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Gaming Laptop help needed!
I'm looking for a new laptop in advance of SWTOR's release, and I'm looking for some advice.
Yes, I know a desktop would be a better gaming setup, but I'm a grad student and pretty much live and die by my laptop. The only MMOs I'm worried about playing are SWTOR and maybe Guild Wars 2 down the line. Beyond that, I will keep my PC gaming largely confined to The Sims 3 series, and maybe Diablo 3.
I'd like to keep my expense under $1500. I want something that's reasonably light and portable, will last a while, and that has a lot of versatility as a system, but which can run these games without much issue.
Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks!
Comments
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8150-clevo-p150hm-p-2972.html?wconfigure=yes
Add in the 6990M GPU and possibly upgrade the CPU / HDD. ~ 1600$$ . My friend uses that same laptop (his has the 250gb SSD and the 2760QM CPU along with 6990M, his laptop along with mine, run all games at max beautifully, (give or take a few settings on the more demanding ones). If that price range is too high, then drop down a notch and grab the MSI with the gtx 570M in it, that will still run them on medium- high just fine and dandy.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
There is a great deal of portable gaming laptops that have just recently as mid 2010 and continuing through this year hit the market.
My channel, http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, shows how the 14 inch Lenovo Y460 games. The new Lenovo Y470(scroll down for pictures) laptops are really nice and affordable at the same time, you can currently pick one up for $649.00, it would play both SWTOR and GW2 maxed out.
There are many more options of course, MSI gx X460 is currently one of my favorites which is also 14 inch laptop. Sony of course makes many nice laptops, both the S series and C series would be ideal for gaming and mobility.
Alienware has some great mobile laptops as well with the m11x and m14x, heres link. Also HP makes the HP envy and beats edition laptop, link here also.
Thats just scratching the surface of whats out there for smaller gaming laptops but its the main ones. The medium or mid sized laptops, well there are literally countless ones of these out there some good and some not so good. Many resellers offer great laptops in this area, XoticPC's 8130 is a nice one, Mailibal is another one as well.
You will want to also check out some that I didtnt list that you might like better;sony vaio z, alienware m17x/18x, Sager 7280 but these can get closer to going past 1500. Cyberpower also makes laptops so check out what they got also, most of there laptops are under 1500$.
Before looking at particular systems, you need to decide what sort of gaming laptop you want. Your basic choices are:
1) Llano integrated graphics
+excellent battery life, with several hours easily at low loads
+can play games on the battery, and have it last perhaps an hour or two
+low price tag ($500-$700)
+essentially all games will be playable at moderate settings, and some games will run smoothly at high or even max settings
+low power consumption and little heat, so you don't have to risk burning yourself
+modest weight (5-6 pounds)
+good video drivers
-a handful of badly coded games will not run smoothly even at low settings
-many games will not run well at high or max settings, though most of these will run well at lower settings
2) Sandy Bridge processor with discrete switchable graphics using a relatively high end discrete card (AMD or Nvidia)
+good battery life (several hours) at light loads
+essentially all games will run well, and most games will run well at high (but not necessarily max) settings
-high price tag ($1200+)
-very short battery life while gaming; games may be unplayable entirely on the battery
-high power consumption under gaming loads means likely to be noisy and/or run hot
-video driver problems are likely
-heavy (7-10 pounds)
3) Sandy Bridge processor with discrete AMD or Nvidia card that is always running
+essentially all games will run well, and most games will run well at high (but not necessarily max) settings
+good video drivers
-high price tag ($1200+)
-very short battery life, with perhaps 2 hours at dead idle, and going down from there if you're actually doing anything
-high power consumption under gaming loads means likely to be noisy and/or run hot
-heavy (7-10 pounds)
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Basically, option 1 gives you portability, option 3 gives you maximum performance, and option 2 tries and fails to give you the best of both worlds, but ends up with its own set of trade-offs.
My system (Phenom II X4 965, 2x Radeon HD 5770) get down to 30fps in TOR at the highest settings when a lot of people are around, 45-55 most of the time.
That's enough for an MMORPG, if less than ideal (if performance doesn't improve with mroe refinment and driver/scaling improvements, I'll probably knock down the settings a bit), but my system is presently as powerful as or more powerful than any single-GPU laptop, which means that some little 14' machine is only going to be able to play such a game modestly.
OP, I think your only decent option is something like what Robgmur posted. That machine would be reliable and very fast, it's only 6.83lbs, and while battery life would probably be somewhere between mediocre and terribad (probably 2-3 hours), that's just the tradeoff.
At the very least, do what he says and get the 6990, and get a 7200rpm drive (the 500gb one is barely more than the base drive).
After that, upgrade the CPU by a notch if you can afford it. It might stretch your budget, but it'd be a nice machine.
XoticPC is also a highly rated place to shop; I've heard nothing but great things.
I have heard that TOR is very CPU heavy. Is this the case? a lot of MMOs / RTS's with lighter engines dig deep with a strong CPU
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
It does seem to be, I was getting about 60fps at a heavily populated area with a i5-2500k and a friend was getting 91fps with a OC'ed i7-2600k, I was running a GTX 560, while he had a GTX 470 which are essentially the same performance. That said, the game does have some performance issues and it might just be an optimization thing.
Why would you care about the battery life on a gaming laptop?
You cannot play any game that will require such a laptop on it if its not pluged in into wall... When on battery all of those laptops are severly underclocked, i have a relatilvy "old(2 years or so)" gaming laptop - ASUS G51J which has aCore I7 Q740 CPU and a GTS 360M GPU and even tho it has a 12 cell battery(with excellent time 4-5 hours) you cant run any games on it with out losing 50-70% of the machine performance. Forget turbo boost, the CPU underclocks, the GPU basicaly shuts down which results in COD for example dropping from 80-90fps to 20-25...
My girl friend has a new toshiba gaming laptop, with Core I7 2600K and a 6970 cross fire and besides being one heck of a furnase that laptop bearly runs mine sweeper on battery...
Wait.. what?
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
You should take into account that the game was running a debugger in the back ground, and I was logging performance locally as well, and that anti-aliasing was available in the build I played.
You could get away with alot less ram, but I wouldn't skimp on the video card, SSD, and especially the processor.
Intel Core i7 2860QM 2.5GHz (3.6GHz w/Turbo Boost, 8MB Cache)
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1866MHz
2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6990M
120GB Sata 3 SSD
Does it come with a lumbar brace?
Nah she's not that heavy
The laptop is around 3.5kg so around 7-7.5 pounds i guess, mine i think is actually bit heavier alltough being just a 15.6" and not 18 or 17" one.... Again if you want a gaming laptop which is actually portable you will have to settle down with a poor gcard even if its a descrete one, the mobile cards are allways run 20-40% slower then their desktop counter parts even if they share the same model, the mobility 6970 xfire is slower than my 6850 Xfire desktop, by quite a bit i might add, Pluse the drivers for these cards are usually a bit behind the desktop ones also.
You can find a decent laptop which is portable with a 65XX/66XX, they will run games like WoW, ToR, LoL and SC2 fine, not on the maximum, or even high settings but medium-high with fairly decent FPS can be achived, again for that you will still need to plug it into a power socket in most cases so again i don't see day to day mobility for a gaming laptop to be an issue.
I own a gaming laptop becasue i travelt allot from work and spend a week or 2 in a hotel during which the laptop keeps me sane no way in hell i would agree to carry extra 6-7lbs on me for a day or 2, not to mention on a daily bases.
Pople in simmilar conditions like students also dont need to worry about the weight, just keep it in your dorm or apartment carry it home over the weekend for school and work i would never buy a laptop over 2.5-3lbs and bigger than a 12-13.3" any how.
If you want to play games but a good laptop and if you need it also for school or work buy a netbook, and ultra mobile laptop or an ultrabook depeding on your needs and financial situtation...
Gonna run you about $800.00 : http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X6-9100_Gaming_Notebook/
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
The mobile video cards you should be looking at. ~rough scale for gaming performance~
GTX 580M --------------------------------------
HD6990M -------------------------------------- (Recommended for budget ~ 1600$$)
GTX 485M --------------------------------------
GTX 570M -------------------------------------- (Recommended for Budget ~1200$$)
HD6970M --------------------------------------
GTX 560M --------------------------------------
Anything loaded with a GPU below these I wouldn't even look at grabbing with a possible 1500$ budget to spend.
You will definately want a small SSD.. 80-120GB is pretty cheap and you will love the response/ load times for your OS and main games.
As for the CPU I wouldn't get anything less than the i7-2670QM. For a laptop, you get what you pay for essentially and sadly in the gaming laptop section.. You will pay a lot for a little.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
The bench Marks for this atrocity reflect its low price tag. If the OP is okay with dishing out ~ 1200-1400$ you can double the gaming performance. On a mobile rig that could mean the world. Of course, yes you can play TOR on the Xplorer listed, but more than likely it will bring it to it's knees on higher settings without even stepping into the ring. if you are okay with low-medium settings, then yes the OP can save good money.
*Corsair Obsidian Series 650D *i5-2500K OC'd ~ 4.5
*Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mother board
* Radeon HD 7970
*8GB (4GBx2) 1600MHz Kingston HyperX
*240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III SSD
You're going to recommend Intel graphics? Seriously?
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"Why would you care about the battery life on a gaming laptop?"
Maybe it won't be used exclusively for gaming? After all, if it's purely a gaming machine, then get a desktop. For that matter, if you're looking at spending $1500 on a gaming laptop, you'd likely be better off with both a cheap laptop and a gaming desktop. That gets you greater portability in the laptop, and also greater gaming performance in the desktop, with a lower total price tag.
Yeah, funny story; I'm a student like the OP, and I have a gaming laptop, and guess what? Maybe 10% of its usage is gaming-oriented. The rest of the time its my only note-taking device and my primary line to the vast majority of my academic resources.
If the OP was only going to use the laptop for gaming, they'd get by without a laptop and When I see someone say "I'm a grad student and pretty much live and die by my laptop", I don't generally think of it as them saying "this is a frivolous toy that will be used for nothing but slaying internet dragons".
Some great suggestions here.
I'm intrigued by the Alienware, Sony and HP Envy beats edition, but I'm still weighing my options. You've given me a lot to work with. Thank you!
I'm definitely taking it all into account. I've bookmarked every suggested laptop in this thread and am looking at reviews, checking my budget, etc. I don't plan on impulse buying this. Any laptop I buy is going to have to stay with me a while.
As for battery life, I rarely have my laptop unplugged if I know I'm going to be working for a while. For gaming? It would be plugged in the entire time, with me sitting at a desk and playing. Battery life only matters when I'm not gaming and I'm at a coffee shop or library writing papers.
Same here. The vast majority of my time with my laptop is spent taking notes, writing papers, surfing the web, downloading music and audiobooks, and getting through grad school. Gaming would be a very small part of my usage, but I want to play SWTOR and other games. I want a laptop that will fit all my needs, but which doesn't require a forklift to cart around.
Exactly. Killing Sith and Imperials will be a small part of my overall usage. It's an important hobby since it's stress relief, but the rest of the things I use a laptop for matter just as much.
You should be aware that that's a class of laptop that barely makes sense for anyone. Any laptop in a sub-15" form factor or with a price tag under $1000 will have graphics that at best, is not that much faster than Llano's Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. In some cases, it will be a discrete card that is actually slower than Llano integrated graphics. That gets you all of the drawbacks of a discrete card (heavier, more expensive, runs hotter, shorter battery life, etc.) without much of a performance benefit to compensate. That's why I intentionally left that class of product off of my list.
The modern discrete laptop cards that are faster than Llano integrated graphics by enough to have a point are the Radeon HD 6850M, 6870M, 6970M, and 6990M, and the GeForce GTX 460M, 560M, 570M, and 580M. You could argue for throwing a Radeon HD 6750M and 6770M onto that list as well, I suppose.
Slower cards such as a GeForce GT 555M, 550M, or 540M, or a Radeon HD 6630M or 6650M will be faster than Llano integrated graphics, but not by that much. Maybe you get 20%-50% faster than integrated graphics. Cards such as a Radeon HD 6470M or GeForce GT 520M will be slower than Llano integrated graphics. That gets you all of the drawbacks of a discrete card, as well as a performance penalty. That's definitely not what you want. The only real point of that laptop (other than selling to people who are clueless, which is a major focus of most laptop vendors) is that you can pair it with a processor that is substantially faster than that of Llano.
For comparison, a GeForce GTX 460M or 560M or Radeon HD 6870M will offer about 3x the graphical performance of Radeon HD 6620G integrated graphics. A GTX 570M is about 4x Llano, and a Radeon HD 6990M or GeForce GTX 580M is about 5x Llano.
You should also be warned that the Alienware M11x has a crippled low-voltage processor. While it is the most powerful system that you can get in an 11" form factor, it's not a gaming system at all, and some games will be unplayable even at minimum graphical settings.
If you haven't picked the basic type of system you want (see my first post in this thread), then you're not ready to look at individual models yet. When that time comes, you should dismiss Sony, Toshiba, and Fujitsu out of hand, as they disable video driver updates. That means you could buy something today, and then a driver update launches a few months later that is necessary to run GW2 properly, but you can never get the update and therefore never play GW2 on the laptop.
If you have a discrete card running all of the time, it gives poor battery life even at idle. A discrete card sucking 10-15 W all by itself even at completely idle can drain a battery pretty fast. The other options might have the GPU burning a watt or two at idle.
#3 in your post is obviously the most attractive because it gives the best performance, but #1 is also stuck in my head.
If I'm going to depend entirely on a laptop for school and work and gaming, I don't want to have to pull out heavy machinery to move it around. I want something that runs smoothly, gives good performance when I *do* game, and is versatile and portable enough to get me through the rest of my day. The models I mentioned are intruiging, but nowhere near definitive. I still have a long way to go before I make a decision.
Good to know that Sony, Toshiba, and Fujitsu are lame about video drivers. That's a definite strike against them. I'll absolutely avoid them for that reason alone.
If you're interested in a Llano system, the highest performance one on the market is here:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Processor&v1=AMD&series_name=dv6zqe_series&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/AMD/dv6zqe_series
That will let you get an A8-3530MX processor. If you go that route, you want either 4 GB or 8 GB of system memory, and not the default 6 GB. The point of Llano is to skip the discrete card, so don't go for the Radeon HD 6750M option there. If you're going to add a discrete card, then you'd be better off grabbing a faster processor to pair with it, as here:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Processor&v1=Intel&a2=Screen+size&v2=15.0+-+16.9&series_name=dv6tqe_series&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/Intel/dv6tqe_series
It can be hard to tell whether a laptop with a discrete card uses discrete switchable graphics or leaves the card running all of the time. If it talks about switchable or hybrid graphics, or uses the word "optimus", that's option #2. Being able to shut down the video card costs you about 5%-10% of your performance as compared to the same card left running all of the time, due to overhead in copying the frame buffer from the card to the integrated GPU, before outputting it to the monitor.
If you're interested in going with option #3, then the highest performance system that will fit a strict $1500 budget is likely this:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X7-8500_Gaming_Notebook/
Do note that you need the memory upgrade (though you could buy your own module for $20 and add it yourself rather than paying them $69) and should switch to a 7200 RPM hard drive.
Still, if you're going that route, you're probably better off stretching your budget a bit to get one of the Clevo units with a Radeon HD 6990M.
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You should also note that AMD's next generation of cards will likely launch as soon as January. That may or may not initially get you higher performance, but it will let you get the same performance as before with much lower power consumption. With the high end laptop cards pushing past 100 W for the video card alone, cutting that back would be great.
Oddly enough, my current laptop is a 4 year old HP Pavilion dv6000. It's served me well and still does damn near everything I need, but for gaming, it's utter crap. Plus it runs hot and I'm tired of my hands getting warm every time I type.
I've looked at the recommended configurations for both of those, since they fit my budget and I'm familiar with HP. I also looked at what they consider the recommended configuration for the Envy Beats Edition, and I'm having a hard time distinguishing the three. Maybe I'm just missing something in terms of processing power. I'm not sure.
I'd tweak anything I get to have a 7200 rpm drive and 8GB of memory, but I don't know enough on my own to tell the difference between those three computers. They seem comparable to me once you get them away from their base models to something a bit more elaborate.
Hmm. Looks interesting. I will definitely take a look at these tonight once I get home. Thanks!
Good to know. I'll keep it in mind.
I game on my laptops battery all the time, I loved it. I could game for hours on end playing Aion and other games like Black ops, but after the year IV owed it the battery has obviously lost alot of its charge, have to get a new one. On my lenovo the performance was never reduced for some reason when I had windowes setting to "HIGH POWERED" in the windowes power management for win 7.