Gaming laptop

M

Mr Krepe

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
I've been looking around for a good gaming laptop (not desktop want something portable) for quite a while now, so i've decided to use NMA as a resource in my search. Can anyone recommend a gaming laptop that can play reasonable games (Fallout NV, Empire Total War and so on) with minimal to no lag and reasonable memory.

Another thing I would want you guys' opinion on is this laptop i've got my eyes on details:

2.1Ghz
3 GB RAM
320 GB Memory

So any advice/help?
 
Well from my sources (brother and website i 'could' be ordering from):

Dual Intel Pentium Processor
Nividia GPU (of some kind, brother has exactly the same laptop, i'll know by tomorrow)
 
What's your price range? I got mine for $500 and it can play most games reasonably well, although it only has 200 something gigs of memory instead of 300.
 
Some i52410/GT540 combo will suit you well, there is plenty of it on market from different companies. The easiest way would be to define your budget, then find something in that price area
 
Courier said:
What's your price range? I got mine for $500 and it can play most games reasonably well, although it only has 200 something gigs of memory instead of 300.
Click to expand...

Well anything below £600 ($800 for Americans) is brilliant, and considering $500 is well below that line even in dollar form. What model is it, Courier?
 
Courier said:
What's your price range? I got mine for $500 and it can play most games reasonably well, although it only has 200 something gigs of memory instead of 300.
Click to expand...

What sort of laptop did you get? Did you get it on discount or something? That sounds really cheap.
 
It's a Dell Studio 1555 with 234 gigs of memory, Pentium dual-core 2.20 GHz processor, and a 512mb ATI mobility radeon HD 4570 graphics card.

I got it tax free but as far as I know there wasn't a discount other than that.

Edit: Alright that's weird, I just looked it up and apparently it's selling for $899 right now when I bought it last summer for $500. :|
 
^ Either it was a promotion, or what they're selling now is a subtly different model.

Anyhow, here's what I've got:

Toshiba Satellite A665
Intel Core i7 quad core @1.6GHz
4GB RAM upgradeable to 8GB
Nvidia GeForce 330M, 1GB dedicated VRAM
15.6" xBrite screen 1366x768; CD/DVD-RW combo drive

It can run Crysis 2 on medium without any slowdown, Witcher 2 at medium-high.

I got this one for ~$850 from Toshiba's official store. They don't seem to have this specific model anymore, but I suggest you dig around to see what they have. From what I've seen, Toshibas tend to be a bit cheaper than HP, Sony or Dell if you want a gaming laptop. Asus/Acer tend to be cheaper, but I'd be careful since some of my friends who had those didn't seem to have the best experience with them.
 
^Well, I bought it a year ago and back then 540m wasn't so common (not even sure if it was around or not). They don't even have the 330m build anymore. The "updated" build for this laptop model now comes with 540m, but the price also went up: http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/satellite/A660/A665-S5183X


If the build quality did indeed get better (and what's more important, more consistent), then it's all good. Acers used to be notorious for flimsy builds and constant overheating.
 
Obviously can't comment on the price, but the specs look OK. I usually try to get Nvidia rather than Radeon though.

Also, be aware that 17" is a big, heavy laptop that's not really suited for transportation.
 
well, it's definitely better for games (slower CPU though) but the price is about $1100
 
Well, considering that it's the HDD that usually bottlenecks these kinds of laptops, that doesn't matter as much.
 
HDD, since when ? Yes, it affects daily use, boot times together with CPU (change from 5400rpm to 7200rpm is noticeable, not to mention ssd). However, when it comes to gaming HDD quality is only noticeable during loading times, even this not always. Most important factor nowadays when choosing gaming laptop is GPU, since it hardly bottlenecked by any modern mobile CPU that comes with it. Good links showing this trend, unfortunately in polish but graphs are easily decipherable, are below.
Guys were changing only CPU in Clevo mainframe and benchmarked it in some games:
http://www.notebookcheck.pl/Test-procesorow-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-w-grach-cz-II.57172.0.html GT560M
http://www.notebookcheck.pl/Test-procesorow-Intel-Sandy-Bridge-w-grach.49585.0.html GT540M

In most games CPU difference is marginal, with GPU setting performance limit. Hope it helps
 
Well, I must thank everyone who posted for their insight and help into the topic, but alas, I ordered a desktop instead, I realised that the price for mobility is often 100's of pounds/dollar/generic currency more than a desktop, which is usually a lot better as well. The desktop I have ordered specs are as:

Hard Drive: 1 TB of Memory
RAM: 4GB
Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 250 AM3 3Ghz

And it was only £270, which is $434, so not bad really. Thank you for the help, and it was not all in vain as you helped my brother find a gaming laptop (he's loaded).
 
Ausdoerrt said:
Obviously can't comment on the price, but the specs look OK. I usually try to get Nvidia rather than Radeon though.

Also, be aware that 17" is a big, heavy laptop that's not really suited for transportation.
Click to expand...

yeah, I currently have a 15.6" HP that I carry around a lot and it tends to feel a bit on the heavy side. but we will use these laptops mainly as gaming rigs at home, or at each others place. went out today to try to find one in-store to see how it feels, but it seems like it's nowhere to be found around here.

and yes, the price is around $1100 which might seem a lot to you, but here in Sweden that's pretty cheap for that kind of hardware. most comparable laptops go well above that price-range.

I'm also more interested in a nVidia card, as I have a Radeon Mobility HD right now and I'm a bit disappointed in the performance. but after looking around it seems not a lot of retailers carry laptops with nVidia cards around here. for some reason ATI is the more popular brand.
 
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