Gaming Laptop

Started by winkio, May 14, 2013, 12:49:36 am

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winkio

Hey guys, I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a brand of laptop that I could get for under $2000 with:

16GB RAM
128 GB SSD (at least 128, can be more)
intel core i7 (min 2.3 GHz)
1920x1080 display

I'm pretty sure that I can find the specs I want on a laptop for a reasonable price, but I haven't found them from the usual places (hp, dell, lenovo, sony vaio).  The closest I have gotten is an Alienware M17x for $2,174.  I'm almost considering going down to a Alienware M14x and cutting the display resolution just to get the rest of the specs at a reasonable price at $1664.  I am definitely looking at brands other than Alienware though, so if you know of something reasonable, post a link.

Seltzer Cole

May I ask what you use 16GB of RAM for? lmfao! My PC has 4GB and I can run pretty much every game there is for PC. Just curious why anyone would need 16GB.
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winkio

May 14, 2013, 01:00:32 am #2 Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 01:08:37 am by winkio
Well I titled the thread gaming laptop because that is the group of laptops that have relatively high specs.  Besides having to keep up with software for the next 5 years, this laptop is also going to be used for experimental research applications, hence the SSD and 16GB of RAM.  People often leave their computers on overnight to perform experiments on large data sets, and having that extra RAM and SSD will help decrease that time by a fair amount, and make me much more productive.

EDIT: found an ASUS for $1950: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230590

Blizzard

May 14, 2013, 02:21:21 am #3 Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 02:25:28 am by Blizzard
Unless your display is at least 23", 1920x1080 will be way too small to see anything. My laptop has a 17" display at 1366x768 and it's at the limit. At work I have a 23" monitor at 1920x1080 and it's fine. So yeah.

Even though SSD is the future, you probably won't really need it. But since you're going for a laptop, it seems actually fine. Get a bigger one, though. I have an 128 GB SSD at work along with a 300 GB HDD. I keep most SVN working copies on my SSD and it really speeds up things, especially since I have to copy large amounts of data frequently (e.g. syncing 2 SVN working copies with 500 MB of data) or start up VS 2012 with 20+ or even 30+ projects in the solution (takes a few seconds on SSD compared to a first startup of half a minute on HDD). Other than that SSD doesn't seem that useful right now. But that's obviously only for desktop PCs. In a laptop you don't usually have 2 disks so SSD seems fine.

16 GB RAM is fine, you can never have enough RAM.

I have an AMD Turion at 2.3 GHz with 2 cores on my laptop and a ATI Radeon HD 4670. The CPU turns out to be a bottle neck far more often than the GFX card. Only on newer games both become bottle necks (e.g. Hitman Absolution which I won't finish because I got bored of the game). Definitely aim for a better CPU. A decent GFX card should be good enough unless you want to play stuff on the Ultra setting in which case you'd probably be better off with a desktop anyway.
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

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winkio

I previously had a 1920x1080 laptop, which I enjoyed, so I'm not worried about the size of things on screen (I actually like it better when things take up smaller portions of the screen).  As I said in the last post, the SSD is mainly for reading/writing large data sets, which is something I will be doing often in grad school.

I'd be interested to hear more about the CPU bottlenecking.  Is it due to graphics, or is it independent of graphics setting?  I know all the i7s I was looking at had Turboboost to 3.4+ GHz, so if only a few cores are under load, it can run pretty fast.

Blizzard

May 14, 2013, 05:46:14 am #5 Last Edit: May 14, 2013, 05:47:22 am by Blizzard
The i-series definitely outperforms AMD's CPUs so you should be fine.

It was independent of my graphics setting. e.g. a game would run at 20-30 FPS regardless of what settings I used (with the exception of FSAA and similar because they are just anal rape for the GPU). It would often manifest in a way that can be easily detected. Without major changes to the actual scene that is displayed, the game would skip a few frames or suddenly there would be slow downs (sometimes heavy ones) that wouldn't last longer than a split second or a few seconds. Due to the fact that the graphic requirement on the scene hasn't change much, but everything slowed down as stuff started to move/animate/process, it can't be the GPU. Generally if the GPU is the bottleneck, the game will run at a lower FPS that doesn't variate too much or changes only if the complexity of the displayed scene significantly changes. If the CPu is the bottleneck, you will only experience slowdowns at certain moments, usually when stuff starts to move, when lots of enemies on the screen are thrown out of their "idle" routine, physics start to be processed heavily or similar stuff. Basically stuff that you would expect the CPU to process.
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

winkio

I ordered the ASUS, I should get it next week.  First computer in over 4 years = EXCITED!

winkio

This ASUS is pretty fucking cool.  High speed, high power, and surprisingly cool (keyboard is still cool to the touch after hours of starcraft 2).  Win8 is dumb, but its a small sacrifice to make.

G_G

Re-install Windows 7 and download the drivers for your motherboard. That's what I did to my brother's new laptop. Also glad that you're liking your new laptop winkio. :3 New computers are always an awesome thing.

winkio

I would, but I'm worried about Microsoft doing something stupid within 5 years that could screw me over (in terms of support for the OS).  Win8 is not too bad, and actually makes a few tasks a bit easier.

Blizzard

May 22, 2013, 02:18:29 am #10 Last Edit: May 22, 2013, 02:34:50 am by Blizzard
YOU NOW HAVE AN ASUS, JUST LIKE ME! WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq9B3evfu8s

EDIT: There are a few add-ons that bring back the task bar and start button etc.
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Taboo

I know this thread was about Winkio's laptop, but I just ordered 700 dollars worth of parts and a $200 monitor to build myself a desktop. I'm pretty hyped. I've been laptop bound for all my life but I'm finally getting a decent rig   8)

azdesign

August 15, 2013, 06:16:35 am #12 Last Edit: August 15, 2013, 06:23:32 am by azdesign
I was late to show up. I should have recommend you MSI before you buy a laptop.
What matters in gaming laptop is GPU. Else ? everything above $1000 mostly has the same spec, i7, >8GB ram, SSD, etc.
So the thing I'm going to recommend you is :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152394
I know it's not an i7, but this is the best price/performance laptop on earth right now.
Pros :
GPU : Radeon 7970M, WAY better than GTX 670, check this out : http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
SSD : 2 64GB runs in RAID 0 has WAY better performance than a single high capacity SSD
Price : Friggin $1200
Cons :
For me, it looks ugly compared to asus
intel's i7 haswell performs better than amd's A10
Other thoughts :
Not everyone fond to MSI
Memory not 8GB ? just add 1 more 8GB stick
SSD not 128 ? sell both default SSD, get a 128 SSD, 2 if you can, and run them in RAID 0.
Gonna buy this if I have the bucks :D
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