First time purchase. [Newbie needs help] Resellers Welcome

Hey guys,

Long story short, I'll be off to college next year after working for about a year. I will be 23 next February and I think its time for me to get a bachelors degree in-spite of having a Diploma (Associate Degree). I am not a big gamer, but would be interested to game during my stay in campus. Oh, and I am from MALAYSIA, just in-case. We do have a local reseller for Sager's laptops, however they're too pricey (I could get one with much better specs including shipping from resellers like Gentechpc & Power Notebooks).

My current desktop is about 5 years old, equipped with a basic ATI card. I use it mainly for watching movies / tv shows. No gaming whatsoever. I do have a Lenovo S10 netbook which i travel with, mainly for watching movies / tv shows and browsing the web.

Now, I would need a laptop with a screen size of 15 inch at minimum, an upgrade from my Lenovo (10 inches). Basically it would be used to complete my assignments (Reading + Writing documents) and to search for information (Browsing) and then, Gaming. Maybe to run multiple OS's through VMWARE for labbing purposes but its not that important since I have a server of my own. I want this laptop to last me for at least 5 years.

I would love to play GTA4 on the highest settings though. Could someone confirm if this could be achieved on the GTX580m or the HD6990? (With fps of 40++)

Now, below are the Specs for the Sager NP8150 from PowerNotebooks which I may need help / argument on choosing. I decided to go with them mainly because of the low shipping cost, their overall price and from what i've seen and read, their remarkable support.

Screen:
Is the $45 Upgrade(95% NTSC Color Gamut) worth it or should i just get the default? I am not interested in the matte version since it would be over my initial budget, and when I am indoors, I would probably be gaming on my 24" Dell Monitor. It would be better if there was a picture / video of comparison for all 3 screens, if its not too much to ask.

Video Card - GPU:
I am leaning towards the ATI 6990M for its price performance ratio but I am also interested in the fact that the GTX580M can be overclocked and that future drivers might "unlock" its true potential, based on what i've been reading. Would the 6990M handle GTA4 on 1080p at the highest setting or would the GTX580M do a better job?

Processor:
I think the i7-2630QM should do just fine. Or would a better processor play a role in driving up the fps in games?

Thermal Compound:
Will stick with the default. I'll probably apply one on my own when I get the laptop.

System Memory:
The standard, 8GB (2x4GB SODIMMS) DDR3/1333 Dual Channel Memory. Could upgrade in the future, however, I believe anything over 8GB would be overkill.

Hard Drive:
The standard, 500GB SATA II.

Optical Drive Bay:
The standard, Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW.
**Could I request to exclude the optical drive, as to save some cost, since most of my media would be obtained digitally. Windows could be installed from a thumb drive and SHOULD I really need to burn a disc, it wouldn't be an issue as I could do it on my desktop, or if I am at college, I could get a friend to do it for me

Wireless Networking:
The standard, Integrated 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN + Bluetooth. I think this would be more than enough for me.

Operating System:
None. I have my own.

Microsoft Office Software:
None. I have my own.

The rest should be pretty standard.

The total cost for the laptop with the HD 6990m GPU inclusive of the 3% cash discount: USD$1517.08 + Shipping (my estimate) USD$155 = USD$1672.08 / RM5,148.67 which is well within my budget. However, I shall cap my budget at RM5,500 which is about USD1786.

Could I get a better system for that amount, or should I upgrade some components?

**I'll probably start college early next year, so I can wait for some time before purchasing the laptop. Perhaps the prices would decrease by then? What do you all think?

Thank you all for reading this rather long and perhaps, boring post.

-Arvin-

 

I will answer to those I can. You can apparently haggle to some degree, so I would let some other re-sellers respond to you...

Processor: Your original assumption is correct, upgrading the processor will not improve FPS. The bottleneck is the GPU not the CPU.

Screen: I have the 95% Matte. It rocks. No idea on the others.

GPU: I have a 6990m. From a value perspective, I think this card has to win. It is currently easier to OC, but I have not bothered (No pt). I play games on max settings. 580m might certainly be the better card, but it wont be by much. I guess it is your call whether the extra bux make it worth it.

Thermal: If you get a 6990m, YOU need to use IC diamond. It drops the laptop like 5c. You can buy some for like 10 bux via amazon and it is pretty easy to install. You could probably talk a re-seller into including this for free. It has to cost them like 1 dollar more max.

Networking Card: Some people say the big foot card helps for online gaming. Like FPS stuff where every ms counts. I would imagine this is a minimal advantage though, as in you probably have to be amazing to really notice a difference.

Second optical bay: Most of them sell the HD optical bay for like 40 bux. I would bet you could talk them into just throwing that thing in bare... Eventually, you could consider buying your own SSD to throw in the main one for the OS, move the 500gb to the optical drive etc... I would highly suggest you get any SSD yourself though because I see decent deals frequently. I use a 120ssd and love it... I will eventually upgrade to a 256 or just get the additional optical drive bay. I have used my CD-ROM exactly once to install SC2. In hindsight, I would not just purchase it from amazon or steam downloads... I doubt i ever use an optical drive again. Maybe an OS? and i could always just swap it back in.

 

To answer some of your comments/questions:

Screen
Depends on your usage. Most people that have upgraded to the 95% matte love them, though the stock is definitely not bad by any stretch. Here's a link for comparison sake:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-between-different-screen-options-photos.html

Video Card - GPU
The 580m is, on average, a few percentage points faster but not significantly. Both should do about the same on GTA IV. Here are links for benchmarks for both the 580m/6990:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M - Notebookcheck.net Tech
AMD Radeon HD 6990M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

I play GTA IV on my 485m and don't have any complaints

Processor
The 2630 is more than sufficient for gaming. You'll be bottlenecked by your GPU long before that. That said, if you plan to run VM's or other CPU intensive applications, the 2760 isn't a bad upgrade option as it's a bit faster and offers some extra features like Vt-d.

Thermal Compound
Applying it yourself is dead simple if you're comfortable with opening the machine up.

System Memory
Ordering it with 2x4GB gives you two empty slots anyway, so those are always available in the future.

Hard Drive
I'd recommend the Hybrid drive if you want a bit of a speed boost but don't have the money for an SSD. It's a pretty decent upgrade and most noticeable on everyday tasks/boot time.

Optical Drive Bay
You can always request no optical drive, or even order a caddy instead which will give you the option of adding an extra HDD down the road.


Prices may not have dropped by next year, but with Ivy Bridge and new videocards coming around then, there's always the possibility of new or upgraded machines.

Hope this helps

 

Looks like most of your questions are answered if we can help with anything please feel free to PM me or Live chat with any of our reps.

 

You should also upgrade your wireless card to at least the Intel 6230. Keep in mind that if you get the Bigfoot cards or the Intel 6300, you will lose Bluetooth functionality.

 

Thank you all for your wonderful replies.

Don't get me wrong, but most of the prices from various resellers are excellent. Before opening this thread, I've done my research for about two days (XoticPC + GentechPC is highly mentioned among gamers of my local forum).

Unfortunately, living half the world away means that I would also have to take the shipping cost into account. I believe some resellers would subsidy the costs at their own expenses and some aren't able to do so, but it wouldn't be their fault. Maybe their components are cheap enough in terms of pricing that they would be making a loss should they subsidy the shipping costs.

seanowns, thank you for the tip on the diamond thermal paste. I did some searching and couldn't find a local seller who is selling it. I decided to ask powernotebook if they could include one in my purchase however Donald from powernotebook mentioned that powernotebook is unable to provide it.

About the network card, I don't think I'll be doing much of online gaming. I am not a hardcore gamer so I can live with some sort of latency. Besides, the Internet connection here in Malaysia is kind of crappy so it would be pointless to get a high end network card.

SSD seems to be a good option, but I shall live without it for now, as it is quite expensive here in Malaysia. I know of various promotions by retail outlets in the USA, however in Malaysia, such promotions are quite rare, if any at all.

MALIBAL #2, I appreciate the work you've put into your post. I actually came across those comparison this morning. But now I have a question. Would there be any difference in screen brightness among the 3 options?

Checked with Donald from powernotebooks, and he mentioned that they're unable to exclude the optical drive. Great to know that you have no complaints on running GTA4 on your gpu. This relieved me.

Also, I've made my conclusion based on what seanowns mentioned. The hd6990 ix clearly a winner in terms of price to performance ratio. Not being a hardcore gamer, i believe it should serve me well.

 

supralover23,

Since our laptops are more or less of the same spec, except for the screen and SSD, I am interested to know if you have GTA4 running on your system? If so, what is the average fps on max settings?

 

Unfortunately DVDRW Optical Drives are not worth much these days. We have several thousand of them that we have removed from upgrades over the years and it is difficult to find buyers for them. I understand about shipping rates, feel free to contact us if we can provide you some shipping quotes. We get pretty good discounts with UPS with our shipping volume.

 

That would be great. Also, the explanation on the optical drives is most appreciated.

Will configure the laptop at your site later today and then I shall request for some shipping quotes.

Update: Sent you the request for the shipping quotes through my order from your site.

 

Hey, I actually haven't gotten it yet! It's supposed to arrive sometime tomorrow, though UPS has it listed as being two hours away.

I'll probably put GTA4 on it at some point, but it's way low on the list of games to install. I can't imagine the 6990m will have any problems whatsoever playing a game from 2008 on max settings, though

 

GTA4 will run as smooth as possible with that card. Just make sure it's updated!

 

Dear gill89

Yes I agree SSD is very expensive in Malaysia. However, the Momentus XT Hybrid drive is the way to go. It boosts up reading speed significantly. It is worth at price/GB compares to real SSD.

The network card upgrade does makes difference in Malaysia even though the internet speed is crappy, especially for those are using UNIFI.

Although you are planning to buy from oversea, we can still provide some information to you
Feel free to use our livechat system.

 

Thank you Alex@XoticPC for the assurance. From everything that I have read, i believe I made the right choice of opting to go with the 6990m.

illegear, thank you very much for your support. Will definitely recommend your services to my local friends should they be interested in Sager laptops but are afraid to deal with non-domestic warranty.

The momentus XT sounds good . I shall look into that.

About the network card upgrade, would it be better than being connected via ethernet? Or would the card just work well compared to other wireless cards but not as well, when connected through ethernet?

 

Wireless is usually a bit slower, usually due to interference. I can setup my laptop next to my router and get the same speeds wireless as I do connected with an ethernet cable. However, once I move my laptop to the basement, where there's a bunch of electronics, the wireless connection drops quite a bit.

 

Dear gill89

I believe ethernet is more suitable for online gaming.

See this:

AnandTech - Bigfoot?s Killer-N 1102 Wireless Networking vs. the World

 

Those stats all seemed good until the NetPerf UDP transmit. There must have been something wrong with their app or the router/switch. UDP has no flow control so you should be able to flood the link at higher than 900mbps. They probably had the MTU either too low or too high so the app or protocol spent more time processing or fragmenting packets instead of forwarding them.

There is alot of latency difference between wired and wireless. Especially if your spectrum is full. Wired is the way to go if you can. But the lowest latency (bigfoot) is good if a cable is not available.