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Question

MSI GT80: 8 Go RAM and GTX 970M vs. 16 Go RAM and GTX 980M

May 1, 2015 7:40PM PDT

Hello.

I'm thinking about buying a MSI laptop.
I'm hesitating between these two:
http://www.fnac.com/mp24497709/MSI-GT80-2QD-046FR-Titan-SLI-18-4-Core-i7-4720HQ-Windows-8-1-8-Go-RAM-128-Go-SSD-1-To-HDD/w-4#bl=HGBPlsi4
http://www.fnac.com/mp24610580/MSI-GT80-2QE-045FR-TITAN-SLI-18-4-Core-i7-4720HQ-Windows-8-1-16-Go-RAM-128-Go-SSD-1-To-HDD/w-4#bl=HGBPlsi1

They are both GT80. They both have a screen of 18.4", a core i7 4720HQ and 128 Go SSD + 1 To HDD.
As far as I can tell, the only differences are:
- The first one has a RAM of 8 Go, a graphics card of "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M - 6 Go GDDR5 SDRAM", and a price of €2286 = $2560 (it's cheaper by €588 = $659)
- The second one has a RAM of 16 Go, a graphics card of "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M - 8 Go GDDR5 SDRAM", and a price of €2874 = $3219 (it's more expansive by €588 = $659)

And so my question is: Which one should I buy? The first one or the second one?

If you need to know some context and what I'm going to use this PC for:
I'm going to use this PC many many hours per day, maybe up to 14 hours per day when I'm on vacation.
I won't play any video games on it. But I will play a lot of chess (and some backgammon), and use powerful chess softwares for analyzing games.
I also often make some programs on MatLab and SharpDevelop.
Also an important note: I always have a few hundred tabs (sometimes even a thousand) constantly opened at the same time on Firefox (which makes it freeze and crash a lot). And many of those tabs are Youtube videos.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
So this is a Gaming question?
May 1, 2015 11:38PM PDT

For gaming, it's all about the GPU. You're at or over the usual 8GB sweet spot and these models would let you change the RAM and/or SSD later but not the GPU. So the uptick of the GPU would be for the rabid gamer that a few FPS matters.

However the truth is that at 1080p, both should run games at full tilt on higher settings fine.
Bob

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Answer
This model does have upgradeable
May 19, 2015 12:08AM PDT

graphics cards. But if you not gaming with high setting the 970 is allright for you. The biggest cost difference in the price is on the Graphics card plus that machine has SLI graphics so the 970 is plenty.