Yeah, that's pretty much how things turned out.
So yeah, with this unexpected overflow of money, I'm purchasing a gaming/engineering pc for class… and games.How is this, guys?CaseBattalion 101 W150HNQ 15.6" HD+ 1600x900 Widescreen LED TFT Laptop w/HDMI Port, eSATA port, fingerprint Reader, Li-Ion Battery, Universal AC Power Adapter - Original Metallic BlackProcessorIntel® Core™ i7-2630QM Mobile Processor (4x 2.00GHz/6MB L3 Cache)Memory8GB [4GB x 2] 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM [Laptop Memory] Corsair or Major BrandVideo CardNVIDIA GeForce GT 540M 1GB GDDR3 3D Video [W150HNQ]Primary Hard Drive500 GB 7200rpm Serial-ATA Super Slim Laptop Hard DriveOptical Drive8x Dual Format DVD±R/±RW + 16x CD-R/RW Combo Drive [W150HNQ]Flash Media Reader / WriterBuilt-in 9-in-1 Media Card Reader/Writer [Laptop]Sound Card3D Premium Surround Sound OnboardNetwork CardBuilt-in 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN [Laptop]Internal Wireless Network AdapterIntel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo Half MiniOperating SystemMicrosoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-BitUSB PortsBuilt-in 2x USB 2.0 Ports + 2x USB 3.0 Port [Laptop]Free Deluxe Carrying CaseVideo CameraBuilt-in 2.0 Mega Pixels Digital Web Video CameraWarrantyStandard Warranty Service - Standard One(1) Year Limited Warranty + Lifetime Technical SupportAdditional Software1 x Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Student Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote includedMouse1 x iBUYPOWER Internet MouseExtras1 x CoolerMaster SF-19 USB 3.0 Gaming Laptop Cooler Black
For $1182 +S&H(I'm asking for help/comments because, though I'm halfway competent about hardware specs, I'm not up to date on the latest, greatest, and newest like some of you are.)Also, stuff that's happened recently:Bachelor partyXbox 360 +lotso gamesCollege - I love my schedule, now I gotta wait to actually attend (I got bumped up to a sophomore calc class. due to my placement test scores :D)WEDDING IS SOON I AM SO EXCITE
I was talking to Cyrus, actually. When I started typing the comment yours wasn't below his. Although I would hope a boot drive wasn't a green…
Regarding the hard drive: Go with the 500 GB 7200 RPM + 4 GB SSD hybrid drive option. It's $63 more, but it should be worth it. Drop down to 4 GB of RAM if you need to… 8 GB is of RAM is definitely unnecessary.
Most people will perceive little to no performance increase beyond 4 GB. Unless you're doing ungodly things that for whatever reason demand that kind of RAM, such as editing massive video projects or working with VERY large images in Photoshop. But you certainly won't get much of a performance increase for, say, gaming. Unless you plan on having a bunch of other programs open in the background taking up your memory while you're gaming, which is just silly. And nor will an OS be snappier and more responsive under an average user's workload with 8 GB when it's already got more than enough with 4.
In the future, games and operating systems may become more complex and demand more RAM, but not now. And probably not soon enough to justify future-proofing. Besides, 8 GB of ram alone wouldn't future-proof your laptop since the games that will eventually need it will also likely need a newer GPU as well.I've got Firefox open with 7 tabs, my iPod syncing with iTunes, a large spreadsheet open in Numbers. And I've got HandBrake ripping a DVD and MacBlurayRipper Pro ripping a Blu-ray simultaneously. And I've also got a video playing in VLC. And… I'm only using a little over 3 GB of my RAM. And nearly a GB of it is inactive and only remains in memory due to OS X's crappy memory management. And obviously, while gaming, I'd have none of these extraneous things running simultaneously since they eat up not only RAM but CPU cycles too.It's not purely for gaming. I WILL be making highresolution textures for my models in Photoshop/GIMP, having huge polycount designs open in Mechanical Desktop/Inventor/Some other CAD program, and want to run other programs at the same time. That would require lots of RAM to maintain those in the background. I like to multitask a lot and I usually encounter slowdowns due to RAM usage more often than CPU overload.
With the i7 and 8 gigs of RAM, I can pretty much have whatever I want open and not worry about it.What the hell do you do, Josea?
I have three gigs. I know that extra gig will probably solve all of my problems, but it's cheap enough to just go all the way to eight and prevent future ones.
Normally- 2/3 Chrome windows with 5/10, sometimes 20, tabs each- Gimp with some kind of 2000x2000 image- Itunes with music (Don't whine about this, it isn't important what I use to playback my music and it already has my library loaded.)- Some windows explorer tabs with shortcuts to games, folders w/ pictures and movies, etc.And I'm good here. But when I try to add a game to that or I make larger images with more demanding filters and effects used, I start to get problems. And once I start adding 3dsmax, autocad, and others into the mix, it's terrible. :\I have 4 Gb right now and I hit swap space very often, and when that happens performance goes straight to hell. I could have bought 4 more Gbs and be done with it, but I have the money right now and I'd rather max it out now and not worry about RAM ever again.