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Gaming Laptop recommendations

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Last response: in Laptops & Notebooks
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Hi Guys, Longtime reader first time Poster.
Long story Short I have found myself in need of an all around decent Laptop I will lay out what I am looking for and see if anyone has any suggestions.

Budget-
I am looking to spend somewhere in the ballpark of 800-1200 dollars, would prefer to keep it around 1000.

Size-
Looking for 15.6 to 17.6(?) whatever the full sized laptop is, this is primarily going to be used as a portable gaming rig, and a something to write my papers on at the library.

Screen Resolution-
Must Be 1920x1080, this is my real big sticking point, and I think it is also the reason I am having such a hard time finding one in my budget on my own I dont want none of this 1366x768 stuff.

It will be a portable/gaming computer

Battery Life=Negligable 3-5 hours, enough that it wont die immediately if I forget to plug it in. Most places I will be using it will have a power source though, IE library, coffee shops, friends houses.

I will be playing games, Many Many games, D3, ME3, BF3, MW3, SC2, WOW, etc. I play A lot of online RPG style games so I would like it to be fairly future proof as well (I was thinking GTX 650/670m)

I do a lot of writing as well so I would like a keyboard with good tactile feedback.

Storage- 500gb -1tb, I have a destop with 4tb that I keep all of my media on so storage isnt a big deal.

No specific Site in mind, I was hoping some people could enlighten me with their buying experiances.

2years - end of time. I like to buy products that are somewhat future proof, so I tend to buy on the high end, spend more now to spend less later is what I figure.

DVD/CD Burner no need to blu-ray

I am not brand loyal, I have owned 2 dells (one through work one bought personally) and an HP. The dell was great but I had a ton of problems with the HP, turns out I had a *** Mainboard and the solder for the connector to the LEd had given out, not to mention the thing ran hot as all hell, thing still lasted me 3 years though.

AMERKA!

I type, A lot (wrote close to 1000 pages for school last year) so i need a keyboard this isnt going to start losing keys after the first year like my HP did.
For Clarification I have owned a DV5-T(purchased 2008) and a Inspiron E1505 (purchased 2005)

If you have any questions for me let me know!

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Laptop Authority
Gaming Authority

There's the Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 which has a quad core i7-3610QM and a nVidia GTX 660m for $1,149.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/Len...

The GTX 660m is faster than a Radeon HD 7850m and certainly faster than the Radeon HD 7730m. As powerful as the GTX 660m may be it generally is not enough to play most games at 1920x1080 with maxed out graphics. For example, the GTX 660m can only manage to get around 22FPS in Max Payne 3 @ 1366x768 resolution with high graphic settings. Performance drops to the mid teens at 1920x1080 resolution.

See following for more info and benchmarks of the GTX 660m.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-650M.718...

To truly get something close to a desktop graphic card performance in a laptop you will need a GTX 680m. That by itself is probably a $700 component.

reread what i said, UPGRADE your desktop. for 1000 dollars you could upgrade your desktop to twice the speed of what your laptop could be at that price and still get a laptop.

You can find some decent i5/i7 based laptops with a good dGPU for that price range. 1920x1080 and 8GB of memory. I know HP has the DV6 and DV7t series which are right in that price range.

You'll be looking for a 650~660M dGPU, with an i5/i7 CPU, 8GB of memory and 1920x1080 screen.

If your buying HP then buy directly from them, you can customize it and usually find coupons to knock another $100~200 off the price.

Not sure about Dell, they've been getting pretty stingy about their configurations and trying to force you to buy the highest end model or else get stuck with a gimpy setup. Leveno might have some good offers.
Laptop Expert

Another option that is worth considering is the Sager NP6165.

Sager NP6165 (i5-3210M, NVIDIA GT 650M, 15.6" 1920x1080 glossy display) - $949 no tax
- http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np6165-clevo-w150er-p-4344...
- You will need to scroll down to Operating System and select Windows 7, unless you already have your own valid activation code and disk image or can acquire one for cheaper (e.g. through a student discount) -- and are willing to perform the installation yourself.

Or, for a faster GPU:

Sager NP9130 (i5-3210M, NVIDIA GTX 670M, 15.6" 1920x1080 matte display) - $1095 no tax
- http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9130-clevo-p151em1-p-434...
- You will need to scroll down to Operating System and select Windows 7, unless you already have your own valid activation code and disk image or can acquire one for cheaper (e.g. through a student discount) -- and are willing to perform the installation yourself.

Note: The GTX 670M is simply a rebranded GTX 570M with higher clocks. It does not use the new 28nm technology, so it is not as power efficient as a (~16% slower) GTX 660M. But due to Optimus (switchable graphics), this shouldn't be an issue when not gaming.

I must warn you, gaming laptops if stressed on battery normally run for about 50 minutes (and they wont run at full power anyway).
3 things you should really care about before the purchase:

A) Check reviews on the laptop, especially relating heat issues. Since almost 2 years, every single laptop has heat issues...

B) Check a site as http://www.notebookcheck.net/ and read as much as possible about the model that you like. Make sure it IS the same model (Year and caracteristics). Focus on objective information like "contrast ratio of xxx:x" or "battery duration of xxx minutes". Dont fall for subjective information like "excellent contrast" or "great gaming performance".

C) Once you have decided the model you want, google a bit similar models from other brands and check those as well. YOu might decide its better to get another brand or model after all.

On a side note: I highly recommed going for a dual core with 4 threads. This is because most laptops with 4 cores and demanding GPUs, eat up a great deal of energy, and the power supplies they come with, are normally too weak. You can check this in the site i sent you by the way.

Also, 2 cores is mostly enought for any game out there, yet it will probably be outdated when the next generation of consoles come out. So either dont worry about that at all, or wait untill the new consoles come out id say.
Laptop Expert
Gaming Expert

Clevo P150EM, P152EM, 170ER, 170EM

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/91510-clevo...

Quote:
CLEVO is a large Taiwanese computer company specializing in laptops. While the Clevo brand name is perhaps not widely known, their products are re-branded and sold by known boutique brand OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)… notably Sager, VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Eurocom, etc. They are also considered (by whoever knows about notebooks) to design and manufacturer the best of the best notebooks in terms of superior build quality and innovative designs.


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