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Graphics Card?
FringeFanBoi
Member Posts: 32
in Hardware
Which graphics card is it worth to get for the money? The New Nvidia GeForce GTX 680m or the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660m
Comments
You probably don't buy a laptop video card all by itself. Rather, you buy a laptop that contains the video card you want. And how much that costs depends on what laptop you're getting.
At the high end, you probably want a Radeon HD 7970M, not a GeForce GTX 680M. From the specs, it's not clear which is faster. But it is very clear that the GTX 680M costs a lot more: checking several sites found a price gap between the two cards of $295-$350. On a $3000 budget, maybe you don't care about that price gap and consider getting a GTX 680M anyway. But unless you're already getting such niceties as a matte 1080p or larger monitor, a 240 GB or larger SSD, and a Bigfoot Wireless-N 1103 wireless card, that's money that is better spent elsewhere.
At the mid range, the options are a lot blurrier, as mid-range laptops usually aren't configurable to let you pick this video card or that one. I suspect that we'll see a decent number of Trinity+Cape Verde laptops showing up soon, too, and that will be serious competition for Ivy Bridge+GK107 laptops, such as those including a GeForce GTX 660M. Not to mention that we'll probably see more GTX 660M laptops show up soon, too.
To do papers but I also want to run Guild Wars 2 on max!
Getting an Alienware M17x with anything other than a Radeon HD 7970M is just silly. The GeForce GTX 680M costs too much, and if you've got the huge budget to afford one, then you probably want the far superior configuration options on a Clevo P170EM instead.
The GeForce GTX 660M is a decent enough card, but if that's what you're going to get, then the Alienware M17x is far too expensive for it. It would be far better to get a smaller, cheaper laptop that doesn't need to feature cooling adequate for much higher end cards.
You might also want to look at a Clevo P170EM (or P150EM if you prefer a 15" form factor rather than 17"). Those get rebranded by a variety of companies, and offer a lot more configuration options than Alienware does. They tend to be cheaper, too. You'll sometimes also see them sold as the Sager NP9170 and NP9150, respectively.
If you've got the budget for it, it would also be nice to get a good SSD. Depending on how much capacity you need, you might want to go with a ~120 GB SSD and no hard drive, a ~240 GB SSD and no hard drive, or both a ~120 GB SSD and also a hard drive of whatever capacity you need.
The graphics card is fine but the miss matched memory may cause issues - go 8 or 16gb
What do you mean by 500g storage? I assume you mean a 500g HD. If so I would make sure the drive is 7200 speed at least. I would suggest going with an SSD only. 240g SSD would be so much better and thats plenty of space.
Match the memory as well, go 8 or 16. Eight is plenty IMO, use the savings from 16g and apply it to the cost of the SSD or GPU.
If the budget allows go for the SSD, you will thank everyone who suggested it later.