Buy new laptop or upgrade my desktop?

mahmoud-brk

Guys, I'm new to computers,so according to your experience, what's better
buying a new laptop for about $1500 with core i7 and 1Gb VGA dedicated ( I didn't know its name, I'll try to know it ASAP, but I guess it's not powerful like HD 5850)
OR upgrading my desktop with the following parts:
*Motherboard Asus P7P55D
*Intel(R) core i5 750 2.66 Ghz ( 4 cores)
*RAM DDR3 2 GB for the above Motherboard
*ATI Radeon® Mobility HD 5850 or 5870
P.S. Money and Life time of the computer is considerable, playing high graphics games like Call of Duty: Black Ops is considerable, too.

Please give me some information about the PSU, I looked at it but I couldn't figure out how many Watts it is.
Also mu UPS is 650 Watts, Anyway, what is the minimum PSU do I need for the HD5850, and do I need to change UPS?
Many thanks in advance

Samer99

Mahmoud Brk wroteOR upgrading my desktop with the following parts:
*Motherboard Asus P7P55D
*Intel(R) core i5 750 2.66 Ghz ( 4 cores)
*RAM DDR3 2 GB for the above Motherboard
*ATI Radeon® Mobility HD 5850 or 5870

Actually you are buying a completely new desktop if you want to buy all these parts...

Anyway, to make it short, between buying a gaming laptop or building a gaming desktop, I definitely advice you to build a gaming desktop.

Samer99

Tthe following relatively cheap desktop will be able to play all modern PC games at high settings full HD, with acceptable to excellent FPS (varies from game to another).

My suggested desktop:

-CPU: i3-540 (3.06 GHz - 2 Cores - 4MB L3) = 115$
-Motherboard: Intel DH57DD = 113$
-RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR3-1333 = 2x38 = 76$
-Graphic Card: EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB DDR5 = 249$
-Hard disk: Seagate 1TB 7200RPM SATA II 32MB = 64$
-Power supply: Thermaltake W0355 Litepower 600W = 80$

The sum = 697 + V.A.T = 687$

(check http://www.pcandparts.com/price.htm).

-You still have to buy a full HD monitor (better to be LED backlight, and 19" or larger).

-You can use your old UPS and old case (but I do not advice you to do that).

-You can use your old DVD drive, mouse, keyboard, and headset.

edgelord101

Mahmoud Brk wroteGuys, I'm new to computers,so according to your experience, what's better
buying a new laptop for about $1500 with core i7 and 1Gb VGA dedicated ( I didn't know its name, I'll try to know it ASAP, but I guess it's not powerful like HD 5850)
OR upgrading my desktop with the following parts:
*Motherboard Asus P7P55D
*Intel(R) core i5 750 2.66 Ghz ( 4 cores)
*RAM DDR3 2 GB for the above Motherboard
*ATI Radeon® Mobility HD 5850 or 5870
P.S. Money and Life time of the computer is considerable, playing high graphics games like Call of Duty: Black Ops is considerable, too.

Please give me some information about the PSU, I looked at it but I couldn't figure out how many Watts it is.
Also mu UPS is 650 Watts, Anyway, what is the minimum PSU do I need for the HD5850, and do I need to change UPS?
Many thanks in advance

Gaming desktop. For your laptop to play games as good as your desktop, you'd need to pay 3 times the price of the desktop. If you really need mobility from time to time, just get a cheap laptop. Anyways, your desktop specs are very nice. All I would change is your RAM. 4GB of RAM is the minimum for games now. And it costs just 40 more dollars, so why not? Second, those are some very impressive cards you've got there. Either will do fine at gaming for 2-3 years to come. Also, for a PSU, I recommend a 650+ Watt PSU, even though the 5850/70 only requires 500Watts. On pcandparts, they're selling an InWin Commander 650 Watt PSU for about $150. Good 12v amps, good watts, it's all good. That's all there is to it. And your UPS would be perfect for it.

P.S. No offense, but I think the poster above me that recommended the i3 isn't giving you the best options for performance. Sure, most games still use 2 cores but we already have some quad-core games. And many more quad-core games are starting to come out. Black Ops has even been optimized for quad-core. Look it up and you will see. I think we might have a hexa-core game, but that's just useless until the new generation of consoles comes out. Personally, I think whatever you do, do not get a dual-core.

rolf

The advantages of a desktop, IMHO, are:
- Better performance for the same price
- More durable, unlikely break down because it is dropped or because of water spillage, or require a battery or adapter replacement.

After using both a laptop and a desktop I came appreciate these.

Samer99

Tako_400 wroteP.S. No offense, but I think the poster above me that recommended the i3 isn't giving you the best options for performance. Sure, most games still use 2 cores but we already have some quad-core games. And many more quad-core games are starting to come out. Black Ops has even been optimized for quad-core. Look it up and you will see. I think we might have a hexa-core game, but that's just useless until the new generation of consoles comes out. Personally, I think whatever you do, do not get a dual-core.

Yes, I was not giving him the best options for performance, I was giving him the best options for money and performance balance (he could spend an additional 100$ on the CPU, and another additional 100$ on the GPU, and 50 more dollars on the PSU (due to power consumption)... I am sure that he will get a better performance).

mahmoud-brk

I'm very thankful to all of you guys, and here some new questions

*what is the best of these CPUs among these: i5 750, i5 750S, i5 760 ( note that the 750S has the highest price)
*why Crysis will be an exception with the desktop i suggested? I read on wiki that the Sys. Req. for windows 7 are
-Intel Pentium Dual-Core, Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad @ 2 GHZ
-DirectX 10 Compatible Graphics card with 512 MB VRAM

*Which is better, the motherboard I suggested Asus P7P55D, or the one suggested by Samer99 Intel DH57DD?

*Should the Video card be designed for a specific motherboard?! I mean I must buy a video card designed for Asus motherboard if I'm choosing the Asus motherboard ?

edgelord101

Mahmoud Brk wroteI'm very thankful to all of you guys, and here some new questions

*what is the best of these CPUs among these: i5 750, i5 750S, i5 760 ( note that the 750S has the highest price)
*why Crysis will be an exception with the desktop i suggested? I read on wiki that the Sys. Req. for windows 7 are
-Intel Pentium Dual-Core, Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad @ 2 GHZ
-DirectX 10 Compatible Graphics card with 512 MB VRAM

*Which is better, the motherboard I suggested Asus P7P55D, or the one suggested by Samer99 Intel DH57DD?

*Should the Video card be designed for a specific motherboard?! I mean I must buy a video card designed for Asus motherboard if I'm choosing the Asus motherboard ?

An HD5850/70 will play Crysis on the maximum settings. If you want proof, watch the YouTube videos of people playing Crysis with them. Everything is high settings. And no, the GPU has nothing to do with the brand of the motherboard. So you can get an Asus GPU and absolutely any motherboard that has the correct PCI slot, of course. All LGA1156 (socket type of your CPU) motherboards will have this slot, so you can basically assume that your graphics card will work on any motherboard you choose.

Now, onto your motherboard question. I would definitely go with the Asus P7P55D since it's compatible with higher clocked RAM. However they both only read 16GB of RAM, but I doubt you'll ever need more than 4-8GB. Also, the Asus motherboard allows you to install another GPU if you want for greater performance. The Intel does not. There are many other details you can go into to pick which one you want, but these obvious and very important differences should make you lean in the way of the Asus mobo.

Finally, about your question on the CPU's. Your i5 750 is clocked at 2.6 and turbo's up to 3.2Ghz. And the i5 760 is clocked at 2.8 but turbo's up to 3.4Ghz. Everything else is exactly the same. They just clocked one higher. It's what stupid Intel does to make more money. Now the i5 750S is different but not by much. It's SLOWER than both the i5 750 and the i5 760, being clocked at 2.4Ghz. However like the i5 750, it turbo's up to 3.2Ghz. This means that it has more headroom for turbo and so it has less power consumption and less heat. And if you look at its specifications, it uses 82 Watts when the i5 750/60 use 95 Watts. This also makes it so that it has a higher temperature threshold. That means it can get hotter than a normal i5 750 and still work perfectly well. An ordinary i5 750 would have trouble if it reached the temperatures that the i5 750s was at. So you have to ask yourself whether 13 Watts less and 5 degrees C more is worth paying more for the i5 750S. Personally, I'd choose the i5 760.