Looking to Buy New Laptop, Would Love Advice!Post Date: 2012-01-03 |
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nst 
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Joined: 03 Jan 2012 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2 |
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 Topic: Looking to Buy New Laptop, Would Love Advice!Posted: 03 Jan 2012 at 2:49pm |
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Dear DS and DS Community, Having spent a couple of days researching a new computer purchase, I came across Digital Storm and am very impressed with the products put out by this company. I am looking to purchase a new laptop and was wondering if I could please get some advice.
1. Your Budget: Under $2,000, but I'm primarily looking for a laptop that suits my needs/expectations (explained further below) and I do not want to purchase power/capacity that I will not use. (Ideally, ~$1,500.) 2. Expectations: I expect a well-built, comfortable laptop that will seamlessly run games like World of Warcraft, SC2, Civ 5, SWOTR at high to ultra settings and Rift at medium to high settings. 3. Usage: I'm ultimately looking for a machine that will run RPGs/RTS/turn-based strategy games well. I will not be using the laptop for high graphics intensive games such as BF3 or Crysis 2. The laptop will be on a docking station most of the time (and is in a way a desktop replacement - though in functionality, not power), but I will take it out of the docking station several times a week. I will have one monitor plugged into the laptop when it is docked. 4. Special Needs: None. At the moment, I'm looking at xm15 Level 2 laptop with the specs listed below. However, I have several questions, the first one being of the most importance. 1/ Given my expectations/usage described above is NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M 2GB with NVIDIA Optimus Technology sufficient or do I really need to move to GTX 560M? 2/ How much of a difference does the upgraded thermal compound make? 3/ Is Intel Ultimate-N 6300 Wireless LAN Module worth the extra $35? Chassis Model: Digital Storm xm15 Laptop (Model: 5165) Thank you all in advance for your feedback and advice. Happy New Year! Nik Edited by nst - 03 Jan 2012 at 6:22pm |
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covfam
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Joined: 07 Dec 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 32 |
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Posted: 03 Jan 2012 at 6:04pm |
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1/ Given my expectations/usage described below is NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M 2GB with NVIDIA Optimus Technology sufficient or do I really need to move to GTX 560M?From what ive read on notebook review.com (wich seems to be the largest collection of laptop users and most of the various laptop sellers/manufacturers have a presence there. the gtx 560m is about 25% faster than the gt 555m and then the gtx 570m (not sold here) another 20% faster than the 560M then the gtx580m is another 30% faster than the gtx570. as an alternative there is the Amd 6990 option here thats about 5% slower than Nividias top video card the GTX580m and its $300 cheaper than the GTX580m. As for the wireless lan card. from everywhere ive read the intel cards are lightyears better than onboard wifi/lan. the onboard lans in most everyones laptops usually have very high latency and slow speeds.Using the x15 (you dont need optimus if your gonna be docked most of the time) and using all the parts you picked out above i configured the same laptop as you did but with the AMD 6990 (roughly 45% faster than the 560mand 65% faster than the gt555m) for $1715. I know you say your not a high end gamer but you really will get much more performance and longgevity with the $148 video card upgrade in your RPG and RTS games and star wars the old republic. Go to notebookcheck.com and compare they keep a database on every GPU and CPU in the notebook world as well as show the actual FPS of most of the major games in the last 5 years that each video card can do... they even compare them to the most popular desktop cards. So while $1715 is not your ideal $1500 it is less than your $2000 max and you WILL get MUCH more benefit out of the AMD6990m than either the nvidia card you listed. and currently the top end Nvidia card is $300 more than the Amd card and not worth the price/performance
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nst
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Joined: 03 Jan 2012 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2 |
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Posted: 05 Jan 2012 at 2:01am |
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Thank you for your feedback. Was curious to see if anyone else had any feedback as well.
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ablahblah
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Joined: 12 Jun 2009 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2312 |
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Posted: 07 Jan 2012 at 2:36am |
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1/ My Y470 with a 550M can run LoL at 60fps at high settings (1366x768), if that's sort of where you're going into. Need to do more testing with other games though. IMHO with the GT555M, it should be in the area where you can tweak it around to make your games playable at 30fps 1920x1080 without sacrificing much quality.
2/ Upgraded thermal supposedly doesn't do much, but imho, cooler is better for lifespan and noise. Also, if you upgrade, you can be sure that someone well qualified for the task applied thermal goo  3/ Intel Ultimate N works well, if not best, among other wireless options today. I've read that BFN's Killer WIRELESS (not to be confused with wired) cards actually do in fact work better though, but the Intel Ultimate N has some good history to back it up compared to the BFN. This is the same principle we apply to SSDs, some are quicker, but Intel has the rep. I'd say go with it. Edited by ablahblah - 07 Jan 2012 at 2:40am |
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