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Zuidy Mario Fanatic Resident Neo total posts: 2610 since: Oct 2009	Oct 07, 12 at 1:45pm ^ Gaming Laptop Questions
	Log in to remove this sponsored message I know people will have their opinions on how a laptop will never be as good as a desktop gaming rig. And I agree, honestly. But portability right now is important to me. So after doing some research, I found these gaming laptops under the name Valkyrie from the website www.ibuypower.com I wanted to know a few things before I go into this: (I will put in BOLD what I plan on upgrading through the website, or other notes) 1: They have immense options as to customization for a Valkyrie Laptop. The type I plan on purchasing will be the Valkyrie CZ-17. If I was to simply purchase with the default specs, I would be getting this: Case Valkyrie CZ-17 17.3" Full HD 1920x1080 LED-Backlit Display Laptop w/HDMI Port, E-SATA, USB 3.0, Illuminated Keyboard, Li-Ion Battery, Universal AC Power Adapter - Original Metallic black Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Mobile Processor (4x 2.4GHz/6MB L3 Cache) Probably one of the biggest downsides for me, wish I could have more speed. Max is a 2.8 GHz quad core i7 processor........ Tips on how to boost speed possibly? Overclocking isn't likely on a laptop...... or is it in this case? Memory 8GB [4GB x 2] 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM [Laptop Memory] - Corsair or Major Brand Changing to 16 GB most likely, will it be necessary for simply gaming and minor web surfing, etc? Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M 2GB GDDR5 Video w/ NVIDIA Optimus [CZ-17] Could upgrade to 675m w/ 4 GB or 680 w/ 4 GB. Which should I go with? Primary Hard Drive 500 GB 5400rpm Serial-ATA Super Slim Laptop Hard Drive Upgrading to 750 GB 7200rpm Serial-ATA Super Slim Laptop Hard Drive Data Hard Drive None Upgrading to 120 GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD Single Drive Read: 525MB/s ; Write: 500MB/s Good? Optical Drive 8x Dual Format DVD±R/±RW + 16x CD-R/RW Combo Drive [CZ-17] Flash Media Reader / Writer Built-in 4-in-1 Media Card Reader/Writer [Laptop] Sound Card HD Audio with THX TrueStudio Pro Network Card Killer E2200 Gaming Networking Internal Wireless Network Adapter 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo [CZ-17] Upgrading to Intel Ultimate-N 6300 802.11 a/b/g/n 450Mbps Dual-Band Wi-Fi. Good? Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-Bit USB Ports Built-in 2x USB 2.0 Ports + 3x USB 3.0 Port [Laptop] Video Camera Built-in 3.0 Mega Pixels Digital Web Video Camera __ Honestly, I am a total newbie to the world of gaming laptops. I really don't want to be criticized for not knowing much...... I feel stupid asking, but Neoseeker is one of my most valuable resources as far as this goes right now. So please, friendly tips and do overstress things that need to be. tl;dr Well that's a shame, but basically rate the laptop at your hands. Post your own specs as a comparison, as well, if you have time. Thanks so much! __ Thanks Neoseeker! See you! Edit: Oct 10, 12 4:47pm new build -------------------
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biomed just getting started! total posts: 103 since: Jun 2011	Oct 07, 12 at 2:45pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	quote Zuidy I am planning on purchasing a custom Valkyrie gaming laptop very soon. I was curious of a few things regarding SSDs/HDDs: 1: Should my SSD be my primary hard drive? Or my HDD? Your SSD should be your primary drive. 2: Should my OS be saved to the SSD or HDD for maximum gaming performance? OS on the SSD. 3: Should I have both an SSD and HDD? If the laptop has that facilty then why not. SSD for OS (and perhaps a couple of your favourite games if it's large enough) and games, data, media, etc, on the HDD. 4: Anything else I should know? Don't think so. Hope that helps. __ Budget isn't an issue at this moment, I just need some ideas. Thanks! __
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hiigaran Sajuuk awaits beyond the Gate of Balcora Elite Seeker total posts: 31934 since: Dec 2005	Oct 07, 12 at 11:07pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	id never suggest any system, laptop or desktop, with only a SSD as its storage. that drive would wear down way too quickly. -------------------
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Zuidy Mario Fanatic Resident Neo total posts: 2610 since: Oct 2009	Oct 08, 12 at 3:19pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	quote hiigaran id never suggest any system, laptop or desktop, with only a SSD as its storage. that drive would wear down way too quickly. Could you explain what you mean by "wear down"? As in, become unusable? Or run out of space? -------------------
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hiigaran Sajuuk awaits beyond the Gate of Balcora Elite Seeker total posts: 31934 since: Dec 2005	Oct 08, 12 at 3:27pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	heres the major problem with SSDs. because of the way they work, they only have a limited number of rewrites, before they cannot be used again. every time you put data on to a certain section, that area becomes worn away. its very tiny, but its there, on the microscopic level. when you erase the data and put new data in its place, that place becomes work away a little more. eventually, after roughly 10000 rewrites, that section becomes unusable. i dont remember if it leaves the last bit of data intact, or if that area becomes completely unusable, but neither is good. now you might think that 10k is a lot, but a lot of rewriting happens without you even seeing it. this is why people move their page files off the SSD, and anything else that acts as temporary storage, like a cache. these cause a lot of rewrites, and lead to an early SSD death. in addition, it seems like the performance of SSDs as time progresses, decreases. depending on how you use your SSD, after 1 to 3 years, there will be a noticeable decline in SSD performance. it is because of this that i would never want a SSD. i used to suggest it to people before, but now i only do it at their request, after i have informed them of the downsides to SSDs. now, until SSDs fix this issue, im not going to change my views on them. btw, take the performance thing as you will. i dont have a source on it that you can read, other than the ramblings of several SSD owners over IRC. however, the rewrite issue is a well known issue. -------------------
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Zuidy Mario Fanatic Resident Neo total posts: 2610 since: Oct 2009	Oct 08, 12 at 3:39pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	quote hiigaran heres the major problem with SSDs. because of the way they work, they only have a limited number of rewrites, before they cannot be used again. every time you put data on to a certain section, that area becomes worn away. its very tiny, but its there, on the microscopic level. when you erase the data and put new data in its place, that place becomes work away a little more. eventually, after roughly 10000 rewrites, that section becomes unusable. i dont remember if it leaves the last bit of data intact, or if that area becomes completely unusable, but neither is good. now you might think that 10k is a lot, but a lot of rewriting happens without you even seeing it. this is why people move their page files off the SSD, and anything else that acts as temporary storage, like a cache. these cause a lot of rewrites, and lead to an early SSD death. in addition, it seems like the performance of SSDs as time progresses, decreases. depending on how you use your SSD, after 1 to 3 years, there will be a noticeable decline in SSD performance. it is because of this that i would never want a SSD. i used to suggest it to people before, but now i only do it at their request, after i have informed them of the downsides to SSDs. now, until SSDs fix this issue, im not going to change my views on them. btw, take the performance thing as you will. i dont have a source on it that you can read, other than the ramblings of several SSD owners over IRC. however, the rewrite issue is a well known issue. Yeah I heard about that as well. But for a gaming computer a lot of people like SSDs..... I will judge for myself. Thanks a lot! -------------------
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hiigaran Sajuuk awaits beyond the Gate of Balcora Elite Seeker total posts: 31934 since: Dec 2005	Oct 08, 12 at 3:56pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	yeah its your choice. many people dont even bother keeping their stuff beyond 3 or 4 years anyway, so it might not even make a difference. i like recycling to save money, so thats just my perspective on the matter. -------------------
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biomed just getting started! total posts: 103 since: Jun 2011	Oct 08, 12 at 4:00pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	I think hiigaran's point of view is perfectly valid and if lots of people like SSDs for a gaming computer then it has to be for the OS only and may be for one or two games only if it's 120GB or over. I still haven't plucked up the courage to buy an SDD, maybe it's me, but I think there'll be problems down the road for the early buyers but time will tell.
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hiigaran Sajuuk awaits beyond the Gate of Balcora Elite Seeker total posts: 31934 since: Dec 2005	Oct 08, 12 at 4:08pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	RAM disk FTW of course, you'd better have a UPS handy -------------------
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Luis_GT I look FABULOUS! Two much Neo total posts: 2288 since: Jul 2011	Oct 09, 12 at 9:37pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	SSD's are great, I have an mSATA SSD on my laptop that's over a year old... I just upgraded the Firmware and it's faster than when it was new! I suggest you get the SSD if you can have both an HDD and the SSD. I have a 750GB HDD for all my games and data, and the SSD for the OS and small important stuff (it's only 64GB) but the OS load times are staggering. Here's a benchmark showing the speed with the new FW (did this 30 min ago) Here's with the original firmware (over a year ago) Here's what a normal laptop hdd will do The 4K random read/writes are what make the OS load fast. ------------------- ...
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Zuidy Mario Fanatic Resident Neo total posts: 2610 since: Oct 2009	Oct 10, 12 at 4:49pm ^ re: SSD/HDD Questions
	quote Luis_GT SSD's are great, I have an mSATA SSD on my laptop that's over a year old... I just upgraded the Firmware and it's faster than when it was new! I suggest you get the SSD if you can have both an HDD and the SSD. I have a 750GB HDD for all my games and data, and the SSD for the OS and small important stuff (it's only 64GB) but the OS load times are staggering. Here's a benchmark showing the speed with the new FW (did this 30 min ago) Here's with the original firmware (over a year ago) Here's what a normal laptop hdd will do The 4K random read/writes are what make the OS load fast. Thanks for your post! I was curious about 1 thing though. If I can fit my games on the SSD, should I go for it? I am going to put the OS on the SSD for sure. But I heard that if you can fit games on it they will run better as well? Thanks again! Also, this can serve as a bump. I updated the OP. -------------------
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Luis_GT I look FABULOUS! Two much Neo total posts: 2288 since: Jul 2011	Oct 10, 12 at 5:06pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	Can't tell you since my SSD is too small for games, but considering the improvement it has with loading windows, and basing on my knowledge of Raid setups, you should see an improvement in load times compared to a single HDD... note that having a fast SSD will not improve your gaming performance, just your load times... Graphic performance is based on the GPU and CPU's ability. ------------------- ...
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Zuidy Mario Fanatic Resident Neo total posts: 2610 since: Oct 2009	Oct 14, 12 at 2:51pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	Bump. Still need help here. -------------------
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Blue Neon ちょうど呼吸する dangerous total posts: 152 since: Apr 2008	Oct 14, 12 at 3:50pm ^ re: Gaming Laptop Questions
	quote Zuidy Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Mobile Processor (4x 2.4GHz/6MB L3 Cache) Probably one of the biggest downsides for me, wish I could have more speed. Max is a 2.8 GHz quad core i7 processor........ Tips on how to boost speed possibly? Overclocking isn't likely on a laptop...... or is it in this case? Nah, to my knowledge no laptop can be overclocked and trust me CPU speed is barely noticeable especially with an i7 - very few games are CPU intensive enough to make a big difference especially goinf for 2.4GHz to 2.8GHz i7 that'd make very little difference. quote Zuidy Memory 8GB [4GB x 2] 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM [Laptop Memory] - Corsair or Major Brand Changing to 16 GB most likely, will it be necessary for simply gaming and minor web surfing, etc? Gaming would barely require more than 4GB tbh - but 8GB is becoming a trend due to how intensive some games and backgound apps are starting to get. I would just stick with the 8, even in the next couple of years 16GB will most likely still be overkill, even if it becomes an issue you can upgrade at a later date quite easily. quote Zuidy Video Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M 2GB GDDR5 Video w/ NVIDIA Optimus [CZ-17] Could upgrade to 675m w/ 4 GB or 680 w/ 4 GB. Which should I go with? Go with the 680M if you want the best performance overall if you want to save money just keep the default - the 680 will drain battery A LOT quicker especially playing games - they default has Nvidia Optimus which is a neat battery saving tech iirc. quote Zuidy Internal Wireless Network Adapter 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo [CZ-17] Upgrading to Intel Ultimate-N 6300 802.11 a/b/g/n 450Mbps Dual-Band Wi-Fi. Good? You will notice very little difference changing your wifi since they all do the same job - the only time they would do any different is if you had a Gigabit connection in your house, for that case you would need a card that supported up to 1Gbps. But nah I would go with stock on that. As for the SSD - Yes what hiigaran says is true but if the stuff you put on the SSD is to stay then it won't really matter. Install your OS to that, a couple of programs you use a lot (eg in my case Photoshop) as well as games you play VERY often. For the standard HDD put EVERYTHING else on that. Or just skip an SSD and get a second HDD to keep the OS separate from all your clutter which will help boot times and make defrags MUCH more efficient. ------------------- Poseidon CPU:i7-2600k @ 4.3GHz RAM:16GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 Mobo:MSI P67A-GD53-B3 GPU:EVGA GTX570 HD SC Case:HAF-X HDD:240GB SSD, 3x HDD
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