1.333MHz vs 1.600MHz clocked RAM

[Demon Cleaner]

Yes, that makes sense.

I was planning of perhaps getting an Alienware M17x R3 laptop, and in their configuration they also have the higher clocked RAM.

CPU would be an i7-2760QM, but then again, that's 171€ more than for the i7-2670QM, and I don't even know if you would notice that much performance increase, what do you think?

GPU you can chose between the ATI HD6990 or the nVidia GTX580, same price, and I guess also same performance. I would go for the ATI.

The price for the 8GB 1.333MHz clocked RAM is 126€, and for the 8GB 1.600MHz clocked RAM is 192€.

[Harrison]

An ATI HD6990 GPU in a laptop? That is extreme overkill. Those are dual core cards with 4GB vram and can walk all over the GTX580. You would only need that if you were running a couple of 30" monitors in eyefinity mode. For a gaming laptop the much better priced HD6950 is perfect if the screen sizes of most laptops. It is the sweet spot in the current graphics card market.

As for ram, with an i7 processor you probably would benefit from the faster ram, but you also need to question if it is worth the extra €66? Probably if you are spending so much on a laptop in the first place.

BTW, didn't you only recently buy a new laptop? Or was that now quite some time ago?

[Demon Cleaner]

My laptop is now 1.5 years old, and that was not a gaming laptop. It's a Core 2 Duo with a smaller 5770 ATI card. Cannot play games properly that are newer than 2007-8. And I really need a laptop for gaming, because mainly I use it at work, and not at home.

Those 2 cards are at the moment the only options for the Alienware. The screen is a full HD 1920x1080 WLED LCD.

The HD6990M GPU is the mobility version, it has 2GB DDR5 VRAM.

And I'm thinking just the other way around, if I buy already such an expensive laptop, the 66€ won't matter at all

[Harrison]

True, €66 isn't much to add to such an already expensive system. I do think Alienware are overpriced though.

[Demon Cleaner]

I also think that Alienware are a bit overpriced, but if I take a look at some other gaming laptops from other brands, they all are about the same price, or perhaps a bit less, but in my opinion the Alienware just looks really nice, compared to some other, really blocky ones.

I always wanted to configure one at mysn.de (the XMG P701 PRO Gaming), there I would get the same setup for 250-350€ less, but they use the Clevo laptop chassis, which is ok, but doesn't have an outstanding look.

http://www.mysn.de

[Demon Cleaner]

CPU would be an i7-2760QM, but then again, that's 171€ more than for the i7-2670QM, and I don't even know if you would notice that much performance increase, what do you think?

What is your opinion about this then?

[Harrison]

OK, this might actually solve your other ram question.

The i7-2670QM has a 6MB cache and is 2.2GHz. Quad core with hyperthreading (8 threads) and Turbo Boost (3.1GHz max), supporting a maximum DDR3 RAM speed of 1333, so it would be pointless to buy ram any faster if you go for this CPU.

The i7-2760QM has a 6MB cache and is 2.4GHz, which isn't a huge amount more. Quad core and hyperthreading, and Turbo Boost (3.5GHz) which might see a fair speed increase over the other slower CPU. Where is differs the most is its ram support as the 2760QM supports up to 1600 ram with a higher memory bandwidth and twice the total ram (32GB).

So the 2760QM will definitely be the faster chip thanks to the higher turbo boost maximum, and support for higher frequency ram, plus providing more ram bandwidth.

The Thermal properties of both are identical at 45W so that won't make any difference to power consumption or heat produced. Something worth noting is that the RRP for both chips is the same on the Intel website so they shouldn't be costing so much different between them.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok thanks for your reply, so it's worth going for the 2760QM.

[Harrison]

Yep, you would definitely see better performance from the 2760QM combined with some 1600 ram. That would be a very nice gaming laptop indeed.

[Demon Cleaner]

This week, several components got again more expensive.

They had a promotion last week, giving a 150€ discount. That stopped the 9th

Then also the price of the GPU increased from 170€ to 199€, and the RAM increased from 192€ to 219€.

So in the end I would now have to pay 2.275€, and last week (Saturday) if I would have bought it straight away, it would have been 2.015€, but my girlfriend was the one who was trying all the time to change my mind, and stop me from buying it, with the argument that I already have a laptop (chicks, tss!). I was in doubt then a bit, and wanted to wait a bit. Now I will definitely have to wait again, as I contacted Dell, and they told me that the prices increase/decrease on a regular basis, and that if there's some kind of promotion, it always comes out on Wednesdays.

Anyway, I have still to pay for my gf's driver's license, next exam is the 20th, hopefully she will pass this time, otherwise you can always add 500€ until the next exam.

And after that, I will also have to buy her a car, so the laptop will perhaps not be my first acquisition. Will see.