Better Cpu Or Better Gpu?

[PashaKabiri]

Im looking for a laptop with good specs and i have a budget of ~2000$. i had these 3 in mind, their are all build on the Sager NP9150/Clevo. they will all have the same ram (8GB 1600) and HDD (750Gb 7200) i wanted to know which would work out the best for the price and if there was any bottlenecking happening on any of them

[moral hazard]

I voted for the system with the 680M, just because I've read about driver problems with the 7970M.

[navdeepz]

1700$ which reseller are you buying the laptop from ? and i voted for a 680M myself .. (rumors are it is better than the 7970m)

[edit1754]

I would suggest simply going with the 3610QM. The performance increases from the 3720QM and 3820QM are relatively minimal (compared to the difference between an i5-3210M and i7-3610QM), and many games will not be able to take advantage of the difference anyway.

[navdeepz]

I would suggest simply going with the 3610QM. The performance increases from the 3720QM and 3820QM are relatively minimal (compared to the difference between an i5-3210M and i7-3610QM), and many games will not be able to take advantage of the difference anyway.

but dont u think 680 is better than 7970 ?? i mean till now thats what i've been hearing .. and secondly he could go for a 3610 with a 680 ?

[PashaKabiri]

i have also heard about driver problems on the 7970m but people have been getting good results with some beta drivers and in the long run when good drivers come out for the 7970m it will be very close to the 680m so it the extra 200$ worth it?

[Jarhead]

If you ask me, the extra $200 isn't worth it. Both the 7970M and 680M are extremely-high-end cards that'll tackle any modern game thrown at them without issue. I haven't heard about any of these driver issues yet, so if someone could point me in the direction of a link I could check it out.

I'm with edit about the CPU though. 3610QM is way overkill as it is, and the 3720QM and 3820QM are basically ways for OP to burn his or her money on nothing really better. If you want to increase **noticeable** system performance, they only two parts that really matter these days are the GPU and the system drive ("downgrade" to a 3610QM and go with the 7970M, use the difference to get yourself a nice SATAIII SSD from a reliable company).

[joelectron]

I voted for the 7970m/3610qm setup for the following reasons:

-The 3610qm is already fast. Unless you need the virtual machine aspects of the 3720 (or higher), it is not worth the extra money or the extra heat.

-If you are going to use this for CAD or animation, the 7970m is surprisingly better than the 680m. Look at notebookcheck's comparison of the 7970m vs the 680m if you can read german [or don't mind reading a translation], as it will provide you with a lot more insight.

-Both GPUs are very high-end and will play almost everything. The games that run better on one card or the other usually only do so by a few FPS. This is, IMO the closest to a tie I've ever seen between Nvidia's and AMD's mobile high-end cards.

I understand that you are willing to pay for the higher end CPU and the more expensive (but not exactly better GPU), but I would save some money in that regard and get a big SSD, as that will provide the biggest increase in speed in a 3610/7970 or faster machine.

The HDD is the biggest bottle neck when you have an i7 and such a high-end GPU.