I've recently made a thread asking for help choosing a laptop, and thanks to suggestions of some people here and on other forums, I've finally decided on a P150HM Clevo (this is equivalent to the Sager NP8130).

Now, I've got some final questions about finishing with configuring it. I'm getting it through a reseller, and I'm wondering what the best options are for some components.
Firstly, I'll explain what I want from this laptop. I want a portable, at least 2 battery hours life, laptop with which I can do some college work (nothing fancy) and more importantly game.
It is meant to last at least 3-4 years and I'd like it to be powerful enough to be able to play games (like The Witcher 2,Crysis 2, Starcraft 2,etc), from now till then. Now, It would have to be able to play on highest settings I suppose to reach that goal. So please answer all the below questions with that in mind.

1) I've got the choice between a GTX 460/1.5GB or AMD HD6970/2GB. Now, the 6970 is €140 more expensive, but it is also better. I might select it, but I'm not sure because notebookcheck has this to say:
"The power consumption of the chip should be similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M / 485M and therefore about 100 Watt with MXM board and 2 GB GDDR5 memory. Eurocom states that the TDP ranges from 75-100 Watt for example. Therefore, the card is only suited for large laptops with good cooling solutions."

This means, I think, it will make the laptop overheat more easily and lead to a shorter battery life. That combined with the extra cost leads me to ask: how much of an improvement is the 6970? Is it essential to reach my above goals?
Laptop specifies:" Battery life : 180 minutes (with nVIDIA? GeForc?e GTX 485M, 76.96WH Battery)". By how much would that be slashed by the 6970 (if at all), should I need it.

2) How much RAM would I need to reach the above goals? Is 8GB RAM total overkill or necessary. Will that lead to big improvements or should I save €18? (Windows 7).

3) Is the Intel Core i7 - 2630QM 2.0 - 2.90 Ghz sufficient to reach the above goals? For €30 extra, I could get Intel Core i5 - 2540M 2.60 - 3.30 Ghz. However, I'm not sure what the difference between i5 or i7 is, and which is better when. notebookcheck rates the i7 higher, but the i5 is more expensive and the Ghz is also higher.

4) Overheating is often a problem. Does anybody have any experience with overheating with Clevo laptops?

So far that are all the questions, any help would be appreciated.

Edit: Damn the typo in the title . That is supposed to be hardware.

AFAIK, the impact of heat from the graphics card on the long term life of a modern battery is going to be negligible at most. There are a couple guides for tweaks to extend battery life. It probably makes more difference on battery longetivity if you avoid charging the battery to the max. If you're really worried about heat, just take the battery out when you're on AC power.

Regarding the battery drain from a fast GPU, it's always a trade off if you want a good gaming laptop. I have an Envy 15 which has a slower card and I'm lucky to get 90 minutes on battery gaming at high power settings. If I reduce all the settings, brightness, and adjust the screen to turn off if after 1min if i'm not typing, etc., I can squeeze about 2 - 2.5 hrs taking notes in MS Word. If you really need a gaming laptop with long battery life, you probably need to buy some kind of external battery.



Unless you will be working with large files in Photoshop, video editing, rendering motion graphics, virtual machines, etc., 8GB is certainly more than enough. For 18 euros, it's worth it to go with 8GB instead of 4GB to have a bit of an extra cushion IMO.



The 6970M is not going to be able to play Witcher 2 with ubersampling, which is designed for dual desktop video cards, but probably with the rest of the settings on ultra you would be able to get above 30fps. with the 460m it would probably be slightly below 30fps.

Not sure about Starcraft 2, is it a bit more CPU intensive than most games? if so, you would probably benefit from going up to i7-2720QM, 2820QM, 2920QM. Keep in mind the i5-2540m is a dual core, definitely a step down from the quad core 2630QM.

never used a Clevo/Sager before.

Thanks for the reply ( and all your previous ones too!).
I've just realized the answer to the battery question is answered by myself already ( I edited in the laptop specifics and didn't notice that the card mentioned there, is also mentioned in the notebookcheck about HD6970).
So 180 minutes of battery life is what I want, and probably can expect (+-).

I'll follow the tip on battery longetivity, and just what I wanted to know about the 8GB RAM.

I've heard that the Witcher 2 ubersampling mode brings down even the most beefiest systems (desktops), but that is a bit overkill ( at least in the screenshot comparisons ).
More concerned about the staying power of the 2 possible video card, with which I mean how long they'll be able to play games on a decent (i.e 20+ fps) level.
My current laptop can't play some of todays games( GTA 4, The Witcher 2, Crysis 2, etc), even on the lowest settings for example. I wouldn't like that to happen in 2 years time already.
So if I'll know that the GTX 460 will be irrelevant in (estimated) 3 years time, and the HD6970 in 4 years, it might be a better investment to get the HD6970.
However if they can both last around 4 years ( at that age, my laptops often don't work as well anymore), the GTX 460 might be the better investment, since it is cheaper and it would help with battery duration (since it consumes 72 watts and has Optimus technology).

I mentioned Starcraft as an example of games I'd like to play, i.e, RTS's which can be somewhat more CPU intensive. Starcraft 2 itself however isn't that bad ( it is playable on my system ).
Should've done better research on the i7 and i5's differences. i7 is definitely better then.
I won't upgrade my current processor choice then, since the difference between the 2630QM 2.0 - 2.90 Ghz (€245.00) and 2720QM 2.20 - 3.30 Ghz (€372.00) is only .20-.40 Ghz for over €100.

Thanks again for the reply, and more feedback is always welcome.

Let's face it, you're not choosing this model because of looks (certainly no MacBook Pro, etc.), you want it to smoke these games. If you can afford it, certainly, go for the 6970m, it's almost as fast as the 485m, which has been the fastest laptop card for the past year or so.

it can even deliver playable frame rates for some games in dual external monitor display resolutions higher than 1080p.

IMO the 460m is kind of borderline. It's a solid card for playing most recent games at 1080p, but if you want some extra cushion to be sure you can handle even the most demanding games at the highest settings for the next few years, I think the 6970m is a better choice (if it's within your budget).

In 4 years, who knows what the game industry landscape will look like. On the hardware side there will probably be a drastic shift from electronics to photonics, and maybe cheap integrated intel GPUs will be fast enough to play games. Or maybe it could go the other way and games will all be in 3D at 4k resolution, etc.

True, I do want to smoke those games. First time I'm putting together a laptop (instead of pre-made from Dell) and also the first one that will have some serious power in it.
And also true that the games/hardware in the future might sway from their current path. Hopefully not in the direction my (future) laptop can't take!
I'll have to think about the total budget and price for the 6970, if I can, I shall certainly go for it.

Thanks for all your advice, both in this thread and others, I really appreciate it.

Sure np!

You may want to double check with some Clevo owners, because it might be possible for you to buy a 6970m (or perhaps some newer card) in the future and upgrade it yourself.

I'm sure you'll enjoy the hell out of this thing no matter which card you end up getting.