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Decent gaming laptop £800+-
MrMonolitas
Member UncommonPosts: 263
in Hardware
Hey guys. So yeah... I'm looking for a laptop i could buy. I was into Alienware 14x but after i read few posts here i got a drawback and also £1000+ for it is just outragious. So i decided that £800 or little more would be enough for a decent gaming laptop. It would be something like $1200. So i dont know what i sould add more... Please guys help me out there 
Comments
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230075
Asus i7, Geforce 540... 6 gig ram... 1000 dollars
Get an Asus laptop.. they run great. My office has purchased 10+ of the gaming grade laptops from Asus and they have all been perfect. You can game on your lap, in the hot sun, and it will not overheat and crash... (overheating is big prob with gaming laptops usually)
You want an i7 chip these days (not great for gaming but just all around good)...
You want ram.. 6 gigs is plenty
The only downside really is in order to get the high resolution displays you have to jump up to the 1500 dollar range. Don't think they make decent displays on laptops for under 1500.
The above link was just a quick suggestion... I'd recommend looking around at all the available Asus models and picking the best one for you.
Rather obsolete, don't you think?
Having a discrete video card brings a lot of drawbacks. At load, it means high power consumption, and therefore, problems with heat, and noise problems trying to keep the thing cool. It also means that at load, it will zap the battery very quickly, or in some cases, games will refuse to run at all unless you plug the laptop into the wall.
At idle, if the video card is left running (as it looks like it is for that laptop), it means high idle power consumption. That means poor battery life. If the video card is turned off when idle, then you get driver problems with the video card not kicking in when it should, or staying on when it shouldn't. That also makes quite a mess of trying to update the video drivers, since you need a package that involves stuff from more than one GPU vendor. That Intel would have to be one of those GPU vendors, with their notoriously awful video drivers, is also a problem.
A discrete video card also takes space, which means less room for other goodies such as an extra drive bay. It adds considerably to the cost, both for buying the card and also to have a beefier cooling system to handle a discrete card. It makes the laptop heavier, to carry the card and the extra cooling hardware necessary for it. It may make the laptop thicker, to allow room to fit all of this stuff.
There's really only one reason to put up with all of the drawbacks of a discrete video card: better performance than integrated graphics. The fastest discrete laptop video cards offer several times the performance of the fastest laptop integrated graphics. If you want high performance, you have to get a discrete card and put up with all of the problems that come with it.
But some discrete cards perform better than others. A GeForce GT 540M is firmly in the "others" camp, and no faster than Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. If you buy that laptop, then you get all of the problems of a discrete video card, without any performance advantage. I say that's pointless.
I don't know what's available in Britain just yet. If you want a budget gaming laptop in your budget, you should be looking for something based on an A8-3530MX APU, and use the integrated graphics from that. That will come in far under budget, and leave room for things like an SSD if you want to fill up the budget.
Alternatively, you could get a considerably faster discrete card, which is faster than the integrated graphics by a large enough margin to have a point. Loosely, a Radeon HD 6770M or higher, or GeForce GTX 560M or higher, will be faster than Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics by enough that you might be willing to put up with the problems intrinsic to a discrete card. There's also the GeForce GTX 460M that might still be around, which is basically the same thing as the 560M except clocked a little lower.
Really, you'd want to make it a Radeon HD 6870M or higher, rather than 6770M or higher, but you likely won't be able to find that (or the GeForce GTX 560M or higher) and still fit your budget. I'd advise against getting a Radeon HD 6770M except that it might well be the fastest thing that fits your budget.
That's a fairly decent budget in theory, but I can't find any decent retailers for the UK (I'm assuming that's where you're looking if you're listing prices in pounds).
The only options seem to be Nvidia laptops, and not even good ones. The Geforce GT540M, for instance, is not a fast GPU. Notebookcheck puts it somewhere between the Radeon HD 5650 and 5730. That's barely faster than the integrated graphics in Liano, and not really worth the money for gaming. Such a laptop would probably come with a nice Sandy Bridge CPU, but that's of no use if paired with an underpowered GPU.
In fact, such a machine would run no faster in games than my 1000USD laptop from 18 months ago, with its Core i7 720QM and Mobility Radeon HD 5730 (it might even run them slower). That's just plain bad.
It is worth noting, of course, that this lack of product flexibility wouldn't hit you so hard if you got yourself a desktop instead of a laptop. You'd also get a machine that's vastly faster and more capable of being upgraded down the road.
If that absolutely isn't an option, then just go with Quizzical's suggestion of waiting for an laptop with one of the top bins of Liano to become available. Doing that should even allow you to not spend some of your budget, unless UK's notoriously bad hardware prices hit you really hard.
Actually, now that I look up specs, the GeForce GT 540M is clocked higher than I expected, so it probably will be a little faster than Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. But only a little, and we're talking maybe 20% or 30%. Faster by enough to have a point? I say no.
Back of the envelope calculation: in a desktop, a Radeon HD 5570 usually beats a GeForce GT 430. A Radeon HD 6620G has 68% of the clock speed of a desktop Radeon HD 5570. A GeForce GT 540M has 96% of the performance of a desktop GeForce GT 430. (There's a serious power consumption penalty to pay for not underclocking, by the way.) That's enough to put GF118 ahead of Sumo in performance. But it's going to be way, way behind in performance per watt, which is a huge deal in a laptop.
I think ill go for discrete card. I think i could handle overheating. Also i dont mind to keep my laptop pluged into the wall as i will use it mostly inside. And i dont really care about the weight of that thing as i wanted to go with alienware and those things are fat and heavy.
My brother bought
Acer AS5740G 15,6" Core i5 430M 2,266GHz 4GB 640GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 WINDOWS 7 HP
I dont really consider it a gaming laptop. I had some troubles with fps in packed places on high demanding games ( fallout nv in this point) i consider it high demanding game tho. Furthermore as you pointed before as i played games temperature would go pretty high, but cooling pad halped alot with that.
Anyway Quizz why do you say i7 processor is obsolete? I tought its best at the market atm.
I'd recommend Llano like quizzy suggested, however it looks like the decision has already been made:D
nothing wrong with discrete card as long as you pick the right one. however do realize the price you pay in $, power/battery life, heat, and to some degree reliability for that discrete card.
i7 isnt "obsolete" in that it's still a fine chip. it's just not the best choice for a laptop. it's way too much CPU power to pair up with what little GPU you are allowed to put into a laptop. if you cant understand what kind of "price" you are paying for that kind of power, then take a 60w incandescent lightbulb, screw it into a light socket, turn it on and try to hold on to the bulb as long as you can:D thats only the amount of heat 60w is putting out:D the laptop you are trying to build is closer to 90 watts. unlike a lightbulb, your hand WILL be on the laptop when you use it so you will be paying that "thermal" price with your hand in the long run:D
The processor is nice. The problem is that it has a discrete video card which isn't fast enough to justify being stuck with all the drawbacks intrinsic to a discrete card. If you're going to live with all of the problems of a discrete card, then you want one that is a lot faster than integrated graphics.
I think he was referring to the GPU paired with it, not hte i7 itself.
A GT540 is not a fast card. In fact, it won't perform signficantly better than the Mobility Radeon HD 5650, so if you're looking for something faster, a Geforce GT540 is not the way to go.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure you can do much better on your budget, and with the constraints of the UK hardware market.
Chassis & Display
Optimus II: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2630QM (2.00GHz) 6MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
nVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M - 2GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - Hard Disk
250GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD2500BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
This costs £800 what do you think?
nVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M is slightly better than lanlo a8 integreted graphic card right?
That's the same video card that you picked before, except clocked a little higher, and this time paired with GDDR5 memory, for extra memory bandwidth and power consumption. And 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, for a lot of extra power consumption, which is completely stupid. If a game is demanding enough that 1 GB of video memory wouldn't be enough, then the GPU would completely choke and the game would be completely unplayable even if you had infinite video memory. That might well get you double the system-wide power consumption of a Llano-based system, and for not that much more performance.
For an Nvidia card, you want either a GeForce GTX 460 or a GeForce GTX 560 or higher. Anything below that doesn't beat Llano by enough to have a point. Actually, I'd say, you probably don't want an Nvidia card at all. They're too far behind AMD in performance per watt.
all that and not a SSD?:D just get a Llano and SSD so you'd actually be happy:D it's not like any vid card you pick out can actually push an i7 anyway... at the very least, switch to an i5 or something:D
I am a fellow brit and Cyberpower (based in Nottingham or something) are a great gaming hardware company. They built my current rig. They also recently really upped their laptop range:
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/category/laptop
Now I haven't bought a laptop from them but I can vouch for their desktops. Also the sales staff are some of the nicest non hard-sell kind of people you will talk to.
Healing the world since 2005
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Thanks mate. Btw do you know anything about geting vat back after purchase? If i can get vat back http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/Xplorer_X6-9400_Notebook/ this one looks nice. Althou it has nvidia ^^
all that and not a SSD?:D just get a Llano and SSD so you'd actually be happy:D it's not like any vid card you pick out can actually push an i7 anyway... at the very least, switch to an i5 or something:D
Maybe you are right... Llano really sounds good, but as quizz said somewhere... there are no good configs to it yet and i dont think i would be able to get llano in my country anytime soon. You see im from Lithuania. But i came to spend my summer at North Ireland. Computers at my country are really overpriced... Anyway i need to get laptop till ill leave for my studies. And in this case first llano laptops isint really good choise is it? Everything might change tho.
hum... this scenario doesnt look good. if you didnt bring the laptop with you when you left the country, you may have to pay import taxes when you bring it back into the country. you may want to look into that before investing in something that may cost you a arm and a leg to bring back to Lithuania. depending on the item and import law. there can be import duty of a few hunderd %.
Yeah...I forgot that I need to look into those things too. Thanks. Anyway what do you think about that laptop ?
as for the laptop, if Llano is absolutely out of the question then i'd try for an i5 rather then an i7. as i mentioned before, there is no mobil gpu chip that can push the capability of a i7. if there is an option for i5, or even i3, then i'd look into pairing that with a discrete card (amd would be better since they are better on performance/watt) THE absolute BIGGEST performance improvment for practical use you can do on a laptop is a SSD.... if at all possible, look into that option. that and 8 gigs of ram so you can do a 2 - 4 gig ramdrive for temp files would help you with practical use purposes.
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk
is what i use. you can have up to a 4 gig ramdrive w/o paying for a license.
1) It's way over your stated budget. You can increase your budget if you like, of course.
2) With that configurator, you need at least 8 GB of system memory. If you get 4 GB, they'll leave one of the memory channels completely vacant, which will cripple the processor.
3) Don't get the default hard drive. If you're on a tight budget, at least switch to a 7200 RPM hard drive. It would be nice if you could get a good SSD, but it probably doesn't fit your budget. If you do get an SSD, then any of the Crucial ones are the best value they offer. Some of Kingston's SSDs are junk, and their naming system is such a mess that I'm not sure if those are among their junk SSDs.
The problem is that if that's your budget, then you're buying in a market segment where no one will configure things right and then price it aggressively. So that laptop might be your least bad option, depending on what you can find elsewhere.
Better advice - for $1120 (within the 800 euro budget) you can get a G53SW:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230027
which will easily take the K-Series out in the gaming department. I have the similar G53JW (see my sig) and it plays all current titles easily on medium settings at 1920x1080. Some new games you can push up to high and of course you can max all older games. You will not find a better gaming laptop at this price point.
Laptop Core i5 processors are strictly dual core. On a sufficiently tight budget, you could justify one, but you'd have to accept that if a future game really needs four cores, it's not going to run well on a dual core processor.
Even netbooks will largely move to four cores next year, with the launch of AMD's Krishna APU. It sounds like for desktops and normal laptops, AMD might not make anything less than four cores after Llano. I'm not sure how long Intel plans to keep on making dual core processors for desktops and laptops, either, as they've been all two or more cores since 45 nm, and Ivy Bridge is two full node die shrinks from that.
Core i3 is a bad idea, though. That means you get few cores, and also poor single-threaded performance. That will significantly hold back a number of games today, and it will get worse in the future. With a laptop Core i5, you're fine today, but only have to worry about trouble in the future.
agreed, but it's not like this is going to be the "ideal gaming laptop" of this budget range:D it's a "oh well i guess you'll have to settle for this" type of gaming laptop:D by not allowing llano as an option, he's more or less shooting himself in the foot and say ok what brand of bandaid i can use to fix this:D
i7 will be underused. the type of game that "require" more then 2 cores wont really play well on his budget anyway since the bottleneck is in the gpu and not the cpu. the i5 may help abit on battery life, tho how much may not be relevant.
anyway. he said he has about a month to buy this. maybe by the end of that timeframe, llano may become avaliable.
It depends on what he wants, really. A GeForce GTX 460M offers around triple the graphical performance of Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. If you want that sort of performance, then Llano isn't an option. Beating integrated graphics by 20% isn't enough to justify all the drawbacks of a discrete card. But getting triple the performance of integrated graphics is enough to justify it for a lot of people.
1) If you are even considering a "gaming" laptop that won't be plugged in most of the time you have no hope.
2) Integrated Video is the WORST possible option you could ever choose. You don't get something for nothing, if you save power by going integrated, it's because you're losing performance.
3) People clicked on the link I posted and derp'd w/o reading the rest of the small post. The example I provided was a 30 second search. I told "whoever" was looking to buy a machine they can likely get a better combination of stats for around the same price.
Point is, Asus makes amazing machines... My "work" laptop is an Asus and I can play any/everything on it... WHICH btw i'm pretty sure runs like an Nvidia 260? or 360... some lower level card.
A GTX 8800 768 meg video card can run todays games at TOP settings no problem... and that card is OLD. Video games aren't advancing as fast as technology anymore.
1) Unless it's a Llano, in which case, with a big battery, you could get 2-3 hours of battery life while gaming. Or even more than that, in some games that aren't very demanding.
2) It depends on what you get. Sure, any integrated graphics other than Llano would be a problem. But Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics has basically the same GPU as a Mobility Radeon HD 5770 discrete card, though the integrated version is clocked lower.
4) Don't get too caught up in the brand name. Asus also makes Atom/GMA 3150-based EEE PC netbooks that can't even run the full Windows 7 properly, let alone games.
And no, a GeForce GTX 8800 can't max settings in all newer games. For starters, a lot of settings in a lot of newer games will be hard-disabled because of missing features, including (but not limited to) API support. Even apart from that, a lot of games can turn settings up far enough to choke GPUs far more powerful than a G80. At sufficiently high settings, some games can even overwhelm a pair of Radeon HD 6990s in quad CrossFireX.
Unless, of course, you have a goofy idea of "TOP settings". I recently got in an argument with someone who insisted that his Radeon X1950 could run Champions Online at "highest settings" if he disabled all post-processing effects. Apparently by "highest settings", he meant "the highest settings that his hardware could handle".
Llano isint out of the question... just be my guest and try to find some a8 in uk...
Anyway that xplorer excluding vat cost 830 with 7200rpm hard drive. so If i will be able to get vat back budget is right. I need to read about vat sometime around.
I tried to look up for Asus G53sw-xn1 as i can tell... This model doesnt exist in uk... Uk pc market is really poor
Btw I have read that llano can be used together with discrete video card ...?
Right now in the US, Llano is offered by Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Gateway, and Lenovo. HP is the only one of those to offer A8 bins of Llano. HP seems to also be the only one to offer 45 W bins, while the others only offer the lower clocked 35 W bins. I checked HP's UK site, and they don't offer Llano at all.
You can use Llano with a discrete card, but it's pointless. Neither asymmetric crossfire nor discrete switchable graphics work well enough for that to be a good idea. The point of Llano is to use the integrated graphics, so that you don't need a discrete card at all. If you ignore the graphics, Sandy Bridge is a lot better than Llano.
The real problem is that AMD is severely supply constrained. The plan was that Global Foundries would have enough 32 nm capacity ready to launch Llano at the start of the year, and then have enough additional capacity to launch Bulldozer at the start of June. That didn't happen, as Global Foundries just couldn't deliver on time. Llano was delayed, and now Bulldozer is probably a higher priority, as the dies probably sell for more. Interlagos/Valencia server chips get top priority, as those are the processors that sell for the most. I wouldn't be surprised if even Zambezi mostly gets the server rejects for a while.