12 replies to this topic

[DocBach]

My wife is buying me a new laptop for father's day. She wanted to get this buy one get one free dell deal that they had going on to get rid of their sandy beach chips and I said why not just get me a good computer at the same price?

So she agreed. I'm planning out a Sager build from xoticpc. I'm getting the NP9150, I had the NP8662 until it fell and died a terrible death.

I was wondering, is the SSD worth it? I'm reluctant to pull the trigger on it because of the small size and crazy price, but I've had several HDs get trashed from falls (my kid loves to grab my laptop and it usually ends up dropped). It's either a 120gb SSD HD or sticking with the stock 500gb HDD and saving a couple hundred bucks.

Next up - RAM - I can either get 8gb of 1600ghz RAM, or 12gb 1333ghz RAM for the exact same price - which one would be better for gaming, specifically MWO. Thanks in advance.

[Diligent Gravy]

As long its the new technology SSD (trim technology i think its called and they last about 7 years or so i was told) then the performance differenance is ~4 times that of a regular SATA drive. if you put them in RAID 0, if you get two then that is ~8 times better... at least on benchmarks ive seen.

As far as ram goes the speed of it is always a bottleneck... if the MB memory bus on the laptop can support 1600mhz speed I would go with that. you can always add a stick or two later.

Im not a tech guru but im getting a laptop myself and did some research.

Hope that helps, and again this is only my opinions.

DG

Edited by Diligent Gravy, 03 May 2012 - 07:58 PM.

[IcemanO11]

I have an SSD, just picked it up for my ASUS G53, and honestly, It speeds up general operations on your PC ~10 fold. Startup time is gone, as well as application start times. As for gaming, Load times are the most affected, generally only takes 5-10 seconds from the SSD versus 45-60 from the HDD. I would reccomend it if you want lasting overall performance, and keep the HDD for mass storage.

As for the RAM, you most likely wont be using anywhere near 8 GB of ram at any given point, unless you're running multiple video editing programs or games simultaneously. I'm not sure if you'll notice a difference between 1600 and 1333, but you'll be safe with either decision.
I'd go with 8GB 1600, just because I currently have 6 and have never gotten close to full usage.

[Fresh Meat]

what Iceman said

Also SSD have great shock resistance

Edited by Fresh_Meat, 03 May 2012 - 08:06 PM.

[Catamount]

Honestly, 8GB of DDR3-1333 is more than sufficient for any gaming application.

So if it's a choice between 8GB of DDR3-1600, or 12GB of DDR3-1333? Well since there's no such thing as either 3GB or 6GB DIMMS, getting 12GB means an incorrect memory setup, because the RAM is dual channel, so you'd have mismatched memory channels.

In other words, for 12GB, you'd be paying more to get an inferior memory setup. So go with 8GB.


Before you do anything else, just make sure you prioritize getting the Radeon HD 7970M, instead of either of the Nvidia GPUs. Unlike the mobile Geforce 600 series which is just rebranded old Fermi cards (they are NOT new Kepler cards), the 7970M is actually a real version of the new Southern Islands cards, and it's vastly faster than either of those Nvidia cards. Basically, the 7970M is 70-100% faster than the 670M (for about 33% more power), and at least 70% faster than the 675 (for the same power consumption). Notebookcheck doesn't have game benchmarks up for the 7970M, because it's very new, but that's consistent across both 3Dmark Vantage, and 3Dmark 11 (which are usually pretty representative of average relative gaming performance).


More or less doubling the gaming performance of the machine for $200 is a steal, and while an SSD is nice, the actual gaming performance is more important, especially when it's that big a difference (yes, it's also worth waiting until they're in stock for that; they say by late May, so it's not much of a wait), and especially when laptops so savagely lack good gaming performance for what you pay.

Edited by Catamount, 04 May 2012 - 06:55 AM.

[DocBach]

The 7970M is staying even if I don't get the SSD. What I read was the 675M was just a 580M rebranded and that you won't see Kepler structured cards until the 680M.

I have no problem waiting until the end of this month because I will be out of town doing military training until the end of the month.... no loss there. I just want xoticpc to get me a total price so I can mail the check off before I leave, because if they don't I will have no way to check my email and tell my wife how much/where to send it.

[Catamount]

Good choices all around. The 7970M is just worth the wait (the 680M would be great too; it's just not close enough to release ), and XoticPC's definitely the seller to go with. I was very close to getting my laptop from them two years ago, but Newegg had a sale on the Asus N61JQ that I couldn't turn down

[AC]

One of the biggest performance bumps I noticed was not overclocking my processor, but overclocking my memory. I would definitely go for the faster memory. You might not need the performance of the SSD if you can put in a fast enough regular hard drive. Takes a bit longer to boot, but after that the performance is not that much different. I pulled the trigger on a SSD for my primary drive, and the computer boots fast and loads programs fast, but its not this super mega awesome performance enhancer I was expecting.

[The Birdeater]

SSD's are great!
I don't have any HDD in my new Computer. Got a Crucial M4 (500 GB) and it is awesome. Expensive, but worth it!

[SNOWHOUND]

SSDs are mega.

if storage is an issue you can always get an external HDD that uses either USB3.0 or eSATA which shouldnt comprimise on your read/write speeds too much if at all.

go with some 8Gb 1600MHz, 12Gb is a bit of a stupid number and a bit excessive.

[guardiandashi]

I am going to say most people will not see a significant difference between 1333 and 1600 ram even though the 1600 is ~17% faster

the real issue as was mentioned is how are they coming up with the 12gb memory config

unless you have something that uses tripple channel ram it likely is not worth it.

ram module sizes are binary numbers

1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192, etc

the most common sizes you will find currently are going to be, 1024mb (1gb) 2048mb (2gb) 4096mb (4gb) and 8192mb aka 8gb

note the 1-4 gb sizes are common, the 8gb part is rare or non existant .... yet

now bearing in mind the common sizes how are you likely to get 12gb?

tripple channel 12gb is a GOOD number as it is 1 or 2 channel banks fully populated (6x 2gb parts) or 3 4gb parts

in dual or quad channel its going to be a odd size arrangement as the most common ways to get it are either 3X4 gb (leaving 1 bank half populated) 2x4 plus 2x2, 1x8 plus 1x4 or some other variation

[Phatt]

G'day, just some info that might be of use.

The answer to your question is 3 x 4Gb of tripple channel memory.

I have an Intel DX58 SO Mainboard that can run either Dual channel or Tripple channel memeroy modules and can have a maximum of 16Gb Dual channel or 12Gb of Tri channel memory. At the moment I am only using 3x2 of tripple channel 1600mhz ram which means there is one slot vacant.

When I first saw the WIN7 64bit system requirement of 8Gb of ram I did have some concerns about whether my 6Gb of tripple channel memory would be sufficeint to run MWO properly, however I have since found that there was no need to worry at all. I have the game settings at maximum running at 1920 x 1200 in full screen mode and It runs as smooth as a realy smooth thing.

WIN7 64bit Pro
Intel DX58SO
Intel i7 730 CPU
Asus GTX560 II Top
Cossair 1600mhz Tri channel Ram x 6GB
Cossair 120gb SSD
WD 160GB x2 in RAID0
WD 1TB
The rest is unimportant and it's not overclocked because it doesn't need to be overclocked.

Edited by Phatt, 31 July 2012 - 12:28 AM.

[ultra1437]

IcemanO11, on 03 May 2012 - 08:00 PM, said:

I have an SSD, just picked it up for my ASUS G53, and honestly, It speeds up general operations on your PC ~10 fold. Startup time is gone, as well as application start times. As for gaming, Load times are the most affected, generally only takes 5-10 seconds from the SSD versus 45-60 from the HDD. I would reccomend it if you want lasting overall performance, and keep the HDD for mass storage.

As for the RAM, you most likely wont be using anywhere near 8 GB of ram at any given point, unless you're running multiple video editing programs or games simultaneously. I'm not sure if you'll notice a difference between 1600 and 1333, but you'll be safe with either decision.
I'd go with 8GB 1600, just because I currently have 6 and have never gotten close to full usage.

I maxed out my Asus (or was it biostar, i can never remember) Z68 Mobo with 16 GBs of 1600. Never seen more than 4 gigs in use without accidentally leaving a game running in the background and playing another. One GREAT use of a large amount of RAM, which really isn't probably performed too often, is using Terracopy instead of the default windows copy program. If you're copying data between two (or more!) physical disks, then terracopy will buffer as much data into RAM as it can, and just refil what finishes copying. From a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA II drive to a 2 TB 5400 RPM Sata III drive, i was waiting on the 5400 rpm drive to finish writing and terracopy actually DID get me over 10 gigs used on a 300+ GB copy of my steam folder.

Been meaning to pick up an SSD for my boot drive, any recommendations on size? (Probably no less than 100 GB)