New Laptop

I am in the market to upgrade the x7200 laptop that I got a few years ago. It has an 3.2GHZ i7-970 with 12MB Cache, 6 cores and 24GB of memory. What is today's best and fastest? My needs are to have as much memory as possible and as large a L@ cache as possible. Don't care too much about the graphics card as I am not a gamer.

Added notes:

1. I don't really care about weight/portability.
2. I am really looking for the fastest laptop on the planet.
3. 17" Screen

 

Probably the p770m. Or 8278.

 

I found the P770ZM but who makes the 8278.

Also, I am not tied to a Clevo base system. MSI, Asus, etc. would be ok.

 

Agreed about the P770ZM (Sager NP9772). The Desktop CPU makes it the fastest available, it can have 32GB of RAM and has a x4 m.2 PCIe slot for the currently fastest available single drive set up.

 

same company. my bad though. clevo name is p770zm. sager name is 9772. for the 8278, clevo name is p170sm-a i believe and sager name is 8278.

the most powerful cpu comes in the p770zm, a desktop cpu and some resellers offer more options than others, but the best bet is 4790 or 4790k. the p170sm-a comes with a mobile chip of course. it has comparable power, it's just a mobile chip with much lower tdp and of course clocked appropriately for a mobile system. it sucks, the p170sm-a recently had the upgraded 4810mq for $35, but the price has steadily risen and is up to $175 for the upgrade, depending who you get it from. the extra 300mhz base clock at an extra $35 was a steal but i was sitting on the fence for maxwell, which ended up being well worth the wait.

you also have the option of Clevo P377SM-A, aka sager np9377 with mobile chip and sli, but you said you're not interested gpu power. i think you're best bet is to look for p770/p771zm with a nvidia 965m as an option which will save you a few bucks, some battery life and still have a little ooomph. i don't know if you're usa based or europe or other, but i would weigh your options between the previously mentioned two laptops. you can get up to a 4940mq in the 8278, but that is almost $900 upgrade. the main advantage of the 8278 is more battery life, though the 4940mq runs much hotter than a base 4710mq. the best bang for the buck is the p770zm with the desktop cpu options. the 4790k is top dog atm, and if you opt to compare the upgraded cpu options, the p770zm will come in way below the 8278 and be much more powerful, minus less battery life because optimus is disabled. all the mobile chips and desktop chips are good options, even if you pick something lower, so i think battery life and price will be your second priority after decding what you really need.

 

There is the odd p570wm (out of sager production but supplied by clevo to some resellers) around which can take a 4960x and 32GB of ram in quad channel.

 

It appears that most builders base their model on the P770ZM, what is the difference between the 770 and 771?

The P570 is what I have been looking for as I like the 12M/15M cache. There are a few that do use those type of processors M-Tech and Eurocom. I want fast but I do have limits.

 

The difference is chrome accents on the exhaust vents.

 

P570WM is your only choice. If you can't pay for that, the P770ZM, the P17xSM-A (with 4910MQ or 4930MX CPU) or the P37xSM-A (also with 4910MQ or 4930MX CPU) are your best bets. They all have the same L2 and L3 caches, assuming i7 4790K for the P770ZM and the listed CPUs for SM-A models. But P570WM is still the best bet; even if you need to take the 4930K to save a solid $500 USD on the cost of the machine. The good thing is if you get a cheap 4930K or 4960X CPU, you could install it yourself on the P570WM OR I suggest trying to contact eurocom and asking them to use your CPU (which you'd probably mail to them) in your machine, and they might subtract the CPU cost from your order.

That's the only thing I can think of.