(URGENT) Need Critical Analysis on laptop. Clevo P170HM Core I7/GTX460M in the next few hours

[TheBlazed]

CPU: Intel I7 2720QM (Quad Core)

Display: Full HD (1920x1080) 16:9 Panel

Memory: 8G Dual Channel DDR3 (Expandable memory up to 16GB)


GPU: nVIDIA Geforce GTX 460M
-1.5 GB GDDR5
-Support PCIe x16
- Microsoft® DirectX® 11 compatible
- MXM3.0 TypeB
- Support HDCP
- DVI Dual link
- HDMI 1.4
- nVIDIA PhysX™
- GeForce® CUDA™ Technology

HDD (2 Slots with)
Seagate Momentus 320 GB - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm
Seagate Momentus 750 GB - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm

Dimensions and weight:
412(W) x 276(D) x 41.8~45.4(H)mm
3.9kg (Including ODD and 76.96WH battery)
Portable as fuck yo.

Battery Life: 3 Hours

Security: Kensignton Lock and Fingerprint Reader

Being Bought for 790$

What im looing to answer: Is this a good buy?

I was looking for a mix between portability and Capable gaming performance.
This is best deal ive run into that offers Full HDMI which seems to be scarce or 17.3 in laptops now.

Can anyone give me their opinion from looking at the specs.

- Any Suggesstions? Laptop cooler?, SSD?

- It comes with 2 HDD as listed above.

- I appreciate any and all Comments.
- MY initial thought is this laptop should be well over 1000$ with these specs.

Full list of specs can be found here
http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/...?productid=311

-Note laptop is similar but apply above criteria

[hey]

- MY initial thought is this laptop should be well over 1000$ with these specs.

That's what i thought. Seems like an incredible deal, but i'm skeptical.

[Zetanio]

Pricing this through other vendors (iBuyPower, NewEgg etc) comes out much higher then $1000 unless I'm missing something.

[The Stig]

a GTX 460m? Wow, this is pretty much a 2011 gaming laptop.

You're correct, you'd need to pay £1300~ for a laptop with those specs in the UK ($1800?)

As a desktop replacement this is pretty much fantastic. The chasis of this laptop is pretty generic but it doesn't really matter. The CPU is pretty much top tier too.

I believe $800 equates to maybe £500 in the UK. I'd buy it up in an instant.

My questions: why is it so cheap, where are you seeing it?

[Tymon]

That's pretty boss. Buy it, at that price you can't go wrong.

[TheBlazed]

Thanks for the reply. Im buying it off someone who just gave me a price and i told him id get back to him....
This laptop looks like it needs to be in the 1200~ ish range

I'm skeptical too we will see soon tho.


Edit: I understand the GTX 460m is a last year card but im not looking to spend the extra 200-300 dollars for the GTX 560M.

This laptop is mainly being used for school and i just want to have the OPTION of using it for gaming.
I have a Desktop already for D3/FFXIV/Tera waiting.

@The Stig: Friend of mine is spending 5,000 on a super decked Alienware desktop. (He won lottery for 20k this week)

He just offering it to me for 790$ (Weird number lol)... and i just said hold onto it i'll get back to you later.

[Zetanio]

If it's not new in box with warranties that takes a bit off the price. Not much, just saying.

[TheBlazed]

Yea he said it has been used for about 4 months.
Still a bargain for ~800$ lol.

Might just have to buy this?

Any Predictions on FPS counts?

I play Battlefield 3
FFXIV (of course)

And will pick up Tera/D3. I heard this models GPU was Upgradable? can anyone confirm this?

I'm just aiming to Be able to play on Medium/High settings. Only inbetween classes n such so not for very long.

[The Stig]

GPUs on laptops are in general not upgradable.

The last time I heard of an upgradable GPU (actually swap out chip/card) was back in the 2003/2004 Alienware days. That quickly went to shit when newer tech came along.

Not sure about current generations. I'd imagine it'd be replacable, but not upgradable. I've not read (and I'm a laptop ethusiast) about upgradable GPUs in laptops recently (2006-present) lol

[Kohan]

Plenty of laptop GPUs are replaceable. It's simply up to the manufacturer as to whether they release a higher tier modular ("modular" being the key word) card or not.

It isn't a new practice, either. I replaced an old Dell's graphics card in 2004 with a 64MB model (up from 32MB) to play FFXI on it.

If there's a more powerful model of the same laptop that includes a better graphics card, and it's not integrated, there's a fair chance it will fit in the machine you're getting. Naturally, you can't just get any modular GPU—it must fit the same form factor, hence mentioning that, if there's a higher tier version of the same machine, it may be possible.

That's not to say it will be worth the cost, though. Specialty laptop parts can be obscenely expensive. This is more so to let you know that the option may be there, not whether it's a sound idea to pursue it or not.

[Cephius]

Not sure about current generations. I'd imagine it'd be replacable, but not upgradable. I've not read (and I'm a laptop ethusiast) about upgradable GPUs in laptops recently (2006-present) lol

Pretty much this. Most motherboards are designed with specific GPUs in mind, you usually can't upgrade them.

[TheBlazed]

Question: Would it be more Beneficial to take out that 320GB HDD and replace with a SSD?
If i only use 320GB HD for Booting i shouldnt have long load times.... maybe SSD would reduce to less than ~20 seconds but if its a marginal difference i can wait.

[rezn0r]

i'd recommend a SSD to anyone that wants to pay for it, it is an awesome upgrade, although between those 2 current games + what i'm assuming will be pretty big games when they are out + office or whatever else you use might be tight on a 120gb (which is what i use, and love). the price for something bigger may end up being a difference maker for you. fwiw i keep skyrim, bf3, rage (will move soon), and ffxiv on mine right now along with a few random much smaller games and im currently around 4gb free. usually i try to keep it around 20-25gb free. have fun.

edit: guess i didn't really give a reason for my answer, the SSD makes a big difference for all load times, not just booting the system. in my opinion they are totally worth it. i might even buy another bigger one soon and move this one to a laptop.

[Cephius]

SSDs are awesome. Worth every penny. Everything that involves seeking the hard drive is faster, such as loading screens in games, boot up times, virus scans... stuff like that. Windows 7 will utilize SSDs properly out of the box but it helps to make a few tweaks. There are a bunch of guides out there that'll help.

Get a 256GB if you can if you're like me (and rezn0r apparently) in that you like leaving a bunch of games installed at a time. Otherwise you'll find you're constantly fighting for space. On a desktop you can have a secondary drive to use for the temp directory and misc programs, on a laptop you don't have that luxury. They have dropped in price a lot the last year or so, you should be able to find a great deal.

[Khamsin]

So ideal setup on a laptop would be something like an SSD with the OS and frequently used apps and games on it, plus a 750+ GB 5400 rpm HDD for media, lesser used apps and games, browser, temp files, and everything else?

Is it true that SSD performance degrades the more you fill it, and the more you delete/rewrite?

[hey]

Is it true that SSD performance degrades the more you fill it, and the more you delete/rewrite?

yes

[The Stig]

yes

I thought this was only on "early" models? Apparently nowadays (not that I've purchased any, at all) it comes with applications that help and extend the life of a SSD?

Pretty much this. Most motherboards are designed with specific GPUs in mind, you usually can't upgrade them.

Ya, but Kohan subverted my own statement by saying that (and I've honestly not considered it when typing) it's possible to "upgrade" it with the same model which has more RAM.

[hey]

it comes with applications that help and extend the life of a SSD?

Well, yes, but as sectors die, they still gradually get slower.

[Arkanna]

The MTBF on a Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD is 2,000,000 hours ... which is more than 228 years, just sayin'. More realistically though, Intel claims a usable lifespan of "at least 5 years at 20GB/day writes" on their SSD's.

Also, many modern SSD's over-provision to account for bad sectors over time, like for example, the stated SSD is a 240GB drive but actually contains 256GB of flash memory. The controller is able to recognize bad sectors and replace them with unused sectors to maintain performance/capacity.

Lastly, Windows 7's TRIM support (and improved native garbage collection algorythms on the SSD controllers themselves) negate any performance loss you may see from lots of SSD activity. The whole reason that SSD's perform worse over time is that, when data is erased, it is only marked for overwrite, it's not actually erased. SSD's *must* erase a sector before writing new data to it, unlike a hard drive. TRIM and NGC both solve this problem by erasing marked sectors while your machine is idle.

[Cephius]

So ideal setup on a laptop would be something like an SSD with the OS and frequently used apps and games on it, plus a 750+ GB 5400 rpm HDD for media, lesser used apps and games, browser, temp files, and everything else?

Yes, but most laptops don't have secondary hdd bays.

Is it true that SSD performance degrades the more you fill it, and the more you delete/rewrite?

Yes, but this was only a notable issue on the older SSD drives. New drives with newer firmware have reduced degradation concerns. It'll still happen, and if you benchmark your SSD as it gets full you'll see a drop in performance, but it's not really noticeable to the every day user. The SSD lifespan still exceeds platter drives anyway.