Which laptop? Fairly serious specs

[Naister]

1st off. I've been doing some research and am primarily looking at the Sager 9285 and the Sager 8850

1 What is your budget?
2k ish (really whatever works)

2 What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
17 inch

3 What screen resolution do you want?
full HD (at least 1080p)

4 Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
I want portable but know it's not going to happen.. so this doesn't affect me much.

5 How much battery life do you need?
At least an hour

6 Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Yes, MW2/SCII High

7 What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Photo editing and watching movies (might get a monitor for home use though)

8 How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
500gb

10 How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I'd love to have this for 4 years.. that's why I want to spend a lot

11 What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD is fine

12 Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Sager looks very interesting, I'd prefer not to go with Dell/Alienware and no Mac for sure

13 What country do you live in?
U.S.A

14 Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Well I'm goin off to college and I would like to replace my desktop. I guess I would take this to class but I'm not worried about weight. The main thing I want is "future proof"
As I said up top, right now I am looking at the Sager 9285 or the 8850.
The only spec difference would be that the 9285 would have the GTX 285m, 6gb of RAM and the i7 Quad 930.
The 8850 would have the brand new GTX 480m, 4gb of RAM, and the i7 Dual 730.

Any new suggestions are welcome

Thanks a lot!

I've been out of the computer game for about 4 years (built a ~1k desktop a long time ago) and now I'm ready for something new!

 

[Maziar]

If you want to keep it for 4 years,then go for a quad core CPU.So i would recommend going with SAGER NP8760 instead
http/www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8760-built-clevo-w870cu-custom-gaming-laptop-p-2660.html
It has a 5870M which is faster than a GTX 285 and about 10-20% slower than a GTX 480M(but its cooler and has less power consumption)

 

[Naister]

Thanks! That looks like a great buy. I would be able to fit another HDD and maybe a nicer sound card into my budget too!

How's the Asus G73 stack up with these guys?

 

[Maziar]

G73 is pretty good too, and offers a better battery life than Sager NP8760, however i think the Sager model has a better build quality and cooling

 

[lostandwandering]

^^The G73 would be about equal to the Sager 8760 that Maziar linked. Having owned a Sager for 3 years now, I'd personally go with that over the Asus unless there is a huge price difference.

 

[Naister]

With the same specs, the Sager and the Asus are almost exactly the same price- but the Asus would have an i7-840 vs the Sager's i7-820 - is that only a minor clock difference or is there something I'm missing?

I've heard bad things about Asus service- has anyone had good/bad experience with Sager?

Maziar- do you have an idea of real life battery life (word processing only) for either? It just needs to be around 1.5 hours

Thanks again for the help!

 

[lostandwandering]

With the same specs, the Sager and the Asus are almost exactly the same price- but the Asus would have an i7-840 vs the Sager's i7-820 - is that only a minor clock difference or is there something I'm missing?

I've heard bad things about Asus service- has anyone had good/bad experience with Sager?

Nope, from what I can tell it is just a simple clock speed boost. They both run on the same manufacturing process (45nm), have the same TDP and cache amounts.

The wrap on Asus' support does seem to point to them being a little lacking. I never had to use Sager's support when my warranty was still valid. I did have to order some replacement parts after the fact and they were very helpful in getting me what I needed in a timely fashion.

 

[Maziar]

Right^
The difference is only in the clock speeds and nothing else.
As for the battery life,well G73 will last about 1hr and 30minutes whereas the Sager one will last for an hour(According to notebookreview.com reviews)

 

[Naister]

Ok one more question-
I've recently realized that I'm probably going to want to have a big ol external monitor for the dorm room - in that case, I would only need the large screen if I was planning to game elsewhere.

This opens up smaller laptop options (like the NP8690).
My main question - would these 15 in laptops show a significant battery improvement? xoticpc says that the 8690 has a "1-2 hr battery life"
I don't care about weight but if a 15 in laptop can last for an hour longer it might be worth it.

 

[Maziar]

NP8690 will last for about an hour
http/www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5406
"The NP8690 has an unusually small 42Wh battery, which, as configured, yields only 57 minutes of battery life while surfing the Internet with the screen brightness one notch above minimum. The battery functions more like an extended UPS. Even for a gaming notebook, a sub one-hour battery life is abysmal."

 

[Naister]

Haha ok forget that.
Thanks for all your help!
I think I'm gonna go with the 8760

i7-820
HD5870
4gigs and a Blu-Ray reader or 8 gigs and no Blu-Ray of 1333MHz RAM
2x 500gig 7200 RPM HDD with Raid 0

and everything else stock
Just gotta decide about the Blu-Ray.. right now I'm leaning towards no, just because I don't want to pay for the stupid discs! (and 8 gigs of RAM is appealing)

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Naister]

Best answer selected by naister.

 

[Maziar]

That's a great config, hope you enjoy it

 

[Naister]

I just ordered it with 8 gigs of RAM and no blu ray
Soo excited to never lag again (well maybe not ever again.. but full specs on things that I'm not used to!)

Thanks a lot everyone, and Maziar you helped out a ton! To think, I was gonna pay more for less with the GTX 285m!

I'm so ridiculously excited right now haha

 

[Maziar]

No problem
Post some benchies when you get it