Clevo P150EM vs MSI GT60

[slapshot30]

Hey guys, I'm in the search for a laptop and right now I'm looking at these. For someone looking around the $1500 price range, both look like great options. I looked around and I'm surprised there isn't more info on the match up of these two. It seems that the P150EM is wildly popular, much more than the GT60. I know that the Clevo is very easy to upgrade and disassemble, what about the GT60? The GT60 has dual 500GB HDD's and an optical, whereas the Clevo only has one HDD slot and an optical. Apparently the audio quality on the MSI is quite a bit better as well. Which one of these has the edge at this price point?

[Prasad]

Definitely the Clevo P150EM. Try and fit the 7970M card in your budget or stretch a little. That could quite easily double the gaming lifespan of your laptop!

[niffcreature]

A note about GPU upgrades on Clevo/Sager laptops VS MSIs:

Spoiler :

Clevo builders have announced that Clevo will no longer be supporting newer GPUs for older (EOL) laptops.

This means that if you choose the 7970m, you will likely be stuck with it or have the choice to upgrade to the 685m or 7990m while the AMD 8000m and Nvidia 700m series will (likely) be incompatible.

MSI on the other hand have simply had the most documented cases of a laptop being upgraded or tested with a card that the laptop was not released with and did not officially support. Modern Clevos will refuse to function with basic, 100% standard low end MXM cards.

Of course, the jury is still out, and no one has tried to upgrade an older Clevo to 7970m or a 600m series card. Several MSIs function flawlessly with the 7970m however and none have failed to support it yet.

Its up to you, but I'd recommend the MSI if you see yourself owning and upgrading your laptop to keep it current for 2 years or more.

You can probably sell the 670m for close to the price of a 7970m. And it wont void your MSI warranty on anything but the GPU and heatsink.

[Kaffikjelen]

I'm in a similar "predicament". The Radeon HD 7970M is rather alluring, but how does that affect battery life? As I understand it, Optimus only comes with Nvidia cards.

[Prasad]

I'm in a similar "predicament". The Radeon HD 7970M is rather alluring, but how does that affect battery life? As I understand it, Optimus only comes with Nvidia cards.

ATI has it's Optimus equivalent on the 7970M called Enduro.

[maverick1989]

Also, the 7970m is going to keep you good for about 3-4 years. Two years on, you should be able to go on gaming on max. Then reduce a bit until 4 years on, you should be on medium with some low or turned off (like 16xAA). That is, if the general trend continues. Now ask yourself. Four years form now, would you pay $600ish on a GPU and keep a 4 year old CPU and laptop or would you simply put in another grand and get the whole system new? Coz to me, the former is not really an option.

[slapshot30]

I could probably stretch my budget and get the 7970, it looks like an absolute beast. I only have one problem, I'm going to be running programs like AutoCAD and others that benefit from CUDA. Isn't that an nvidia only feature? Does AMD have a similar offering like CUDA?

Sent from my HTC Holiday using Tapatalk 2

[Prasad]

I could probably stretch my budget and get the 7970, it looks like an absolute beast. I only have one problem, I'm going to be running programs like AutoCAD and others that benefit from CUDA. Isn't that an nvidia only feature? Does AMD have a similar offering like CUDA?

Sent from my HTC Holiday using Tapatalk 2

Nope. Unfortunately, AMD doesn't support CUDA... :/

[maverick1989]

^ He asked for a similar offering. Yes there is. OpenCL. Although, at this stage, CAD probably does not have support for OpenCL. Only a matter of time though.