15.6" Vortex IV Gaming Laptop help.

G

George_AO

Member
How good is this Laptop and how well will it run at high settings.

Total Price £1,471.00

Chassis & Display

Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)

8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 780M - 4.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk

120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)

2nd Hard Disk

750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

1st 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

Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack

Wireless/Wired Networking
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 Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)

Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 230W AC Adaptor
 
Last edited:
mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
The i7's have hyper threading which gives it 2 virtual CPU cores it can work with. They are not as good as real ones but better than not having them at all. You are looking for a gaming laptop, so in that case I would get the quadcore i7 with a lower clock speed over the dual core with a higher clockspeed. You actually save £50-£60 for a huge leap in performance so get the i7-4700MQ as it will destroy the dual core i7 you have selected.

The GPU, which is the important bit for gaming is half way decent. I wouldn't be expecting to play many modern games on ultra a@60fps but it should be getting decent fps if you crack the settings down a fraction. If you look up online for GTX 770m benchmarks you will get an idea what kind of FPS you can expect on your favourite games.

But overall it looks a well balanced spec as soon as you change out that CPU
 
SmokeDarKnight

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
if you can accommodate the 17" i would go fir the one in the review section it is a BEAST http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews/ see spec and comments below

8GB ram is plenty for gaming if your doing any video editing or rendering etc you might want to bump it up though if not 8 is more than enough for today's gaming needs

I would always say if you can up the PGU to do it, although these things are upgradeable it really depends on the manufactures (Clevo) support for BIOS updates etc. My advise is if you can get the 780m to go for it, it is a great GPU.


Vortex IV X780

Display

17.3" Matte Full HD LED Display (1920 x 1080)

CPU

4th Gen Intel Core i7-4700MQ

GPU

4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M Beast of a GPU

RAM

16GB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz More than is needed but the more the merrier

SSD

120GB Kingston V300 SSD Superfast boot up speed and loading from software on this drive

HDD

750GB WD Scorpio Black SATA III (7,200rpm) Not as fast as SSD but still fast access, this is the drive i have and its rapid

ODD

4x BluRay ROM / 8x DVD-RW Combi

Network

Gigabit LAN / Killer 1202 Wireless / Bluetooth Upgraded Wifi

Features

USB 3.0, 2MP WebCam, 9 in 1 MCR, Backlit Keyboard, Display Port

Warranty

3 Year Silver

Price

£1449.00 inc VAT & Delivery

Hope this helps
 
Cricky

Cricky

Enthusiast
I just got a Vortex IV myself. I went for the HD 8970M in the end as it seemed to be the 2nd best laptop GPU, the best being the 780m. I would have liked that one but £200 is a lot of money and I was at the limit of my budget. Whether it is worth the extra, you'd need to ask someone who has it, but you'd also need to have the £200 spare too. :)

I also went for the 17". I'm not going to be moving mine around much so the extra size and weight isn't a problem, and that being the case I'd rather have a big screen.

As for RAM I went for 8GB. A single 8GB stick so that I can add more later if needed. I think it has 4 slots.
 
SmokeDarKnight

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
I was in the same possition as Cricky a couple of years ago and went for the HD6990m which was the equivelent to the top Nvidia and i must say two years later and its still keeping up with games im playing, i can easly play Battlefield 4 on medium to high settings at 1080 resolution .

Performance betweeen the top Nivida and AMD GPU are extremely close and varies from game to game, some are optimised for Nvidia and will run better on Nvidia and same for AMD.
 
G

George_AO

Member
Thanks

This is an alternative.


Total Price £1,471.00

Chassis & Display

Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)

8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 780M - 4.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - 1st Hard Disk

120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)

2nd Hard Disk

750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

1st 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

Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack

Wireless/Wired Networking
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 Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)

Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 230W AC Adaptor
 
SmokeDarKnight

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
if you wanted you could drop the SSD as its not essential, i dont use one personally i have the 7200rom and its rapid, you can always ass SSD at a later date
 
G

George_AO

Member
What is the difference between


Vortex Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

and

Vortex Series: 15.6" AUO Matte 95% Gamut Widescreen (1920x1080) (+£79)
 
Reap3r

Reap3r

Member
Hi George,

I just bought myself a Vortex IV 15.6" - they're fantastic!
To echo what's been said, swap your CPU for the 4700MQ - I found it was actually cheaper for my spec than the lower model.
Don't bother with more that 8GB of RAM unless you video edit, run VMs or massively (like 50 things) multitask.
Get a HD8970M - it kicks the GTX770M in the rear & is only a bit slower than the 780 but is ~£100 cheaper.
Get a 7200RPM drive if you're gaming. SSD is a luxury if you have cash left over - it has the least real impact.
Finally, the 15.6" is actually pretty big, especially if you travel. 17.3" can be really difficult & heavy.
 
Reap3r

Reap3r

Member
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top