Welp, getting the same damn crash with games that I got on the Mac, so it looks like it was the card all along and I'm going to have to take back some of the things I said about Apple.*
Guess I should probably check the warranty on this thing. Sure wish I hadn't had to get a new computer to figure out that it was the card and not wonky Apple third-party compatibility. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting a new computer, but I DO regret that I put up with this shit for the past three years when I could have just gotten the damn thing fixed.
And I guess I might wind up using that onboard video after all.
*Don't worry, I've got entirely new things to say about Apple. Know how you set your monitor to a 2560x1440 resolution in Lion? Well, hope you installed Xcode back when they had the Lion version in the App Store, because for some fucking reason (1) you need Xcode to set your fucking monitor to a high DPI*** in Lion, (2) the App Store has the awesome "feature" of only letting you download the latest version of an app regardless of whether or not it will actually run on your computer, and (3) of course you can't fucking download Xcode anywhere else -- but hey, if you missed the boat, there's always some obnoxious-ass third-party nagware piece of shit that'll set it up just fine in about thirty seconds but then keep popping up every two minutes to beg you for money.
MEANWHILE, on the C720 front: Got it today. It looks a little smaller than the Samsung, and the trackpad is definitely smaller. I think the charcoal-colored outer shell is more appealing than the Samsung's shiny one, but the bottom of the chassis looks like cheaper plastic.
It's way the fuck easier to put Linux on the thing; no dual-boot script needed, because this thing's actually got a dual BIOS that will let you boot any old arbitrary x86/x64 boot disk.
On the minus side, driver support's not really there out of the box; it looks like you need to patch and recompile the kernel to get the trackpad to work. There's a nice script to automate the whole thing, but, well, okay, I may have been exaggerating when I said "no dual-boot script needed" because it's actually a piece of the same script. Also, I'm finding that it's giving me way too many prompts for which file I'm supposed to be patching, and I don't actually KNOW which files I'm supposed to be patching, so I guess I'll let you know how that goes. **
Still, pretty optimistic; lack of trackpad support is of course a nontrivial problem but on the whole it's been way the fuck easier to get Linux installed on this machine than the Samsung and I expect it's going to be pretty smooth sailing once I get the trackpad and video working.
There's a rather wonderful
list of fixes on /r/Chrubuntu, if anyone's curious; that's what I'm currently working my way through.
** Edit/Update: Looked up the prompt; found another thread on
/r/Chrubuntu that explained it was due to a botched apt-get upgrade (for some reason the Flash installer is hanging on download and that keeps disrupting my upgrades). Ran upgrade again, then the script; trackpad working now and seems to be working pretty well in the 30 seconds or so I took to try it out. But it's past my bedtime so I'll fuck with it more tomorrow.
Can definitely confirm I'm having the issue with flaky wireless that others are reporting; there's a fix for that farther down in the post so I'll probably give that a shot next.
*** Edit/Afterthought: To clarify, "High DPI" is what Apple calls it. I know the difference between DPI and resolution; they're the ones who don't.