£2000 gaming laptop - which one of these two?

C

chrmcc

Active member
A gaming laptop to still perform over the next few years. Which one would you go for and why?


Vortex II: 17.3" £2176
Vortex II: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Extreme i7-2960XM (2.70GHz) 8MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
2.0GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M - DirectX® 11 (17.3" Vortex II)
Free Item
FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above!
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (3,800 mAh)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery

OR

Viper III: 18.4" £2154
Chassis & Display
Viper III: 18.4" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Extreme i7-2960XM (2.70GHz) 8MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
2 x 1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (SLI)
Free Item
FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above!
Memory - Hard Disk
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1102 WIRELESS 802.11N - IDEAL FOR ONLINE GAMING
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 3 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Battery
Viper Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (4,700 mAh)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 220W AC Adaptor
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
and you will have better screen etc, you should get the seagate momentus drive for better hard drive performance if you can and make sure to get silver warranty for a fiver
 
C

chrmcc

Active member
Just to mix things up a little :) how do you think this spec compares? Huge cost saving. Improved processor. How do you think the GFX compares against the two options above?
Vortex II: 17.3"
i7 Quad i7-2860QM (2.50GHz) 8MB
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
2GB AMD® Radeon® HD 6990M - DirectX® 11
500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)

If this is still a good gaming machine at around £700 cheaper I'd be tempted to go this route.
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
processor is worse, lower speed ram although that doesnt matter, that card performs worse than 580m and 560m sli, the hard drive is 5,400 which is much slower, longer to load games etc
 
C

chrmcc

Active member
Thanks for the advice. I think this spec seems pretty good and was thinking this would do me... then i clocked the price £1900. So I'm back at the 2 grand mark! What to do?
Vortex II 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Quad i7-2860QM (2.50GHz) 8MB
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
2.0GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M - DirectX® 11
500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

If I could get the viper with with a matte screen and the 2 x 2GB 580 gfx cards I think that would be my choice. Is it possible to order something like this even if its not on the configurator?

ta - getting excited now
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
probably no chance of the matte screen but depending on the card sizes, the dual 580m may be possible, give PCS a ring
 
A

Adare

Member
I contacted PCS myself the other day about the possibility of having the 580m in SLI on the Viper II and unfortunately it's not available.

Also, is the 560m in SLI really superior to a single 580m or 6990m? From what I can gather you don't actually get double the performance of a single 560m, instead it's scaled down to about 50 - 80% capacity for each card depending on how the drivers / game have been optimised. Couple this with the fact that not all games can use SLI effectively, plus possible micro stuttering, driver issues, problems running games in windowed mode, etc - running a single, more powerful card may be a better bet.
 
Fear

Fear

Prolific Poster
Wozza365 said:
all modern games will have good optimizations for SLI and you will certainly see a great difference
Click to expand...

You got a crystal ball there wozza :p some of these modern games don't get fully optimized for sli untill after release when the GPU drivers get updated.
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
well i know bf3 was sli optimized for the beta, in the alpha the 590 sucked but in the alpha it was right at the top :)
 
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