Will this configuration make a huge difference, a little difference, or no difference? I don't care about initial load times, I get coffee and chat with the flight attendant while waiting for that; I'm more interested in "smoothness."
The configuration is very good but:
Don't believe a laptop will ever be a true "desktop replacement". Yes, the video card number "looks" like a 980, but that M (Mobile) makes a lot of difference, since mobile GPU are underpowered in comparison with their desktop counterparts, so it will never perform like a real 980 would.
Yes, I read the nVidia claims that the 980M can offer about 75%-80% of the desktop 980 performances, but they don't say exactly when doing *what*, and FSX is a bit of a special case in gaming, because it's not so efficient in GPU usage. P3D is better in this aspect, but it also means it needs all the GPU power you can throw at it...
You don't see this so much in benchmark, because they run for a couple of minutes only, but for Flight sim usage, over a course of a flight, the GPU will automatically clock down itself to prevent overheating, which is WAY likely to happen on a laptop. And the CPU will do the same, and it will do it dynamically depending on the temperature so, all these clock up/downs made by both the CPU and the GPU WILL have a bad effect on smoothness, because your fps might go up/down depending on the temperature.
Having 4 SSDs installed internally, even if they are surely much better than traditional drives in relationship to overheating, they surely won't *help* keeping the temperature down.
So, unless you have strict space/mobility requirements and you MUST have a laptop, for much less money you can have more powerful AND (more importantly) reliable and *predictably* reliable desktop system.
About smoothness vs loading times. I'm afraid that, regardless if you don't care about loading times, and you are more interested in smoothness, working on such hardware will MOSTLY help with loading times.
Yes, smoothness will improve a bit too with very fast SSDs, when flying around a scenery, especially over large photoreal sceneries, but only to a point. You might have less blurries and a *bit* better smoothness especially when flying high and/fast, but don't expect better fps (comparing to the SAME system using traditional hard drives, of course) or any miracles.
And, don't expect the fastest SSD in the world will make the slightest difference if you are in a very dense airport, with lots of AI, using a memory-hungry and detailed airplane. The fastest hardware in the world will STILL risk OOMs there, if you don't restrain yourself with settings, and no hardware can replace a sub-optimized scenery.
The only thing that works well, is the one not entirely under your control, which is optimizing the SOFTWARE.
Just as an example, when we remade JFK, getting rid of everything that wasn't 100% native FSX code, we were able to INCREASE detail (JFK V2 added 3d taxiways, while JFK V1 was flat) AND getting a 30% fps increase too. To get a 30% fps increase in FSX on any random scenery, you should probably double the CPU/GPU power at least so, that's to give you an idea how much more efficient is working on the software, rather than the hardware.
The only thing you can control in the software is:
- Don't purchase something that is not very well optimized.
AND
- Don't go overboard with settings.
If you keep that in mind, and don't have unreasonable expectations, that system will work just fine. Although I'm still convinced that nothing can beat a Desktop for Flight sim usage.
