PC Noob Buidling Laptop

Hello all, I am looking to buy a new laptop for gaming and am pretty certain on the Eon17-SLX. I haven't been able to decide on a few things:

GPU: single 980m or dual 970m (SLI)? - I've heard SLI can cause problems for some games, so I'm not sure if the extra power will be worth it.

CPU: i7: 4810MQ or the 4910MQ? -any significant difference?

Storage: Is SSD worth it? Should I get an SSD along with an HDD? What amount of total space do you think is reasonable?

As you can see I'm pretty new to this so I have a lot of questions, especially about the GPU. Any help would be appreciated.

 

All depends on budget and needs. For 1080p, SLI is a bit overkill, and personally unless you plan on using the laptop for the next four to five years, or require 120FPS in your games at Ultra or want to play at 4k resolution, I wouldn't bother.

As far as the CPU, if you can get the 4910MQ for not much more than the 4810MQ (like less than $100), I wouldn't bother. It's only 100MHz faster an pretty much any laptop out there probably can't handle a CPU much past 4GHz anyhow. The 4810MQ can overclock 400MHz with Intel XTU, and 4910MQ can overclocks 600MHz, so 4.2GHz and 4.5GHz respectively. I doubt any laptop will be able to maintain the temps for a 4.2GHz CPU let alone 4.5GHz.

The SSD is absolutely worth it. Storage all depends on what you plan on doing with it. Get a 256GB SSD for OS and some of your most used apps and games, and then a 1TB or even 2TB hard drive for your storage and other games. If you can afford it, go with a 480GB to 512GB SSD.

 

Also, you really shouldn't double-post. No need to have the same post in both the Gaming forum and the Hardware Components forum. One post in the "What Notebook Should I Buy" forum would have been appropriate.

 

The price difference for those chips at Origin is $234. Even if he's not interested in overclocking, I'm guessing the extra 100MHz and extra 2MB L2 cache in the 4910MQ isn't really worth it.

 

oops, sorry. didnt mean to be obnoxious by double posting. now i know. (first time poster)

 

If longevity was of concern, at least 3 years, does this change your opinion on SLI?

 

No worries, I'm not a mod or anything. If you could answer those questions I linked on your other post, though, we could give you more help.

I definitely agree with HTWingnut, by the way - get a 256GB-512GB SSD for your OS, and a 1TB+ HDD for storage.

 

Not for me, it doesn't. Again, not all games support SLI. Go single 980m, and if you feel like you need SLI in 3 years, get another 980m.

 

HTWingNut means "if you CAN'T" get the 4910MQ for not much more than a 4810MQ then don't bother.

Also 4.2GHz on 4810MQ is only single core; 4-cores is only 4GHz and for the 4910MQ 4-cores OC is only 4.3GHz.

If you want a breakdown on what SLI is like, then you can check the guide in my sig; it's pretty detailed. Some of the stuff pertains to desktop cards, sure, but the benefits/downsides of dual-cards totally apply to mobile cards. If you're taking a SLI model laptop ANYWAY, grab the 980M and put another one in sometime later if you need it. If you're considering single-GPU vs multi-GPU, then look at the differences between single and dual GPU machines: The Clevos and (I believe Aorus has em?) machines can't use their intel GPU, but the Alienware 18 can (it requires a restart, however, and that locks the dGPUs away until you un-do it).

 

The 4810MQ is the best bang for buck no doubt, and will allow you to run 4GHz on all 4 cores. If you don't foresee yourself needing more than 4GHz for 24/7 use, then there's absolutely no sense in getting the 4910MQ. If you can get the 4910MQ for less than $150 extra over the 4810MQ, then it could be worth it provided your laptop has good CPU cooling.

I will point out however that the 49x0MQ chips appear to be binned for very high efficiency, which makes sense because the TDP envelope stays the same at 47W from 4700MQ through to 4910MQ, but the 4910MQ has to run 500MHz faster than the 4700MQ stock for stock, so it has to be more efficient otherwise it would TDP throttle.

 

thanks for all the input, much appreciated.

 

Origin laptops are overpriced. You can pretty much get the exact same laptop from places such as XoticPC, LPC-Digital, Mythlogic, and Powernotebooks for less.