Vortex 17.3, 8970M build, a couple of queries

[jimmymac]

I'm curious as to peoples thoughts related to performance between the 8970M and the 780M, I have recently ordered my laptop and I just couldnt justify the extra £300 odd it was to jump up to the 780M, I enjoy gaming but I have been quite happy with my desktop running a Q6600 and a 560ti for quite some time now as I am not one for really being too bothered about having all settings at "ultra". As such I have gone for the following build and I think that it should be powerful enough for my needs

Chassis & Display Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card AMD® Radeon® HD 8970M - 4GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk 750GB WD SCORPIO BLUE WD7500BPVX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 8MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 6x BLURAY WRITER, 8x DVD ±R/±RW & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE
Sound Card Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking: GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0


My requirement has been due to moving house, although we have moved to a bigger property I no longer really want to have a desk in any of the rooms and as such my Desktop PC has become a bit defunct and so I've looked to go towards laptop gaming instead.

I see on the website that the laptops might be upgradeable too, is it likely that I might be able to change the gfx card in the future should I need it?

 

[keynes]

I would look at a Scorpio black as a secondary drive. Regarding upgrades on the gpu for future graphic cards depends on whether or not Clevo releases a bios upgrade for your chassis. I think the vortex III doesn't have a bios update yet to support the gtx 780m for example.

 

[jimmymac]

No changes to be made i'm afraid, the system has apparently already been built and is in testing and configuration as we speak

I should probably elaborate a bit more on my previous spec too, basically it was a Q6600, 560Ti, 128 SSD and then about 4/5 (can never remember) seagate 500GB drives, none of those SATA drives were particularly new and pretty much just for storage. As I mentioned I game but I am all about gameplay having been a child of the 80's and 90's I was quite used to CGA/EGA graphics and which meant I barely had colours let along anti aliasing!

I got quite used to merely having the OS and installing the games on the SSD and then removing them once I had finished and using the extra drives just for "other" and thus not really needing to worry about how quick they were, hopefully this will remain the case


Do you find the 17" laptop big? I am used to using a 15" work laptop and can't help but wonder if I have gone a bit bigger than I really need.

 

[Cricky]

Yours is a pretty similar build to mine. I too couldn't justify the extra for the 780M. I had read up on them before buying and found some sites saying it was 30% faster than the 8970M but not in all games, and in some cases they were equal. I guess it depends on whether they were optimised for Nvidia or AMD.

I find the screen size fine myself but my previous laptop was a 17" so I couldn't go any smaller. Plus it stays in the house so I'm not carrying it all over the place.

 

[jimmymac]

Thanks, thats great, looking forward to it arriving and getting a chance to get back into a bit of gaming again, its been months since I have had a chance to!!

 

[Cricky]

 

[Thorthor]

If you look at the 3d mark scores on the forum you'll see my vortex scored 4800 ish. The difference between the 8970 and the 780 scores is about 6%. Is the 6% worth £250 extra? Not to me. To others it is and that's fine though, I don't want to start a debate, we all know the 780 is a beast!

As for the size? It took me about 8 seconds or so to get used to it!

I'm sure you'll be grinning when your laptop arrives! Enjoy!

 

[jimmymac]

This has now arrived and all looking good, I do have one question though, the spec tells me that I should have cyberlink software with the blu ray player but I don't seem to have it?

 

[vanthus]

This has now arrived and all looking good, I do have one question though, the spec tells me that I should have cyberlink software with the blu ray player but I don't seem to have it?

If the Cyberlink software disk isn't included in your welcome pack,give PCS a call.

 

[jimmymac]

Ahh ok, only got windows and the laptop drivers so will call them