New Laptop Build

[Drazo]

Hi

I decided to buy a new laptop for gaming mainly for WoW, and secondarily for other games which may have high graphical requirements. I understand that getting a desktop is a much better solution but with all due respect, a laptop fits my needs as I travel regularly. I would just like to ask a few questions from which I would be grateful if you could give me some constructive advice and respectful responses. Firstly, I would like to know how effective this build would be for WoW mainly, and other games in terms of graphical output and other performances like frame rate, AA, texturing, etc. Also another things I would like to ask is whether I should invest on more RAM or SSD for future proofing as I have $150 more in hand. (or any other suggestions on upgrades). I do also welcome opinions on the build and suggestions that you may come across.

Build:

Sager NP9377-S (Clevo P377SM-A)

Processor: Sager - 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4810MQ (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache)
Display: 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen w/ 72% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080)
Graphics Video Card: SLI (2x) - NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 980M (16.0GB total) GDDR5 PCI-Express DX11 (Maxwell) [User Upgradeable]
Ram: 16GB DDR3 1600MHz [2x8GB] Kingston HYPER X (CL9) Dual Channel Memory
mSATA SSD Drive - Configuration Option: RAID-0 Storage - (Stripe) Combines mSATAs for performance. (Requires identical mSATA SSDs)
mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 1 ): 120GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive ( Operating System – Drive C: )
mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 2 ): 120GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive ( Operating System – Drive C: )
Primary Hard Drive: 1TB 7200RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s]

Once again I welcome everyones opinion so thanks in advance

[Denpepe]

The dual GPU is complete overkill for Wow, could be somewhat usefull in other more GPU demanding games. My laptop has an 880M an already runs wel over 100fps in the world, not sure about raids and stuff but that's mostly cpu bound anyways.

Depending on how much multitasking you intend to do 8GB ram should already be plenty for gaming, 16 GB should be more then enough, the dual SSD again is maybe somewhat pushing it, doubt you can get much faster then a single one and notice it but I guess the added space is welcome.

Other then that it seems a beastly machine that should run most games smoothly.

I know these laptops are already pretty good price/performance compared to other brands, maybe if you list a budget someone might be able to make some other recommandations.

[Drazo]

I was able to come with specs and other few things I have not mentioned with a budget of $3000. I would have upgraded cpu but is a huge jump. About 300 dollars more or so. I think i will go for a the Crucial msata m550 instead of samsung as it seems to have better write performance. Yeah, the laptop seems overkill but im hoping this will max out almost all games for sometime. My only solution atm for a desktop replacement. Thanks for your input.

[Masark]

I wouldn't bother with the more expensive RAM nor with RAIDing the SSDs. Neither is going to get you any real performance benefit and I don't trust RAID 0. Just get 16GB of the vanilla RAM and a 250/256GB SSD.

Though that aside, the NP9377 is probably your best option as a base. The only thing currently coming down the pipe is the P670 series, which Sager is calling the NP8672. It offers M.2 SSD capability*, but AFAIK, has no potential for SLI and Sager only offers the i7-4720HQ CPU, even though Clevo offers the i7-4870HQ and i7-4980HQ as options.

*M.2 is the next generation interface for SSDs, which is able to tie the SSD into the PCIe bus rather than through SATA, which allows for far greater throughput. SATA has been the bottleneck on SSD performance for awhile now, as it limits out at about 500MBps. M.2 tied into the PCIe bus offers 2-4GBps depending on configuration and should also cut down latency a tad.

[Drazo]

So its pretty much a gamble between M.2 SSD capability or SLI and better CPU. I think the NP9377-s should do alright for me atm. SSDs do not impact games as much so with that in mind I would go for performance. Would have liked to get the next generation M.2 PCIE in terms of future proofing knowing that this one would have bottlenecked but cannot have it all. I decided to go for 256 Crucial mSata m550 , after hearing that it has better performances than Samsung Evo. As for RAID 0, I was initially unsure about it but I guess its abit late for me to change the order. I guess I will have to keep regular backups.

[axhed]

is that a laptop with dual 8gb 980m's? does this thing sell for $7999 or something?

[Masark]

is that a laptop with dual 8gb 980m's? does this thing sell for $7999 or something?

No, around $3k.

[skitszo]

I'll guess your not gonna need battery life concerns...the Samsung is suppose to have the best energy efficiency if battery life is a concern.