Questions about P150EM build

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking around this forum for a while and I finally decided to make an account.

I'm going to buy a P150EM for college and I had a few questions about my build.

1. How much of a speed difference does a SATA III ssd have over an mSATA ssd? I'm thinking of getting one of those as a boot drive and an hdd as a secondary drive but I don't know if I want to sacrifice the odd.

2. Is it worth it to get the upgrade to the intel 6300 lan card or should I just stick to the stock card?

3. For those who have experience with both, is it worth it to get the 95% gamut screen over the stock screen?

4. Is it likely for the 680m and 660m to be released by august? If not, would the performance increase from a 7970 be worth losing optimus from 675m?

5. I'm thinking of purchasing from either xoticpc or malibal. Which would you recommend?

Sorry for the long post and thanks to anyone that answers my questions.

 

Answers to all of these questions can be found very easily.

 

1. On paper, a lot. The SATA III SSD's can be in excess of 500Mb/s read and write speeds. Current mSATA drives are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150Mb/s read and 70Mb/s write for Intel drives, and 200/200 for other brands. How much this actually translates to real world usage is up for debate depending on what exactly you plan to do with them. Both options are much faster than any HDD would be.

2. The 6300 offers a big boost in overall range, since it has 3x3 send/receive antennas versus the 1x1 configuration on the stock model. Even without a router that can take advantage of the 450Mb/s throughput, it benefits in overall range. The Bigfoot cards on the other hand won't offer the same range, but they have much better performance numbers.

3. Depends, check this thread for comparisons:

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

I would highly recommend the upgraded screen if you find that color reproduction is important to you, or if you just want something to make everything much more vivid (plus better brightness and viewing angles).

4. Hard to say on release dates, but the general rule of thumb is if you don't need a laptop right away, you'll benefit from waiting for something you want. The 7970m is going to be a huge jump from the 675m based on current benchmarks but without graphics switching, it can easily cut battery life in half. There may or may not be Enduro graphics switching, but that has yet to be confirmed either way. If you want to be portable, 2-3 hours of battery life versus 4-6 could be a big deal. For college, I'd say you might want to look into longer battery life because you can't always count on having an outlet in class.

5. Forum rules limit me from addressing this, so others will have to chime in either way.

 

So you recommend the 6300 over bigfoot? How is gaming with the 6300, do the Killer-N cards have superior results?

I'm curious as I want range but excellent gaming compatibility

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

 

I would also like to know the answer to this question. Until reading this thread, I was under the impression that both the Intel and Bigfoot cards with 3rd antennas had the same operating range, but the Bigfoot was designed more for gaming and had faster transfer speeds. It seems this is not the case and Intel is in fact longer ranged?

But thanks, just reiterating Roken's question.

 

I recommend the 6300 for range reasons, but yes Bigfoot currently has the lead in latency/throughput numbers. Here's a review that's been out for a while but has a good breakdown:

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

The 6300 will work fine for gaming, you just won't have the absolute lowest latency that the Bigfoot will offer. I'd still recommend the 6300 though because it doesn't rely on the QoS proprietary software and it's a very capable card in its own right.

 

Thanks a lot for the fast replies.

I noticed that xoticpc allows you to exchange the default ram (8GB 1600Hz) with 8GB 1333Hz ram. Malibal doesn't have this option on their website but would it be possible to order a laptop with this configuration from them? From what I heard the performance increase from 1333Hz to 1600Hz is negligible and this drops the price by $50.

 

Contact us directly and we'll be happy to see what we can do for you

 

Thanks for all the help Anthony.

I won't be making my purchase until august but I'll definitely keep that in mind when I do.

 

I believe the bigfoot 1103 is also a 3x3 card (Correct me if I'm wrong here though.)

 

That is correct. The 1102 is a 2x2 and the newer 1103 is a 3x3.