New Laptop Advice

[nullusnomen]

Hello folks. Long-time follower, but new poster. I currently have a desktop I built some four years ago and it's still a nice system, however I'm buying a new house and have a daughter/grandson moving in for the time being so I'm losing my den. The plan is to switch to a laptop for mobility thoughout the home.

Despite a decent general knowledge of computers and the ability to build a desktop system, my knowledge of laptops is limited to the modest laptops I purchased for my kids when they went off to college. I have done some research and have narrowed my list down, however I'm looking for opinions, advice and any other input from you more knowledgeable folks.

I generally keep my systems for around 4-5 years before upgrading so while starting with a budget, by default I like to purchase on the higher end of it to get as many years out of it as possible. I use my computer for quite a bit of gaming, typical daily browsing, photo editing and overall general use.

I have been looking at Sager laptops and have found that Xotic (by way of Amazon), seems to have the best current available options within my budget ($2000 range). This is the system I am currently looking at.

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Looking forward to replies and thanks in advance.

 

[jbgarcia]

That is the exact model I ordered a few days ago, identical down to every last component (I also did quite a bit of research, plus I have some experience with gaming laptops). I purchased it directly from Xotic PC; you'll save about $190 if you do so, but you'll have to wait much longer because I assume the Amazon version is already stocked in their warehouse. If you want the savings just search XoticPC (or Google) for the same model number minus the 1 designation, so Sager NP8173-S.

Anyway, performance-wise this laptop will handle any hardware-intensive games you throw at it and crush them at 1080p Ultra settings at 80/90+ FPS. Only a few strategy games which are heavily CPU-dependent will stay closer to the 60+ FPS range. This laptop can even do 4K Ultra at 35-45 FPS or High at 45-55 FPS. If you only play less intensive games like MOBAs or CS:GO then this laptop will feel like a quantum computer.

For general use this is overkill but most modern laptops are, of course.

Here is a link to a list of game benchmarks for the specs you have (scroll way down to Game Benchmaks section to see them). By the way, each setting has 3 or 4 numbers next to it, some higher and some lower. This is because some of the benchmarks were done with a different, overclocked CPU. You can click each number to see what the reference specs are.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1070-Laptop.169549.0.html

 

[jbgarcia]

I should mention that I also selected this build to last me about 4 years. I plan on skipping the next GPU generation and upgrading midway through the second or until the third rolls out (Nvidia GPU main series are generally 18 months apart, not including Ti refreshes).

 

[velo3100]

That machine is a very good laptop.

 

[nullusnomen]

Thanks for the great replies. My main concern was the CPU being 6700HQ instead of 6700K, and whether I should wait and hope the price of the faster model dropped at some point.

 

[nullusnomen]

Just to follow up...I went to both Sager and Xotic's websites and built this same system. Neither site had a lower price, and although Xotic's was close, Sager's was way off (due to the 512 nvme ssd upgrade). After reading up on several threads and websites, I'm still trying to understand why folks think you can save money by going direct to those sites instead of using Amazon? Yes, Xotic has a 3% cash option, but otherwise, the price isn't any different, and in the case of Sager, it's actually notably higher. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.