Is the 17.3" Optimus VII Elite right for me?

shogun1904

Active member
I am looking at buying a gaming laptop and want it to be under £1000. Looking at the ones on offer here the 17.3" Optimus VII Elite stands out to me. I like playing Football Manager and would like my laptop to run that well for the next few releases. I also want to play Skyrim and possibly Fallout 4. Is the Optimus VII elite good enough for my needs? If not I am considering a custom build. Are there any components I should be upgrading to get what I need?

Basic Specs for the one I was looking at are below and a link to the full specs. Any advice would be appreciated.

17.3" Matte Full HD IPS Screen
>Intel® Core i7-6700HQ
>8GB HyperX IMPACT
>2GB GeForce GTX 960M
>1TB SATA HDD (5,400)
>Genuine Windows 10 Home

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers-for-next-day-delivery/241/
 

Parramatta

Silver Level Poster
Just one thing that might not be relevant to all people, but GPUs at 960M and lower will have trouble playing smooth 4K content (movies, TV, etc) in the future (as the entertainment switches over in 2016-2018, etc.

We had the same problem around 2005 when older, budget GPUs couldn't handle full HD blu-ray movies, etc.

Already streaming sites like Amazon are streaming 2160p TV shows and this will only increase over the years.

The 970M can play smooth 4K content.
 

saf94

Member
By far and away the best thing for Football Manager is an SSD. If you really want to get deep into it I highly suggest you make a custom laptop with an SSD. Fm doesn't need a good graphics card but installing it on an SSD makes all the loading and simulating games go really fast. You could rattle through a whole season in half the time.

960m isn't the top graphics card but it can play most games at pretty decent settings. Check out this site, scroll down and it will tell you at what resolution and settings it can play these games http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-960M.138006.0.html. I imagine Skyrim would be no problem, Fallout you'd need to dial the settings down a bit but can still do a decent fps at high graphics settings.

You can also go on youtube and type in gtx 960m and watch videos to see how it plays modern games.
 

shogun1904

Active member
By far and away the best thing for Football Manager is an SSD. If you really want to get deep into it I highly suggest you make a custom laptop with an SSD. Fm doesn't need a good graphics card but installing it on an SSD makes all the loading and simulating games go really fast. You could rattle through a whole season in half the time.

960m isn't the top graphics card but it can play most games at pretty decent settings. Check out this site, scroll down and it will tell you at what resolution and settings it can play these games http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-960M.138006.0.html. I imagine Skyrim would be no problem, Fallout you'd need to dial the settings down a bit but can still do a decent fps at high graphics settings.

You can also go on youtube and type in gtx 960m and watch videos to see how it plays modern games.

Yeah I have decided to go custom and get a SSD for my operating system and games. The upgrade from the 960M to the 970 seems quite pricey so I am struggling to justify that.
 

saf94

Member
Depends how much you need top end graphics. Fallout 4 would be playable but do you need it to be full 1080p highest end graphics? If you dont mind going down a bit for graphics then 960m should be no problem at all.

Here's a video to demonstrate how Fallout 4 looks on a 960m, seems decent enough to me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk9GNW0kv7M
 
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