Purchasing Gaming Laptop

Hi I'm looking to buy a laptop that I will primarily use for gaming. I'm fairly uneducated in this area and was hoping that someone could help me choose a laptop.

1_What is your budget? - up to 3000

2_How much screen size do you need? - 16"

3_How much screen resolution do you want? - preferably 1920x1080

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? - whichever would work better

5_How much battery life do you need? - as much as possible (not as important as other specs)

6_Do you want to play games with it? If so then what kind of settings you want to play your games?(Low,Medium or High)? - Preferably high

7_What other tasks do you want to with your laptop? multimedia

8_How much storage(H.D.D Capacity)do you need? - I have an external so this isnt very important

9_If you just want to buy from some sites that you like,please post the link of them.

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop? - preferably 4 years

11_If you like to mention some other things,please post them too. - Unfortunately, the on-campus warrantly and support will only cover Dell, HP, and Lenovo laptops, so it has to be one of those brands. Thanks!

Reply to SmythA

Hello and welcome to the forums
Well playing games and having a good battery life doesn't play nice with each other.
Currently the fastest gaming notebook is SAGER NP8120
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np812 [...] -2768.html
Another option would be AW M17x which has 2 HD 4870Ms and performs the same.
Also if you can wait a little more,AW is going to update M17x with 2 5870Ms

Reply to Maziar

Thank you for the quick response, but it really does need to be a dell, lenovo, or hp laptop.
Is there a laptop made by one of them that you would recommend for under $3000. I would like to stay away from AWs because they tend to get a little too pricy.

Reply to SmythA

How about Asus laptops? ASUS G73Jh @ ~$1500 Core i7-720QM, 17" 1920x1080 and Mobility Radeon HD 5870.

Reply to WR2

Look around over here @ xoticpc.com and see what else is available out there.

Reply to WR2

Thanks for the response, but it does really need to be a Dell, HP, or Lenovo laptop.

Reply to SmythA

If it has to be one of the 3 companies the look at the HP Envy 15, the soon to be released HP Envy 17 and the Dell XPS Studio 16.

Envy 15: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/ [...] Y15_series

XPS 16: http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/not [...] =19&~ck=mn

Also, I know you said you think Alienware gets pricy, but take a look at the M15x. You can build a pretty respectable system for under 2K.

Edit: just noticed this. Take a look at the Lenovo Y560 series. $1100 gets you an i5 processor and an HD 5730 GPU.

Lenovo: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary [...] 1A7A5D7192

Message edited by lostandwandering on 05-11-2010 at 02:53:50 AM

I was just going to add that Lenovo Y560. It's worth looking at.

Reply to WR2

I was looking at the Dell Studio 16...is the ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 4670 – 1GB good enough to run most of the newer games?

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Reply to SmythA

SmythA wrote :

I was looking at the Dell Studio 16...is the ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 4670 – 1GB good enough to run most of the newer games?

At full 1080p? No. You'd need a gaming class GTX 280M or HD 5850/70 for that. You'd be looking at a reduced resolution and probably medium settings.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-A [...] 881.0.html

Ok...Well could someone help me customize a respectable alienware m15x for around 3000 that could?

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Reply to SmythA

SmythA wrote :

Ok...Well could someone help me customize a respectable alienware m15x for around 3000 that could?

Add the following:
i5-540M (possibly the i7-620 for another $100)
ATI Radeon HD 5850
1920x1080 screen
4gb DDR3-1066
and add the 9-cell battery (you're probably going to want it)

Just choose your color, warranty upgrade (if you want it), and HDD size. Those add-ons I listed would come out to around $1800, so you have some room to play with.

That would good ^
However you can go with M17x too(its 17" though)

Reply to Maziar

Thanks for all of the help.
What are the differences between the i5-540M, i7-620M, and i7-720QM?
With the m15x, how much battery life would the 9-cell give me for just browsing and light computing?
Besides the size, whats different between the m15x and the m17x?
Would you recommend the ATI Radeon or nvidia card?

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Message edited by SmythA on 05-11-2010 at 08:31:56 PM

Reply to SmythA

I can answer some of your questions.

The i5-540M is A dual core processor but it acts as a quad core while the i7's are true quad cores most likely the i7-720QM is faster the the i7-620M.

The mx15x is a 15" laptop while the m17X is a 17" laptop more than likely it can be upgraded more.

It depends on which card is better I personally prefer ATI but some people will say vidia then a war might spark so just use this to get your answer:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobil [...] 844.0.html

Just use Ctrl+f and then type the name of the graphics card and find out which one is better overall or type in "{name of card} benchmarks" into any major seaerch engine and it should take you to the same website which wll give you a summary and multiple benchmarks .

Message edited by Komomu on 05-11-2010 at 09:36:16 PM

Reply to Komomu

SmythA wrote :

Thanks for all of the help.
What are the differences between the i5-540M, i7-620M, and i7-720QM?
With the m15x, how much battery life would the 9-cell give me for just browsing and light computing?
Besides the size, whats different between the m15x and the m17x?
Would you recommend the ATI Radeon or nvidia card?

1_The first 2 are Dual cores whereas 720QM is Quad core.
2_About 1hr and 15-30mns
3_Cooling and VGA models
4_The best model for M15x is HD 5850M and for AW M17x is HD 5870M

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Reply to Maziar

Thanks for the responses. I've got a few more questions...
What advantage does having more cores give me? Just more raw power?
Is it possible to upgrade the video card for the studio 16?

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Reply to SmythA

More cores allows for parallel computing, sort of. If your application takes advantage of multi-core processors, it will run tasks faster by splitting them up amongst the multiple cores.

I don't think you can upgrade the Studio 16's video card, at least not on their website. There may or may not be some custom guide out there, but that would most definitely void your warranty. I haven't heard anything about Dell upgrading to the 5000 series, but they should probably do it soon. The Studio 15 already has a 5450 or 5470, I believe.

Reply to lotri

I was actually just looking at the studio 15 before i saw your reply...Would the Studio 15 be able to run most of the newer games?

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Reply to SmythA

SmythA wrote :

I was actually just looking at the studio 15 before i saw your reply...Would the Studio 15 be able to run most of the newer games?

The 4670 in the XPS 16 would be the better choice. The HD 5470 in the Studio 15 would only get you about half the performance of the 4670 in games like Battlefield BC2 and Call of Duty MW2.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Compu [...] 849.0.html

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SmythA wrote :

Thanks for the responses. I've got a few more questions...
What advantage does having more cores give me? Just more raw power?
Is it possible to upgrade the video card for the studio 16?

Some games and some CPU-intensive apps benefit from more cores.
And not its not possible to upgrade the VGA on Studio 16

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Reply to Maziar

Maziar wrote :

1_The first 2 are Dual cores whereas 720QM is Quad core.
2_About 1hr and 15-30mns
3_Cooling and VGA models
4_The best model for M15x is HD 5850M and for AW M17x is HD 5870M

Isn't the i7-620M quad core??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7

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Reply to Komomu

Komomu wrote :

Isn't the i7-620M quad core??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7

No, dual core + hyperthreading + a much higher clock speed. If it were a true Quad it would have the QM designation like the 720, 820 and 920. See here: http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] Spec=SLBPD

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lostandwandering wrote :

No, dual core + hyperthreading + a much higher clock speed. If it were a true Quad it would have the QM designation like the 720, 820 and 920. See here: http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] Spec=SLBPD

Oh thanks

Reply to Komomu

lostandwandering wrote :

The 4670 in the XPS 16 would be the better choice. The HD 5470 in the Studio 15 would only get you about half the performance of the 4670 in games like Battlefield BC2 and Call of Duty MW2.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Compu [...] 849.0.html

Lol, oops. Just looked at that link. I thought higher numbers were supposed to be better?

Oh wow, 64-bit bus and fewer shaders for higher clock speed and dx11.

Message edited by lotri on 05-13-2010 at 01:59:55 AM

Reply to lotri

I would definitely checkout the soon-to-be-released HP Envy 17". I just posted a video in another thread that has all the details. Check it out.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/59797-35-envy

Reply to Gnom3

lostandwandering wrote :

No, dual core + hyperthreading + a much higher clock speed. If it were a true Quad it would have the QM designation like the 720, 820 and 920. See here: http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] Spec=SLBPD

+1^
Its because of HT,which shows double number of cores in task manager

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Reply to Maziar

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