Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Tnnaas]

I'm actually running through my own magical adventure of dealing with laptops. I'd love to help you out more, but seeing as how I know nothing severely helpful, I cannot help out. I've been using Notebook Check as resource to help upgrade my very bland clam-shell. I suggest you check them out.

Realize though that if you are flat-out buying a gaming laptop, it's going to cost a lot.

[Cortexian]

Here's a really helpful hierachy chart for the GPU's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ew,3107-7.html

As you can see, the 680M is barely as good as a desktop GTX 295, 480, 570, etc...

[Warsaw]

Believe it or not, the Alienware M17x is actually a pretty good value. You get the best performance you can get in a gaming laptop short of buying the monstrous, SLI/Crossfire-capable M18x, you get a full HD screen, you get aluminum construction, you get backlit keys, and you get a phenomenal-for-its-class five hour battery life.

In the grand scheme of high-end laptops, it's also not that expensive if you configure it right. Leave out the RAM and HDD upgrades and buy those third-party. Max the GPU and know when it's not worth it to get a better CPU. Get the BD-player.

Personally, if I had cash to blow on a gaming laptop I'd be looking at the Razer Blade v.2. I know it's neither the most powerful nor the best on battery, but its subtle-but-not-so-subtle character really appeals to me. It's also got a track-pad in one place where I think all laptop track-pads ought to be, and then there is its lack-of-thickness.

[Donut]

So between selling my old card and the free metro last light that comes with some Nvidea 600 series cards, I figured I could get a pretty good deal on an upgrade. I was originally looking to get a 660ti, but its performance gain over the 660 is minimal, especially considering the 100 dollar price gap. The 660 is ~200 dollars. I figure I can sell my 560ti for at least 100 bucks, and free metro is worth 50, so thats not a bad deal.

I noticed something though:
My current card is an EVGA GTX 560ti: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130604
I'm looking at an EVGA GTX 660: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130825

The (E: some of) 600 series cards only have 192-bit memory, while my older 560ti has 256. I googled around, and I can't find a reason for this. Does anybody know why they do that? The posts I've seen online say this memory bandwidth restriction makes the card not worth it.

I value performance over graphics. I will put everything on low to achieve 60fps if I have to. I don't want to do that with Last Light though, and for the price I could get a newer card at, I'm really on the fence about what to do here. Input anybody?

[DarkHalo003]

Believe it or not, the Alienware M17x is actually a pretty good value. You get the best performance you can get in a gaming laptop short of buying the monstrous, SLI/Crossfire-capable M18x, you get a full HD screen, you get aluminum construction, you get backlit keys, and you get a phenomenal-for-its-class five hour battery life.

Yeah, it looks pretty freaking awesome. I love that screen, computer size, and light-up keyboard. On top of that, technology is currently at a point where it's so good that it can run most everything I want it to, so the minimum specs (aside from using NVIDIA GTX over AMD, fuck that) would probably be outright overkill as is. I'm not running anything like Crysis too, so I honestly have no reason to need superpower.

Obviously, price bites. Even in today's market these kinds of Laptops don't fall below $999 (which is what I paid for my undergrad Laptop, which is still pretty good all things considered).

[Zeph]

My current card is an EVGA GTX 560ti: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130604
I'm looking at an EVGA GTX 660: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130825

You're not comparing the same line of cards.
Successor to the GTX 560ti is the GTX 660Ti not the GTX 660.

[Donut]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130809
the 660ti has that same 192bit memory situation going on.

[Zeph]

Hmm, did not know the Ti's were 192-bit. Looks like it's more than made up for by architecture and clocks in the benches, though.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/547?vs=647

You can compare the 660 vanilla in there as well. Anandtech doesn't have a nice way to compare more than two.

[Donut]

Ooo that site is cool. just eyeballing it looks like the 660 is about a 25% improvement on everything my 560ti does. considering the ~150 i would get back between selling my card and free metro, that seems worth it. is ~50 bucks for a 25% increase in performance worth it at this point? im still on the fence.

[InnerGoat]

600 series are built like midrange parts. The memory runs at a much greater clock speed on the 600 series cards to make up for the narrower memory bus.