Budget Gaming-ish Desktop Replacement Laptop

PhelimReagh

Hiya folks. I recently found this 17.3" laptop ( http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668736.php ) on sale  for $650.

 

I know Gateway has had it's problems in the past, but Asus bought them and they seem intent on bringing the brand back from the dead. Here are the notable specs, most notable of which is the ATI HD 5650 1 GB:

Processor	Intel® Core™ i5-460M Processor1 2.53GHz with Turbo Boost2 Technology up to 2.8GHz (3MB L3 Cache)
Operating System	Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit)6
Memory	4096MB DDR3 Dual-Channel 1066MHz Memory7
Hard Drive	500GB SATA hard drive3
Color	Wave Pattern Case Design with Satin Black Lid
Chassis	Chassis with ATI Radeon® HD 5650 Graphics with 1024MB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM memory supporting Shader Model 5.0 and Microsoft® DirectX® 11 and Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset

 

It normally retails for $820, and reviews when it came out said it was a pretty good buy at that price, even though there are some definite shortcomings (like 1600 x 900 resolution and I think the 5400 RPM HDD). I saw it when looking for laptops for a friend's father, and it was by far the best value for laptops I could find (especially for a 17.3" screen size). It got me thinking that maybe I might want it too as a cheap laptop well capable of playing many MMOs at above-medium settings.

 

I realize that the 5650 isn't a top of the line GPU, but it's not too shabby either, with 1 GB dedicated memory, and the processor seems pretty nice too.

 

Does this seem like a great deal? It seems like it would play most games at pretty decent settings. Is there somethign I'm missing? In my search for laptops I was looking at almost all of them at the lower end had integrated graphics and were still around $750-850. This seemed too good to be true, as it was priced akin to refurbished laptops with integrated graphics.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: It has since gone up to $750. D'oh. Guess it was too good to be true. LOL.

Quizzical

Right now, there is no such thing as a budget gaming laptop.  If that's what you want, then wait for Llano, which is coming this Spring.  It will probably offer performance comparable to that one, with a price tag around $700 and significantly lower power consumption.