Consultation before buying

Hello everyone,

I'm relatively new to this forum so please excuse me if this is not the right place to post the following questions.

I'm about to buy a Clevo D900K branded Sager 9750 from powernotebooks.com (they seem to be the cheapest reseller at the moment, correct me if I'm wrong here).

I'm looking to max out the system as far as specs, but can't figure out what is the actual difference between the two most expensive upgrades and their next in line. Namely:

1. What is the difference between AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+ and AMD Athlon64 FX-60 (except for cache size).

2. What is the difference between Nvidia GforceFX 7950 and Quadro 2500M? Can the Quadro do everything that GForce does only better or are there non-overlapping differences?

Couple more questions for those that would happen to know:

3. What brand HDs should I get if I want two 100GB (7200 RPM) for Raid 0. I know there are Seagate and Hitachi models that fit the description and are often sold with those laptops. Is one brand better than the other? Does anyone know of any problems with Raid configurations on those two brands?

4. I'm going with 2GB of memory (2x1GB SODIMMs). What brand SODIMMs should I ask for? Are the generics fine for this system or should I insist on the more expensive Corsair/Kingston chips?

5. Does anyone know of any specific heat/noise problem on those systems/configurations? (i.e. "Don't get the FX-60 with the Hitachi drives cuz this combo makes noise")

I would appreciate any answers I can get, and thank you all in advance.

 

okay go for the geforce 7950, seagate hard drives. What is the price difference between the two processors? and generic memory is fine

 

Welcome to the NBR Forums.

Before you decide to go with the D900K, I would like to know why you would want this model.

I own this model [which has served me well] and built it about exactly 1 year ago, it was the best performing notebook on the market... and I really wanted the high-end videocard, dual Harddrives, and (of course) dual core CPU, which this was the first model in the world to have.

This D900K is about to get phased out, because the technology for it [DDR1, socket 939] is becoming older and older. The new Clevo D900C is the first model of the next gen to replace the current D900T/K.

I would recommend to look at the current:
- Clevo M570U (a.k.a. Sager 5760)
- Clevo D900C (a.k.a. Sager 9260)

These two models will be around longer and would give you a better performance/price ratio. If you really need the multiple Harddrives [since you are considering the D900K], I would recommend the following:
- get the Clevo M570U and get an external 2.5" HDD (its much more cost efficient and less bulky)

If you insist on getting the D900K (Sager 9750), then to answer your questions:
1) The 4800+ is clocked at 2.4ghz, the FX-60 is clocked at 2.6ghz
2) The 7950GTX is faster than the Quadro 2500M, and significantly less in price. The Quadro 2500M is more equivalent to a 7900GTX... but optimized for OpenGL to do rendering on Maya or 3ds.
3) I would personally recommend the Seagate SATA drives. As for the RAID-0, I know you want more performance, but if you ever lose one drive, pretty much ALL of your data will be lost.... not to mention that the RAID-0 only gives a marginal boost in performance. I have RAID-1 in mine and it still performs well, as well as giving me data redundancy.
4) The RAM should all be standard. Kingston, Corsair, Mushkin, Crucial..... they're all good. However, if you want the best, look for the memory with 2.5 latency, which is the fastest for notebooks... i think.
5) The heat problem for this notebook.... none really. The CPU never gets past 50 C degrees because of the huge copper heatsink and dual fans. The videocard is probably the component that gets warmest and needs to be monitored to make sure that it does not overheat. Just remember to use the Clevo Fan Toggle (Fn+F2) to switch the fans to Max Speed, when you are playing games or doing 3D work.

Hope this helps,
-Gophn