[Solved] Gaming laptop under $600 + questions about llano

1. What is your budget?

Less than $600 (with tax, estimating that tax would be around $40 for $550 laptop). less the better.. glad around $500

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

Personally, I'd love to have 14 inch, but 15.6inch is perfectly fine with me. 17.3inch not so really.

3. What screen resolution do you want?

1366*768 seems the most logical/realistic answer for the budget. (if possible, 15.6inch with 1600:900 is also great)

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Desktop replacement mostly, but not the biggest laptop. as in, I'd like to have it on my laps (as in, it's a laptop..)

5. How much battery life do you need?

Not really concerned about battery life. Although a student, I mostly am going to use it in my house.

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)?

Really, depends on the game, but most games with Medium is pretty good, I'm not crazy about High settings (personally can't tell much difference? lol). Games like BF3, I'm glad as long as they're playable with 1024*768 with low-mid settings with more than 30fps. If that's too much, oh well.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

mostly gaming. nothing else, really. internet surfing i guess... a Blu-ray drive isn't necessary, and mostly not going to be used anyways.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

Ehh, I can live with 320GB. 500GB makes me happy. More than that, why not.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

N/A

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?

As long as possible, I guess. I don't believe that the laptop around this budget will be able to play 2014~2016 games decently, but I mean, I can stick with recent games of right now.

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

As long as I have a DVD Rom player, I'm happy. Writer isn't necessary, and most likely won't be used.

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.

I've looked around the web for several laptops, and I really don't care much about the brand as long as they're not "unheard" of. I'm not the pickiest person for the design, but I do look at some of them and think I don't want them even if they have the best performance in the price range. But most laptops around this price range, I noticed, have decent designs which satisfy me.

13. What country do you live in?

Virginia, USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.


Hi, I'm a high school junior without video game consoles and lover of PC's.

Recently, I got a chance of getting a laptop for myself, for somewhat a decent price range.

My parents said that they would buy me one I choose; personally, I don't want them spending too much money on this "present" for me, and they won't buy me one anyways if it's super expensive.

So I put a price limit for myself; I actually put it as some figure close to $500, so I think below $600 is a good explanation for it.

I like to play video games a lot, including recent ones, such as BF3, COD, Skyrim, Starcraft2, etc.

Since I like to research laptops anyways, I've looked at several laptops, and sorted out 2 best laptops I have found of my interest.

HP dv6-6135DX : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834158073
ASUS K53TA-BBR6 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834230216

dv6-6135DX has A8-3500 with Radeon 6750 switchable graphics, 6GB ram, and 640 HDD (additionally, something just cool to have is the fingerprint reader lol). this comes with price of around $530

K53TA-BBR6 has A6-3400 with Radeon 6650 switchable graphics, 4GB ram, and 500 HDD (sadly, no fingerprint reader.) this comes with the amazingly nice price of $400

I looked at both of them, and kinda judged that they both have similar specs, but quite a gap in the price. I think I'll most likely go for K53TA-BBR6 for several reasons

1. A6-3400 and A8-3500 are pretty similar in CPU usage. If I am really desperate, I can always overclock the CPU a little bit. (just a throw out question here, but is a little overclocking OK if I have a laptop cooler?)
2. 6750 is better than 6650, but not significantly different; as in, I found out that you can still play BF3 with decent graphics with A6 and 6650. 6750 might give me a better option, but someone claimed that A8 is too weak of a processor for let the 6750 to exert its full potential.
3. 4GB of ram is good enough, at least for now, I believe?
4. Fingerprint reader is pretty cool, but not worth $100 for me. HDD i don't care much. 500GB is good enough.

Well for this reasoning, I believe K53TA-BBR6 is a better choice in budget-performance ratio.

.. is what I thought up till now.
However, I am inquiring you guys for one reason: Although K53TA-BBR6 has a discrete graphics card, it uses an APU. I simply thought that it doesnt make sense, and there should be a laptop out there that uses a sole CPU and a discrete graphics card with the same price but with a stronger CPU. This is solely my thought, and I justified it myself. I might be wrong, but it's just a greed of a high school student who wants the best laptop for the least price. I'd be perfectly happy with that K53TA, but I'm always open to a new opinion. Also, if you think dv6-6135DX is worth the price (as in, worth $130 more than K53TA), please do tell me with your justifications.

Thanks for reading!

A6 vs A8, CPU will run about the same, but it's not a super powered CPU to begin with so every little bit helps. The A8 does have a better GPU when you depend on it. Llanos with discrete graphics however should come with discrete cards that will hybrid crossfire. As stated above, Hybrid crossfire does not always work, but works very well when it works. In DX9 games the crossfire will not work and it defaults to the stronger GPU, so it doesn't hurt to have a nicer discrete card for those cases.

Here's a combo chart BTW. http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4 [...] anding.jpg

All that being said, an A6+6650 will do pretty well, but an A8 +6750 will give you better graphics in more situations, so it's a matter of how good do you need and what games you play.

thanks for the nice chart. by any chance, do you know how much difference there is between 6720G2 and 6755G2? A6vsA8 now seems a minor detail, and I can change the RAM by myself if necessary, but the last problem would be the graphics card I guess. would 6755G2 run way fairly than the 6720G2, or are they pretty much the same? as in, how much fps would differ between the gpu's?

You can get a brand new HP A6 at bestbuy.com for $400. just saying.
I would advise to look at sites apart from newegg, as their laptop prices are just generally bad these days.

There are no taxes as long as you are not living in the state where Newegg has it's HQ (CA), or not living in a state where Newegg has a warehouse. For example, Newegg has a warehouse in NJ (most of my purchases originates from there) so if you live in NJ, then you will be paying NJ sales tax. I think Newegg also has a warehouse in TX.

here is a host of options

http://topbestprice.com/top-20-bes [...] computers/

Best answer selected by mathnino.