Best website is
www.xoticpc.com. Good customer service, best prices, and can talk to an actual American with very little hassle -- tech support not outsourced to a 3rd world country, in other words.
I'm in about the same boat as you, but looking for a powerful 3D laptop and not just a powerful laptop.
Sager NP7282 is due for a refresh. It's likely that they will refresh it to use either Sandy Bridge or Sandy Bridge E series chips this fall. I've heard rumors of Sandy Bridge E series with LGA2011 socket cpu for the high end Sager refresh coming out pre-Christmas, if you can wait that long.
Tomshardware.com did a check on RAM and found that for gaming, you want 8GB, and more than that didn't really do much of anything for current generation games. So go with 8GB of fast DDR3.
SSD's are definitely worth it. Buy as big of an SSD as you can afford. Get a Sata 6GB/s one, too, and make sure that the laptop supports SATA III (6GB/s). OCZ Vertex 3, Intel 500 series, and Crucial M4 are all good SSD options. I have used both SSD and HDD for boot drives and would never go back to a HDD for a boot drive / applications drive.
Best setup is an SSD for a boot drive and a large HDD for a data drive. If you don't have a lot of storage needs, then a single large SSD could potentially work, but stay away from RAID-0 for SSD's, because that doesn't support TRIM.
Top of the line display probably means a matte screen and 120Hz. But it could also mean high color gamut on a glossy screen. Which is more important to you, refresh/matte or gamut?
One of the nice things about Sager is that you can upgrade the graphics card(s) in the future, which helps make the laptop one that will stick around for a while.
You might consider a setup like this for a $3500 budget, from
www.xoticpc.com.
Sager NP8170 / Clevo P170HM
- 17.3" FHD 16:9 120Hz 3D "MatteType" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Screen (1920x1080) - With 1 Pair NVIDIA 3D Glasses (Can only be used NVIDIA 485M)
- Included nVIDIA Wireless 3D Glasses (Bundled with 3D Screen)
- Standard Dead Pixel Policy
- -2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2820QM, 2.3-3.4GHz, (32nm, 8MB L3 cache)
- - IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- nVidia GeForce GTX 485M 2,048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 (User Upgradeable)
- No Video Adapter
- ~ 8,192MB DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS)
- Standard Finish
- ~ 250GB Intel 510 Series Solid State Drive (SSD2 Serial-ATA III)
- ~ 750GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache)
- HDD Raid Settings - OFF
- ~ 6X Blue-Ray Burner/Reader / 8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
- No Extra Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy
- No Back Up Hard Drive
- NO External USB Optical Drive
- No Floppy Drive
- Internal 7-in-1 Card Reader (MS/MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/SD/Mini-SD/MMC/RS)
- No Back Up Software
- None Standard--
- Intel® Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module
- No Network Accessory
- Built in 2.0 Megapixel Camera
- No TV Tuner
- Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio - Included
- Basic Black Business Case - Included
- Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- No Car Adapter
- None Standard*
- No Dock/Hub/Adapter
- Integrated Fingerprint Reader
- No External Keyboard or Mouse
- No Notebook Cooler
- No Thanks, Please do not Overclock my system (Overclocking will add 3-6 business days to build time)
- ~Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Installed (64&32-Bit CD Included) w/ Drivers & Utilities CD's + Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - Included with OS Purchase
- No Office Software
- No Software Bundle
- 3 Year Labor* 1 Year Parts Warranty Lifetime -24/7 DOMESTIC Based- Toll Free Telephone Tech Support (Labor Warranty through Xotic PC)
Includes FREE Shipping Both Ways for Warranty Repairs
- No Xotic PC Gear
$3,519.00 before cash discount.
You could even trim some from the budget by going with the core i7 2720QM cpu and going with the Blu-Ray reader instead of the burner and skipping the wireless N upgrade. Depends on if those upgrades are important to you or not.
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