Dual graphics card help

I am planning on buying a laptop from here and something i found confused me. Well it just got me thinking. I don't know a lot about graphics cards and stuff so i thought i would ask here.
Would two graphics cards with 6gb each be better than one with 8gb memory? The ones i see are
2 x Nvidia geforce GTX 970m 6gb DDR5 video ram

and the

1 x Nvidia geforce GTX 980M 8GB DDR5 video ram

Would the dual graphics cards be better for performance on a single program/game? Or would the single 8gb graphics card be better suited for that?
Another related question is do the dual graphics cards work together or just do their own thing?

Thank you for your time.

In all cases (I believe) where the program/game and drivers allow, the two 970m cards will easily trump a single 980m, regardless of the extra 2Gb.

micgup said:

In all cases (I believe) where the program/game and drivers allow, the two 970m cards will easily trump a single 980m, regardless of the extra 2Gb.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your help

I always find this site to be pretty good for judging the performance of laptop GPUs.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html


Also, both dual GPUs do indeed work together which means a game would treat the dual setup as having 6GB of vRAM, not the combined amount of 12GB. Anyway, vRAM amount doesn't really affect performance, it just increases stuttering if settings like textures, resolution and AA are set too high and vRAM usage gets out of control. 6GB of vRAM will be fine for the next few years. You'd have to game at 4K resolution with heavy AA to be getting close to using all that RAM but by the time you've hit the ceiling of vRAM, your framerate would be so low that stuttering due to swapping data in and out the vRAM will be the least of your worries.

Well that was a long winded way of saying 6GB vRAM will be enough!

What's your budget for the laptop? Which chassis you looking at? What screen resolution you wanting to have on the laptop? Any video or photo editing or programming?

SlimCini said:

What's your budget for the laptop? Which chassis you looking at? What screen resolution you wanting to have on the laptop? Any video or photo editing or programming?

Click to expand...

My budget is around £2300. By chassis (if you are talking about what i think you are) i want the 17.3" Vortex IV Elite. Resolution the standard 1920x1080.
Maybe some video and photo editing. But mostly for high end games. I want the laptop to be as future proof as possible.

That's a monstrous budget for a gaming laptop. I don't think it's worth going SLI on a small 1080p screen (which is what a Vortex would be). So I'd spend about £1.5k on a single 980m in a Vortex IV if you went down the Vortex route.

Alternatively you could look at an Octane 3k screen with the 8Gb 980m. I wouldn't go for the Defiance 3k screen as it only comes with the 4Gb 980m which might bottleneck the high resolution. But saying that I'm also not entirely sure how a single 980m would deal with a 3k screen in gaming and whether it has enough grunt on it's own.

It's mildly unfortunate that the only laptop to have SLI gpus is stuck with 'only' a 1080p screen whilst the higher res screen laptops are stuck with single GPUs only... seems a bizarre conundrum. Maybe a Vortex V elite will have a 4k screen and dual GPUs in future, we'll see.

Anyway, to sum up, I'd not spend your entire budget just to game on a 1080p screen. You can buy a desktop and 24"1080p screen and game on that for £600 so to choose to spend over £2k to game on a 17" 1080p laptop screen seems madness. I'd save a load of your budget and just buy a single 8Gb 980m Vortex IV build for just over £1.5k. Then put the rest of the money towards a new laptop in a few years time. Tthat 980m will game for years. I've got a single 680m which came out almost three years ago and it still games at 60fps on everything I throw at it (Far Cry 4, Metro etc). The settings that I need to turn down to achieve this are unnoticeable to me. I don't anticipate needing a new laptop due to gaming restraints for a couple of years yet unless there is some monstrous new breakthrough in gaming technology. But my laptop right now is more powerful than a PS4 or Xbox1 so I can't see that becoming a significant factor.

SlimCini said:

That's a monstrous budget for a gaming laptop. I don't think it's worth going SLI on a small 1080p screen (which is what a Vortex would be). So I'd spend about £1.5k on a single 980m in a Vortex IV if you went down the Vortex route.

Alternatively you could look at an Octane 3k screen with the 8Gb 980m. I wouldn't go for the Defiance 3k screen as it only comes with the 4Gb 980m which might bottleneck the high resolution. But saying that I'm also not entirely sure how a single 980m would deal with a 3k screen in gaming and whether it has enough grunt on it's own.

It's mildly unfortunate that the only laptop to have SLI gpus is stuck with 'only' a 1080p screen whilst the higher res screen laptops are stuck with single GPUs only... seems a bizarre conundrum. Maybe a Vortex V elite will have a 4k screen and dual GPUs in future, we'll see.

Anyway, to sum up, I'd not spend your entire budget just to game on a 1080p screen. You can buy a desktop and 24"1080p screen and game on that for £600 so to choose to spend over £2k to game on a 17" 1080p laptop screen seems madness. I'd save a load of your budget and just buy a single 8Gb 980m Vortex IV build for just over £1.5k. Then put the rest of the money towards a new laptop in a few years time. Tthat 980m will game for years. I've got a single 680m which came out almost three years ago and it still games at 60fps on everything I throw at it (Far Cry 4, Metro etc). The settings that I need to turn down to achieve this are unnoticeable to me. I don't anticipate needing a new laptop due to gaming restraints for a couple of years yet unless there is some monstrous new breakthrough in gaming technology. But my laptop right now is more powerful than a PS4 or Xbox1 so I can't see that becoming a significant factor.

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for this advice. I feel very relieved knowing i can get a great laptop for a lower price. I will definitely do what you advise. Thanks again

I'd recommend one of two options (and you get Dying Light and Witcher 3 free with any 980m so that's an extra £60 of game free straight off the bat):

(1) The Defiance in the review section for £1350 (although definitely get silver warranty for an extra £5). Carries a discount of £156 as long as you order it as it is and don't configure it (otherwise it jumps up to £1506). This represents great value and has a 980m which will game for ages for you. A 240Gb SSD is also a nice touch. Only downside is it comes with no OS so you'd need to buy that separately (so the real cost would be closer to £1430). But still, cheaper that speccing up your own laptop from scratch, but if you did so you could really choose every little bit you wanted such as a better secondary hard drive... so choice number 2...

(2) Getting a Vortex IV like this for £1545. Upside is a better second hard drive (which you won't be able to configure into the review defiance or you lose the discount) and the 8Gb 980m instead of the 4Gb 980m (although this will make little to no difference really on a 1080p screen).
Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4710MQ (2.50GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980M - 8.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Free Item
FREE DYING LIGHT DIGITAL VOUCHER with GTX 965M / 970M / 980M GRAPHICS!
Free Item
FREE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Game with Select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
Memory - Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
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
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery
Vortex 17.3" Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 230W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Windows 10 Upgrade
FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,545.00 including VAT and delivery.

Unique URL to re-configure: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/quotes/vortexIV-17/L82qCCq_yu/

Are SSDs necessary? I dont know much about them but i would prefer a large standard hard drive than a ssd like 2tb and another 1tb hybrid thing (it seems good)
Can they do anything that a Hard drive cannot do?
Also wouldn't 16gb Ram be more useful? I mean i will probably have this laptop for 6+ years (that's how long my current one lasted).
Also about COOLING. Would i need a cooling stand?

RAM - yeah you could for16Gb I suppose but the time games need more than 8Gb is a long way off yet. But yes, it's not a massive upgrade expense so choosing 16Gb wouldn't be the most illogical thing in the world.

An SSD is certainly not necessary but it makes computers so much more pleasant to use with your frequently used pieces of software saved onto one (the main one being the OS). You can boot in under 20 seconds (even faster in windows 8). They will read files far more quickly so having one is definitely desirable (now I've had one I'll never own a computer without one ever again).

Ideally you'd have a smaller SSD to have your regular pieces of software on (OS, Office maybe, any editing software you might use, frequently played games possibly) then a larger regular hard drive for everything else. The scorpio black are the fastest regular hard drives but the largest you can get is 750Gb. I wouldn't get an SSHD at your budget, they're more an inbetween for those who want something a bit faster than a single normal hard drive but can't afford a full sized SSD and hard drive combination. The bulk of an SSHD is still a 5400rpm hard drive, which is slower than a scorpio black. if you're feeling flush then just get yourself a 1tb samsung SSD (or maybe 2?!). But how much stuff do you actually have that you'll be saving onto your hard drive? Just games?

Oh yeah, and cooling stand definitely... I have this and it works a charm: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0012WXFO8?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00

I did have the Zalman ZM-NC3500-PLUS originally but two of them broke on me with the same fault so I won't be using one of those again (although who have them that haven't broken also say they're great).

Ok then. The 16gb ram is what im gonna go for. I have decided on a 480gb Kingston ssd. But for the bulk storage i will just use a normal 2tb hard drive. Im gonna need loads for games, movies and other things. The laptop will have 4 different people using it so it needs space for us all.

Fair enough.

Are you not tempted by a networked NAS to store loads of movies and files on? ANyone could access them from anywhere on your network then rather than needing to save them on your laptop hard drive. Would alleviate your need to get the low budget cr@ppy 2tb 5400rpm hard drive then!

Yeah i have had my eye on the Zalman ZM-NC3500-PLUS it looks amazing and it has speakers!!!! I want it.

The 500Gb Samsung is cheaper than the 480Gb Kingston HyperX. Whatever you do, don't get the 480Gb Kingstone V300 as it has serious speed issues. Go for the Samsung or HyperX (and the Samsung is cheaper so the logical choice).

EDIT... yeah that's why I wanted that cooling stand too. Shame two of them fell to bits for me and didn't work.

I have no idea what a NAS is.

SlimCini said:

The 500Gb Samsung is cheaper than the 480Gb Kingston HyperX. Whatever you do, don't get the 480Gb Kingstone V300 as it has serious speed issues. Go for the Samsung or HyperX (and the Samsung is cheaper so the logical choice).

EDIT... yeah that's why I wanted it to. Shame two of them fell to bits for me and didn't work.

Click to expand...

LOL i hope it does well for me

You might to read the amazon reviews of it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-rev...UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=byRankDescending

I'm not the only one that had the USB slot cave in and fall inside the casing (and it happened to me twice, both within a couple of months of starting using it). It also requires 2USB slots to power it (one for the power, one for the audio). ANyway your choice.

A NAS is basically a hard drive you simply plug an ethernet cable into. Any device connected to your home network (wired or wireless) will be able to access whatever is saved on the NAS and copy files to it or read files from it. It's basically like gogle drive, or microsoft one drive, but your own version of it. Have a read: http://www.dabs.com/learnmore/components-and-storage/network-attached-storage-(nas)-explained/

If you have movies and music saved onto it you can stream them to any device that is also connected to your network (so you could play them on any computer, play them on your tablet, on your phone, over your sonos speakers, through your TV, through your bluray player). ALmost anything wired into your network will be able to access and play those files. I have all my movies saved on a networked hard drive (over 2tb) and stream them to my TV or my tablet if I want to watch something in bed. Screw saving things like that locally on my hard drive!

The NAS sounds really really useful. I will definitely use it. I don't plan on buying the laptop until after my may exams so i will have plenty of time to make a decision.
I need to say thank you again because you have been massively helpful.