As regards the graphic cards, how's ATIs Radeon HD 6970? Or should I just stick with the 570?
ATI is OK as well (and probably slightly cheaper) but ATI seems to be having a lot more compatibility issues with games new and old and the 6970 is getting hotter and drawing more power than the 570. If you were looking for a desktop system and trying to keep within a certain budget then the 6970 might be a decent pick but since you're looking for a laptop I'd recommend to opt for nVidia and the 570.
I've also noticed that there's quite a price gap between the i7-2820QM and the 2720. Is the increase in price matched by it's performance, or is it similar to the 570 and 580.
The difference is 2MB cache and +100MHz which is indeed pretty much insignificant. I just looked up the OEM prices. The OEM price for the 2820 seems (or seemed? The
article I found is from January) to be US$ 563 and US$ 378 for the 2720. So for the 2820 one is paying an almost US$ 200 premium for a very minor, negligible performance gain, i.e. if you consistently find laptops with 2720 CPUs that are considerably cheaper than their 2820 counterparts then it would not be worth paying the extra premium just for the faster CPU (always got to check out the whole package, of course).
Then I have a friend who's recommended the Intel i7 980X. How's that?
Good but "old". I'd go for a Sandy Bridge i7-2820/2720.
And again, I must ask, can these various cards run something like the Witcher 2 maxed out? It looks absolutely gorgeous and is obviously a brute on the machine, so I want something that can handle it properly.
No graphics card in the world can run The Witcher 2 all maxed out
. If you enable "über sampling" in The Witcher 2 then even a desktop GTX 580 or 6970 is going to produce no more than ~20 fps.
However, as long as über sampling is disabled then a mobile GTX 570 and a quad core mobile CPU should be sufficient to produce ~35 - 40 fps on average. The game won't grow wings and learn to fly but you'll get playable frame rates at least.
And will these last me for at least 3-4 years, for the most part? I'm looking for a long term investment.
That's hard to tell. If things stay like they are right now, i.e. lots of crossplatform development where games need to be made to run on the aging X360 and PS3 then there's a good chance that a laptop like what we are discussing here will last that long.
But if Sony or MS release a new console next year or in 2013 then the game will change completely. Then it's likely that the usual cycle will begin all over again where even high end PCs will be barely sufficient to run the latest games.
There have been many rumors about the new consoles from MS and Sony, ranging from "next year" to "nah the current gen will last at least until 2015".
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
It might also depend a bit on Nintendo who will release the Wii successor Wii 2 (Project Café) next year. Nintendo is in a different corner of the market from MS and Sony (of course a corner that MS and Sony would very much like to be in or get more of) but if the Wii 2 should turn out to look like a smashing success prior to its release then I'd be very surprised if MS and Sony would sit idly by and watch while Nintendo is raking in all the money. Seems more likely they'd counter with a X720/PS4 that would then combine the casual features of the Wii/Wii 2 while maintaining/expanding the "hardcore" capabilities of the current gen.
Since there'll obviously be a lot of different opinions, I'd appreciate it if anyone who has a gaming laptop (or who recently built a new rig) could chip in and give me their first hand opinion, so that I have a wider pool of choices!
I'm in the "recently built a new rig" club and to be honest unless someone is forced to via certain circumstances (like limited desktop space) I wouldn't really recommend a laptop for "serious" gaming at all. Gaming capable laptops are crazy expensive compared to desktops and you can't really do much in terms of upgrade or even if you can then the upgrades are crazy expensive, too.
Laptop components are also lower performing than their desktop counterparts so you end up spending lots of money just to match the performance of desktop components that would probably cost less than half of what you are spending for your laptop.
That's why I would always recommend to get a desktop and build it on a solid foundation, i.e. first off a really nice case and a HQ power supply. Then a good board, CPU, RAM, SSD and you're set. Then all you need to do for the next three years is buy a new graphics card (always the second best model like the 470 or 570) every 12 - 18 months (sell the old one on eBay). Upgrading the CPU or mainboard should usually not be necessary if you watch the market and pick a good time to build your MB/CPU foundation.
For example, I think that anyone who bought something like an Intel P55 board and a Core i7-860/950 with 4 or 8 gigs of RAM back in 2009 will still be going strong today with "only" a GPU upgrade and it should also last well into next year and maybe even beyond with another VGA upgrade.
The games where a more modern CPU/board combo will make a real difference are few and far between. The only games I can think of would be Metro 2033 and Crysis (Warhead) on the highest settings.