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Seeking guidance on a gaming Laptop
Dragonantis
Member UncommonPosts: 974
Hiya Community,
I would like to post this question as ive rattled over the answer for a few days now and I just cant decide.
Im looking to buy my Wife a new gaming laptop but for the life of me I cant settle on one.
My budget for this laptop is 1000 Euros (1211.97 USD). As far of what she plans to play on this laptop it will be mainly LoL, GW2, D3 and a few other games less taxing than the ones I listed, with a possiblity to be playing FFXIV 2.0 in the future so thats my main future concern.
I have stuck my nose in every online store to speak of regarding a laptop but im admiting defeat as far as picking one, so id like an opinion on what you all think is the best laptop for my budget.
Thanks in advance guys and girls 
Comments
What country do you live in? This affects where you can buy a laptop, which greatly affects what is available to you. It's nearly impossible to get a laptop that is configured sensibly outside of the high end.
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Why do you want a laptop rather than a desktop? A desktop will get you better performance, a lower price tag, better reliability, much easier repairs if it does break, a better upgrade path, much better ergonomics, and various other advantages. The only important advantage of a laptop is the portability.
Even if you have clear reasons to need both a gaming machine and also a laptop, it doesn't automatically follow that a gaming laptop is a reasonable choice. For many people, it's better to have both a gaming desktop and a cheap laptop. Gaming laptops only make sense if either:
1) You have a low budget, need a laptop, and don't already have an old laptop, or
2) You want to play games away from home, such as a business traveler who wants to play games in his hotel room.
Furthermore, option (1) only justifies getting a gaming laptop the first time. When it comes time to replace it, the sensible thing to do is to keep it for whatever you need a laptop for while getting a gaming deskop for gaming purposes.
The laptop will be bought in Canada.
The reason is actually a private matter but lets just say their will be alot of traveling so a gaming laptop is a must.
its a little outside your budget, but really if your gonna spend $1200... you might as well get what you really need for these games. Cant go wrong with this one.
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3420609&CatId=4938
or this one, its not as good but closer to your budget...
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3420582&CatId=4938
and this one from newegg is worth a mention.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246629CVF
its too bad you cant get a 660/670 and a decent ssd for that price range.
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=73015&vpn=20994CU&manufacture=Lenovo&promoid=1261
That will get you mid-range gaming performance with a decent price tag. But the laptop has a lot of cut corners, such as a tiny monitor resolution and a glacially slow 5400 RPM hard drive.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152349
That will get you the same basic gaming performance, but without the cut corners. It's quite a bit more expensive, though.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152348
That's the same thing in a 17" form factor.
As for Rungard's options, the first one is a high end price tag without high end hardware. You don't want an aging Fermi card unless it comes with a clearance price tag. Incidentally, if that's what you want, you can get it with what looks to me like a clearance price:
http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=524
Or if you're willing to pay for a high end laptop, then you might as well actually get something that is high end:
http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=525
A Radeon HD 7970M is the right video card to pick there, as it will offer graphical performance in the ballpark of triple that of a GeForce GTX 660M.
http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=523
That's the same thing in a 17" form factor. I'm not sure how much Malibal charges for shipping to Canada, but they do offer to service the laptop in Canada for no extra fee.
Rungard's second option is a budget gaming video card without the budget price. That's way too much to pay for not very much performance.
Rungard's third option is basically the first laptop I linked, except with a 64 GB SSD added. The SSD is what makes it interesting, but the monitor is still going to be mediocre. A low resolution monitor like that is fine in a $600 laptop, but you may want something better on your budget.
Well I spend the day weighting my options and researching and decided on a laptop factoring in your advise.
The laptop I choose is an MSI the same as the one you linked http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=523 except im upgrading the Wireless to the bigfoot version.
Thanks for the helpful input guys
Err, what? That's a Clevo P170EM. There's nothing MSI about it. The point of it is to be able to handle the highest end video cards, such as the Radeon HD 7970M and GeForce GTX 680M. They also still offer the last generation GeForce GTX 675M. MSI doesn't make any analogous laptop.
Exactly what laptop did you buy? Asking for advice and then buying something at random that was completely off the radar usually doesn't end well.
I pasted the wrong link, no need to get snappy for a simple mistake.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152348
That should work pretty well for you so long as your wife isn't the "I need to max settings!" variety of gamer.
I think you'd have been able to get something just as good for a couple hundred dollars cheaper in a couple of months. But it takes a while for new products to show up. The Ivy Bridge+Kepler products are mostly just showing up now, after the parts launched in April. I'm expecting Trinity+Cape Verde to be cheaper, and show up any month now.
the 680m series is probabally 3x better than anything else but i dont see you getting one of those anytime soon for $1200
As compared to a GeForce GTX 660M, maybe, or probably a little less than that. But if it's faster than a Radeon HD 7970M, it's not faster by much.