Opinion on 15" vs. 17"

Hello, I was hoping I could get some opinions on the Alienware 15" vs. 17" 2015 laptop. The laptop will be used for both work (design) and gaming. First off, I am definitely getting the 980m on either one. The size of the 15" is nice, but is there a big difference of heat and fan noise on the 15" compared to the 17"? If the 17" is a lot better in those regards, I will go for that one. Hopefully this has not been answered before, I've looked through quite a bit. Thanks for the help.

 

If you want a 4k screen for the design work, go 15".

If you just care about standard HD, go with the 17".

If I recall correctly, there is some difference in heat between the 17 and 15, I can't recall any specific numbers though.

I'm not sure what kind of design work you do, but I find when I'm using Solidworks or Autocad, I like to have as much screen space as possible, so a larger screen on a laptop is better for me.

 

I use Autocad. I am in the engineering field. I was also a little worried about the 4K scaling issues, so it sounds like the 17" might be the right choice. Now I just need to decide between the 4710 and the 4980! Thanks for the help.

 

a 15 inch with a 4K display? that's a joke, get ready for a lot of issues with DPI scaling on such a small screen unless you want to run at the default resolution with a magnifier. I wouldn't even get a 4K screen on my 18.4" screen.

At the moment, on the native resolution (1920x1080) things are too small for my liking so I have to set a DPI scaling of 125% and not all programs play nicely with DPI scaling.

Now if you got for a 4K display, you would probably need a 250% DPI scaling in order to be able to see anything. I would go with the 17 inch HD screen in your case

 

Ah cool, I'm in university studying engineering. I would say go for the 17" for sure. I would recommend the 4980HQ, just to more or less "futureproof" the machine and help speed up rendering times when possible. If you buy the machine off Dell online, you should be able to haggle on the price with a sales rep to not pay full price, so it would only be a small increase over the price of the 4710, or no increase at all. You can haggle few hundred off the right agent. Shoot for at least 10-15% off the laptop's price when haggling. Some people can get 20% off just haggling, but it depends on the agent you connect with and how convincing you are.

 

The standard HD screen on the AW 15 or the AW 17 will work good for you to design. They both provide similar performance on gaming.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I ordered the 17" with 4980 and 980m, have the 240w supply on the way also. Looking forward to it, hopefully it doesn't have any issues!