Alienware m17x R4 a good sidegrade?

So I'm trying to sell my gaming rig (see this post for specs). I built it just over a year ago and it's a beast. Sadly though, now that I live with my GF, I just don't have much room to use it. Right now, it's tucked into a corner of the bedroom and it's lucky to see 1-2 hours of use a week. I use my Dell Precision m4600 a lot more, due to the fact that it's easier to move into another room when I need to. Unfortunately, the Quadro 2000m is a bottleneck and since it's an MXM type A slot, I don't have a whole lot of upgrade paths.


Anyway, due to the desktops mass and size, I really don't want to ship it... nor do I really want to part it out if I can help it for fear of damaging something in shipping. I was browsing craigslist and saw that someone locally was selling an Alienware m17x R4 (i7, 16GB ram, 256Gb SSD + 1TB mechanical & a 2GB HD7970m). They were asking 1400.00 for it, which is probably $400 overpriced in my humble opinion, but it's still a really nice portable gaming machine. It also has the benefit of being upgradable to a current gen GPU.

So my thought was to offer the guy a trade, his laptop for my desktop, but I can't help but feel that I'm getting the short end on the deal. What does [H] think? Would this be a worthwhile trade? Or do you think I could find a better deal out there?

Look for a better deal since that is a 2 generation old laptop now. Shooting you a PM to help you out.

I don't recommend buying used notebooks (unless you know the owner), you never really know how they've been treated and they wear pretty fast.

That's definitely a high price. I've seen GTX 980M-equipped laptops hover around the $1500 range on eBay. I bought my ASUS G751 as an open box from NewEgg for $1850, as a matter of fact. Yes, that's about $500-$900 more than you expected to spend, but the performance is also increased many folds. That 7970M is 2 generations old, as others have said - and AMD is not as good as NVIDIA in the mobile realm.

As a desktop gamer (and mobile gamer, too) I must tell you that anything less than the 980M will likely make you dissatisfied...but it depends on what you play. I play BF4 MP so it's great. I could see being upset having anything less.

thanks guys. I appreciate the feedback. Think I'll stay away from the laptop and hold out for a better swap deal or a cash sale for the desktop.

Cheers

Not sure I agree with anything less than a 980m. Unless you get a 3k or 4k laptop, you're only gonna be running at 1080p. Anything above a 780m and I think you'll be happy. I'd personally look at 970m equipped laptops as they are closer to your price range (only 980m equipped laptop at this price point is a Sager) and offer great performance.

The 970/980m gpus really are a big step forward in mobile gaming performance.