Gaming laptop advice

[blacklight186]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a gaming laptop and I've detailed the requirements below.

1. What is your budget?
Approx USD 1500 (without shipping costs) (don't mind a little higher or lower, + - USD 50).

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15.6"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1920x1080

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Hopefully portable, within 3-3.5 kgs (6.6-7.7 lbs). Hence I chose the screen size of 15.6".

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not important I'll be near a power outlet while I'm gaming. It should provide me around 1 - 1.5 hrs battery for the rare occasions I will be taking it around (for MS Word/ Powerpoint, not gaming)

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Yes, definately! Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops, Left 4 Dead 2, Bioshock 2, Assassin's Creed 2 all at High/Ultra settings @ minimum 1366 x 768 (preferably higher resolution). While playing, I will be downloading using Vuze in the background. No other apps will be open.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Photo editing in Photoshop, watch HD movies, listen to music.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Not very important, 500GB is OK, must be 7200 RPM (if Hybrid drive fits in budget then that's good)

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
xoticpc.com, powernotebooks.com (these are the only 2 sites I know offering intl. shipping for gaming laptops)

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
2.5-3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD read/write

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
None in particular.

13. What country do you live in?
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Screen display should be good & bright with good colour contrast. Laptop should not heat excessively & make loud fan noise.

So far, I've seen 2 laptops that meet my requirements - Sager NP8690 & Asus G53JW-A1. The Sager is in stock while I've been told by online retailers that the Asus will be backordered and I will receive it only late December/ early Jan if I order it now (not guaranteed).

Both have Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M.

- Sager 8690 - Core i7 720 QM, 1.6 - 2.8 Ghz, 6GB RAM, 500 GB @ 7200 RPM - USD 1394.
- Asus G53JW-A1 - Core i7 740 QM, 1.73-2.93 Ghz. 8GB RAM (special offer) - USD 1381.

Will I experience much performance difference between the two, given my usage as above? Also, are Hybrid hard drives worth the additional USD 135 cost in laptops?

Thanks!

 

[cinnaman]

Both laptops can do what you want.

the asus will have slightly less graphics performance maybe amounting to ~5fps difference however it also offers a faster processor and more RAM for a cheaper price from a very trusted brand

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-460M.33612.0.html

heres a summary of the 460m GPU that is in the asus as you can see it can handle all those games at 1280x1024 with a lot of FPS to spare for you to boost the resoltuion meaning you won't really need the 470m in the sager.

 

[blacklight186]

Both laptops can do what you want.

the asus will have slightly less graphics performance maybe amounting to ~5fps difference however it also offers a faster processor and more RAM for a cheaper price from a very trusted brand

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-460M.33612.0.html

heres a summary of the 460m GPU that is in the asus as you can see it can handle all those games at 1280x1024 with a lot of FPS to spare for you to boost the resoltuion meaning you won't really need the 470m in the sager.

Thanks cinnaman for your reply...

I think you probably mean that the Sager will have 5 fps less performance (not the asus) right?

Thanks for the link... The only gripe is that the Asus won' be in stock for the next month or so...

Any idea why ATI cards are not available? Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen laptops switch from ATI to Nvidia cards all of a sudden. As per benchmarks, the ATI 5870m is better than Nvidia 460M (at higher resolutions) and cost around USD 30 less...!

Also, do you have any experience with Hybrid Hard Drives (Seagate Momentus XT)? I'm wondering about any noise / wear issues due to frequent spin up / spin down?

Thanks,

 

[cinnaman]

No i really did mean the sager has a better graphics processor

sager = 470m Nvidia
asus = 460m Nvidia

will make a small difference but.

you can find 5870's in alienware PC's unfortunetly those cost way to much i think acer also uses them in their products aswell. TBH i don't know why they dont have the options for ATI graphics in the laptop's you have looked at might have something to do with manfacture preference or deals they have with nvidia.

for gamign a 7,200 RPM drive will do what you need at max resolution I use one in my desktop (3.5" not 2.5") and it will hold up fine in crysis takes about 45 seconds to load a good 30 minutes of game play. if you really wanna break down and go for the the hybrid drive you can but you will loose some max storage and gain a much faster operating system.

> basically you won't need a hybrid for games. but it will increase boot times shutdown times and certain OS functions greatly. IMO not worth it. though try to get more ppl's feedback

 

[thegodfather369]

Those prices are going to be hard to beat I would think. If you were willing to shell out a little extra cash I would say the m15x, but the laptops you have found are better deals. As for the laptop, I would probably go with ASUS but that's just my opinion they're pretty evenly matched so you can't go wrong wither way.

 

[blacklight186]

@cinnaman

hmm they had ATI options till about 2 weeks back - and they disappeared suddenly.. I wrote to both xoticpc (XP) & powernotebooks (PN).

XP says the ATI cards had some stability issues so the manufacturers have switched to Nvidia.. I don't think this is right!
PN says there's a short supply of ATI cards at the moment, hence the shift to Nvidia... This might be true....

Reg. hybrid drives, yeah I was looking to see if it could speed up my OS... seeing as I had a budget of 1.5K and these laptops are now about 1.4K so I have some leftover cash.. I'll decide later whether to go for it or save up for an SSD....

Reg. hybrid performance, this is a good link:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18989/6

On page 10 of the same article are some notes on their noise/power performance...

Cheers!

 

[blacklight186]

@TheGodfather

Thanks for your reply...

I checked out the Alienware M15x on the Dell website and their prices are way out of this world!!

Probably at those prices, I could include a better processor & an SSD (Sager or Asus)...