Looking to buy the Vortex III 15" - some questions

[ahall91]

As the title says, I'm pretty set on this laptop model now (It's either this or the MBP 15" non-retina, leaning towards this because the specs are much much higher, and I'd only want the MBP for the unibody chassis and logic pro mostly) - I'd be using it for some gaming and audio work (production, mastering, sound design etc) mostly.

I'm currently looking at getting it with the 7970M (best price/performance that I can see, the GTX680 would be awesome for the overclocking potential down the line, but it's just not worth it for me right now)

For processor, I'm debating between the 3610qm or the 3720qm - probably going to stick with the 3720qm for the small boost in performance as I'd be using it for audio work - does anyone know if this is a good idea? It seems the best performance-wise for the cost, as anything bigger starts to really ramp up the price.

As for RAM, I'm either going to go with 16GB (4x4GB) or 8GB (2x4GB) - does anyone have any reccomendations for which speed to go for, and whether the 16GB is neccesary (seems overkill, but I'm thinking a few years down the line it might be worth the small bump in price)

Networking card - I'm not hugely concerned with latency as I'm not a very competetive gamer, however the included bandwidth management software on the bigfoot card would be the main appeal to getting it - is it worth the cost? I'd be going without an OS as I can get W7 for free through my university, so I figured I'd use the few quid spare to get something extra - this and/or the blu-ray drive

Finally, can anyone let me know roughly how loud and hot this thing runs? It's not a huge deal as I'm probably going to get a decent stand/cooler for keeping it a few degrees lower, just for keeping it in good condition for longer mainly, although I'd want to know what to expect in general. Also if anyone has any good reccomendations on stands for this thing that'd be awesome

If there are any other reccomendations anyone has about this laptop, let me know - I'm not going to be ordering for a few weeks so I can have enough time to plan out my order and what I'd need for it

Alisdair

 

[dangro474]

Hi Alisdair,

Very quick reply, will update later if necessary.

MBP: If you're a competative gamer and aren't prone to wiping your backside with £50 notes, throw the notion of opting for a MBP out of the window.

GPU: the 7970M is by far the leader in price : performance, however poor (historical and current) driver support results in poor Enduro performance and random isolated issues in various games. For these reasons I would recommend opting for the 680M GTX, even if youre paying a premium for the brand. Like every apple customer for every apple product they buy (ok i'll stop digging :]). The 680M is also superior for 3D modelling, but poor in comparrison to the 7970M for compute.

CPU: For gaming the 3610QM is more than enough. If you are sticking to a budget I would opt for the 3610QM, however if you play a lot of CPU intensive games, enjoy video editing and can justify spending the extra cash, you may want to consider the 3720QM.

RAM: Unless you do a heavy amount of video editing, 3d design, high res photo design etc etc, 8GB is enough. Technically 8GB is still heavily overkill, however 4GB is now becoming borderline, so 8 is a good compromise.

NETWORK CARD: Standard is fine. There are plenty of free bandwidth management apps out there.

TEMPS: You'll be looking at 32 - 40 degrees idle on both CPU and GPU. The fan should ramp up when it hits 50, increasing the noise, however once it cools down to below 40 the fan will lower its RPM. Load temps while gaming will reach around 55-70 CPU and up to 81 GPU. These are WELL within the threshold limit (105 degrees), so don't worry about it, Unless oyu do something stupid like over clock it, block all intake vents or operate the machine at 45 degrees room temperature and manage not to pass out, it won't overheat (unless it has an obvious hardware problem).

NOISE: Quiet while idling and surfing, although the fan noise will be noticeable when fans spin up. It can get quite noisy while gaming, slightly below that of an xbox 360 for example, however i must stress that this is COMPLETELY normal for the implimented cooling system. The one thing macs really have going for them is their design, which while lacking a decent cooling system still manages to keep the system at manageable temperatures. This is of course largely due to the integrated GPUs which are not even comparable to the 100W TDP MXM 3.0B GPUs in the Vortex III chassis.

Ultimately its up to you, but as a perso who purchases a new gaming laptop every 12 - 18 months, I have to say that the Vortex II and III 15.6 and 17" chassis are by far the most stylish, sturdy and efficient I have owned.

- Dan

 

[flobber238]

Hey, I recently chose the 15" Vortex over a Macbook Retina. I was more attracted by the high-gamut display than the high-pixel density display. Plus I couldn't afford the Mac. Well, I could, but the model I was looking at (top spec) made me a little sick in my mouth. The laptop I chose is otherwise just as capable as the Macbook, but I can also afford a folding bicycle too! So I can at least travel to a Starbucks now; I just can't look like a pretentious git inside.

 

[ahall91]

Hi Alisdair,

Very quick reply, will update later if necessary.

*snip*

Thanks! To preface, the MBP would be simply for the audio side of stuff - Logic pro and so forth, the premium is definitely there, though it's less for me because the benefit of being able to use a really nice DAW (I'm used to ableton more, so can avoid it but have tried Logic and it's definitely a good product ), although to be honest I can get a much more powerful laptop with Ableton from here, and really can't justify the massive cost/performace ratio on the MBP (I'd have to spend upwards of £1500 even with the HE discount at about 15% and it'd be beaten red raw by the Vortex for gaming, only advantage is lower weight) - there's still reasons people buy them (although a lot of people get them for the wrong reasons at least)
/off topic

Interesting to hear about the GPU, I've noticed that the 680 seems to run cooler as well going by reviews - I think it will come down to what I can afford at the time I get the build, although I'm toying with the idea of getting the 500gb momentus hybrid drive (£40 or so less than the 750gb) then upgrading a few months later to the 750gb one (or an SSD if I can afford a sizeable one by then) and then swapping them round (using the 500gb as a secondary drive for storage) - I'm not too sure how much I'll have by the time I purchase the laptop, although this would allow me to bump up to the 680, if the difference really is what you'd suggest.

With the CPU, as far as I can tell the 3720 doesn't bear much of a difference for gaming, although I'm debating the difference it would make with sound design and music production - currently I'm on a (ludicrously) weaker system so have gotten used to being frugal with the amount of processing power I use, however I'm still unsure whether I'd ever need to ever use up all four cores on a project (I'm only ever really browsing the internet in the background while using live)

Cheers for the fast reply though! Really handy to get some more advice, think I'm going to have to spend a while pricing this up, hah

 

[QuickstepKing]

On the RAM side of things, I remeber when Windows XP came out and they recommended 128MB ram minimum, preferably 256MB. Nowadays, even 1GB means there's a whole lot of disk swapping going on - I guess services which get modified with updates and security updates are demanding more RAM, particularly anti-virus. I find if I install Windows XP clean it will boot in about 20 seconds. After installing the usual stuff (office, Firefox, acrobat reader, flash etc) and all the MS updates it soon comes grinding to a halt. I wouldn't run Windows XP with less than 2GB these days.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, (if you're using windows), what seems like excessive RAM today, will be just enough to keep you running smoothly in 3/4 years time...probably.

That's my opinion anyway.

 

[M3zxu]

There hasn't been much development on RAM usage in the eyes of the general consumer. OS are made to be lighter and faster by the day, it's really only special programs that will use up the RAM. To really benefit of getting excess ram, heck even I should probably do it on my 8GBs, one should set a RAMDISK cache to ease up writes on SSDs and to get some really really snappy "HardDisk" benches and performance. For the rest part, I'd probably drop the faster CPU unless you want to get your laptop faster by ordering the more expensive option and use the money gained to buy a larger SSD drive to get more programmes to benefit of the ridiculous hard disk performance they give.

in short: I'd get the 3610QM, 16gbs of RAM, and a large SSD coupled with the HD7970M

 

[dangro474]

Although I have a special place in my heart for AMD, a lot of 7970M owners are complaining about teething issues with the drivers, as well as Enduro problems resulting in the GPU underperforming in certain games due to processing cores being disabled.

I'd go for the 680M, which although may still be in its early days, has presented no glaring issues as of yet.

RAM is cheap so opting for 16GB is not a huge waste, however I guarantee that at least 10gb of that 16gb will do sod all for a long time to come.

Back in 2008, 4GB become the recommended amount of RAM. Today I struggle to exceed 4GB of use while gaming. As for Quickstepkings comment; Windows XP was released in 2001... 512mb was considered outrageous at the time. The OS (still) has an incredible lifespan. 9 years down the line 1GB was accepted as the minimum for a decent XP based system. 9 years down the line.

 

[ahall91]

Although I have a special place in my heart for AMD, a lot of 7970M owners are complaining about teething issues with the drivers, as well as Enduro problems resulting in the GPU underperforming in certain games due to processing cores being disabled.

I'd go for the 680M, which although may still be in its early days, has presented no glaring issues as of yet.

RAM is cheap so opting for 16GB is not a huge waste, however I guarantee that at least 10gb of that 16gb will do sod all for a long time to come.

Back in 2008, 4GB become the recommended amount of RAM. Today I struggle to exceed 4GB of use while gaming. As for Quickstepkings comment; Windows XP was released in 2001... 512mb was considered outrageous at the time. The OS (still) has an incredible lifespan. 9 years down the line 1GB was accepted as the minimum for a decent XP based system. 9 years down the line.

If I can afford it I think I will - the main thing for me, is it seems that the 680's drivers are (presumably) newer as well - which should hopefully mean more optimisations down the line, as well as the biggest value to me - reduced noise (douple of dB isn't that much but can mean the difference between hearing it over your headphones or not) and the ~10 degrees temperature less when it's being stressed according to benchmarks I've checked - this should mean a longer lifespan for it and other parts within the laptop, which, IMO, is utterly invaluable (obviously getting the improved thermal paste - do you know if this is applied to everything in the laptop, and if not is it possibly to pay to have the thermal paste re-done on parts that haven't if this isn't the case?). That, and playing the occasional PhysX game with slightly better performance once in a while can't hurt!

My configuartion will probably be the 680m, then the 3610 OR the 3720 (depending if I need to cut the budget down a bit or not), along with 8gb RAM and the 500gb hybrid drive - RAM/HDD are a piece of **** to upgrade (going into 3rd year of an electrical engineering degree, so this stuff is practically like lego ) so that's not an issue for me a few months down the line

Is there anything glaringly wrong with this set-up? (barring any huge issues down the line before I order, obviously)

Also, some magazines offer the £15 discount for this place on occasion - does anyone know which ones? So I can pick one up for a few quid before I send it in, shave a few £ off haha (yeah it's less than 1% but that £15 can buy a good few drinks, hah)