Gaming laptops: ASUS G551JM vs MSI GT70 2PC Dominator

[MokiCzech]

Hey fellas,

I am looking for a new gaming laptop and I am currently stuck between these two. I've had ASUS G75VW until now and I can easily say that the cooling of ASUS notebooks is the best - hands down. Dominator however looks also very sturdy, so I wouldn't be too worried. What's the most important though: It comes with nVidia GeForce GTX 870M (compared to Asus's 860). On the other hand, it does not have SSD. I am just really torn between these two.

ASUS G551JM-CN109H

• 
  CPU: Intel Core i7 (Haswell), 4710HQ(2.5/3.5GHz)
  GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M, 4 GB
  SSD: 256 GB
  MEM: 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3

I also prefer the look of Asus much more - it has this amazingly slick design that makes me drool all over my keyboard.

MSI GT70 2PC-1890CZ Dominator
* Dominator is $40 more, but it comes with a bag which would be fairly handy. So consider prices the same.

• 
  CPU: Intel Core i7 (Haswell), 4710MQ(2.5/3.5GHz)
  GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M, 3GB
  HDD: 1 TB (7200 RPM)
  MEM: 8 GB 1600Mhz DDR3

Please someone, save me!

 

[Suztera]

Neither. You can find a GTX 970M laptop near that price which will outperform the GTX 860m

 

[MokiCzech]

That might be true if it wasn't for me living in Czech Republic. I realize that you can easily get better notebooks for the same price in USA, but cheapest GTX 970 I see is $250 more.

 

[Suztera]

That might be true if it wasn't for me living in Czech Republic. I realize that you can easily get better notebooks for the same price in USA, but cheapest GTX 970 I see is $250 more.

Then the MSI is better due to its 8GB ram and GTX 870M.
If it is not a laptop for your main gaming purposes then you could comprise graphical performance for aesthetics.

 

[MokiCzech]

Asus has 16 GB RAM though, and 4 GB on GPU. MSI has 8 GB RAM and 3 GB on (better) GPU. I think you may have overlooked I'm still not decided honestly. Is 870 that much better, considering I am sacrifising SSD, 8 GB of RAM, 1 GB of video memory and better looks? DAMN YOU, DECISIONS!

 

[Suztera]

The loss of 1gb vram isn't much. 3 gb vram is fine. Look at the performance of gtx 870m vs 860m. 870m is almost double the performance.
ssd isn't that important in gaming performance. Plus you can install one later on.