Hello all!

So, I'm currently customising the specs on a gaming laptop which my girlfriend is kindly buying me for Christmas last year (Yep, just a bit late). I'm not going to mention the website, but it's a highly recommended one from other forums and review sites. I've got pretty much all the specs I want, but there's a couple of things I'm unsure of. I'd really appreciate some advice/answers from you, the people in the know.

1. 8GB 1333MHz RAM or 4GB 1600MHz RAM, which is better (Going with Windows 7 64 bit, if that swings it either way)?

2. 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid or 750GB WD Scorpio Black, which would you go for when they're both the same price in the build?

3. Would the slower HDD and 4GB 1600MHz RAM options effect gaming performance?

4. Final question, glossy or matte monitor?

Thanks a lot for any advice given.

Is this PCS by any chance?

I bought a PCS laptop about a year ago. Handled Skyrim fine. It was the Vortex II.

Can't recall the specs - would have to look them up but it came with a 500GB Scorpio HDD. Whilst this was great, i was running out of space. I bought the 750GB Seagate momentus hybrid HDD. Since doing so, my boot times have dropped dramatically down to around 35 secs from power on to firefox up and running. This includes the time taken for me to swipe my finger on the fingerprint reader to log in.

Glossy is great for vibrant colours eg DVDs. My sister had a laptop with a glossy screen and i hated thefact you could see reflections easily. I went for a 17.3" matte monitor which was extra but is the same as my previous laptop from 2003 and my netbook so I didn't really miss anything.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, that's the site. I'm looking at the Skyfire II. Handling Skyrim with high settings would be great. The specs I've configured to seem like they'd do that.

I'm not worried if the laptop takes a little longer to load up. I'd rather have 750GB storage and a slightly slower boot time, than 500GB and a slightly faster boot time. It's gaming performance I'm wondering about more. Would a slightly slower hard drive effect gaming performance, or just the loading time for the game?

The matte and glossy monitors cost the same with he Skyfire II. I'm thinking matte would be better for me, as I hate reflections my on monitor while playing games.

This is my spec:

Vortex II: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2720QM (2.20GHz) 6MB Cache
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
2.0GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M - DirectX® 11
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
SONY BD-5730S 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£89)

I had no issues with read/write speeds with gaming. So far, the only noticeable improvement with the hybrid HDD is boot up time and load time of programs. Not noticed any improvement in gaming. Was able to play Skyrim at max settings without any issues.

If there's any way to switch out either HDD for an SSD, that'll be your biggest speed increase. In fact, I'd even say that if you have to stay at 4gig RAM but you can have the SSD, do that.

Frequency is largely irrelevant unless overclocking, so 8gig will stand you in better stead otherwise.

Would you mind listing the whole spec for us?

Also, welcome to the forum

An SSD takes the price way above what my girlfriend can afford, so that isn't an option.

Specs:
SkyFire:17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670M - 1.5GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm) or 500GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT HYBRID, SATA 3 Gb/s, (7200rpm)
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

It's a massive upgrade from the Acer Aspire 6920G which I currently have.

Looks really good. But seriously, you won't believe the difference. I would suggest switching the i7 for an i5-3210 and the 120gig Intel 520. If my calculations are correct, your girlfriend saves £12 as well....

I wouldn't fuss over SSD at the mo. You can always upgrade later. Any reason you didn't go for a blu-ray drive?

Would need to go on to the PCS site to check the latest specs but if it's specced higher than mine, it will be fine. PCS are cool but they have had issues with couriers and no one is 100% satsified with their choice of courier so I wouldn't fuss about this.

Really?!

I'm running almost the cheapest processor currently available from Intel (couldn't bring myself to stoop as low as a Celeron) and even just a 64gig M4 absolutely transforms it. I can only imagine with 120gigs of SSD goodness would do to a gaming monster like the above...

The only thing that an SSD will do to improve game performance is reduce the loading screen times; it won't have any influence at all on the actual game play, that will all be down to GPU, CPU and RAM.

Right, but what's the difference gonna be between an i5 and i7 in gaming??? The GPU and RAM remain the same, and so for general usability (and ludicrously fast suspend/hibernate on a laptop) an SSD has to be a no brainer for me. You disagree?

It depends on the priorities. Besides, the hybrid drive should give a good compromise between speed, cost and capacity.

I don't like the idea of a 120GB drive. My 250GB one in this laptop is pretty much full. I have to keep deleting things I don't really want to, just to free up space. I store a lot of music and videos on my laptop, so small drive space really doesn't help me.

A Blu-Ray drive takes the price higher than my girlfriend can afford. I'm already putting £100 toward the cost, and I can't afford to put any more in.

The answer is it depends. Different games split tasks between GPU and CPU in different ways. Games like Crysis for example, whilst being renowned as graphically intensive, actually put a higher than normal load on the CPU for example. It's not terribly helpful when trying to spec a machine, but that's just the way the industry is.

Personally, an i5 is fine for gaming in almost every set of circumstances, but given the OP's requirement for disc space an SSD of that size will be ruinous. The only other option would be a more normal sized SSD and an external HDD or two.

An SSD really is out of the question, especially if I'd need to buy extra external drives to have around at all times. Money wise and space wise, it just wouldn't work.