Vortex III Elite? - Do I need more RAM?

[atomsmasher]

I've been talking to the man, the legend, the dangerous drunk, our man Jack Turner. He said this should run Solitaire in Med-High settings. I'm hoping this should cope with Minesweeper, and my huge 1280x768 24bit drawings of horses I like to do in MSPaint also.

Do you think this will be powerful enough for the job?

I didn't get to ask Jack about this as we ended up talking zombies in the work environment, pigs in blankets and how he had a few traumatic events in his youth that shaped the man he is today. Also Jagerbombs, quite a few times, so got a bit sidetracked.

So it's now been dispatched from the busy hive of activity at PCS, so wondered if anyone thinks this will cope with the game Minesweeper and my large drawings of horses, or if I should get more RAM or perhaps another GFX card?

Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Extreme i7-3940XM (3.00GHz) 8MB
Memory (RAM)
32GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (4 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
2 x NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M - 4.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
240GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
6x BLURAY WRITER, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ HD-Audiophile-Grade Sound External (£82)
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
2 x Vortex Elite Series 8 Cell Battery (89.21WH) (One Spare) (£69)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 300W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Pro 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£109)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Mouse
ROCCAT™ Kone XTD – Max Customization Gaming Mouse (£62)
Gaming Mouse Pad
ROCCAT™ Taito Mid Gaming Mouse Mat (£12)
Speakers
Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II 2.0 High End Speakers (£85)
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Headsets
Creative Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Rage (£62)
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Ninja Build - faster than your sisters knickers drop when she visits me
Quantity
1

Price: £3,292.00 including VAT and delivery.

What with the ninjas at PCS getting this out in Olympic record timing, I should have it tomorrow, with a full low down and and testing over the weekend, big up all at PCS! You lot do not fu@k about!!!

 

[LiddleP]

A flying pig just stopped by my window while I was reading your post and peering over my shoulder said "Not a chance"

Fantastic build :tt1: gratz, enjoy !

 

[atomsmasher]

Fingers crossed eh? If it can handle a bit of Mahjong as well this will be worth every penny.

Oh yea, did you spot where that flying pig went? I've got a, err, blanket, I'd like to wrap him in, keep him warm like, in this cold weather yes, and umm, not eat him, well maybe a little... Mmmmmmm, pigs in blankets... Sorry LittleP!!!

 

[simonmoore1986]

I dont know those horse pictures sound like a lot of hard work, i think if you had put a bit of extra cash in, but you have risked lmao! awesome setup!

 

[atomsmasher]

I know it can seem pushing things a bit far but these modern fandangled devices seem to cope quite well with such big pictures haha, what they don't cope with, at all, is Creative's god-awfull drivers and software :burn:

I've spent nearly 12 hours so far trying to get audio out of the Soundblaster X-FI MB2 box, to no avail, get errors upon reintstalling the software/drivers that not even hours with a search engine give much more insight into, than shed loads of people with the same errors in the same boat...

What I should have done, is stuck with the internal and got a proper external soundcard, as the Creative speakers plugged direct into the headphone (Realtek, may not be the fanciest but I don't ever remember problems with Realtek, ever, Creative on the other hand, was 5 years since I last used their ****e, and going through this reminded me why I hate them, but I thought they'd have learned how to write an install/drivers by now, sadly, not a fooking chance, morons...) do sound great (And yes, the built in speakers are pants) so wasted £90 on an external box that is going in the bin...

So yeah, HD horse pictures in MS paint, Soltaire and every game I can throw at t doesn't phase it at all. Metro 2033 was supposed to be a challenge but apart from the fans going most of the time, it's max settings with out a glitch. Infact, I was downloading Assasns Creed 3 on Ubisofts downloader, and Borderlands 2 through steam at the same time as shooting some scary looking dog/wolf things and there were no hiccups so I think this laptop is well worth the funds. Hah, the 19GB of A Creed installed in what seemed about 30 seconds on the SSD, have defnity noticed the speed of the SSD over my old laptop.

Keyboard looks great, very good in the dark, but when typing definitely have the issue of the odd skipped letter but I think I'll get used to that, for the benefits of the backlighting it's not terrible, it's more a case I'm being too soft on my new toy really, mind you, I use my phone as a remote mouse and keyboard when not too close or gaming so it's all good.

Screen is excellent, have only been using it a 1/5th brightness and it looks so crisp, my cons in my taskbar are about 4mm tall and my start button is not much bigger than the 'O' of the keyboard! So much real estate, can spilt the screen 4 ways and still be productive!

Am still tweaking and setting everything up as of yet, given up sorting the X-fi, that really is going in the bin, but have been trying out a few setups with the SSD/HD for my gaming and audio production with some VMs so will need a week or so to get it settled, want to do that before benchmarking or anything.

So far am very happy with the laptop, but I would love to see Creative burn in a fire, slowly...

 

[CEUOTC]

Great build, and well 32gb should just be about enough for what you need it for

 

[simonmoore1986]

shame about a creed 3, what a **** installment, thanks for nothing ubisoft

 

[kingmeisteruk]

Awesome build, congrats, I think you might just have squeezed enough RAM in there to do the mundane tasks although watch out for Spider Solitaire, that's a real test for this machine .

The additional battery is a good investment as you'll find out, this monster eats up battery power

 

[atomsmasher]

Have now settled in to this machine, it is mental with a capital F!

Chomps through anything like it is indescribably bored and is waiting for some numbers to destroy... All games at max setting so far and it warms up on Metro 2033 but chugs along nicely. As CEUOTEC said t should be enough for what I need (Like, really need, as horse pictures are my release on the side not my MAIN hobby lol), for when I get creative I make a bit of music (Crap, but, I try...) loading VST and VSTi's in FLStudio until I get bored of adding them as the cpu meters just sit there waiting for something to actually do unlike my old machine that would struggle after 3 synths!!!

And this badboy plays Spider Solitaire on High settings with minimal glitches as long as I keep the temp down with a 4 cooling stands!!

Kingmeister, you were'nt even joking about the battery life man, I tested it out over Chrimbop while being a general drunkard, I actually had to look underneath the laptop to see if it was leaking! At one point I swear the battery percentage was going down 1% per second lol!

This is seriously for those with a hunger for power without actually putting in any effort at all, Like Rygil from Farscape haha, I really can't see this being ripped from my cold dead hands for quite a while now it's set up as I want it, shabba!

Some benchmarks in my sig show this is no slouch, and this could be OC'd but not through BIOS. Apparently Clevo fans never ramp up 100% so you'll never get Alien Ware OC'ing ability but you certainly could squeeze more if you wanted, but I'm not going to as I don't find a need to, and it's not what I'm aiming for.

Still loving the screen quality and resolution, watching films and doing '****' on the other side is, erm, productive, if what I was doing was actually productive....

Decided I don't quite get on with the keyboard still, missing letters like I'm playing a game to miss every 6th character... Which is annoying, some keys are worse than others, like the L key, always have to add in L's after typing a block of text... Might settle down over time though to be fair... Backlit keys make up for it though, great for playing Metro 2033 in the dark to scare the crap out of you when **** goes down!

Trackpad really is a pain in the arse, might just be me again, but I really struggle to use it at all, nice concept but mouse jumps all over the shop, makes my horse pictures look really rough But I don't even use it with the Roccat mouse so, nurr.

Build quality of the Clevo body seems sound to me, and I like the finish, maybe it's the cost or maybe it's cos it's so new but have been quite militant on keeping it clean so it looks understated and minimal rather than an Alien Ware hyperactive teenagers laptop. I've heard reports it's a bit wobbly but I don't treat it like the drunken monkey that I am, well... I'm pretty careful with laptop screen opening/closing anyway, but can tell if you try man handle this it will flop about a bit, and I think that once while grabbing it from the front right corner while I was a little drunk that the machine cut out... So, umm, don't treat it like a netbook, it's a 17" laptop...

Overall am seriously happy I got carried away on the laptop configurator, and can recommend this build to anyone who will listen lol, sell your soul, sell your gran, whatever you need to sell just get rid of it and buy this, you don't need to eat, it's a myth! :]