Poll: Gaming Laptops

[Angerwing]

I got my HP Pavilion DV6-3016AX for $800 Australian. It has the AMD Phenom II x4 N930, 2.0ghz in a quad core, 4gb DDR3 RAM, 500gb Hard Drive, and an ATI Radeon 5650 1gb graphics card. It's got a 1080i screen, and it performs like a fucking champ.

Don't tell me you can't get a powerful laptop for cheap.

 

[brumby]

true. you don't need a desktop to run games. but once you do you'll never buy a gaming laptop.

I like my setup. $1500 Desktop and $500 old arse macbook.

If you get a gaming laptop, its normally far too heavy, far too cumbersome and with a pretty shit battery life.

Have you looked into netbooks?

 

[brumby]

I got my HP Pavilion DV6-3016AX for $800 Australian. It has the AMD Phenom II x4 N930, 2.0ghz in a quad core, 4gb DDR3 RAM, 500gb Hard Drive, and an ATI Radeon 5650 1gb graphics card. It's got a 1080i screen, and it performs like a fucking champ.

Don't tell me you can't get a powerful laptop for cheap.

I have to ask. Where did you get it?? I havn't seen that model for under $1100

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Nowadays there is no reason to buy a desktop. The prices for just the hardware is pretty close counting a monitor.

I have http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/us/en/pclc/articles/series-hdx-notebook-pc.html the hdx 18 with the 18.4 inch monitor. The thing is huge but the performance is awesome.

Not sure it is crisis capable but it played everything else at full 1080 without flinching.

 

[Colonel Alzheimer's]

Am I being retarded because I won't have time to game in college?

No, you will definitely have time to game in college.

On topic, while it's true that desktops are hugely superior to laptops for gaming, it is also not necessary to have a top-of-the line gaming machine to get a great gaming experience. The latest and greatest video card is generally overkill: dropping your games to "medium" graphics and tweaking some of the bloom, lighting and filtering effects will go a long way towards getting even the newest games to run smoothly on a mid-range machine. This is especially important when you consider that you'll be limited to the screen size and resolution of a laptop, rather than (let's say) a 24" LCD monitor...

First off, thanks for answering the question about gaming in college, glad to know I'm not wasting my time by looking.
Secondly, your views reflect what a decent number of people of saying, and I agree with you that I won't need some kind of crazy NASA computer to game, I will be in college after all. For that reason I'm kind of leaning towards a laptop, as I've heard some great recommendations for laptops that fit my budget and make sense to me. Buying a desktop and a netbook is an interesting proposition, but I'm not sure I couldn't just get a laptop for that price anyhow.
Anyway, some great advice from everyone so far, keep it coming please!

 

[Apocralyptic]

For all you folks recommending this person get a desktop... I agree in theory, but keep in mind that he said he's only played console games up until now... sure, you need a top-of-the-line desktop to play the newest stuff, but there's plenty of older games that will run great on a laptop. Hell, if you've never played the original Xcom, start with that and work your way to the present

 

[Ironic Pirate]

"gaming Laptop" is an oxymoron, don't do it.

DESKTOP!!

According to Can You Run It, my laptop can run Crysis. Either it's inaccurate, or New Egg is awesome.

 

[Colonel Alzheimer's]

For all you folks recommending this person get a desktop... I agree in theory, but keep in mind that he said he's only played console games up until now... sure, you need a top-of-the-line desktop to play the newest stuff, but there's plenty of older games that will run great on a laptop. Hell, if you've never played the original Xcom, start with that and work your way to the present

That's completely true. I've got a lot of catching up to do. A friend of mine really wants me to get in to WoW, I really want to play Civ 5 when it comes out, and I'd love to play Dragon Age on the PC, but other than that I'll probably play a bunch of older games, like Fallout 1 and 2 or X-Com or whatever people here have said in the kajillion threads about what old games are good.

 

[TMAN10112]

From what I've seen, gaming laptops aren't too overpriced anymore, so if you really must have one keep two things in mind; Do your research (read reviews, compare the specs VS prices of laptops within your price range), and you will pay hundreds of dollars more for a laptop VS an equivalent desktop.

Alternativly, if you're worried about the space it takes up rather than mobility, you could always configure your own Fragbox PC. It's still going to cost you more part-for-part than a desktop, but you'll certainly get more for your money compared to a laptop.

P.S. Newegg seems to have a good selection of laptops, so you might want to start there.

 

[zakski]

Im going into my third year of college, I have a gaming laptop, no real complaints with it, just gotta remember to treat the battery right

 

[Continuity]

"gaming Laptop" is an oxymoron, don't do it.

DESKTOP!!

Incorrect.
http://www.gateway.com/gaming/pseries.php

"gaming Laptop" is an oxymoron, don't do it.

DESKTOP!!

According to Can You Run It, my laptop can run Crysis. Either it's inaccurate, or New Egg is awesome.

Yes yes, you can game on gaming laptops and some of them even have reasonable specs, however that is entirely not the point. A laptop will always be inferior in performance and in the gaming experience it provides to a similarly priced desktop, and what's more the desktop will be fully upgradable and will likely last longer.

In summary only get a gaming laptop if a desktop is out of the question for some reason, the only time a gaming laptop is likely to be preferable is in the following scenarios:

1) You are a casual gamer.

2) you live in a box and have no space for a desktop.

3) you are a twat who cares more about form than function.

4) you "need" to be able to game in multiple locations.

 

[Croaker42]

I'd say save your money; buy an Asus laptop instead. They're damn good quality for the price.

I have an Asus N81-vg right now. It has an Nvidia GT 120M 1gb graphics card, a 2.4ghz dual core processor, and 4gb of RAM. Runs most newer games on at least medium settings. And this is a year old. It cost me $1000 USD! So you can get something even better.

I have been shoping around for a "gaming' laptop for a while and have to agree Asus or Acer is the way to go.
This one uses an i5 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU. Not
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220751 (Not bad for $800 USD)
Depending on what you think you need you could probably go down as far as $700 USD

 

[The Shade]

Yeah - the Macbook Pro, bootcamping Windows 7.

It has the Victor Lucas seal of approval, and mine, too!

 

[superbatranger]

I'd say save your money; buy an Asus laptop instead. They're damn good quality for the price.

Amen to that.
I have an Asus N10J netbook and I'm playing Half Life 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, Call of Duty 4, and more...on a netbook (with just a little bit of overclocking). It's freaking awesome. I love my netbook.
Asus is awesome, stick with them
And don't buy form a big-box store, whatever you buy. Order from the manufacturer.
Big box = cheaper price = cheaper parts = shittier warranty = a brick in a year or two.

On a netbook? Damn, I always thought those tiny little hunks of plastic wouldn't be good for gaming.

I'm actually planning on buying a new laptop when I go back home for Christmas. I was going to get a desktop, but right now it's not worth the hassle, since I'm going to be flying back to Costa Rica afterwards. I've decided to wait until I move back home to finish college before getting a desktop. I know that for the time being a new laptop will do just fine.

 

[Denizen]

Im using an asus n80vm. I got it last year in the middle of summer for a price of about $770 and it out-performed most laptops that were priced at $1100. It all depends how far you look into what a laptop offers vs. price.

You're budget will go a long way since I had to convince my "budget-providers" that I wouldn't just use it for gaming and also the budget was originally at $600 .

The only thing I did to "upgrade" it was installing windows 7. Since then, no problems have arisen. From what I've seen and also from what other friends have experienced, Asus is a really good brand. My friend just bought a (rough estimate) $1000 machine (asus) and it again outperformed the others in it's price range above (to what end i forgot already).

 

[vf501]

ASUS G60JX

Core i5 2.26 GHz
nVidia GTX360 1GB(equal to a desktop 9800GT)
4GB RAM
320GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
1366x768 Res Screen

999.99$ USD
899.99$ USD for the G60VX (if you can find it)

Awesome laptop. I have its older brother the G60VX which is C2D 2.13GHz instead. Main heat exhaust is side mounted on the left for the GPU. GPU hits 80C under full load in games like BFBC2 or Mass Effect2, but is still in safe operating temperature. Screen Res is a bit low, but its a 16" laptop so it's not too bad and it retains a good level of portability.

The G60VX with a bit of OCing (temps hit 75C max underload stable at 2.4GHz) through SetFSB can handle BFBC2 and GTA IV on medium/low settings avg 30-40 FPS. The G60JX will handle both of those fine due to it being Hyperthreaded.

Only issue I had was a keyboard failure, but I found a replacement on eBay for 20$ and ASUS sells replacements for 55$

For its price its a good mix of power and portability. A desktop though still gives more bang for the buck.

EDIT: Forgot to add. A 600$ midlevel laptop is fine though for normal school work and light gaming. Only go the 1000$ route if you're going to be away from your living space for hours on end. I take plenty of computer and graphics classes, so the G60VX was good to get work started/done between classes and then transfer to desktop to finish it up.

 

[Macgyvercas]

"gaming Laptop" is an oxymoron, don't do it.

DESKTOP!!

This. More power, more graphics, more RAM...Desktops rule!

I mean, there are laptops that will do the job, but if you want an optimal gaming experience, desktop is the way to go.

 

[Freshman]

Well, as a recently inducted collegiate, i believe i can lend you some advice. I got a laptop, which was fine for me because it ran SC2 and SC1 and those are basically the extent of my PC games, However, the only time its mobility has come in handy is when i want to go play SC2 in the really well air conditioned building, other than that, get a desktop. (i don't recommend laptops for class notes either, they dont fit on the little fold up desks, and they get pretty hot on your lap after a while)

 

[Freshman]

For all you folks recommending this person get a desktop... I agree in theory, but keep in mind that he said he's only played console games up until now... sure, you need a top-of-the-line desktop to play the newest stuff, but there's plenty of older games that will run great on a laptop. Hell, if you've never played the original Xcom, start with that and work your way to the present

I can't find a good DOS emulater, so every time i run it the "5secs" setting goes through a day in like 10 seconds. just a bit too fast.

 

[UBERfionn]

I have a gaming laptop.
It's awesome.
'Nuff said.