High Performance Laptop?

[grizzlybear]

I am still having some trouble with my hard drive choice, im looking between the 500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm) and the 240GB KINGSTON HYPERX SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW), i cant decide whether its worth spending the extra money on getting a SSD, how big is the difference between the two?

 

[Garfield The 2nd]

massive. simple as that. booting the OS initially, gaming, opening programs. If you can afford it, go for it, you absolutely won't regret it. It is a luxury, but one which is definitely worth it. Also no moving parts, so they are completely silent

 

[grizzlybear]

Would you say its worth the extra money? And may mean that i get the 2.20 quad core instead of the 2.40 to be more within budget.

 

[AndyL]

Would you say its worth the extra money? And may mean that i get the 2.20 quad core instead of the 2.40 to be more within budget.

If you are going to be using the laptop for gaming then you might aswell drop the CPU to an i7-2670QM (2.2GHz).

The performance of SSD's is incredible when compared with traditional HDD's. However they do not improve gaming performance as someone mentioned above, they do however improve all loading times such as game loading times and OS boot times, also the OS feels a lot more responsive.

 

[Garfield The 2nd]

as mentioned above, i may not have made myself 100% clear, but when i referred to gaming, i meant specifically the loading times, etc, not just generally, but yeah an ssd will be a massive performance gain for any rig overall, and it will make your pc a lot livelier and more responsive in general.

 

[Music Guy123]

The SSD will make a lot more improvement to the system performance than that from the increase of the cpu. It is well worth it, you will be glad you did it, believe me!

 

[grizzlybear]

thank you i will most likely get one of these now, ive been looking at laptop cooling stands, do you know if there any good?

 

[Music Guy123]

A laptop stand is always good and prolongs the life of your laptop. I'd say they are worth it.

 

[grizzlybear]

i want to ensure my laptop is future proofed so would that be more so if i got vortex with the 1.5gb gtx 560m rather than the optimus with the gt 555m?

 

[Music Guy123]

For gaming, yes that would future proof the laptop. Otherwise, probably not make a huge amount of difference.

 

[grizzlybear]

i may be totally wrong but would a 17" been cooler than a 15" as there is more room inside?

 

[Music Guy123]

There would be a slight difference, especially for the gpu.

 

[grizzlybear]

Thank you, another question i have is it worth getting 16gb of ram for future proofing purposes or would 8 be fine with the chance of faster ram coming out at some point?

 

[Music Guy123]

For gaming and general use, 8GB is plenty, possibly overkill. For detailed vid editing, 16GB may be better but I would just stick with 8GB.

 

[grizzlybear]

im just trying to make sure my laptop is future proofed and i know that newer games will take more ram etc, and by an overkill do you mean more than enough?

 

[Music Guy123]

Overkill can be basically be described by using a bazooka to kill a rabbit when you could use an air rifle. Yes, it does mean that it is pointless, honestly, 8 will be more than enough and you could always add more later if there is enough RAM slots free.

Edit: The optimus 17" only has 2 RAM slots and the maximum supported per RAM stick is 4GB so you won't be able to get 16GB in this laptop. You honestly won't need it though.

 

[grizzlybear]

i was looking at the possibility of getting the vortex 17" for the upgraded graphic's card

 

[Music Guy123]

I still believe that 8GB will be fine, especially as seeing how easily you could add the RAM later. Honestly, it really isn't worth it right now, 4GB should be enough.

 

[grizzlybear]

yeah i think your right, and like you say if i do need more i can just add it later on, thank you.

 

[grizzlybear]

Could i add another 4gb later on taking it up to 12gb or does it have to go straight up to 16gb, im asking this purely because the configurator doesnt have a 12gb option so was just wondering.