SSD or CPU upgrade?

I'm going to buy the new XPS L502x to do some gaming. Should I opt for the i7-2820QM or the 256GB SSD? I'm guessing a quad-core CPU would be better, but I like the idea of my lappy being lighter and much quiter.

 

An SSD is not going to help you get more FPS in gaming, only decrease load times. Also most games are GPU bound so upgrading to faster CPU won't significantly help either..

 

SSD. The CPU on that is going to be always waiting on a HDD.

 

get a quad, upgrade to SSD later.

 

Yup get the CPU. you can always get the ssd later.

 

SSD

Cheers
3Fees

 

The 2720qm is perfectly fine, if thats what ur upgrading from, you wouldn't notice the difference with the 2820qm.

As for SSD, do not buy this thrugh dell.
Get just the cheapest HDD and upgrade by yourself later, it would be far far cheaper.

 

ummm.....the SSD won't make your laptop lighter.....seriously, we're talking 200grams max?

 

Purely for gaming? CPU.

Want to feel the biggest bump in OVERALL computer performance? SSD.

 

This.

Dell overprices their components, so when its something you can easily buy and switch yourself (e.g. ram/HDD) you're best off buying it from somewhere else by itself, significantly cheaper.

 

[Off Topic] JKleiss, that is an AWESOME signature!

[On Topic] Yeah, that's what I hear, Audio. I wasn't expecting the weight to be that much different, but it'd be really nice to not have the whirring sound of the HDD.

 

If there's an option that you can choose the 2720QM instead (Which is cheaper), you might get away with the SSD as well.

Keep in mind that the difference between 2720QM and 2820QM is negligible (even in cpu intensive applications).

But overall, if it was me, I'd opt for the CPU first, then the SSD later on.

contemporary HDD's don't really produce any noticeable noise.
At least I can tell you I barely noticed laptop hdd's producing whirring sounds of any kind.

 

Every post in this thread is basically telling you one of two options:

(1) Get the CPU upgrade first, and then get the SSD later; or
(2) Skip the CPU upgrade, and then get the SSD now

Everyone agrees that SSD is the way to go. The only question you need to ask yourself is whether you have the budget to buy only one of those two components, or whether you can afford them both.

If you do choose to get the SSD now, rather than later, do what was suggested - buy the cheapest storage option from Dell, and buy an SSD by yourself aftermarket. The sweet spot for price/capacity on SSD's are the 120GB models for ~$200, so figure that you'll be spending about that much on an aftermarket SSD.

 

I smell "close me" all over this thread.

 

Get the 2720QM, the 2820QM is a waste of money IMHO. Little to no improvement for a significant price bump. For the price increase you can put that towards a nice SSD.

 

^^^ i was thinking of saying the same thing yesterday. but he said close it and i saw the 2820 in his sig already...

oooooh well. double the price for a mere 100mhz, and 1mb of cache maybe he'll be able to get a cheap ssd soon since a bunch of new ones are coming out

 

Yeah, the CPU is one thing I'm just going to get from Alienware. I'll go with a couple Intel SSD's and Kingston's KHX1600C9S3K2/8GX.