In need of Advice

I am looking to replace an old HP laptop with something around $1500, 15", and is able to run SC II, and WoW, thats really all I am currently playing and all I plan to play.

The GX660 and GX660R have caught my eye as they are both in my price range, however, it appears after reading through the forums quite a bit, that the only advantage to the 660R, for me personally as I have no plans of using it as a BR-player, is the Core i7 and higher resolution screen.

My question is this, is the Core i7 really going to improve performance? Neither SC II or WoW take advantage of more than 2 cores. And Could I and I have seen it mentioned once or twice, replace the screen in the much cheaper GX660 with a 15.6" screen with a native resolution of say 1600x900 or 1920x1080?

Essentially could I purchase the GX660, and a new screen and still get the same or similar performance for those two games for less than the cost of the GX660R?

Replace it with this


**** Edit, While I have no experience replacing Laptop screens, I am an EE, have built a number of electronic devices, and feel up to the challenge, haha

 

You could look at some sellers to see if they have 15.6" screens available but I'm guessing not all are compatible.

In my opinion 1366x768 is a very good resolution if you just use it for gaming. The lower the resolution is, the easier it is to see items on the screen and you will of course get better performance in games.

the i7 is not that much of an advantage right now. CPU will not be the bottleneck for you for a while.