Looking on Advice for D900F -> P270WM Potential Upgrade

Hey guys,

First time poster, long time owner of this series of laptop. Looking for some advice on whether I should upgrade what I currently have to the upcoming next generation of Clevo or not. Sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this in.

For reference, this is what I currently have:

Code:

Clevo D900F Notebook Computer, 17" LCD

Options:  Display: 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) GlassView LCD , 	
Video Card: nVidia GTX 285M 1GB DDR3 , 
CPU: Core i7-960 3.2Ghz 8MB Cache, 4.8GT/s QPI, 4 Cores  , 
Thermal Compound: Manufacturer's Thermal Compound , 	
Memory: 10GB DDR3/1333 Triple Channel mode - 3 DIMMs(2,4,4)  , 	
Primary Hard Drive: 320GB SATA300 7200rpm  , 	
RAID: RAID 5 (For 2 or 3 Hard Drives) , 	
2nd Hard Drive: 320GB SATA300 7200rpm   , 	
3rd Hard Drive: 320GB SATA300 7200rpm   , 	
Optical Drive: 8x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer , 	
Wireless LAN: Intel 6300 802.11ABGN  

And this is what I would *potentially* get:

Code:

Clevo P270WM, 17.3" FHD

Options:  Display: 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080 LED Backlit GlassView LCD , 	
Video Card: nVidia GTX 580M 2GB GDDR5 , 
CPU: Core i7-3930K 3.2Ghz 12MB Cache, 6 Cores   , 
Thermal Compound: Manufacturer's Thermal Compound , 	
Memory: 16GB DDR3/1600Mhz - 4 DIMMs, Kingston HyperX , 	
Primary Hard Drive: Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB MLC SATAIII , 		
2nd Hard Drive: 750GB SATA300 7200rpm  , 	
3rd Hard Drive: 750GB SATA300 7200rpm , 	
Optical Drive: 8x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer , 	
Wireless LAN: Bigfoot Networks Killer Wireless-N 1103 (3x3) 802,11ABGN + Bluetooth

Some background info:

• I take this with me when I travel, and am used to carrying this thing around in my back pack.
  
• I use this for gaming and work, I often use photoshop, flash, aftereffects, and other development tools simultaneously.
  
• I've got a laptop cooler already

Main reasons for switching:

• A new Clevo has just come out, and so if I were to upgrade, seems like a good opportunity
  
• My video card seems like it might be outdated, and more importantly, the drivers are very old, and upgrading to the latest versions causes me to get random blue screens maybe once a day
  
• The D900F doesn't have USB 2 or 3 slots
  
• The P270WM screen seems like it might be better, 3D is an interesting novelty

One of my biggest problems with the Clevo systems is, like I posted above, that the drivers are not kept up to date it feels. Also upgrading to a new video card is impossible (correct me if I'm wrong). I feel like I'll eventually have the same problems with the P270WM, but there isn't much I can do about it.


I made a few configuration changes from my previous machine, and was hoping for some advice on them.

• I switched from using RAID 5 to an SSD + 2 data drives, one because I felt like the SSD would be a performance increase for games/windows use, and two, because I needed more data storage space. I do worry more about HDD failure, but it seems like at least the stuff on the SSD would be pretty safe (more safe than a normal HDD). I also use dropbox to back important things up anyway.
  
• Is Dual GTX 580M's worth it? I'm a hardcore gamer, and I play a lot of games like Skyrim/SC2 (and eventually ME3 + D3). But I also like bang for the buck, so I'm hesitant to upgrade that if the improvements aren't noticeable (especially with the driver issues I mentioned). I'm also worried about needing an additional adaptor for the extra power use (especially if its big, since it would mean I'd need to carry one more thing around with me travelling).
  
• I choose the Bigfoot wireless, but does that really matter? Seems like all of the potential choices for that are about the same.

Finally, I've used this reseller R&J Technology, Clevo Barebone Notebook kits, Laptop and desktop system builder for awhile, and they've done good by me thus far, but if there are any benefits to switching to a different reseller, I'd be willing to hear them.

Thanks in advance for any advice people can give.

 

Hey

I would say that upgrading is probably a good idea in your case.

For driver updates, that really depends on who you buy it from. We maintain our own drivers so we keep things a lot more up to date then Clevo does. For video card upgrades, what your old machines issue was that there was a MXM card change and they stopped making new cards for old MXM standards. MXM 3.0b is whats currently used now, and the P270 and the IVB laptops will use that so there should be newer cards coming.

For how you have the HDD's setup, the SSD+HDD is a good way to be, just remember that the most common failure of a SSD is the controller goes, not the NAND so it goes dead, not a giant read only flash drive, so something to be aware of.

Dual 580m's are quite powerful and in default trim the P270 does NOT need the extra adapter even with the dual 580m's unless you are overclocking things.

The bigfoot adapter is the best wireless card you can get. If you have a dual-band MIMO router, get it, the speed improvements and range is awesome.

For the company to buy it from? You may have started a holy war there Just kidding

 

So, just curious where are the drivers located on your site?

 

Once you have a system then there is a control panel that you can see the drivers for the specific models (Keeps bandwidth usage down)

 

Ah ok, thanks for the info. By the way, I'm not planning on overclocking anything, but I've read:

So is this something I'd have to worry about with a dual 580m setup? I of course would plan to run everything at the absolute max settings, and wouldn't want to worry about random shutdowns if the cards were under load.

 

Their "load" furmark is an artificial bench that over-draws the cards, far more power than any actual game ever would. Combined with prime which was causing full powerload on the CPU, you get a situation that can't really happen unless you do that specific set of "benchmarks". So while gaming even under load it shouldn't be an issue.

 

Prime95 was the main reason for PSU tripping there. When stressed to 100% the CPU can draw extra 100W+ over the "normal" load. Also, Speedy managed to trip his PSU in games like Mafia 2. Not sure if he OC'ed the CPU/GPU though.

But I agree, under normal conditions there should be no problem using a single PSU.

 

Speedy tripped it once he ran some benchmark within the game itself and also when he ran furmark dual GPU w/ Prime 95 - http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-x7200-power-supply-issues-3.html#post6763973

It's when he pushed the single PSU above 340W that the safety feature kicked in.

 

Correct with one notion:

His PSU was tripped at ~343W and during gaming it was ~330W. This not within safe limits, IMHO. Regardless, I'd personally still grab 2 PSU's, just in case

 

Somewhere in one of these threads someone mentioned the safety feature kicks in at roughly 110%. I'm pretty sure that is what Speed was encountering. I don't know if there's any physical danger (fire) at running around 330 watts, but rather that this kind of use reduces the lifetime of the power adapter. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

However, since there's no 550+ watt power adapter in the works (can you imagine?), if anyone's going to be pushing the CPU and has SLI/XFire, the double adapter is definitely the way to go.