Viper III or Vortex III

[danfai]

Weighing up two options at the moment - which one should I go for? I am looking for a good all round future proof laptop.

Option 1)
Chassis & Display Viper III: 18.4" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2670QM (2.20GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 12GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (3 x 4GB)
Graphics Card 2 x 1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (SLI)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 750GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 6 Gb/s, 32MB 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 (£9)
Sound Card Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ADVANCED-N 6230 (300Mbps) +
BLUETOOTH

Option 2)
Chassis & Display Vortex Series: 17.3" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2760QM (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 8GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670M - 1.5GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 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 STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® ADVANCED-N 6230 (300Mbps) +
BLUETOOTH
USB Options 3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing 1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Kimikus]

That's a very similar dilemma I had actually lol.
What I'm doing is waiting for the new Ivy Bridge processors coming out at the end of the month before purchasing anything. I've been told by multiple people that Ivy bridge performance will be better compared to Sandy bridge for approximately the same price so if you can afford to wait a bit (only a few weeks), then I would. By the way I should warn you that there are only 2 Viper III laptops left in stock so if you are inclined to go for the viper I wouldn't hesitate for too long...

 

[dangro474]

Having owned both chassis I would personally opt for the Vortex III 17.3".

The viper III is a beautiful machine with excellent build quality, however the weight, gloss finish, lack of a matte screen and GPU limitation of the Viper III ultimately leads to it being outshined by a high spec Vortex III. Although SLI 560M's will outperform a single 675M, SLI performance varies game to game and ultimately can end up causing more issues than its worth, and once you have used a matte screen it's difficult to go back to glossy

If you do decide to go for a Vortex III however I would highly recommend opting for the most powerful GPU option available, as the GPU will ALWAYS be your perofrmance bottleneck with gaming laptops (unless you do something daft like opt for the lowest end i3 CPU...).

 

[jameslondon05]

Tip: the viper III is no more. I got the last one