[Dobrescu George]

  XPS 15 is borderline I think. The unfortunate part is the fact that the less expensive models use a smaller battery because they use a small SSD (mSATA or M.2) and a large 2.5" HDD for storage. The 2.5" HDD takes a good chunk out of the battery. I think the least expensive model that is SSD only WITH a full size battery (I think there's a SSD one that still has a half size battery) is $1200-$1400 or something. If you can get a coupon then you could go that route. Otherwise, go with the FHD 960M model that has the smaller battery.
 
Inspiron laptops I'm never really sure about. I generally only go for Dell for high-end stuff, so XPS and Ultrasharp (minus Alienware for reasons we all know).
 
The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro 15" is always a good choice to look at. I don't remember the weight though.
 
Lenovo Y-series laptops are good. I think they're coming out with slim versions of the Y series laptops soon? I think it's the Y710S or something. I'd look at that and see if you want to wait.
 
I remember seeing on Newegg an ASUS laptop that was $700 with a 15" 1080p screen, fairly thin, and had a 950M in it (I think it was a K series or X series laptop).
 
Apparently Skylake Toshiba Satellites have NVIDIA GPUs in it this time around. I saw a few with 950M's. Go ahead and check those out (I'm personally wary of Toshiba).

 
Besides being overpriced, are there any bad parts of alienware laptops in general? (this kinda piqued my interest)

 

[bowei006]

   
I already have Acer V17, you can fiind V15 if you want a 15" gaming laptop. 
 
My wife has an Asus laptop, and my brother has a lenovo. I had a Dell, and never tested a MSI laptop. 
 
Well... overall... I would buy Acer again, I would avoid DELL, and would want to test MSI, but they are overpriced for what they do. I would not buy Lenovo under any circumstances, except for their ultra high end ones. 
 
these would do:
 
Notebook / Laptop Lenovo Gaming 15.6'' Ideapad Y700, FHD IPS, Procesor Intel® Core™ i5-6300HQ (6M Cache, up to 3.20 GHz), 8GB, 1TB, GeForce 960M 4GB, FreeDos, Black
 
Notebook / Laptop ASUS Gaming 15.6'' ROG GL552VW, FHD, Procesor Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz), 8GB DDR4, 1TB 7200RPM, GeForce GTX 960M 4GB, FreeDos
 
Notebook / Laptop ASUS Gaming 15.6'' ROG GL552JX, FHD, Procesor Intel® Core™ i7-4720HQ 2.6GHz Haswell, 8GB, 1TB + 128GB SSD, GeForce GTX 950M 4GB, Black
 
Notebook / Laptop Acer Gaming 15.6'' Aspire Nitro VN7-592G, FHD, Procesor Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz), 8GB, 1TB, GeForce GTX 960M 4GB, Linux, Black
 
About these I could fiind at 1000$ or so, but the store I searched was based off in Romania. You should be able to get an ideea what is fair to get at 100$ price point. All of these cost the same./ 
 
My most sincere advice, do not ever buy low voltage cpu for gaming. It works well with programs and so, but might hinder gaming. 

 
Maybe the possibility of you being situated in Romania has an effect on the price.
 
For us in the USA, MSI is typically on the charts for performing well while still having good build and usability. It's one of my top choices right now.
 
Those are about what I am considering. Thanks for the advice. I'm pretty much just looking at HQ processors
 

  XPS 15 is borderline I think. The unfortunate part is the fact that the less expensive models use a smaller battery because they use a small SSD (mSATA or M.2) and a large 2.5" HDD for storage. The 2.5" HDD takes a good chunk out of the battery. I think the least expensive model that is SSD only WITH a full size battery (I think there's a SSD one that still has a half size battery) is $1200-$1400 or something. If you can get a coupon then you could go that route. Otherwise, go with the FHD 960M model that has the smaller battery.
 
Inspiron laptops I'm never really sure about. I generally only go for Dell for high-end stuff, so XPS and Ultrasharp (minus Alienware for reasons we all know).
 
The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro 15" is always a good choice to look at. I don't remember the weight though.
 
Lenovo Y-series laptops are good. I think they're coming out with slim versions of the Y series laptops soon? I think it's the Y710S or something. I'd look at that and see if you want to wait.
 
I remember seeing on Newegg an ASUS laptop that was $700 with a 15" 1080p screen, fairly thin, and had a 950M in it (I think it was a K series or X series laptop).
 
Apparently Skylake Toshiba Satellites have NVIDIA GPUs in it this time around. I saw a few with 950M's. Go ahead and check those out (I'm personally wary of Toshiba).

 
 
there is an XPS coupon for outlet right now but its pretty meh. 
 
I'll be looking around some more. Thanks

 

[214324]

 

  XPS 15 is borderline I think. The unfortunate part is the fact that the less expensive models use a smaller battery because they use a small SSD (mSATA or M.2) and a large 2.5" HDD for storage. The 2.5" HDD takes a good chunk out of the battery. I think the least expensive model that is SSD only WITH a full size battery (I think there's a SSD one that still has a half size battery) is $1200-$1400 or something. If you can get a coupon then you could go that route. Otherwise, go with the FHD 960M model that has the smaller battery.
 
Inspiron laptops I'm never really sure about. I generally only go for Dell for high-end stuff, so XPS and Ultrasharp (minus Alienware for reasons we all know).
 
The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro 15" is always a good choice to look at. I don't remember the weight though.
 
Lenovo Y-series laptops are good. I think they're coming out with slim versions of the Y series laptops soon? I think it's the Y710S or something. I'd look at that and see if you want to wait.
 
I remember seeing on Newegg an ASUS laptop that was $700 with a 15" 1080p screen, fairly thin, and had a 950M in it (I think it was a K series or X series laptop).
 
Apparently Skylake Toshiba Satellites have NVIDIA GPUs in it this time around. I saw a few with 950M's. Go ahead and check those out (I'm personally wary of Toshiba).

 
Besides being overpriced, are there any bad parts of alienware laptops in general? (this kinda piqued my interest)

They seem to be okay. I don't see any "bad" parts to say.
 
For desktops it's probably the PSU.

 

  XPS 15 is borderline I think. The unfortunate part is the fact that the less expensive models use a smaller battery because they use a small SSD (mSATA or M.2) and a large 2.5" HDD for storage. The 2.5" HDD takes a good chunk out of the battery. I think the least expensive model that is SSD only WITH a full size battery (I think there's a SSD one that still has a half size battery) is $1200-$1400 or something. If you can get a coupon then you could go that route. Otherwise, go with the FHD 960M model that has the smaller battery.
 
Inspiron laptops I'm never really sure about. I generally only go for Dell for high-end stuff, so XPS and Ultrasharp (minus Alienware for reasons we all know).
 
The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro 15" is always a good choice to look at. I don't remember the weight though.
 
Lenovo Y-series laptops are good. I think they're coming out with slim versions of the Y series laptops soon? I think it's the Y710S or something. I'd look at that and see if you want to wait.
 
I remember seeing on Newegg an ASUS laptop that was $700 with a 15" 1080p screen, fairly thin, and had a 950M in it (I think it was a K series or X series laptop).
 
Apparently Skylake Toshiba Satellites have NVIDIA GPUs in it this time around. I saw a few with 950M's. Go ahead and check those out (I'm personally wary of Toshiba).

 
 
there is an XPS coupon for outlet right now but its pretty meh. 
 
I'll be looking around some more. Thanks

np

 

[bowei006]

I'm down to two choices. Help me compare and contrast
 
 
2015 Dell XPS 9550
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd
 
$1,000 Total
Intel i7 6700 HQ (4 Cores, 8 threads)
8GB DDR4
512GB M.2 Samsung SSD (580MB/s R/W from reviews)
Nvidia GTX 960 2GB
15.6" 1080p Infinity Edge Screen
1 Yr Limited Warranty
3.9 Lbs and Ultra thin
-- Has extra Sata bay for HDD or SSD upgrade --
 
2015 MSI GE62 276
http://www.xoticpc.com/msi-ge62-apache276-p-8459.html
 
$900 Total
Intel i7 5700HQ (4 Cores, 8 Threads) (Benchmarks note the 5700HQ is faster slightly)
12GB DDR3
1TB 7200rpm HDD
Nvidia GTX 960 2GB
15.6" 1080p Anti Glare
2 Yr Limited Warranty
5.4 Lbs
-- Has 2 extra HDD/SSD/M.2 Upgrade places
 
 
-------------
 
I'm leaning towards the XPS 15. My only concern is throttling but many note that the past issues of XPS throttling from 2014 are gone and that the CPU and GPU can be used to its potential when plugged in.
 
I do like the keyboard on the MSI but the super light weight of the Dell makes me just.......god....I dig. 

 

[214324]

XPS 15 since it seems your ultimate goal is mobility rather than a desktop replacement. The FHD panel is sRGB btw and the UHD ones are AdobeRGB calibrated (actually Notebookcheck showed 89% AdobeRGB coverage for the UHD panel so...they tried at least). There's PWM backlighting on the FHD model (about 360Hz) and they don't use PWM for the UHD (the PWM rate is high enough it really doesn't matter).
 
Also the XPS 15 is actually a 14" laptop with a 15" screen so...
 
I'm honestly not sure what that extra 4GB is RAM is going to do for you, especially since the GPU does not share RAM w/ the CPU since it has its own dedicated cache. I don't see that as an advantage of the MSi. The architecture is older (albeit just as fast in certain scenarios) and one of Skylake's emphases is on lower power draw (so they have that more precise CPU stepping thing with Win 10 with some other improvements). XPS 15 has less storage but it's an SSD to begin with. I doubt you will put everything on this laptop since you have a desktop at home for that. 256GB will be about 220-226GB usable (30GB allocated for Win 10 and programs, since Win 10 shrunk the size of the OS on disk quite a bit from what I've seen). I'd say maybe 26GB music max so 200GB usable. That leaves a lot of space for quite a few games (I don't think you'll be playing anything too heavy on the go). If you don't bring all that music on the laptop (since you do have your iPhone as your audio source, plus the circuitry is probably better on the iPhone. Only laptop I remember in recent with good audio circuitry is from Samsung with the ATIV Book 9 12" Core M one which use a Wolfsom WM5102 and some older variants of the ATIV Book 9) then you have room for a few more small games or another large game.

 

[bowei006]

  XPS 15 since it seems your ultimate goal is mobility rather than a desktop replacement. The FHD panel is sRGB btw and the UHD ones are AdobeRGB calibrated (actually Notebookcheck showed 89% AdobeRGB coverage for the UHD panel so...they tried at least). There's PWM backlighting on the FHD model (about 360Hz) and they don't use PWM for the UHD (the PWM rate is high enough it really doesn't matter).
 
Also the XPS 15 is actually a 14" laptop with a 15" screen so...
 
I'm honestly not sure what that extra 4GB is RAM is going to do for you, especially since the GPU does not share RAM w/ the CPU since it has its own dedicated cache. I don't see that as an advantage of the MSi. The architecture is older (albeit just as fast in certain scenarios) and one of Skylake's emphases is on lower power draw (so they have that more precise CPU stepping thing with Win 10 with some other improvements). XPS 15 has less storage but it's an SSD to begin with. I doubt you will put everything on this laptop since you have a desktop at home for that. 256GB will be about 220-226GB usable (30GB allocated for Win 10 and programs, since Win 10 shrunk the size of the OS on disk quite a bit from what I've seen). I'd say maybe 26GB music max so 200GB usable. That leaves a lot of space for quite a few games (I don't think you'll be playing anything too heavy on the go). If you don't bring all that music on the laptop (since you do have your iPhone as your audio source, plus the circuitry is probably better on the iPhone. Only laptop I remember in recent with good audio circuitry is from Samsung with the ATIV Book 9 12" Core M one which use a Wolfsom WM5102 and some older variants of the ATIV Book 9) then you have room for a few more small games or another large game.

 
The XPS I am looking at has the 512GB M.2 SSD . I made a mistake. It has 16GB ddr4
 
It can upgrade RAM and hard drive as well as it has two DIMM slots and a currently empty 2.5" bay
 
Im really only worried about throttling but the few replies I've read don't seem to note it being there anymore.

 

[Duncan]

Max settings at 1440p and maintain 60FPS or better at all times ...

And I still don't get that ... Metro Last Light still drops down in to the 50's .. LOL ... 

Yeah, strange / bad coding...

I am, in the next 24hrs going to order my second Asus 980ti Strix OC card, along with a 1500w PSU - hopefully then I'll get consistent 60hz refresh rate on max settings @ 4K...

I'm annoyed that Assassins Creed Unity uses more than 6GB of vram on max settings @ 4k, shows you the way it is going... Next stop, faster memory (3600mhz DDR4 vs the 2800mhz am running at the moment, hopefully that 2:1 ratio compared to vram will make things smoother when has to bump into system memory)

 

[s1rrah]

Yeah, strange / bad coding...

I am, in the next 24hrs going to order my second Asus 980ti Strix OC card, along with a 1500w PSU - hopefully then I'll get consistent 60hz refresh rate on max settings @ 4K...

I'm annoyed that Assassins Creed Unity uses more than 6GB of vram on max settings @ 4k, shows you the way it is going... Next stop, faster memory (3600mhz DDR4 vs the 2800mhz am running at the moment, hopefully that 2:1 ratio compared to vram will make things smoother when has to bump into system memory)

 
I think you'll be fine for 4K @ 60fps for most titles ... the typical heavies will give you some issues, though (Last Light/Crysis 3/Witcher3/etc) ... here is a good article: http://techbuyersguru.com/taking-4k-gaming-challenge-gtx-980-ti-sli?page=2
 
Is your 4K screen G Sync capable? That would make a huge difference ...

 

[Dobrescu George]

   
I think you'll be fine for 4K @ 60fps for most titles ... the typical heavies will give you some issues, though (Last Light/Crysis 3/Witcher3/etc) ... here is a good article: http://techbuyersguru.com/taking-4k-gaming-challenge-gtx-980-ti-sli?page=2
 
Is your 4K screen G Sync capable? That would make a huge difference ...

I could get a Clevo laptop with I5 or I7 desktop from 6th generation, with GTX970m and Gsync
 
or an acer predator with I7 mobile 6th generation, with GTX980 without Gsync, other things being the same, including the actual display. 
 
Clevo is bought off pieces and a dude in Romania assemblies them and sells them. 
 
Do you think that Gsync is actually worth it in this situation?

 

[s1rrah]

  I could get a Clevo laptop with I5 or I7 desktop from 6th generation, with GTX970m and Gsync
 
or an acer predator with I7 mobile 6th generation, with GTX980 without Gsync, other things being the same, including the actual display. 
 
Clevo is bought off pieces and a dude in Romania assemblies them and sells them. 
 
Do you think that Gsync is actually worth it in this situation?

 
Is it a desktop 980 in the Acer? Or a 980m? If a standard 980, then that's a pretty hard call ..
 
If you plan on gaming exclusively on the laptop screen, then I'd go with the Clevo/G Sync laptop as the 970m is a very respectable mobile GPU and with G sync would be really nice. Further, if it's like most Clevo's ... you should be able to upgrade the 970m to a 980m later if you care to (most Clevo gaming rigs are user upgradeable).
 
If the Acer has a desktop 980 in it, I'd go with that ... but if it has a 980m, and if I knew I was going to be gaming on the laptop screen, then I would go with the Clevo/G sync option...

 

[214324]

 

  XPS 15 since it seems your ultimate goal is mobility rather than a desktop replacement. The FHD panel is sRGB btw and the UHD ones are AdobeRGB calibrated (actually Notebookcheck showed 89% AdobeRGB coverage for the UHD panel so...they tried at least). There's PWM backlighting on the FHD model (about 360Hz) and they don't use PWM for the UHD (the PWM rate is high enough it really doesn't matter).
 
Also the XPS 15 is actually a 14" laptop with a 15" screen so...
 
I'm honestly not sure what that extra 4GB is RAM is going to do for you, especially since the GPU does not share RAM w/ the CPU since it has its own dedicated cache. I don't see that as an advantage of the MSi. The architecture is older (albeit just as fast in certain scenarios) and one of Skylake's emphases is on lower power draw (so they have that more precise CPU stepping thing with Win 10 with some other improvements). XPS 15 has less storage but it's an SSD to begin with. I doubt you will put everything on this laptop since you have a desktop at home for that. 256GB will be about 220-226GB usable (30GB allocated for Win 10 and programs, since Win 10 shrunk the size of the OS on disk quite a bit from what I've seen). I'd say maybe 26GB music max so 200GB usable. That leaves a lot of space for quite a few games (I don't think you'll be playing anything too heavy on the go). If you don't bring all that music on the laptop (since you do have your iPhone as your audio source, plus the circuitry is probably better on the iPhone. Only laptop I remember in recent with good audio circuitry is from Samsung with the ATIV Book 9 12" Core M one which use a Wolfsom WM5102 and some older variants of the ATIV Book 9) then you have room for a few more small games or another large game.

 
The XPS I am looking at has the 512GB M.2 SSD . I made a mistake. It has 16GB ddr4
 
It can upgrade RAM and hard drive as well as it has two DIMM slots and a currently empty 2.5" bay
 
Im really only worried about throttling but the few replies I've read don't seem to note it being there anymore.

So here's the thing with the XPS 15:
 
The models with a 256GB or 512GB M.2 SSD generally come with a 84 Whr battery that spans the length of the entire wrist rest area in the chassis.
 
The models that come with a 2.5" HDD have a smaller battery that's a 56 Whr (the numbers I don't remember but one's bigger, one's smaller, point made) to give you space to fit that 2.5" HDD.
 
So the model you are looking at has no empty 2.5" bay. It just has a larger battery. You can tell which model comes with which by just looking at the rated battery capacity in watt-hours. If it's 56, it's the shorter one and there is space for a 2.5" HDD. If it's the 84 Whr one, the M.2 SSD is the only storage you have.

 

  I could get a Clevo laptop with I5 or I7 desktop from 6th generation, with GTX970m and Gsync
 
or an acer predator with I7 mobile 6th generation, with GTX980 without Gsync, other things being the same, including the actual display. 
 
Clevo is bought off pieces and a dude in Romania assemblies them and sells them. 
 
Do you think that Gsync is actually worth it in this situation?

 
Is it a desktop 980 in the Acer? Or a 980m? If a standard 980, then that's a pretty hard call ..
 
If you plan on gaming exclusively on the laptop screen, then I'd go with the Clevo/G Sync laptop as the 970m is a very respectable mobile GPU and with G sync would be really nice. Further, if it's like most Clevo's ... you should be able to upgrade the 970m to a 980m later if you care to (most Clevo gaming rigs are user upgradeable).
 
If the Acer has a desktop 980 in it, I'd go with that ... but if it has a 980m, and if I knew I was going to be gaming on the laptop screen, then I would go with the Clevo/G sync option...

You do realize that a 980M is a 980 (desktop part) just binned for lower power consumption right?
 
There is no difference except TDP. The 980M will be limited in TDP and cooling in mobile applications but otherwise it's a fully enabled 980 desktop chip.

 

[s1rrah]

  You do realize that a 980M is a 980 (desktop part) just binned for lower power consumption right?
 
There is no difference except TDP. The 980M will be limited in TDP and cooling in mobile applications but otherwise it's a fully enabled 980 desktop chip.

 
There's tons of benchmark data out there.
 
GTX980 in the newly released laptops are 30% to 40% faster than the mobile GTX980M GPU ... across the board.  The following video, starting at 2:50 mins show some typical benchmark deltas between the two GPUS: 
 
...
 
(JUMP to 02:50)
 


 
...
 
Otherwise, as mentioned, there's tons of other bench articles out there showing similar results. The GTX980 desktop GPU that is being incorporated in to newer laptops is significantly faster than the GTX980M.  That's why the fact that certain Notebook vendors are now incorporating full GTX980 desktop GPU's in to some of their highest end model laptops has been somewhat of a big deal in the laptop scene of late.
 
...
 
More decent reading (at least introductory) on the significant differences between the new class of GTX980 laptops versus the typical GTX980M variants...
 
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-arrives-gaming-laptops-35-faster-gtx-980m-full-overclocking-support/
 

The GeForce GTX 980 comes with 2048 CUDA cores, 128 texture mapping units and 64 raster operation units. The GeForce GTX 980M featured 1536 CUDA cores, 96 texture mapping units and 64 raster operation units. The 980M was clocked at 1038 MHz while the 990M will have a higher clock speed of 1126 MHz base and 1218 MHz boost clock. The desktop class GeForce GTX 980 is also clocked at the same speeds of 1126 MHz base and 1218 MHz boost. So one thing is confirmed, the GeForce GTX 980 is as fast as the desktop variant and around 35% faster than the GeForce GTX 980M.

Read more: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-arrives-gaming-laptops-35-faster-gtx-980m-full-overclocking-support/#ixzz3yZDjO7aV

 
 
...
 
If I were buying, I'd certainly take the much faster 980 laptop over the 980M
 
 
...

 

[Dobrescu George]

   
There's tons of benchmark data out there.
 
GTX980 in the newly released laptops are 30% to 40% faster than the mobile GTX980M GPU ... across the board.  The following video, starting at 2:50 mins show some typical benchmark deltas between the two GPUS: 
 
...
 
(JUMP to 02:50)
 


 
...
 
Otherwise, as mentioned, there's tons of other bench articles out there showing similar results. The GTX980 desktop GPU that is being incorporated in to newer laptops is significantly faster than the GTX980M.  That's why the fact that certain Notebook vendors are now incorporating full GTX980 desktop GPU's in to some of their highest end model laptops has been somewhat of a big deal in the laptop scene of late.
 
...
 
More decent reading (at least introductory) on the significant differences between the new class of GTX980 laptops versus the typical GTX980M variants...
 
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-arrives-gaming-laptops-35-faster-gtx-980m-full-overclocking-support/
 
 
 
...
 
If I were buying, I'd certainly take the much faster 980 laptop over the 980M
 
 
...

 
I must chose between 980m and 970m at this point in time. 
 
I do plan to get a Clevo laptop with 980 or whatever the desktop flagship will be at the moment I get it, a few months later. But right now, it is between an acer predator with 980m, or a clevo with 970m, but clevo has both g sync and desktop CPU. Acer predator has normal voltage CPU and no gsync, but features the exact same display. 

 

[s1rrah]

   
I must chose between 980m and 970m at this point in time. 
 
I do plan to get a Clevo laptop with 980 or whatever the desktop flagship will be at the moment I get it, a few months later. But right now, it is between an acer predator with 980m, or a clevo with 970m, but clevo has both g sync and desktop CPU. Acer predator has normal voltage CPU and no gsync, but features the exact same display. 

 
Well if you can wait and get one of the new laptops that incorporate the "desktop grade" GTX 980 (some refer to this as the GTX 990M) then do that as it is quite a bit faster than the vanilla GTX980M.
 
If you buy  now and between those two you mention, then I'd say go with the Clevo 970M/G Sync options ... upgradeable, G sync and desktop CPU is a sweet deal.
 
I've been using a 970M laptop (MSI GS70 Stealth Pro) for about as long as they've been available and have had no complaints when gaming but then again, my main gaming is done on my desktop. But still, the 970M has been a very fun and very capable GPU so far...

 

[214324]

  If I were buying, I'd certainly take the much faster 980 laptop over the 980M

Hm, I thought they named the desktop 980 chip in a laptop the 980M. Looks like I was mistaken. mb