GTX 260 SLI and he would have gotten the same performance, but lets not make this into a 260 vs 280 debate.

The one thing about the M17x though, is that because it uses the latest tech, he can easily upgrade GPU for future games extending it's life by 3-5 years.

 

not impressive, just a waste, 5k couldve spent alot more on better practical things

 

This topic has reached the end of its usefulness and is now closed.