Purchasing a Batallion 101 X8100-U3 (Clevo X8100) NEED ADVICE!

So I'm relatively new to the looking-into-computer-specs business, but I can say that I'm at least a little more savvy than the average computer user. I've done some homework, is what I'm trying to get at I guess.
To make a long story short, me and my family are moving to Switzerland. There we will be a sort of transient family, moving from place to place. Obviously, a laptop is a much better choice than a desktop PC. I'm a serious gamer and for a long time have desired a really nice system that will play the most current (DX11) games in high (to possibly max) detail.

I found the X8100 here:
iBUYPOWER Computer :: Battalion 101 X8100-U3 Gaming Laptop

Processor
Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Mobile Processor (4x 1.73GHz/6MB L3 Cache)

Memory
4GB [2GB x 2] 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM [Laptop Memory] Corsair or Major Brand

Video Card
2x ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 - 1GB [X8100] - CrossFire Mode

other interesting bells and whistles offered coming to a total amount of (give or take) $2,000
-and after research discovered that this is a pretty good deal for the specs offered. I'm particularly excited about the mobility 5870 crossfire GPU.
So here's where I need advice:
This is pretty much the extent of my budget. I can't really go much higher than this and BUT I really want to make sure that this system is going to be very powerful and worth the money.
So I need to know things like:
Are there any bottlenecks with this build? (Is the processor fast enough, should I consider upgrading to a 840QM 4x 1.86GHz/8MB L3 Cache for +$300)
What about the RAM? will 4GB suffice? I can upgrade to 8GB for +$100.

What will help this system work at it's full potential?

Buying my first serious system is very very nervewracking . Any gurus wanna help me out with some advice?

 

cpu will probably bottleneck, my Q9550 @ 3.6 bottlenecked my 4870's. I think only the 920XM will be sufficient but thats out of the price range i guess. You could always OC the 740qm but its still a fast cpu, no doubt about that
Anymore than 4gb of ram is not really beneficial unless ur a design student or use cad etc.

 

Thanks a lot GapItLykAMaori. That info is exactly what I was looking for.
I've got a couple other questions though, if you don't mind:
Is it worth upgrading to the 840QM processor? Remember that it is +$300.

Also, would you say that this price is at least decent for this build?
If I can go bigger elsewhere for $2000, then I'd love to.

Lastly, how does the clevo x8100 compare to the MSI G660? Link here: http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6646273&CatId=4938

Thanks for your help.

 

Thanks Panzer, I was sorta suspicious of their processor upgrade prices.
Any guess as to how much it would cost me to upgrade to a 920XM myself?

 

I think you would be fine with the 740QM. It is an unfair comparison with the Q9550. The new i7 architeture is leaps and bounds better than core 2 achitecture when placed in a system with more than one GPU so you won't find any bottlenecks there.

However faster is always better in my books so if you have the money get the best you can afford.

 

I hope you're right because it would seem strange to me if actually NEEDED to upgrade the processor. I might be able to afford the 840QM (+$300), but the price for a 920 seems almost appalling. (+$840). If it's not necessary, then that's nearly 1 grand in my pocket. I don't plan on doing much mega multitasking, I just wanted to make sure that when playing a graphic intensive game that there will be no bottlenecks in the GPU.
From what you've said, it seems that the 740QM should work well with the 5870 CF.
Your wisdom is much appreciated.

 

It will work very well. In fact I bet the 740QM is quite capable of being OCed to 840QM levels and even possibly to 920XM levels so sure save yourself the money. Perhaps see if you can get 8GB of ram rather than 4GB if it is not too costly or even better for your uses buy a decent SSD. An OCZ vertex 2 would be a much better way to spend your money than on a slightly faster processor.

However these two upgrades are by no means necessary your machine will simply be more future proof and more of a joy to use as the SSD will give you instanteous response times and insanly fast boot and load times.

 

Well I've checked and the SSD you mentioned is not offered by where I was purchasing this build. Link here: iBUYPOWER Computer :: Battalion 101 X8100-U3 Gaming Laptop

I have never looked into SSDs before and quite frankly don't know much about them. I suppose I should do some research.

It would seem at this point I'm leaning towards the 740QM and getting the extra 4g of ram (8gb total) and just leaving it at that. I will strongly consider buying the 840QM instead but I can't say right now if I will be able to afford that extra $300 when it comes time to make the purchase.
But if it's better to stay with the 740QM and grab a SSD then I'll look into it.

EDIT: I've looked into it and now understand that a SSD will increase load times and the like, but won't so much affect game fps or things like that. ...At least that's what I've read. I also read that it's pretty easy to replace a HDD with a SSD later( "later" being when I get to quit using food stamps because of what this laptop will do to my wallet), which may might be the best choice for me.

I'm thinking:
Get the 8gb RAM,
Consider the 840QM
Later upgrade to SSD.

What are your thoughts on this? Please, feel free to tell me if my ideas are stupid. I AM a newbie, after all.

 

In your case the HDD would be the bottleneck. Get an SSD.

 

u know what? if this was about a month or 2 ago, i would've been skeptical about this suggestion. but, now, after ownin my NP8850 for a little while, it's actually a really nice suggestion.

after a little more time with my NP8850 (specs in sig), i feel that a nice SSD will make using my laptop a whole different experience. there are pretty much 3 main categories when u are measuring laptop performance: memory, computing power, graphics power. when comparing my NP8850 to my XPS M1530, the i7-840 & 480M is on a whole different level, performance-wise, when comparing to my old T-8600 CPU and 8600M GT. that only covers the CPU and GPU part. the load times and memory speeds are just the same, so it kinda leaves me yearning for more.

while the SSD might not show any direct improvements to yur actual FPS, i think it'll still make yur gaming experience faster. if not faster, at least better. the snappy response should make yur comp better as a whole. i know i can't wait to get my SSD.

p.s. - i just got the new naruto game on ps3 and it is niiice!

 

Well the only SSDs offered for where I'm buying this laptop are:
Intel-X25 V MLC, (and) M MLC

Kingstson SSDNow V Series MLC

Corsair Force Series F60 MLC, F120 MLC, and the F240 MLC

ADATA S599 MLC.

Are any of these worth purchasing?
Also, if I upgraded to a 840QM processor, would an SSD upgrade still be ideal?

 

Mate it is a fair comparison. Yes the i7 archtecture is better however his is clocked almst 2ghz lower than my Q9550. I dont think you fully understand what bottlenecking is? ur system is as only fast as ur slowest component and in the OP's case the 5870m xfire is a LOT fast than his processor. With the 920-940XM bottlenecking would be very minimal and would not b something worrying about. Just because something has a better architecture doesnt mean that it wont bottleneck. I guarantee u if u start OCing that i7 by 100mhz increments u will notice a healthy increase in performance in synthetics and even gaming in some cases.

SSD's dont increase performance just ur load times for the OS and games, it is pretty dramatical though. Personally I dnt thnk that upgrading any of the i7 mobile series is worth it in terms of price/performance, $300 for something that performs slightly slower than an i5 750 makes it difficult to invest upon. My best advice to u would be to not upgrade the cpu but purchase an ssd if u would like faster load times and work with a more "responsive" computer. As for the model of the SSD the intel x25m is the best imo but the ssd choice is really up to you.

Even though for $2000 you could build a monster computer laptops are more expensive but u gain the portability. In a laptop point of view u r getting one of the best money can buy and it is decent, will play all ur games maxed or near max settings.
Ur X8100 will destroy the GX660 in almost everyway. Its like comparing a 5770 to a 5850 really. Also a 1080p screen for a gcard that has a 5770 performance level is kinda awkward as you will be forced to lower res making ur visual experience blurry. However a 5870m xfire system can easily play ur games at 1080p without a hitch. My old Q9550 and 4870 xfire could play bc2 maxed out and pull off 45-60fps constant no dips, I would get up to a few hundred fps in areas of the map.

 

Thanks for the input everyone.

I think I've decided that I will try to buy the upgrade to a 840QM (If I can afford it) and shop for the SSD and the extra 2-4gb ram elsewhere. I've done some looking and found that I can find the same components offered at iBuyPower other places for much cheaper.
-Plus, the RAM and the SSD are way easy to install for a first timer like myself. It'd probably be a bigger and more confusing project replacing the CPU myself if I bought the 840QM elsewhere.

Once again, thanks for all the advice; it was very enlightening. I'm very excited to finally own this machine and have it's super awesomeness melt my face clean off.

 

hi there
i sure you will love the clevo when you get and almost every component, save the motherboard is upgradeable; and with general ease as compared to your regular notebook.
one thing id like to point out is that afaik, the i7 qm's are not o/c'able on the clevos.
i believe people with the aw and asus gaming laptops are able to o/c their qm's thru the setfsb application but this is not possible with the sagers/clevos thats uses a different pll transistor.
if you planned to o/c your 840qm you may want to do a little more research on this first.
cheers

 

It's not quite a fair comparison, mostly because you're trying to compare a mobile CPU to a desktop CPU. Even back in the last generation, you couldn't really compare a QX9300 to a Q9550. It's also worth noting that with the trends of many modern games, they place a far higher load on the video cards than before, while not increasing the load as much on the CPU. There are many people that find that a single 5870M bottlenecks a i7-720QM (depending on the game).

Again, the i5-750 is a desktop CPU... not really comparable, unless you're actually suggesting he build a desktop, or a ShuttlePC or something like that.

Just as a bit of a check, your 4870 XFire are desktop 4870s, right? I should note that desktop XFire 4870s are about as powerful as XFire 5870Ms, maybe a little more.

 

Exactly my point? 5870m xfire performs slightly lower than the 4870 xfire (Although 4870's clock high) therefore a 740QM would bottleneck? Im comparing based on performance and it is completely valid. What im trying to say is that the OP is going to experience some bottlenecking and there is not much he can do to FULLY prevent it.

Also the 840QM is comparable to the i5 desktop at stock. Even though performance is around 15% lower its still pretty darn good for something that has a 45w tdp.

 

I think I question more your claim that the Q9550 is bottle-necking. Then again, it'll be highly game dependent, so it'll probably vary depending on which games he wishes to play. It might be worth asking if the i7-720/740QM bottlenecks any M17x games over in their forum, as that's probably one of the closest (practical) comparisons we can get. Either that, or ask the question directly in the Sager/Clevo subforum.

Oh, and in theory, unless the game is coded for quad-cores, it probably won't use more than 2, so the i7-720QM should Turbo-boost to 2.4 GHz. In theory.

 

If you could just squeeze a little more out of your budget, you could have this:

See:
Is That A Notebook? MALIBAL's Six-Core, Dual-GPU, Speed Demon : Incomparable Performance?


Sorry, just kidding - but I thought you may want to see what the top mobile computers can achieve compared to their desktop counterparts.

And also compare those mobile systems to the one you're considering too.

Hope this helped?

 

So what do you guys think then..? Does the inevitable bottlenecking in this build make it not worth the 2k? Considering the 5870CF GPU bottlenecking with the 840QM, could I get the same performance in a different system for cheaper?
You guys are all freakin' me out with the whole "You can't do much to stop the bottlenecking" thing.

EDIT: Remember that I'm looking for best possible gaming performance. I WILL be using this laptop for college stuff, but that's mainly just word documents and the like.

PS: Yes, I realized I've said "Bottlenecking" 4 times now in this reply. Is there a synonym for this word, so I can prevent looking like a dumb doofus?

 

Really? Don't worry about it. Yes, it will bottleneck, but unless you're going crazy with your settings, it probably won't be extremely noticeable. As in, you probably will be able to maintain 30+ FPS with little trouble. As I said, your best bet is to ask in the appropriate forums for real, personal experience with these machines, on the games you're interested in playing. I'd rather not deal with the whole crossfire/SLI issue myself, since I've heard that there's a bit of messing about with drivers to make them work properly in some games, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Really, a lot of what we're arguing about probably ends up in the "well, yes, but will you ever really notice?" category. It's like arguing whether a Porsche is faster than a Ferrari. One of them will be, sure, but the difference is not going to be enough to worry about, especially as it'll still likely be more than you need. Remember that plenty of people play games just fine on a single 5870M (or weaker cards!), and you're talking about getting 2 of them.