GTX 870m 3gb vs 6 gb

hi
i am looking at the MSI GT70 dominator notebook with intiel i7 4700MQ and geforece gtx 870m 3gb
i was wondering, that since most 870m's are 6gb, if the 3gb verison will lack in performance? should i get this laptop with the 3gb 870m or should i spend another 250 and get the sager with a 6gb version?
the games ill be playing are
FSX
battlefield
crysis
skyrim
etc etc

 

At 1080p, 3GB vs 6GB makes no difference whatsoever. I've heard some claim that, "too much vRAM will hinder performance...", but I find that hard to believe.

If you plan to hook up multiple monitors down the road (at higher resolution) the 6GB version will come in handy.

 

I wouldn't say no difference.. I'd say with the games currently it doesn't matter much... But who knows.. maybe BF5 will be 4 or 5 gigs recommended on ultra..

that said, i personally wouldn't spend 250 to get the extra 3 gigs on a 1920x1080 screen.. but thats me.

 

3GB is more than sufficient. There is no way the 870m can manage more than 2GB effectively anyhow at appreciable frame rates. Many desktop cards have only 2GB and run at 3x1080p perfectly fine. Any card that can effectively use 5-6GB of vRAM at 60FPS won't be an 870m or even 870m SLI.

 

thanks guys!
aslo im not very familiar with the MSI brand. do they make reliable laptop computers? i have a sager (clevo) that ive been running for the last 5-6 years and ive never had a single problem with it even though i treated it like hell sometimes...is msi as reliable as sager?

 

I'd say MSI are roughly comparable. Their fans can be loud though.

 

EDIT: Oh, never mind. You want the 870M, lol. It's about 15% better than the 860M Maxwell.

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT70-Domi...33119&sr=8-3&keywords=gtx+870m#productDetails

Great deal there. Cooling isn't that great, though.

 

i can get a similar sager configured for ~1450$
how does the cooling compare between sager and msi?

i like to run FSX for extended periods of time (14-18 hours).. and on my current sager the temps never go higher than 70C with the fans at full blast ....i dont wana fry the video card

 

They've actually redesigned the cooling for the new Dominator series MSI's. They now share another heat sink bridge, but still share a single fan. It's more efficient.

They keep temperatures well within a safe range. But as mentioned above, MSI's are loud.

 

EDIT:
oh duh!

anyways..
the deciding factor between the sager and MSI for me is the cooling system
like i said i will run a GPU intensive game for long periods of time and i dont want the video card to fry on me..
my current sager is working perfectly fine despite the fact that its close to 6 years old.. the temperatures are still around 40C idle for gpu with a max of ~70C under load

 

Sager's GPU cooling isn't really bad. The CPU cooling is more of a concern with my model, to be honest. My 780Ms don't usually crack 80 degrees unless I overclock them by around 100/500 AND run a really intensive game... and then again, it's still dependent on the game. Deus Ex Human Revolution makes my GPU hotter than Battlefield 4. Go figure.

As for 3GB vs 6GB... the 870M is a downclocked GTX 660Ti in desktop land. If you gave the memory a 500MHz overclock via nVidia inspector etc, it's going to actually be pretty much equal to the 660Ti in power. That being said, it may not handle 6GB of memory fully well, but for games which use 3-4GB like Titanfail, it'll help. Also, that being said, there aren't too many of those games. 3GB will still do you just fine. And the 3GB version should consume a bit less power. So really, up to you in what you want. The 6GB will not be any huge jump for you, but it will not be any kind of detriment and *POSSIBLY* it may help you in two or three games. However no way to know if you'll be playing those games or not. So don't feel bad going with the 3GB version bro, get what you wanna get.

 

question for you bro,
is there software or hardware control on ur sager that allows you to control fan speed? my current sager only has a full blast, auto, and low fan speed hardware controlled setting that i can access by pressing fn+1,2,3

 

Newer Sagers only have max and auto toggled with Fn+1. Honestly the auto is pretty good.

 

Full blast is also pretty good if you think you're gonna get hot. Like me. But it gets the job done, that's for sure.

 

30% at least.

 

860m can OC fairly successfully to a stock 870m, but with a well cooled system there should still be plenty of headroom for the 870m OC as well.