Upgrade m15x or my desktop?

Hi everyone. I am looking to upgrade either my m15x or my desktop. The max I am willing to spend is $500. With that I am able to either get a 920xm and 7970m for the Alienware, or 2x 7870s for my desktop. My problem is I spend a lot of time away from my home rig, hence the m15x. On the flip side, however, when I am home I love being able to have a beast of a rig that can handle anything. Therein lies my problem. Please share your thoughts/recommendations. Thanks

 

Since you have the 1080P screen on the M15x I would vote put my money into it, also since you use it the most makes the most sence to me. Plus adding that video card will dramically increase your frame rates to enjoy playing even further.

 

I agree with homank76. You will get an awesome mobile gaming machine with the m15x, and your desktop machine is still pretty respectable with the crossfired 4870's. Then, after you upgrade your video card, sell the 5850 mobility, and with your leftover money, apply it towards that 920xm chip!

 

Thanks for the help. Trying to buy a 7970m from somebody on nbr right now

 

Good decision mate. The 7970M is basically a desktop 7870 desktop card. It can handle almost anything thrown at it well at stock clocks already plus runs cooler than the 6990M. Mated with the 920XM and the only bottleneck left is the ram bandwidth perhaps

I also recommend you to put your blu ray reader external like me and stick in a high capacity HDD I am hoping to upgrade to 1.5TB when a small one comes out. Really comes it handy! Also whack in some USB 3.0 ports too!

 

Was thinking about doing the external bluray+2nd HDD mod. Any tips/advice? Also, how do I add usb 3.0 ports????

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...drive-hdd-caddy-installation-56k-warning.html

Here you are. The Drive is buried within the chassis so quite the xtensive dissasembly is required. Off comes control panel, keyboard and mouse pad panel. Then the chassis underneath needs to come out too. THe components can stay in place though. I cheated and simply disconnected the various cables and pulled them free of the chassis bunched together near the screen to avoid hassle.

USB 3.0 = Use you express card slot. You can get a 2x USB 3.0 card and slot it in. VOila done!
http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/220782539969?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&adtype=pla

 

Wow! Sorry for the necro-post, but this was very helpful. Extending the life of my m15x makes me pretty happy. Such a great computer.