Judge My Purchasing Decision: Gaming Laptop

"

BearCares wrote:

But the ladies love it when I whip out all dat RGB on 'em. LIke POW You don't even know about that

I am a cmyk person, RGB is low quality bait.

"

BearCares wrote:

Thanks for the advice! But now I need to maximize performance. I don't expect anything big but any advice on undervolting/overclocking thingies? ;3

My advice may no longer be as valid as it used to be. That advice would be "don't." I don't see much of a reason to overclock chipsets that don't have "Overclockabledness!!!" plastered all over them as marketing ploys... But, epeen displayers love them some overclocking to display their chipmangling prowess!

(See, back in the day, when "overclocking" was edge-of-your-seat real, gamers depended on the clock-speed quality of a chip. Crap chip runs got pressed and cert'd for lower clockspeeds and good ones got a thumbs-up for a bigger number displayed in their screenprinted label. If you overclocked a chip of less quality, you're cooking breakfast on it and then.. there it goes. /scene)

"

My firestrike score is below average

I average three double-ply, "Extra Strong," squares per wipe. I'm sure that means something about a specific game's expected performance. Once I figure it out, I'll be rich! :)

The point being - What is measured is, hopefully, accurate and is important regarding the measured quality. A game, though, could be coded much like post-wipe paper bits and that "score" would be largely meaningless in the quality of one's overall experience due to "overclocking." I suppose one would see "bad coding result" more quickly on an overclocked system?

"

- I expected that because it is a Max Q laptop. But at the same time I can haz 10% more perforance with undervolt/overclock? HOW?

Follow any manufacturer's recommendations, there. Laptop components are generally fairly robust with good heat tolerance. But, the environment itself is also min/maxxed for a certain range of expectations. Who's going to know good, realistic, settings that won't melt the motherboard? The manufacturer.

Looks like a "good" score to me. But, I haven't overclocked anything... since the Pentium chip. (I dunno, maybe a P2 here and there?)

Note: By any means necessary, stay aware from crapware like RivaTuner and MSI Afterburner for any sort of "overclocking" or "optimizing" of graphics and performance... Just my two coppers. They're more trouble than they're worth. (I'm very sure someone will chime in with a vehement objection to that opinion, so judge for yourself.)

Well I actually did download MSI afterburner and overclock the GPU and... well... I was able to get 1500 more points in Firestrike benchmark!! Which means I got +10fps on the graphics test which is literally 10% more performance!!!

Unfortunately it did not translate into any real in-game performance increase so it's all just a placebo. So you were right I will uninstall it now ;)