Need Advice on 8150 hardware

Alright so I'm getting close to ordering my 8150 from Malibal hopefully in a few weeks or so, and if anyone could help me out on a few things. This is my first laptop ever but i feel confident in the research I have done. So anyway here is what i plan on getting.

1. Color Gamut Matte Display, i heard it was really worth the $95 and from videos the screen looks awesome!

2. Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM or Intel® Core™ i7-2720QM I'm a bit stuck on this one i heard it's not worth getting the 2720 over the 2630? Will i get better performance in games? Will the 2630 last me 4-5 years? Will the 2720 use more power consumption then the 2630QM?

3. ATI 6990, i was planning on getting the 6970 but this is now on pre-order at Malibal and certainly seems worth the extra money.

4. 80GB Intel® X25-M SATA II 3Gb/s SSD2 Drive or 120GB Intel® (510) SATA III 6Gb/s SSD2 Drive I've heard SSD were really worth the money and speed up your computer a lot so I really want one but is there a difference between these to besides the size? the 120GB is tough on my budget and 80B is plenty for me. I don't really feel comfortable installing my own SSD either because this is my first laptop also. So i guess what I'm asking is the 120GB faster then the 80GB?

5. Windows 7 installed for me.

6. IC Diamond 7 Thermal Compound i want my Laptop to run cool.

My Budget is about $1800ish max maybe a tad more if really needed.

My biggest concerns at the moment are Heat, battery life and weight.
I'm unsure of how hot the 6990 will run and how much energy it will consume sense it not out yet? Do you think I'll still be able to get 3+ hours browsing the web with low brightness even with the 6990? Also lastly the weight of 6.83 lbs seems fairly light for a gaming laptop? I'm hoping it will still be fairly portable still?

Thanks for all the help I appreciate it!

 

the screen is really awesome, but im not sure if the difference is worth $95. i got it because i needed a matte screen, but if you prefer the glossy, then its not really worth $95, as it would be better spent on the graphics card, or an ssd.

you wont see performance gains for gaming by upgrading to the 2720qm, but it helps in other tasks, like video transcoding.

as far as the ssds, the 120gb is sataIII and will be significantly faster than the sataII 80gb ssd.

go for the 6990m, you will be more happy at the end of your laptops life.

ask about discounts that malibal has, through the pm.

in conclusion the main things that you want to upgrade are the ssd and the graphics because they are the bottlenecks right now, everything else is more than sufficient.

 

Well, what's the difference between the the screens and is it noticeable? what makes the matte screen so much better?

 

The IC Diamond won't make that big of a difference... just about 3-5 degrees (C) down. Of course, when you're overclocking, every degree matters.

 

I'd like to second the OP's question regarding heat and the 6990. I really dislike excessive heat and noise from my machines.

 

well a matte screen has a flat satin finish, meaning its not reflective, and a glossy screen is shiny, like a car window. look up on google "difference between matte and glossy". supposedly glossy has better color, but to me its not worth having reflections on my screen.

and about the heat, the 6990m is 100w tdp, and the 6970m is 75-100w tdp, so basically the 6990m will produce only slightly more heat than the 6970m, because the 6990m will have a heatsink more suited to its tdp.

 

So do you think it would be better to get the 120GB SSD over the upgraded screen? Also do you have any info on the portability/weight of the 8150?

 

its slimmer on the front portion, and its actually quite light, in comparison to an m15x(9lb). and its almost the same weight as my d820, even though this is slightly bigger. in fact the m14x weighs 6.45lb.

 

I'm pretty much in the same boat as the op.

I wonder why Sager doesn't offer the same default matte screen as the 8130? I thought people in this forum have said they have the same chassis. It's one of those deciding factors between the 8130 and 8150 for me, because I can put that $95 into upgrading to an SSD.

The other thing is the 6990. I will wait till people get their 6990 and use it for a bit before I pull the trigger. I don't want to be like some of those 6970 owners where they have reported some problems with their 6970.

 

i just got my laptop with basically the same specs. i got i7 2720, 580m, 6gb of 1600mhz ram, 500gb, with upgraded screen. i got the 2720 so i could get the faster ram, the screen is amazing u wont be disappointed, the 69990m and 580 compare in performance. i didnt get a ssd because of how expensive they are. your specs wont disappoint, i didnt think games could look so good on a laptop.

 

Do you think I'll be fine with the i7 2630QM? I feel like a SSD would be a bigger performance gain then the 2720 for me at least. I don't plan on getting the 1600mhz ram either its not within my budget. I mean the most demanding thing for my processor will be playing games and having multiple tabs/few programs opened at once . So i think the 2630 should be more then plenty for my needs?

 

1. DEFINITELY get the upgraded screen... it's BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL!
2. 200MHz boost for $160 is a good value, but between CPU upgrade and SSD... GET THE SSD!!!
3. Get the 6990M unless you need CUDA
4. Get the 120GB if you can afford it. Otherwise, the Seagate Hybrid drive is a cheaper alternative. In the future, you could get an SSD for your primary drive and move the Hybrid drive to the optical bay
5. If you are not computer savvy, get the OS installed
6. If you are not computer savvy, get the IC Diamond installed too

Think about the Intel-6300 wireless card if you're a student. The upgraded antennas could help you reach distant WiFi Access Points on campus.

I don't think anyone has posted the 6990M thermals yet so if this is a deal breaker, you might need to wait for a formal review.
On battery life, I expect the higher 6990M clocks will pull more battery but here's the Anandtech scores for you:

The lowest brightness on my NP8150 is very readable. In fact, in a dark room, I wish it wasn't so bright!
6lbs is a breeze vs my old 8.8lb Asus. Good choice for a student. I carry 2 laptops in my Wenger Ibex backpack without any problems.
I have not seen any reliable comparisons between 1333 vs. 1600 RAM - put your money in an SSD

 

Well I'm assuming the ATI 6990 will run close to how the 6970 ran? Did the 6970 run hot? Also i heard the 485/580 draw about the same power as the 6990 so if people with the nvidia cards get 3+ hours shouldn't I be able to with the 6990 hopefully? The screen and the SSD are killing my Budget at the moment, I might only be able to get one of them. Or I could get the Matte screen and the 80GB SSD but if its that big of a performance drop from the 120GB SSD it might not be worth it?

 

Going with only 80GB SSD is really not enough.. You are going to be using half of that for just general apps and the Operating System. That leaves 40GB for games, etc. You are only going to fit about 2-3 games in there. I suggest getting a larger SSD or going for a small SSD and upgrading to a second harddrive.

 

If I had to choose an upgrade between the screen and the SSD, I would get the screen upgrade and upgrade the SSD myself later on. The screen upgrade is much much harder to do on your own than a SSD upgrade, and it's also more expensive to upgrade the screen down the road. But that's just my choice. I would stick with a normal harddrive, and upgrade to a 120 GB SSD when you have enough money or when they drop down in price along with more reliability.

 

3 hours is the MAX battery life you will be getting. Expect around 2-2.5

 

QZone is correct - think of it in terms of what you can EASILY upgrade later... a future GPU upgrade will be very expensive (assuming the next-Gen even uses the MXM 3.0 standard), and an LCD upgrade is not only expensive but very risky for an inexperienced technician.

Or you could save $95 and stick with the stock screen if you're not planning on doing any serious photo editing - if you haven't SEEN the upgraded screen, how do you know what you're missing???

The SSD performance is like CRACK. Once you have one, you cant live without it. In 6 months, the SATA3 SSD's will be very affordable, and you can evaluate how much you need the optical drive so you can select a large SSD or dual HDD config (I have dual HDDs, and USB DVD).

 

If it were me... I would get the 95% Color screen, 6990M and 500GB Hybrid drive. Ditch the IC Diamond paste (you can do that for $7 later as the paste degrades): $1800

SOLD!

 

Well i think I'll be able to fit the 120GB SSD and the Matte screen into my budget. It'll cost almost exactly $2000 but i feel like it'll be really worth the extra money. Also how reliable our SSD's? I need this Laptop to last me 4-5 years I know that it'll probably only play games well for 3 years at best but I'll still need it for college and basic internet tasks. I take very good care of my stuff, so will it Hold up for 4-5 years though?

 

I believe if you take good care of your laptop it can last quite a long time. The SSD is a different story. I don't own an SSD right now so I can't say for sure, but have read quite a lot of stories about the unreliability and problems of SSD. Though most have 3 yrs warranty, so if there are any problem it should be covered (hardware not data). That's why a lot of people use SSD as a boot and program drive and have a mechanical drive for data. You can google the SSD you want and go from there, but be warned, a lot of people say once you go SSD you will have a hard time going back to the traditional harddrives , because you will get addicted to the super fast speed of the SSD.

 

Stick with the Intel SSD for high reliability at 1.2 million hours MTBF (mean time between failure) and 1500G of shock resistance. If 200 YEARS of service time and enough G's to turn you into goo aren't good enough, I don't know what is

 

Also i know the 6990 is not out yet but how is the performance going to be. I was planning on getting a 6970 so i didn't really look into the 6990 so much but I've been seeing anywhere from close to the 485M to the 580M or even better then the 580M? So where exactly is the 6990's performance?

 

Notebookcheck is your friend, and Google the 6990M press release

 

Bartman: MTBF is a completely artificial and useless determination of a drive's lifespan, given the issues with the sandforce controller and a thread I saw earlier regarding defective Intel SSD's I would say 5 years would be pushing it, no less 200. Granted the warranty on these drives is decent.

Also, although the memory itself may stand a 1500G shock, it is well known that the controllers are known to fail from shock. I don't know how they possibly tested a 1500G shock in a lab save shooting it out of a gun into a brick wall, but I highly doubt either of these statistics are even close to reliable.

 

1500g is a load of bull if that's the actual statistic.

That's about 15000 m/s^2. A bullet travels at ~350 m/s. That's a bullet at full speed stopping in less than an inch distance. This is quite literally launching the drive into a brick wall.

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, it's believable. Assume velocity ~10 m/s (about 20 mph), that would make stopping distance ~0.025 inches. Which is concrete essentially. Basically, it'd survive a fall from about 10-20 feet above ground.

 

I'm a college student, does the 6300 really make a huge difference over the. 6230 in term of range? I just don't know if I will ever use blue tooth but it doesn't hurt to have it.

Which one should I choose?