Choice between two laptops, have a couple of questions...

touchyandalou

Estimable
Sep 2, 2015
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Hey guys. I've decided to upgrade on my Dell 7720 to a proper gaming laptop and had originally planned on spending around £1000. Initially I was drawn to the Acer Aspire Nitro 17 Black Edition outfitted with a GTX 965m, but then started to think that considering I want this laptop to last me a good while I should probably spend a bit more to hopefully get a good 3-4 or maybe even 5 years out of the thing (probably being a bit optimistic, but meh)

So I do a bit more looking around and move from the Acer (965m) to the Asus G751JT (970m) to the Asus G751JY (980m). Now all of a sudden I'm in £2000, which is the absolute limit of my possible budget but definitely more than I'd ideally want to spend.

Long story short, I've moved away from the Asus and settled on the MSI GT72-2QE Dominator Pro. Now my questions relate to the choice between two different models, one which costs £1999.99 and the other £1699.99, and whether the differences justify the extra cost. But first, here's what they share in common:

17.3 FHD IPS Display
GTX 980m
i7-5700HQ
16GB DDR3L
2x 128GB M.2 SSD + 1TB 7200rpm HDD
Bluray writer

The difference is the £2000 model has a 75 Hz G-SYNC display, whereas the £1700 model doesn't. And the more expensive one also has 8GB VRAM while the cheaper one only has 4GB. So my questions are:

1) Is G-SYNC worth the extra money? I understand what it does, but what I'm specifically wondering is in 3 or so years when the 980m is getting on and can only play the latest games at reduced FPS, is G-SYNC likely to offer any advantages then? i.e. will 30 fps with G-SYNC play a lot smoother than 30 fps without G-SYNC?

2) How advantageous is having the 8GB 980m likely to be 3 years down the line? I'll only be playing games at the native 1080p resolution (no 4K) but do you think 4GB is going to be a significant bottleneck 3 years from now on new games at 1080p?

I'd obviously like to save £300, but some degree of future-proofing is also playing on my mind.

Thanks in advance for reading and taking the time to respond!
 

metalicgeek

Estimable
I don't believe that G-Sync is worth the money on a laptop, even with such a powerful graphics card as the 980M. Laptop cards depreciate in value for performance very quickly compared to desktop cards, and after a few years, you likely won't be getting the very high framerates that justify G-Sync. As for the VRAM amount, 8GB won't help a card like the GTX 960, which is not powerful enough to competently play games at maximum settings and 4K resolution, where 4GB of RAM becomes essential. Ultimately, I think saving 300 GBP would be better.
 
1) I personally don't think g sync is worth it unless you have very good eyesight or look out for screen tearing. This will depend on the type of games you play. If you play mostly fps, which is where screen tearing can happen due to the fast movement, then yes, it maybe worth it in the future. But if you play mostly rpgs, where most of the time you are exploring the area you are in then no.

2) I think the 8 gigs will make a difference in the future for the 980m as games are requiring you to have more vram by default. As this is a strong gpu and can play most games at the highest settings at 1080p, I think it will be worth it.