Got $7k? 6990M Xfire vs 580M SLI Laptop comparison

that's ridiculous. is there really a market for this kind of hardware?
 
Zinn said:
that's ridiculous. is there really a market for this kind of hardware?
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mostly millitary, IIRC. Deployed for months at a time, with little to carry = the main market for this. That's what I remember being told by a few reps and repairmen from Dell during discussions.

EDIT: and TomHW no doubt used a bullshit nVidia supporting set of games. Am I right? I don't want to give those [(#^$]ers any advert views at all.
 
th ysed: crysis, jc2, f1 2010, and cop

jeremyshaw said:
mostly millitary, IIRC. Deployed for months at a time, with little to carry = the main market for this. That's what I remember being told by a few reps and repairmen from Dell during discussions.

EDIT: and TomHW no doubt used a bullshit nVidia supporting set of games. Am I right? I don't want to give those [(#^$]ers any advert views at all.
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Neither setup would run Metro 2033 at the proper res.

All in all, i think they gave a pretty good review. the bottom line was that the 580MSli was faster and the 6990M xfire was close, but much cheaper. Never heard that before right? ;-)

Anyway, both cards put up very impressive stats...especially for a laptop.
 
jeremyshaw said:
mostly millitary, IIRC. Deployed for months at a time, with little to carry = the main market for this. That's what I remember being told by a few reps and repairmen from Dell during discussions.

EDIT: and TomHW no doubt used a bullshit nVidia supporting set of games. Am I right? I don't want to give those [(#^$]ers any advert views at all.
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laptops are huge for deployments, it becomes our main stage of entertainment. Movies, games, internet; chat, video, personal finances. The big thing is most military can't afford these and would be pretty dumb (IMO) to lump that much for a deployment laptop, deployments are known for thrashing your equipment, dust gets sucked up, tons of scratches and theft is pretty common in the desert.

Also weight, I had to go from phx to baltimore, to germany, to italy, to qatar, to kuwait to iraq all with in 36 hours, no way in hell I'm lugging that around during that trip, could barely handle my DV6!
 
Nice laptop! but too much money on something that will lose half its value in a year.
 
munkle said:
Nice laptop! but too much money on something that will lose half its value in a year.
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as far as I can tell people who buy clevos keep them until the completely disintegrate, so the resale value is not even an issue. These laptops aren't fashion accessories like some other disproportionately expensive laptops.
 
Notleh said:
Neither setup would run Metro 2033 at the proper res.

All in all, i think they gave a pretty good review. the bottom line was that the 580MSli was faster and the 6990M xfire was close, but much cheaper. Never heard that before right? ;-)

Anyway, both cards put up very impressive stats...especially for a laptop.
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What? Both setups can run Metro at 1080P. My M17x has a single 580m and can run it just fine.
 
Sojuuk said:
as far as I can tell people who buy clevos keep them until the completely disintegrate, so the resale value is not even an issue. These laptops aren't fashion accessories like some other disproportionately expensive laptops.
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They're pretty useless as laptops though, a 21 minute battery life!?
 
Why are they using 1366 cpus and not sb? I assume it has something to do with the chipset?
 
shoota said:
Why are they using 1366 cpus and not sb? I assume it has something to do with the chipset?
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Cause a 990X will be much faster than a mobile Sandy Bridge, even the i7 2920X, the are rumors that they will refresh those monsters once Sandy Bridge E (desktop) is released.
 
Abula said:
Cause a 990X will be much faster than a mobile Sandy Bridge, even the i7 2920X, the are rumors that they will refresh those monsters once Sandy Bridge E (desktop) is released.
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.... if they are using one desktop cpu, why not use a SB desktop cpu.....
 
munkle said:
.... if they are using one desktop cpu, why not use a SB desktop cpu.....
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This platform was develop 2 years ago, its not like they like to try to fit a destkop chipset on laptops every year.... they have a really small market as it is, they were cenetered on the best cpu at the time, Sandy bridge E will give something mantain the six core... mayb even give 8 core in time... so i dont see a reason to design a Sandy bridge, just for six months.... probably not worth it to them.
 
I've had two configs being tested here (an x7200 with dual 485m SLI and and m18x with dual 6990m x-fire). The main draw of having an ultra high-end gaming laptop is flexibility. Sure, you lose some power when compared to a top-end desktop, but for me, having a single, portable machine that I can use as my primary gaming PC at home and away is priceless. I now just have a desktop for shits and giggles that I haven't turned on for a month. It's also a good time to own a high-end gaming laptop since there are basically no games out there that a dual 485m/580m/6990m setup can't run at highest settings -- this has, as far as I can remember, never been the case in the history of PC gaming. The obvious deterrent is price, but for some of us, this isn't an issue.

As for the Sager/Clevo x7200, it wasn't really viable as an even semi-portable solution so I sold it (and my God, did it put out heat). The m18x is a much better option: about the same performance, cooler, with much longer battery life.

Regarding the article, the test suite is flawed: almost all other sources have shown the 6990m and 580m are much closer (<5%) in performance. In any case, even if 580m SLI was 20% faster it wouldn't be worth the 60%/$600 price premium over dual 6990ms. Tom's hardware has never been the go-to for reviews like this.
 
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