Considering an 8170

Hey,
I'm looking at purchasing a gaming laptop as my dv7-1014ca is right at the borderline for being able to play the latest games. Originally looking at Alienware, but they appear to get blown out of the water by the resellers.

I'm looking at
i7 2820qm
485m or the 6970m (Haven't decided)
120GB Intel X25-M 510 Series GEN3 SATA III 6.0GB/sec Solid State Drive
with a 320 gb 7,200 rpm non raid

1.)The dead pixel warranty charge seems a bit, well, steep at anywhere from $60-99. Is it needed? Will they negotiate that into the price?

2.)Will they ship it without having any ram installed? I'd take a look at installing 8 gigs of the Kingston Hyper-x if dropping the ram was worth it.

3.)How negotiable is the price on these computers? Is it possible to knock a couple hundred off?

4.) For someone who doesn't want to have to upgrade it, other than the ram possibly at the start, is there anything else that you would change to lower the cost that would still keep it well future-proofed?

5.) Reading through the forums I have come across several different resellers that are commonly mentioned? Which one(s) have the best reputation? Coming from Canada, the only one I have come across has been Reflexnotebooks; Is it fairly decent or is it worth dealing with an American reseller?

 

Only for gaming you should get the Intel Core i7-2630 and it will suffice. If you have the budget allowance you can get the 2720 for ~10% speed bump.

Dropping a couple hundred dollars off is probably not possible but around a hundred or less is possible when you negotiate with the reseller. If you are a student, you can get student discount from some resellers. Contact all of them and see which one gives you the better price and service.

Most resellers are listed here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-0-faq-reseller-info-read-before-posting.html

Some resellers do ship the laptop out without RAM for a small discount.

GTX485M vs 6970M. This will depend on whether you want the features of Nvidia such as CUDA, PhysX, and 3D. 6970M is only like 5-10% slower than the GTX485M stock vs stock. You will have to decide whether it is worth a few hundred more for the performance and feature for a GTX485M.

 

I have a Momentus XT 500GB in mine and it gives me a noticeable boost in speed compared to my standard 750GB. I also agree that you should go for the i7-2630QM. For gaming, you will not see any significant benefit in spending so much more for the i7 2820QM. I also recommend you go with the 6970M if you are looking to save even more money.

 

By the way... Forgot to mention it. There is a battery life penalty of 30-60mins when you go with the ATI 6970M instead of the Nvidia GTX485M.

From what I heard is that ATI has some glitches with downclocking the GPU when it is not needed. Not sure if manual downclocking will solve the battery loss. Nobody has done any benchmark on that yet.