What is the best gaming laptop for about 850$

I got a very good laptop from Dell, m-640 with C2D 1 gig and 15" screen. I think I paid $699, so maybe you can upgrade the graphics for $100.

alright i'll look that one up

Dell E1505 with a Core 2 Duo T5200, 1 Gig 533 DDR2 memory, 80 gig hard drive, and Radeon x1300 is right at $848 right now.

Each of these 4 specs are about the minimum for a "gaming laptop" by any means. Throwing another $200 into the mix would REALLY help, though.

Another option is to look at the Dell Outlet, as there are some great deals there.

As for something other than Dell, here's an HP through the Egg...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I know you said you would use it for college, and this doesn't have any Office software on it, and that would obviously up the price.

Oblivion and Fear will be the "gotchas" in your laptop hunt. WoW will play on most modern laptops... works great on my ATI X1400 equipped e1505.

I don't think you're being realistic (in early 2007) if you expect an $850 laptop to play Oblivion and FEAR... Gateway has a model that's not too far out of your price range that has a NVidia Go 7600... and Dell's e1705 (that's a big 'en) has a 7900 GS listed as a $299 option. I just don't think you'll find anything within your budget in the immediate future that'll PLAY Oblivion... the word "play" is emphasized as I do not count a slide show as playing.

Well i figure they would play oblivion and fear, because the screens are so small you play at low resolutions.

While not an HP, Dell, or Gateway, this one should do nicely.

-Wolf sends

Edit: If it's available in your area...  

That doesn't matter, you still need some great hardware to play those games. And the resolutions on most laptops are going to be at least 1024x768, and higher if it's widescreen.

That was a bum link... I was curious to look over what you selected. What make and model? Could copy/paste the specs and price?

Odd... Works for me...

Anyway:

Everex StepNote XT5000T 17" Notebook PC

* AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50
(1.6GHz) (512MB L2 Cache)
* 1024MB DDR2 System Memory
* 100GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
* 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
* 17.0" WXGA DiamondBrite TFT Widescreen Display (1440x900)
* NVIDEA® GeForce® Go 7600 Graphics (Discrete 256MB)
* Atheros AR5005G 802.11b/g WLAN
* Windows® Vista Home Premium OS
* 1-Year Limited Hardware Warranty

$899.98

Go to Officemax.com
Click Clearance (under technology)
Click Computers and Laptops

-Wolf sends

Dang, that is a lot of laptop for the money! Maybe Oblivion is doable.

*EDIT*

Ugh... it has Vista. Better make it 2GB with that pokey laptop HD.

So wipe it and install XP.

Thats an awesome deal. You can get another gig of RAM from newegg, and have quite a lappy.

Definately the iBook G4 that I would sell you for $800. Nothing beats an iBook G4 when it comes to gaming laptops!

Sorry to burst your bubble, but laptops generally suck for gaming. Like Ninja said, the only ones that are any good cost over two grand and more resemble a small-form-factor desktop with an integrated screen in size and weight than a laptop. And then your $2000+ will buy you a laptop that a $1200 desktop can kill with one core tied behind its back. The laptop that was listed pretty much demonstrates that. Its performance will be roughly equal to a Pentium D 820 with a 7600LE in it. Basically, the performance of a mid-range desktop of two years ago. You can find a machine like that for much less than $900.

I'd suggest that you buy yourself a desktop that you'll game with. Spend all but $200 or so of your intended budget. Then with your left-over $200, buy a used laptop in good condition. Use the desktop for gaming and such and haul the old laptop to class. I decided to not upgrade to a newer laptop and instead spent the money I would have spent on an okay laptop on a very nice desktop. I use the desktop at home and it's far, far nicer than any laptop would be (until they make laptops with dual 20.1" 1600x1200 screens and RAID 5 arrays) and my 5-year-old laptop has more than enough power to run an e-mail client, word processor, and a Web browser. I suspect that your $200 will buy a much newer laptop than what I have, so you'll certainly be fine in that regard.

Too many people, especially students, try to make a laptop do everything. They can't. I've been there and found that one out. I got a 10-pound "desktop replacement" laptop that was one of the most powerful available in 2002 when I bought it. It cost a crapload- $2600 and it wasn't even a Crapple!! and I quickly found out that it made a pretty poor desktop. The 15.7" screen, while one of the biggest laptop screen made at the time (17-inchers had yet to be introduced) was pretty small compared to a 19" CRT or the 17" LCDs that were just becoming popular at the time. It was not all that comfortable to use for all that long. The Radeon 9000 GPU was pretty quick when I bought the unit but was immediately outclassed by Radeon 9700s in desktop and even the icky NVIDIA FX5000 series. I really couldn't play new games with it past a year after I got it. And there is no upgrade path either. Laptop HDDs really suck, too. The absolute fastest ones are 7200 rpm units of 120 or 160 GB. That's what desktops had in 2000. They're little better than half as fast as a less-expensive 150-gig Raptor. And no laptop drive holds a candle to a RAID made of inexpensive 250 to 400-gig desktop drives even though a top laptop HDD will cost as much as 2 or 3 of those desktop drives.

Just some food for thought...

I still say gaming laptop is an oxymoron period.

...I agree with most of what you said, and you have some really good points, but please clarify which laptop you are comparing to a Pentium D 820? None that I see stoop that low!

-The String

I referred to the laptop that was listed above:



The Turion 64 X2 TL-50's 1.6 GHz chip with 256 KB L2 should be around the performance of the Pentium D 820 or 920. The 2.0 GHz X2 3800+ with 2x512KB L2 performs like a Pentium D 940 does, so I'd think that the TL-50 would perform similarly to the 820 due to its smaller cache and lower clock speeds. This is just an estimation as I don't think anybody's benched a TL-50 against a PD 820. The TL-50 could even perform like a PD 805, but you get the picture. Laptop CPUs are not all that powerful and the TL-50 is a lower-end one.[/quote]

As a data point, I have a laptop about 2 years old with:

single core pentium M (dont know clock speed off hand)
geforce go 6600 (128mb)
1gb memory
15.4 inch 1650x1080 rez

WoW is plenty playable at native rez and high detail settings. Granted, 'playable' for a game like WoW is like 30 fps, but hes getting a dual core chip, a faster video card with twice as much memory, and will be using a lower resolution. He should see very good game performance for the price.

i'm sorry when i meant gaming, i meant my type of gaming rig... not your dual core OC'd cpu, and 8800 GPU, with 2gigs ram

I meant something that will play games, not on max settings with 140 fps, but like medium settings with 30+ FPS