Cant Decide

Alright so I need some help on deciding on a computer. I'm planning on using both for gaming, as well as using several instances of VMware to making networking and pen-testing labs. Also for monogramming but I think that's not a huge issue here.

It was going to be a Bolt 3 with an i7 6900k, GTX 1080, 32 gigs of DDR4 3000Mhz, ASRock X99 mobo, with 2x SSD 512GB Samsung 850 PRO.



This was going to be my initial choice, but with the GTX 1080's being out of stock, I'm kind of SOL. I originally had a Bolt from DS but it finally gave out, the powersource gave out and damaged the motherboard and ram.

So I was also looking at the Banshee with

Intel Core i7 6700K 4.0GHz, 980m SLI, x2 M.2 SSD - 512GB Samsung 950 PRO (NVM Express), 64GB DDR4 2133MHz.

Having a mobile workstation that can do my pentesting labs at school and study anywhere. As well as gaming where I please.

So I think the major difference here is that with the laptop I will get a bunch more ram which I will like for running my VMwares, but with the desktop I will get the GTX 1080, but I have to wait an unknown amount of time.

I dont know how GTX 1080 would compare against 980m in SLI, keeping in mind that I dont game with anything over a 1080x1920 resolution. What are your guys opinions? Is the combination of the i7 6900k processor with the GTX 1080 going to be worth the wait, or is the Laptop with 64 gigs of ram and those M.2 harddrives in RAID going to be more than enough for gaming too?

Also, does the wireless card in the laptop support packet injection?

Originally posted by DST4ME A desktop cpu is much more powerful then a laptop cpu, there is no comparison there. the 980m is nothing like the 980 either. you need to decide if you want power more or mobility because one will have to get sacrificed for the other. for 1080p a gtx 1080 is overkill.

Yes, I do plan on eventually picking up a 4k monitor, but framerate is more important to me than quality.

I guess my question more to the point would be, how much power would I be sacrificing for the laptop?

I think he is referring to getting close to 60FPS by dropping some of the image quality settings (ie not everything at "Ultra").

I believe you can now select "No thanks" for the GPU and you can go out and purchase you own to add in.

You'd also get better performance with a single 950 Pro than two 850 Pro.

How many simultaneous VM's will you be running? How many threads and how much memory do you want to allocate to each? The guys that I know that do pen-testing use large GPU farms for their brute force attacks; will you be utilizing the GPU for this or do you have something that is more serial and requires the CPU?

The 6900K is sort of an in-between processor now. The premium that DS charges for the i7-6950X over the 6900K is less than what is out in retail (meaning they have a higher premium for the 6900K than the 6950X). So, if you have the need for more cores, the 6950X may be worth your consideration.