Optimus V vs Vortex IV, dual-monitors and illum. keyboards?

[d4005]

A £280 gap is not surprising for a better chassis in terms of cooling and, most importantly, a GTX 870M. Few laptop GPUs can compete with the 870.

I am just curious about the 16 gig of RAM. Why do you think you need that much? Everybody here seems to believe that 8GB should be sufficient for almost anything. Is there a reason to upgrade?

Looking at it again, it is a much nicer gap than the £550 I had earlier. I would rather have Bluetooth 4, and a fingerprint reader might be nice, and if you think a GTX870M is a significant upgrade (I never really took much interest in graphics cards in the past). The real noticeable value for me is the illuminated keyboard. I've given up on any expectation of getting an answer from PCS on whether the Optimus V 17.3" has one. They aren't commenting in the forum question and haven't answered any of my emails about it (but did answer one where I pointed out a config error on the site). The cooling should be a nice bonus too.

Right then, I'll go ahead and order this tomorrow.

Btw, I've had 16GB in my current desktop machin for the last 3 years and several times wished I'd gone for 32GB. I have a few software development applications that eat up a gig of memory, and can get the browsers up to a gig of memory with lots of open tabs, then there's the video editing and photo editing applications, but it's the virtual machines that are the biggest memory hogs - each one needing anything from 2GB - 4GB. A few times I've had to shut down (sleep) a VM or two because 16GB wasn't enough, but that was only a few times over 3 years (once a year maybe), so 32GB is over the top, but I'd reach the limits of 8GB almost every workday.

 

[Sberca]

Thanks for your answer regarding RAM!

The 17.3" Optimus does not have a backlit keyboard. Only the 13.3" and 15.6" Optimus series have one. So if you really need a backlit keyboard in a 17.3" chassis, go for the Vortex.

 

[d4005]

Thanks for your answer regarding RAM!

The 17.3" Optimus does not have a backlit keyboard. Only the 13.3" and 15.6" Optimus series have one. So if you really need a backlit keyboard in a 17.3" chassis, go for the Vortex.

Thanks for the Optimus backlit keyboard info. I'm not even sure if it did have one that it would automatically win now. Those extra features and that cooling have won me over

 

[d4005]

Multi monitor output is dependent on the gpu, and all will support dual certainly. If you want triple, it may be worth opting for the extra vram cards.

Just thought I'd come back to this thread to report that my single-graphics-card Vortex IV is working in triple monitor mode. One of them is the laptop screen, but it's still triple

I've got my main 27" 1080p monitor connected directly using HDMI and I've set that as my main display (for screen size and readability). I've got my laptop screen as the middle 1080p screen, and an old 19" 1280x1024 connected using the mini-dp output with an adaptor to VGA. If I had another monitor I'd try plugging that in via the full-size DP port and see if quad displays would fly. I don't know if I'd be as shocked to see that work as I was to see the triple work.

One thing I couldn't get to work was dual external displays when the laptop lid was closed. They both received a desktop picture but the machine was unresponsive until I disconnected the second. This is cool though. I'm so tempted to disconnect the screen from my g/f's computer and use the full-size DP to VGA adaptor that I've got and go for a quad (just for curiousity).

edit: Update: of course I couldn't resist trying a fourth monitor. It certainly recognized the fourth as you can see in the screenshot below, but every time I tried to connect "a fourth", it would deselect one of the others. I could choose any three from the four, but only three. Still very happy, I wasn't expecting three to work.