14 DAY TRIAL // Accelerated Processing Units from Advanced Micro Devices have pretty good integrated Radeon graphics, but Maingear didn't feel that was enough for a gaming laptop, so it included a discrete GPU too when it upgraded the Nomad 17.
Nomad 17 is one of its more successful gaming notebooks, something easily deduced from the simple fact that Maingear bothered to upgrade it at all.
Then again, it's not like Maingear, or any boutique gaming desktop or notebook maker, are likely to launch half-baked systems. Customizability is their game after all.
That said, the Maingear Nomad 17 can now be outfitted with the quad-core AMD A10-5750 APU, with a base CPU clock of 2.5 GHz, a Turbo Core maximum of 3.5 GHz, and the Radeon HD 8650G integrated graphics processing unit, with 384 stream processors, 533 MHz base frequency and 720 MHz max frequency.
There's also an integrated, dual-channel memory controller (DDR3-1866, DDR3L-1600, DDR3U-1333) and driving chips for PCI Express 2.0 and an HD media accelerator.
Not that the GPU will be used much. This, after all, is a gaming system, so Maingear also added the Radeon HD 8970M 2 GB GDDR2 discrete graphics card.
It runs at 850 MHz (900 MHz on a good day) and has a memory clock of 4.8 GHz, plus a 256-bit memory interface, leading to 153.6 GB/s memory bandwidth.
The Nomad 17 further boasts up to 32 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 4-in-1 card reader, a Killer E2200 network adapter, duwl 750 GB HDDs or 1 TB solid state drive, optional 802.11ac wireless and a whole bunch of ports (HDMI out, DVI-I out, 2 USB 2.0, 3 USB 3.0, IEEE-1394 Fire Wire, S/PDIF out, J-45 LAN, RJ-11).
All the hardware is packed inside a 17.3-inch frame. On that note, the display is an anti-glare LED backlit matte LCS with 16:9 aspect ratio and Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels). The starting price is of $1,289 / €1,289.