Can my $4,000 2013 gaming laptop run HTC Vive? How much is it worth today?

[Gherr369]

Hi, I'm looking for help about upgrading to VR gaming. I have a Mythologic Gaming laptop that I bought for $4,000 in 2013. The specs of it are bellow. I was wondering if its best to sell this laptop and build a desktop or if I can just upgrade certain parts of my laptop through Mythologic and that would do it?
Mobile Chassis: MYTHLOGIC Nyx 5713 (Clevo P570WM) Exterior Finish: Carbon Fiber Wrapped LCD Lid Mobile Display: 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) Matte 72% NTSC Color Gamut LED Backlit LCD Dead Pixel Guarantee: MYTH Pixel Perfect Guarantee Monitor Calibration: Free MYTH Professional Monitor Color Calibration CPU: Intel Core i7-4930K 3.40GHz, 2133MHz DDR3, 12MB Cache, Hex Core ProcessorThis product is no longer available Thermal Compound: Free IC Diamond Thermal Compound System Memory: 32GB (4 x 8GB) , PC3-12800, 1600MHz SODIMM Quad-core processors ONLY! Video Adapter: NVIDIA 780M 4096MB GDDR5 DX11 Compliant Video Card Optical: Notebook Black 8X DVD+RW/CDRW Combo Drive Hard Drive: Samsung 250GB 840 EVO Series SATA III 6Gb/s Solid State DriveThis product is no longer available Hard Drive: 1TB 7200 32MB Cache SATA 3GB/sec Mecanical Hard Drive Keyboard: Standard Backlit Keyboard - NON Chiclet Webcam: Integrated Webcam Fingerprint Reader: Integrated Fingerprint Reader Wireless Card: Intel Centrino Advanced-AC 7260 2*2 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n + BT 4.0 350/867MB Total Bandwidth Bluetooth: Integrated Bluetooth 4.0 (On supported wireless cards) Operating System: Windows 7 UltimateThis product is no longer available Anti-Virus Software: Microsoft Security Essentials MYTHLOGIC Assurance: MYTH Lifetime Assurance with Lifetime Labor + 3 Years Parts Warranty, 3 Yrs 2-Way Shipping Canada Phoenix Upgrade Plan: Lifetime Phoenix Upgrade Plan
I also wanted to ask if I was to just sell my Mythologic, how much could I get for it?
Thanks, Gherry

 

[jaguarskx]

Unfortunately, it is not worth much if you were to compare it to a modern laptop. The GTX 780m is basically about equal to a desktop GTX 760 GPU and slightly better than a GTX 965m mobile GPU. A laptop with GTX 970m can be purchased for under just under $1,000 (Acer Predator), but I think they usually hover around $1,100 - $1,150.

What's unique about your laptop is that it uses a desktop CPU, the six core i7-4930k which alone costs about $600 if purchased new. That may pique the interest of some people that wants to record gameplay, but for most people it is overkill. That and the fact the CPU is rated at 130w TDP means it is both hot and power hungry so it is basically a desktop replacement.

Value? Hard to say. It's a 4 year old laptop which means it definitely lost over 50% of it's value. A new $1,300+ laptop can easily outperform your laptop even though at that price it will only a a quad core i7 CPU vs. your 6 core i7. That's because most games are limited by the GPU rather than the CPU and there are also diminishing returns for very powerful CPUs, but that means the CPU would then have to wait for GPU to catch up. Check ebay to see if there are any similar laptops to yours.


As for HTC Vive, I would say no. The minimum requirement is a GTX 970 / Radeon R9 290. There are very few mobile GPUs that are equal to or better than a desktop GTX 970. That basically limited to the following GPUs in the order of increasing performance. I think VR headsets requires GPUs that have been designed to support that tech so I do not think GTX 7xx generation GPU can handle VR. Besides, a GTX 780m is below the minimum system requirements anyway.

GTX 1060 - The same nVidia GTX 10xx series chips are used in both desktops and laptops. There is no "GTX 1060m" mobile GPU. However, the laptop version is tweaked to be a little slower than the desktop GPU versions. Definitely less than a 10% difference.

GTX 970m SLI

GTX 980 - nVidia sold cherry picked desktop GTX 980 chips to be used in laptops.

GTX 980m SLI

GTX 1070

GTX 1080