Gaming Laptop, Suggestions?

[Your Fearless Captain]

You're about to buy a "gaming" laptop before a new console generation ships.

...Gonna have a bad time...

If you really need a laptop for some reason, buy a non-gaming laptop, cheapest you can find, and save up for a gaming computer for later. There is no gaming laptop on the market, not even any high end laptop on the market, that'll deal with post-newgen console designed games.

LOLOLOLOL. Stop giving people bad advice. It'll be like 2 years at least before anything that a real gaming laptop would struggle to play, that is unless both consoles use strange processor architecture making porting nearly impossible. The Xbox 720 and the PS 4 aren't even on the horizon yet so I think that buying and laptop now would be fine.

 

[SnowBurst]

i should say i dont care about weight or battery life it isnt a problem

 

[SnowBurst]

You're about to buy a "gaming" laptop before a new console generation ships.

...Gonna have a bad time...

If you really need a laptop for some reason, buy a non-gaming laptop, cheapest you can find, and save up for a gaming computer for later. There is no gaming laptop on the market, not even any high end laptop on the market, that'll deal with post-newgen console designed games.

and i dont care about consoles i wont even buy a ps4 or 720 for years because 1) usualy 90% of the games in the first year or 2 are crap and 2) theres no bloody games for them at launch also even laptops are far more powerfull then even post gen consoles, consoles are weak simple as their designed to make money and be cheap to build while doing enough otherwise theyd all have gtx 690's and i7's in them

 

[SnowBurst]

basicly what im saying is i need a gaming laptop that has a great gpu i dont know how anything below the 680m performs so i dont know how to compare and im hesitant for nvidia because i had the older 8000 series which sucked and i have had 2 ati gpu's since and they own so i dont know whether to go ati or nvidia and which card also any site which sells laptop gpu's would be good and other components because i can upgrade the parts easily i know how to

 

[SnowBurst]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

i'd rather recommend you to get a barebone pc.

laptops tend to heat up really damn fast and the battery only lasts up to 1-2h so you have to be constantly connected to a power source.

but it looks ok.

maybe you have luck and Matthew94 comes here.
he might help you out more since my knowledge is a bit outdated.

idc for weight or heat or battery i just care about performance im hardly going to play bf3 on ultra on the train

 

[juyunseen]

I suggest a high-end Acer Aspire as a good all around laptop that can game reliably. I have a lower end one (Aspire-5552) and it plays L4D2, DayZ, Nexuiz, and Crysis (on mid/low settings)

 

[Heronblade]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

i'd rather recommend you to get a barebone pc.

laptops tend to heat up really damn fast and the battery only lasts up to 1-2h so you have to be constantly connected to a power source.

but it looks ok.

maybe you have luck and Matthew94 comes here.
he might help you out more since my knowledge is a bit outdated.

idc for weight or heat or battery i just care about performance im hardly going to play bf3 on ultra on the train

You should, for any and all gaming computers, heat is the enemy. All laptops known to man have major issues with heat dispersal (some are worse than others), it is for this reason that there are no good gaming laptops, there are some halfway decent gaming laptops that will cost you a small fortune, but even those are... unlikely to last the 5+ years you are asking for.

I assume you need a laptop for schoolwork or something similar? If so, have you looked into buying both? 200-250 pounds can purchase a basic but reliable work laptop (note: it will not be sufficient for graphic design if that is a requirement), with the remaining 750-800 pounds being more than enough for a good gaming desktop that should last quite well, particularly if you shop smart.

 

[Griffolion]

Just invest in a new laptop that has a high price and you should be sweet. The laptop I'm using right now is great for gaming and it wasn't built for it, didn't cost much either.

snipped for gaming laptops

The price . I believe Alienwares are over-priced but someone with actual technical knowledge can correct me here.

Alienware's laptops tend to be above average, though their desktops are a waste of time.

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

That MSI one is quite good looking, that looks like your best option. Not sure you'll be playing "new releases" on ultra, but you'll be doing okay for a laptop in general.

 

[SnowBurst]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

i'd rather recommend you to get a barebone pc.

laptops tend to heat up really damn fast and the battery only lasts up to 1-2h so you have to be constantly connected to a power source.

but it looks ok.

maybe you have luck and Matthew94 comes here.
he might help you out more since my knowledge is a bit outdated.

idc for weight or heat or battery i just care about performance im hardly going to play bf3 on ultra on the train

You should, for any and all gaming computers, heat is the enemy. All laptops known to man have major issues with heat dispersal (some are worse than others), it is for this reason that there are no good gaming laptops, there are some halfway decent gaming laptops that will cost you a small fortune, but even those are... unlikely to last the 5+ years you are asking for.

I assume you need a laptop for schoolwork or something similar? If so, have you looked into buying both? 200-250 pounds can purchase a basic but reliable work laptop (note: it will not be sufficient for graphic design if that is a concern), with the remaining 750-800 pounds being more than enough for a good gaming desktop that should last quite well, particularly if you shop smart.

im too old to be in school lol finished tht like 2 years ago (college) so i use the laptop for gaming wherever i am which is 90% of the time next to a plug socket but use it for research etc. heat can be combated with other methods so it isnt a problem just dont play a game all day everyday and discharge the battery every now n then and keep the airways dust free and itll be fine

 

[SnowBurst]

Just invest in a new laptop that has a high price and you should be sweet. The laptop I'm using right now is great for gaming and it wasn't built for it, didn't cost much either.

snipped for gaming laptops

The price . I believe Alienwares are over-priced but someone with actual technical knowledge can correct me here.

Alienware's laptops tend to be above average, though their desktops are a waste of time.

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

That MSI one is quite good looking, that looks like your best option. Not sure you'll be playing "new releases" on ultra, but you'll be doing okay for a laptop in general.

alienware arnt that good ull pay 1k for a i5 and gtx5 series but what i mean is, that msi i dont know if it sells in the uk and i dont know for what price with the 680m and i7 (im more concerned with the gpu then cpu)

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Well do some research on MSI's website for the laptop that fits best into your requirements, and then search that model number on Amazon etc. I'm going to be honest, if you're after a 680M model, you're going to be going above £1K very very easily.

Plus, Alienware's laptops are known best for their build quality and reliability. Unlike their desktops.

 

[Saregon]

Having had 2 gaming laptops in a row, both of which I was really happy with, and never bid me any problems (except when my first one fell on the floor and cracked the screen, I can say a couple thing.

Dell makes a killer gaming laptop if you're willing to invest a bit of money, and their customer service, in my experience, is top notch. That's where I got both of mine, the first an Inspiron something with the best insides they offered at the time, the second an XPS something which I only recently changed for a desktop, and still use from time to time(it can still run stuff like BF3 comfortably on low, despite being a couple years old).

The second; make DAMN sure you don't buy it too small, it needs to be a certain size to have room for sufficient cooling. My Inspiron was a 17" and had several air intake fans. My XPS was a 15" with only 1, and I can tell you it gets extremely hot when gaming, going beyond the point of discomfort and reaching temperatures high enough to give actual burns, which my hand can attest to after trying to touch the underside of it to lift it after playing BF3 for about an hour (and I use a fairly decent cooling pad too).

 

[SnowBurst]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

Honestly, I would wait till the new consoles come out. While pc gaming isn't technically restricted by console specs, most developers make their minimum to maximum specs based on consoles (ESPECIALLY if it's a cross platform game). That's why TONS of games right now have min/max requirements around the 8800GT and 9800GT. With the next console generation, there will be another huge jump in graphics. BUT those graphics will stay around those new requirements based on consoles. So if you can manage to wait a year, then do it.

OTHERWISE, msi is my favorite laptop company.

im not getting a console period. and whats a good msi one then? tht gt60?

 

[Denamic]

When it comes to hardware lifespan, heat cycles are murder. Meaning going from cold to hot and from hot to cold. Booting up a computer and going into a game, then shutting the computer down completely, is among the most punishing things you can do to your computer. It will literally bend your hardware out of shape, slowly breaking it. Laptops growing hotter than normal computers only makes it worse, on top of the fact that you generally boot up and shut down laptops much more often due to their mobile nature. That's in addition to overheating issues, which breaks your shit even faster. Laptops will always have a much shorter average lifespan.

For a gaming computer, don't use a laptop. The value for your money is just much lower than a normal stationary computer, unless you have money to spare. Which, judging by the fact that you have a budget, you don't.

Incidentally, that's why computers you never/rarely shut down have a longer lifespan than computers you shut down every day.

 

[SnowBurst]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

Honestly, I would wait till the new consoles come out. While pc gaming isn't technically restricted by console specs, most developers make their minimum to maximum specs based on consoles (ESPECIALLY if it's a cross platform game). That's why TONS of games right now have min/max requirements around the 8800GT and 9800GT. With the next console generation, there will be another huge jump in graphics. BUT those graphics will stay around those new requirements based on consoles. So if you can manage to wait a year, then do it.

OTHERWISE, msi is my favorite laptop company.

im not getting a console period. and whats a good msi one then? tht gt60?

I don't think you understood what I said. lol. GPU generations typically coincide with console generations, so if you wait for a new console you'll probably get a new, more sophisticated GPU archetecture and stuff. It's not about the consoles.

Anyways, honestly, I'd go for the GE60 or GE70. It's about half the price of the GT60, you really don't need a top of the line i7 for gaming (in fact an i5 would be just as good) and you'll be getting a 650 or a 660, which is good enough to play 98% of all games on ultra or high right now and it'll last you about 3 years or so (which is and SHOULD be the average life span of your laptop). So yea, it might not last you as long as you want it to, but the money you'll save will should make up the difference of having to buy a new one a little sooner.

Personally, I think a gaming laptop needs a large screen, so I'd go for the 17 inch plus. But yea.

The problem with buying the best of the best shit is that you don't know how the computer market is going to go, especially with new advances in software technology (that coincide with a new console generation release) that will put new demands on computer hardware (this is why you'd want to wait, btw. New software will make new hardware demands, and companies come out with new software when there's a new console, which correlates to computers as companies redesign their GPU's and shit for optimization with this new software). If nvidia, for example, decides to release new architecture, your computer will go out of date really quick. I'd honestly go cheaper and prepare myself for a new one in 3-4 years than invest in something that might be obsolete so soon.

i read nvidia arnt doing a 690m so itll jump straight to the 700m i spose which is in another year or so and this laptop is about to commit suicide everytime i load bf3 up god knows how i got 30fps on a 5470 mobility and 2st gen i3

 

[GeneralBob]

It appears you can get a sager NP9170 with 8gb ram, a 750gb hard drive, 128gb ssd, 2.3ghz i7, and 670m gpu for $1600 (<£1000). I've had good experiences with sager in the past; their machines are power houses, easy to clean, and have generous customer support. However, I'm unsure what their availability in the UK is and you can't mind your rig looking like it's from 1999.

Whatever you end up buying I recommend two things:
-Get a SSD, preferably in conjunction with a hard drive. On any gaming laptop a conventional hard drive will frequently be your bottleneck by a wide margin.
-Remove the battery while it's plugged in, this will dramatically increase its lifespan so when you actually need to run it without an outlet you can do so for longer than 30 minutes.

 

[chadachada123]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

I'm from the US, but for 830 USD on sale (~510 BPD), I recently got an Acer laptop with a GeForce GTX 650m graphics card (two gig dedicated memory), 6gig RAM (4+2, with four slots total, upgradable to 16gig total), and a pretty good i7 quadcore.

It's not a behemoth, but it gets a consistent 40-60 frames in all but the most insane Battlefield 3 situations on mostly-ultra settings, and well over 150 frames in Minecraft consistent.

Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215410

I'd say to use this as a bit of a baseline, to know what level you want to go to and what level I'm at for my price.

I can play pretty much every new game at damn-high or max settings with a very nice framerate, and usually with V-Sync on too. The 17 inch screen is also damn-nice.

 

[SnowBurst]

Well im looking to get a decent high end gaming laptop for around £1,000 that i can get in the UK. MSI's GT60 looked good with the 3rd gen i7 and the 680m in it, sagers NP9370 looks best atm but is like £2,000. Mainly want it to be a great gaming laptop to play new released on ultra for a while n at least be able to run latest games on low at a decent frame rate for a good 5+ years. dont know whether a 650 will cut it with a i7 not sure. I have an ati 5series in this laptop atm which has done good for a while now but its showing age with a 1st gen i3.

Bit lost as to what are good gaming laptops. Desktop is out of the question because i need a laptop.

I'm from the US, but for 830 USD on sale (~510 BPD), I recently got an Acer laptop with a GeForce GTX 650m graphics card (two gig dedicated memory), 6gig RAM (4+2, with four slots total, upgradable to 16gig total), and a pretty good i7 quadcore.

It's not a behemoth, but it gets a consistent 40-60 frames in all but the most insane Battlefield 3 situations on mostly-ultra settings, and well over 150 frames in Minecraft consistent.

Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215410

I'd say to use this as a bit of a baseline, to know what level you want to go to and what level I'm at for my price.

I can play pretty much every new game at damn-high or max settings with a very nice framerate, and usually with V-Sync on too. The 17 inch screen is also damn-nice.

looks good for the money but a 650 is pushing it for longevity? also minecraft will run on anything lol

 

[chadachada123]

looks good for the money but a 650 is pushing it for longevity? also minecraft will run on anything lol

I can agree on a possible longevity issue, though for now at least it's well within my expectations.

As for Minecraft, hey, my last laptop was a piece of Dell shit (only three years old, too) that played Minecraft at 7-15 fps on its lowest settings. I always like mentioning that as an ego boost for myself, since I was so used to such comparably-deplorable gameplay.

 

[loc978]

Regardless of the laptop you get (I've heard Acer makes good ones lately), get a cooling pad for it. Preferably a refrigerated one with an external power supply.

Seriously, gaming laptops burn themselves up every goddamn time. If you can, find one that isn't bragging about being thin and light. Gaming hardware needs airflow, period.

...avoid Sony or HP like the plague. One tiny fan in the back of the system on one side only is not enough to cool the machine, even with a cooling pad (I type this on a "desktop replacement laptop" by HP from 2008. I can feel the video card heating up under my palm just playing flash video on this site).