proviticus

I would vote Sager/Clevo based on mostly price. I bought an alienware m18 r2 in 2012, and a Sager NP9377 in 2014. I loved both, but (at least in my price ranges of 3000-4000) I found a lot more bang for my buck with the Sager. Now, the Alienware definitely has a unique and flashy look. I liked that sometimes and was annoyed by it other times. I think the NP9377 has a nice mix of flash and class, so I prefer its look, too, which was unexpected. Now, as far as cooling goes I have had problems with both. My 7970ms in crossfire in the m18 consistently ran hot and the system died a little less than two years after I purchased it (out of warrantee). Reflowing the cards restored the system to working order, but they would continue to die and require reflowing again. Because heat issues killed my previous machine, I opted for the thermal paste and copper heating upgrades from Xoticpc when I purchased the NP9377. However, that machine is just begging for the same problem since the 880ms consistently max out at 93c. It is, despite these high temperatures, still running today, about 16 months later. Maybe I just have bad luck, I'm not sure. I would say maybe stay away from SLI, but my temperature issues actually seem worse in games that don't support SLI (since SLI support isn't usually perfect, so when SLI is on neither card tends to be at 100% utilization). I loved both of my laptops, but in the future I will probably do some kind of solution like the MSI GS30, so I can have portability and power, without the airflow restrictions in normal solutions.

I give another vote for ARK: Survival Evolved. That game is just awesome, and I'm loving it right now. It fits most of the posted requirements, except it completely lacks any sort of story. Also I hear optimization has improved a lot (only got it a couple of weeks ago), but it is still very poorly optimized. I had dual 880ms and I have to play on the lowest settings (but I bump view distance and textures to max without noticeable drop in framerate). A promised future update to DX12 should fix this issue, as it will enable SLI to work, but it has been severely delayed.

Hi all, Before my upgrade to Windows 10 I had a strange issue (windows 8.1). My computer would just hard shutdown without any reason. I could be programming, 3d gaming, 2d gaming, or anything, and it would just turn off. No bluescreen, no logs in the event viewer, no hints whatsoever. I started monitoring temperatures and even stress tested it and couldn't get it to reproduce on command (despite being able to run very high temperatures). So, I started doing everything I could. I opened up the laptop and cleaned it out, uninstalled many unnecessary pieces of software, upgraded drivers (using DDU in between for graphics drivers), all to no avail. I fixed it, eventually, by downgrading drivers to the Sager official drivers for Window 8.1, which were quite old. Before where I was unable to go an afternoon without a shutdown, I went 3 weeks without one. I was elated, obviously. Now, at the end of those three weeks I upgraded to windows 10, mainly to open up options for DX12. When I did so, I upgraded to the Sager official drivers for Windows 10 (using DDU again). The problem has no reappeared since, which is great, however the Sager official drivers use a version of the NVidia drivers that have a seemingly known issue where the mouse cursor in Windows 10 behaves strangely (stretched out, pixelated, etc). I was wondering if I can ever expect to see another driver update from Sager, or if people think it would be safe/smart to downgrade to the Sager Windows 8.1 drivers again, or if maybe I should run the latest drivers again and cross my fingers that the shutdown doesn't reappear. Does anyone have any advice, or has anyone gone through something similar? Thanks to all!

Thanks svl7! I look forward to downloading the vbios for my 880ms (still need the 5 posts); hopefully they give me options to solve my temperature issues. In my Sager NP9377 with dual 880ms my main card often maxes out and does minor (down to 900MHz) throttling at 93c. The fans are loud but I'm not sure they're maxed out. I've heard talk that maybe I can undervolt the card without lowering the clocks? I've tried to search and it's hard to find the most modern statement on the matter, but easy to find thousands of posts about the 880m heat issues. I have opened up the laptop and blown out all the dust, and it looks very clean inside. So, if anyone has any suggestions of what I can do to improve the situation I would be very greatful (or even just a testimony that maybe svl7's vbios fix the problem would give me peace of mind)! I would love to even be able to overclock them a little bit, given that some games are starting to come out that the two 880ms can't handle, but honestly I must be dreaming, as I already have major temperature issues Thanks to anyone who can help and a special thanks to svl7!