The 17.3" Vortex III first time buyer

[LDog]

Hi this is my first time every buying a laptop so i want to get it right :sweatdrop:

Vortex Series:17.3" AUO Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Intel® Core™i7 Dual Core Mobile Processor i7-3520M (2.90GHz) 4MB
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM - DX 11 (ETA 23rd JULY)
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
2 x 17.3" Vortex Series Battery Pack, 76.96WH (One Spare) (£49)
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

Im going to be using this mainly for gaming and just watching stuff thats been downloaded etc going to be playing diablo3 starcraft2 and BlackOps2 on release so im wanting it to be able to play these game with no problem and play games for the next 12 months.

So my first question is which is better the

Intel® Core™i7 Dual Core Mobile Processor i7-3520M (2.90GHz) 4MB or Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3820QM (2.70GHz) 8MB

and my second question is the AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM - DX 11 (ETA 23rd JULY) is this in stock ? as the ETA was yesterday

Thanks in advance for any advice and info on the wait time.

L.Dog

 

[Angelmaker30]

if its just for gaming you can probably drop down on more step again on the processor without noticing much difference. I'm not an expert but from what I have been reading the nvidea 680 may be a better bet and with the money saved on downgrading the processor it should not cost much if any more.

 

[Dizmo]

The i7-3610QM isn't really much slower than the i7-3820QM but is £230 cheaper. Quad core over dual for sure though.

Since you play GPU intensive games like BO2, the GPU will likely become obselete far sooner than the processor, so the 3820 isn't worth the extra expense. You'd probably never notice the difference.

 

[LDog]

do games us the extra core tho on a quad? thats why i was thinking the 2.90GHz dual as it had a higher GHz altho im not sure what that is

 

[AzY]

do games us the extra core tho on a quad? thats why i was thinking the 2.90GHz dual as it had a higher GHz altho im not sure what that is

Go with the 3610qm, its 4 cores, and cheaper.
the i5 3520 runs at 2.9 x 2 = 5.8
i7-3610qm runs at 2.3 x 4 cores = 9.2

the 3610qm is easily better and is cheaper, no reason not to go for it

 

[Dolleeh]

the i5 3520 runs at 2.9 x 2 = 5.8
i7-3610qm runs at 2.3 x 4 cores = 9.2

It doesn't really work like that. Although I do agree with your decision to go with the quad core, you don't add the frequencies together to get the total. It's more about the multitasking abilities for the processor to run more applications at a higher frequency.

For running a single application which only requires 2 cores, then the higher frequency of the dual core would be preferable, however it is likely that you will run multiple applications and some will benefit from the quad core, for example BF3.

So yea, I'd go with the 3610qm