Selling my X7200 for Alienware M18x. Good idea?

[GTO_PAO11]

Hello guys,

I need your opinion about this. I have this laptop:

Clevo X7200
CPU I-950 3ghz
480M SLI
6 gig Ram DDR
Bluray player
Windows 7 basic

I have this for November 2010 and this is in perfect condition. Slightly used and I did not use it too much for gaming since I was occupied with Gears of War and Marvel vs Capcom 3 on that time. I really wanted to either:

a) Sell it for $2200 and I will give also an extra laptop (Gateway 7811 FX) for free.
b) Trade it with M18x with CF 7970m and I will pay extra.

The reason why because I do not know how long the x7200 will be supported with the new video cards. At least the M18x, it can be upgrade able for future years to come.

So what do you think? Should I sell this or just upgrade my video cards to the latest possible cards(7970M)?

[Fat Dragon]

Two questions:

Why are you using Windows 7 Home Basic on a machine that cost thousands of dollars?

and

You've had this for a year and a half and you haven't used it much for gaming. Do you really need an upgrade right now? Why not wait until you really need it? By that time, if future cards are still compatible, you can put in 8990M's/780M's or buy used (or new) 7970M's if the future cards aren't compatible.

Someone trading an M18x with dual 7970m's for this would probably want well over a thousand dollars thrown in with the trade, very possibly two or three times that. Again, if you didn't game much with your several thousand dollar machine in the first year and a half of owning it, is it really worth upgrading?

[GTO_PAO11]

I did game but its not as much as playing my console games. If the video card is really strong, It will motivate me to play this Laptop. Unfortunately when i got the 480m gtx SLI and the 485m gtx game out, the diffrence was huge. I felt discourage.

Now I heard Sager would not support this unit in the long run. At least on the M18x, its a future proof upgradeable machine

[Fat Dragon]

Your machine is still faster than the vast majority of laptops out there, even specialized gaming laptops. If you want to throw away a couple thousand dollars to get even faster, nobody's stopping you, I just wonder if there's any really good reason to do so.

If you had an Audi A8, would you stop driving it when you saw someone else driving a Bentley? You may not have the greatest laptop out there, but you're near the top of the heap. Shouldn't that be enough? Especially when you're gambling on the possibility that you'll play more games if you've got a faster machine. Why not start playing on this machine and then upgrade when it feels inadequate - that way you know you'll be getting your money's worth out of the upgrade rather than just leaving it to gather dust again?

[Tyranids]

Nope worst decision ever made in the history of mankind, you should go home and rethink your life.

[GTO_PAO11]

Ok, then I will wait for the upgrade then, huh?
How fast is my CPU compared to the m18x alienware ones?

[Fat Dragon]

According to Passmark, it's not quite as fast as most Sandy Bridge mobile quad cores, and Ivy Bridge will be faster yet, but you've got room to upgrade as high as an i7 990X desktop CPU, which is faster than any mobile Sandy Bridge i7's, XM's included. It's possible that the Ivy Bridge XM processors that will soon be available in the newest M18x's (if they aren't already) will be faster than that, but either way your upgrade path puts you near the top of the CPU charts, and your current CPU is no slouch.

Like with the GPUs, is there any reason, other than scoring higher on benchmarks, that you want or need a faster processor in your X7200? The i7 950 not going to bottleneck even dual 7970M's in games, so the necessity of an upgrade would have to lie in other applications you use.

[GTO_PAO11]

Oh , so I just need to upgrade only my video cards to play better games,right?

[Hirohata]

Just keep the x7200. It still has the capabilities to play most current games at max/high settings. Heck, I have a i7 920 and 280M GTX and most of my games are on either max/high or mid settings. Not worth the thousand dollar upgrade at the moment, especially since you've barely used it.

[s2odin]

You have asked the whole cpu vs gpu thing before.

Multiple people have told you the cpu DOES NOT matter in gaming.