Gaming Laptop help Pliz

Looking at the following Specs, First does everything look good or should i change something’s around.

Second, Is it worth 300 more to upgrade the nVidia GeForce GTX 675M 2,048MB for the HD 7970M and if it is worth it should i Just pay the few hundred more for the GTX 680? Would like the laptop to be able to play current and future games for next 3 years at least. I’m a pilot and travel a lot and want to keep gaming on the road. Thanks in advance for your any input!



Sager NP9170 - Gaming Laptop (Clevo P170EM)
- FREE!! Continental (U.S. Lower 48 - UPS Ground Only) Ground Shipping on ALL Sager Laptops (Enter Coupon Code: "SAGERFREESHIP" during order process)
- SAGER Autumn Sale!!! - $100 OFF When you spend $1350* or more! (*excludes non-sager parts, accessories, shipping, & taxes) - [NP9150, NP9170, & NP9370 Only]
- 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen (1920x1080) (SKU - S1R506)
- Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- NO Professional Monitor Color Calibration
- Sager - 3rd Generation Intel® Ivy Bridge Core™ i7-3740QM (2.7GHz - 3.7GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache, 45W Max TDP) (SKU - S2R202)
- - IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- FREE - nVidia GeForce GTX 675M 2,048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 with Optimus™ Technology [User Upgradeable] - ($100 Value: FREE!) (SKU – S5R520)
- No Copper Cooling Upgrade
- No Video Adapter
- No External Mobile Display
- 8GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (SKU - S4S423P)
- Sager Branding
- Standard Finish
- 128GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD ( Storage Drive )
- 750gb 7200rpm (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache) (SKU - S5R306)
- None Standard
- HDD Raid Settings - OFF
- Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (When selecting a Hard Drive in the Optical Bay, No Optical Drive is Included) (SKU - S7R455)
- No Extra Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy
- No Back Up Hard Drive
- NO External USB Optical Drive
- Internal 9-in-1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD/Mini SD/SDHC/SDXC/MS/MS Pro/MS Duo)
- No Back Up Software
- Bluetooth Included *With select wireless cards only* (See “Wireless Network” Section Below)
- Sager - Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 + Bluetooth 4.0 (Dual Band) (SKU – S8R008)

 

At least for the card, go for the 680M if you have the cash. If you are short on cash, get the 3610QM instead and use the money you saved to get the 680M.

 

Or if you have a little time - give it another week and see what goes on with the AMD hotfix coming out. That should really tell you where you can go. Personally I also look at it as we're half way between last launch and next launch for the newest product. If the hotfix works as shown in reviews - I'd rather get the 7970m - and save the extra cash to go towards upgrading (and using the money from sales of the 7970m) in 6 months to the newest GPU from amd or nvidia!

 

With the 7970 fix coming soon, I'd also recommend waiting for that if you were strapped on the budget. You can definitely do as Montage suggested. Its unlikely you'll need the added power of the 3740 for your gaming. You can even combine the two suggestions and save more.

 

Hey thanks for all your guys input! Ill get the 3610QM and Ill wait to see if the new patch fixes anything. Does everything else look solid?

 

Yup! Looks good, and you did well by chosing Xotic, they've got great service. I'm really happy with my NP9150 with 7070m. I'll be even happier once the hotfix comes to fix the gpu utilization issues with the couple games in my collection that suffer from it

 

Definitely avoid 7970m until hot fix is produced... I've made the mistake of going with 7970m and have regretted it since - we've been waiting for this fix for over half a year now and we don't know how well it will work yet. I would probably skip 7970m altogether as 680m is a lot faster, runs cooler, offers much better battery life and over clocks far higher. You also get regular driver updates and fixes to issues, which AMD seem to be pretty bad at.
3610qm with 680m will give you better performance in games than 3840qm with 7970m.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

This is misleading and not true. Yes, it runs a bit cooler and consumes average 15 Watts less when under load.
But....its definetely not faster.
And its definetely 1.5x times more expensive.

Let me explain something to the original poster.
Nvidia produces overall very good drivers for their chips, supports always the latest games and has some extra goodies of Physix support and CUDA computation for some video encoding programs.
But you pay the ultimate price, in cash. They always price their cards at 2x times more than their competitor, AMD. Sometimes its 3x as expensive.
Bear in mind - Nvidia hasn't been perfect (as noone is). They had some bad drivers years ago, which caused mass video card failures. And they had some nasty videocard series, like the 8000 and 9000 series, which have a sky-high failure rate from normal usage. This forum is full of people, who have had their card die on them, then they underwent the nightmare of having to bake it, try to repair it or shell out another 200-500$ for a new card.

AMD, previously ATI Technologies (which was acquired by AMD), is the main competitor of Nvidia. They have had some hits and misses in their time as well, more in terms of driver support.
But from their 5000 series of videocards to this day, they are definetely stepping up their game. 5000 series, then 6000 series and now 7000 series, I would say are the most stable and best-performing cards they ever released.
As a proud owner of an 6990m, I can say that for the price, you are getting the best hardware you can get.
My 6990m has cost me less than a gtx570m, beating its performance by 1.5x times and it beat the gtx580m in many games too. And yes, gtx580m was equally as overpriced as the new gtx680m now.
Right now, a new AMD 7970m costs 200$ less than a gtx680 and features MORE bandwidth, despite that both cards are 256bit.
Drivers may be inferior to Nvidia, but the AMD flagship still beats the bajeezus out of Nvidia in professional applications and many games as well.
Right now AMD's biggest problem is Enduro. They still haven't fixed the utilization issues with the switchable graphics. If they fix it in a few weeks, then dont hesitate and get a AMD card. This is my recommendation.

From my perspective, there is something worth mentioning about Nvidia's salesman policy (if you are not interested in this, ignore it).
They LOVE to sell rebranded GPU's even long after AMD has launched their top-of-the-line cards.
Many people fall for it and have bought the gtx675m, thinking its something new, but its really a rebranded gtx580m. Thats their own problem for now knowing, but the re-brand is still a sneaky way to sell off their warehouses full of old chips.
Others couldnt wait for gtx680m and bought gtx675m in hopes of upgrading. Well, the thing is, you never want to be in the position of having to upgrade a laptop. Ever. Its expensive as HELL, its a hassle, you end up with two cards and selling a gtx675m is hard (since people know its old-generation gtx580m). So, never buy a laptop with a GPU upgrade in mind! Never! Either shell out the cash for the best option right now, or save the cash and wait 'till you have enough. RAM and hard drives are always easy to replace (hell, even WiFi cards are easy). GPU and CPU should be the foremost while configuring.
So, about Nvidia's policy - they sold off their old stuff to unwary (and impatient) customers and launched the gtx680m 2-3 months after AMD. And guess what - it turns out, the gtx680m is an even match with AMD 7970m. Instead of offering better performance by a long shot, they make their cards to match the competition and not an ounce more. And yet, they advertize it as the best in the world. Talk about misleading and untrue marketing. And they pumped up the V-RAM to 4GB (thats the maximum allowed for 256-bit memory bus) and advertize this as "better". In truth, 2GB of V-Ram will be more than enough before your GPU simply loses its strenght against the new games in 2-3 years.

So, to wrap it up - Im displeased with Nvidia's marketing and advertizing, selling old hardware from last year, giving misleading names like gtx670m andgtx675m in hopes of fooling their own customers, not offering much better performance, deliberately bottlenecking their cards to match the competition, yet advertizing false data that their card is "more powerful", using tricks like increased V-Ram to sell better (gtx570m with 1.5gb and 3.0gb if you guys remember) and finally - demanding HUGE cash for their stuff. And they still lose at many real performance tests against AMD's flagship.

But thats just my take on things. I might be wrong about some of what I wrote. This is just my opinion. Take it for what it is.
I hope I helped you with this information, my advice would be to wait a week or two. As a customer, the BEST thing you can do, is wait when you are advised to. In this forum, watch out for the guys with more reputation points, they ALWAYS give good advice. So, like I said, wait a little bit, maybe AMD can actually pull this off and fix their Enduro problems with a new driver and if they do - jump on it!!! The best performance for your money - thats what you will be getting!

(pfew, wall of text finished...that took some 30mins to write)

 

even with a 7970m hotfix 680m was on average 22% faster at stock on AnanTech test, - without hotfix its not even a contest.If you overclock both cards the gap widens even further.

 

The 680M is a safe bet. You know what you get, and that is why I would recommend it if you have to buy now. Yes, the AMD's Enduro fix won't bring the 7970M up to the 680M's level, but future driver updates might. I think AMD stated that the current drivers aren't performance optimized for the 7000M series, and now that we have a unified driver set, things might improve faster. And I'm also pretty sure the 7970M will run all the games 3 years from now with decent graphics settings.

I would get the 680M if I were buying now, but yeah, you will save a lot of money going with the 7970M (which I've been rather happy with).

 

More like 15% on average.

But lets not make this a 7970M vs 680M thread.

OP I would go for the 7970M, unless you for some reason want the 675M.

 

I'm happy to recommend the 7970. It's significantly cheaper with similar performance to the 680m. I've been happy with mine, though there are two games in my collection (saint's row the third and batman ac) that suffer pretty badly from enduro and only average 30 fps or so. Every other game I've played (Battlefield 3, Metro 2033, The Witcher, Crysis Warhead, bunch more) run great. The enduro fix has already been reviewed and should be out soon. It will be nice to be able to get the full potential out of the card. Anyway, good luck on your purchase!

 

at 1080p 680m was on average 22% faster according to AT.

Agreed, I just want to pass information that I wish I was given at the time when I chose to buy 7970m myself. If you reduce 3740qm to 3610qm then going up to 680m is only about $100, or about 5% of total price of your laptop.

 

If price is the determining factor here then the 7970m + 3610 combo win hands downs. That being said the 680 is technically the better card and definitely the better choice if money is not an option, but it's 160% the cost of the 7970 so that's something to keep in mind.

Overall I have been quite satisfied with mine, it has handily max'd every game I've thrown at it without issue which include Guild Wars 2, Rift, Diablo 3, Saints Row 3, and Crysis 2.

 

Then why not remove those sad and angry faces from your sig

 

that kind of depends on how much time you want to spend with your new laptop checking NBR forums for enduro fix ;P... though seriously, until that fix is out and has been thoroughly tested by users on this board I would not buy 7970m. $300 is a lot cheaper than spending over half a year online waiting for issues to be resolved.

I have SR3 and Crysis 2 (DX11) and they both run pretty poorly. I can max them out yes, but sub 30fps dips are too distracting.

 

Thank you all for all the Good Info! Its always good to get a debate going because everyone has their reasons why they think one product is better than the other! I am going to wait till I hear about the Enduro Fix. I would like to save money where I can but willing to put the cash up for a quality product if need be.