680m How long will it be king?

[Fawkon]

Firstly I'm very new to Laptop/PC gaming. I have used computers to play games when I was a kid such as X-Com (Old skool version), Fallout 1/2 etc. meaning not very demanding.

I usually game on an the X-Box but have recently moved house and would like to switch to using my laptop for some serious gaming with the likes of Dayz/Battlefields/New X-Com. I don't have much experience with Graphics cards as such and although I know the golden rule "The moment you buy computer hardware it is already outdated" I am curious as to how long you think that a single Nvidia 680m would be capable of playing the newest releases without dropping below an average of 30 FPS.

The reason I ask is I'm debating whether to jump from a 15" Vortex to the 17" Elite and get 680m SLI. Is it overkill if you are not looking to play at 100+ FPS on every game for years to come? I guess I'm trying to justify the price in my head and am hoping you guys could help me out. I'm moving from a Dell Inspiron with an i5 520 with an AMD HD 5450 1 gig card. I played Dayz for 2 months with 13 FPS average haha...

(Sidenote: Probably a hard question to answer but would the 680m be upgradeable to whichever the next best mobile card is when it is released? OR is it soldered into motherboard?)

Thanks
Ró

 

[Iroquois Pliskin]

I am curious as to how long you think that a single Nvidia 680m would be capable of playing the newest releases without dropping below an average of 30 FPS.

By newest release you probably also imply the condition of "maximum settings"? Currently, a single GTX 680M can handle everything in 1080p at max with 2/4x Anti-Aliasing, while maintaining 45-60 FPS.

I would say two years from now, you would have to disable any AA, while still retaining maximum possible settings, then six months to a year from that, you will have to start lowering the graphical settings in order to maintain a playable frame rate of 30-35. Although, the second part will depend largely on how soon the new generation of consoles come out.

Middle to High end mobile GPUs are not soldered and can be upgraded much the same way a desktop PCI-E card would be. Mobile motherboards use something called "MXM" standard.

I would go for SLI 680M for the peace of mind for the next 5 years, but I'm biased like that. : D

[video=youtube;DVH-uv8803U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=DVH-uv8803U#t=441s[/video]​

This is the Clevo P170EM (Vortex III), GPU replacement is at 7:21 and is as easy as 1-2-3, as you can see.