Xoticpc or another reseller - considering buing - are there coupons for Sager NP5793?

I want to buy a new gaming laptop and have recently noticed the Sager NP5793. I am a graduate student and want to use the computer for gaming, but also for other entertainment, such as watching movies, and of course for work. The latter is important, because I want to be able to take the machine to meetings or for presenting stuff to my students (as a graduate teaching assistant), which means it probably should not have some fancy design that would be inappropriate for this task. It appears that Sager NP 5793 fits this criterion unlike some other systems that are excellent value for money, but have various extravagant designs.

As a graduate student, however, money is a definite consideration, so I really need to find the best possible price on this machine and with any coupons that might exist for it. With this in mind, I would like to ask if anybody knows of some coupons/codes for xoticpc or even another reseller for the Sager NP5793? Thanks!

 

I should mention that the only coupon I know about that is applicable is the $20 off for Notebookreview members at Dark Smiley Systems. Are there any more?

 

at the moment, the best bang for the buck (~$1500 budget) 17" high-end gaming notebook is the Sager 5793 (Clevo M570RU-U).

The Gateway P FX with the 9800M GTS is near the same in price and performance... but the Clevo gaming notebooks have better build quality and cooling.

If you want to know about any more discounts (student/teacher, military, cash discount, etc..), contact the vendor directly to inquire about them.

 

Actually, at this point. the X305 SLI is the best choice for dual cards,but for single ...I would go for the 5796 also.

 

Yes, the Sager 5793 seems like the one to get.

Just a question on the RAM though: it has 667MHz DDR2 which is fine considering the price, but if the price of 800MHz RAM declines in the future, is it upgradable to that (I mean it does have 800MHz FSB) or is it somehow rooted to 667MHz?

Contacting the vendors directly, well, yes, I suppose I can do that after the weekend - was hoping to place my order before then, but yes, if it means I can get a student discount or something like that, I will wait. On that note, which Sager 5793 vendors are prone to giving such discounts?

 

It wont matter if you get DDR2-800 since it will be downclocked to 667 ... since the chipset is limited to 667.

In any case, it should not matter since the speed of the memory does not really affect gaming or overall usage.

Read the Clevo Guide for the vendors with discounts.

But its best to directly contact the vendor(s) yourself to ask what they have to offer.

 

OK, thanks, I suspected as much.

Good to know

Alright - thanks!

Would you recommend getting the 1920x1200 screen or the cheaper 1680x1050 screen?

 

I believe that the reason why there's no coupon is because you always get the lowest price. You could try to do a price match between retaillers. I think Lynnbay beats all Prostar notebooks.

 

up to your needs/wants really.

I like having the 1920x1200 now, cannot go back.

It gives me a lot of workspace for graphics, documents, etc...

But some people feel that its too small to read... does not bother me though.

the 1680x1050 usually has slightly better contrast and response time.... good for overall usage and gaming.

 

Well, my current 3-year old notebook has 1280x800, so anything will be an upgrade.

Usually I would think that 1680x1050 should be sufficient, but Sager 5793 has a Blu-Ray drive, so it would actually be capable of using the 1920x1200 resolution. Hence my indecision.

Any other advice on the configuration of the laptop? There are many a number of choices to make and for example I didn't know that RAM speed is not so vital to performance. I would suspect the processor is best left at 8100 for value for money, right? Or would you recommend going higher with it? Also, I am wondering about Turbo Memory/Turbo Cache. I have never used it before - does it make a significant difference?

 

I want to point out that bigger resolutions are more demanding for games if you plan on gaming in native resolution...
If this doesn't bother you, then bigger is indeed better

As far as I can tell Turbo Memory has only shown it's use for Vista, not anything else in particular but I could be wrong? So I guess you don't really need it if you want to keep low on your budget.

 

Interesting, and yes, since I do want to keep low on my budget that means no Turbo Memory unless it provides a useful boost in performance.

BTW: Does anybody know about how good/reliable PC Torque is as a reseller/vendor? According to the guide ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264311#northamerica), PC Torque has no representative here and does not have a good BBB rating, but their pricing and discounts are very competitive.

 

PCTorque is a known vendor, they went through a transitional period a while back.

You can contact them if you want to ask any questions and as well as find out how their service/support is like.

As for competitive pricing, pretty much all of the major Clevo vendors price match each other.

So get a good quote and go to a reputable vendor that will match that price.

 

Alright - great!

Any advice on the processor side of things? Is an upgrade from T8100 to T9300 worth $174?

BTW: You guys are great!

 

CPUs are rarely the bottleneck in everyday usage or in gaming.

CPUs are most useful in multi-threaded applications for heavy media conversion, editing, mixing, rendering, etc...

Some of the new games coming out should take advantage of multi-cores.

Its up to you, but if the upgrade option was for around $100 then it would be worth it.

.... since you can get a T8100 for ~$190-$200 and a T9300 for ~$300-$310 on reputable web stores.

 

OK, so it is probably not worth it to upgrade the processor (the upgrade costs $174).

Do you also know about how Turbo Memory 2GB or 4GB helps, since Chimeray was not certain about it?

 

Turbo Memory might be useful if you want to pre-cache programs on them.

But I use XP, turbo memory does nothing.

 

I see. So it only works with Vista. And does it pre-cache programs automatically or do I have to do it manually?

Also (and this is not really related to the Sager computer), is Turbo Memory faster than SSDs and does it work differently, or does it use the same principle?

 

Turbo Memory and User Pinning:
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/turbomemory/index.htm

Turbo Memory is just an expansion of RAM that can allocate memory of programs... while a SSD is a full fledged hard drive that can run full OS'es.

So its not fair to compare the two.

 

Thank you! That answers all my questions!

"You must spread some reputation before giving it to Gophn again!"