MyBB Community Forums

I need some help picking out a new laptop for uni/gaming.

Currently I'm using a 2010 Dell Vostro with the following specs:

Intel i5-450m Processor @ 2.4GHz
4GB Ram
nVidia Geforce 310m (crap for casual gaming and just about anything else)


The main reason I am buying a new one is because I would like to do some casual gaming in my free time here since I don't have access to my desktop anymore (living on res). By casual gaming I mean the following to be more precise:

CSS
Killing Floor
Minecraft
Arma 2 (DayZ)
Battlefield BC2/ Battlefield 3 (pushing the limit...)
Portal 2
Skyrim
etc.

I would prefer if the games ran smooth on medium settings, for Skyrim/Battlefield it's fine if it will only run on low settings it just has to be smooth.

Budget: $900 (Willing to push it a little more if necessary)

So if you guys have any ideas be sure to throw them out!

Current Candidates:

Asus Ultrabook
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/S...11123%20CA

Toshiba Satilite
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/S...11103%20CA

Thanks!

Either will be more than enough but my worry would be if you plan on playing for a long time it will get extremely hot. So make sure you get a cooler with either one(not end all be all solution but will give you more play time).

I would go with the Asus personally.

Out of those two, I'd personally go with the Toshiba. It can be upgraded to 16GB memory if you feel the need to (which you probably shouldn't - 8GB should be plenty). It also has a superior processor that will definitely run your games. The only advantage to the Asus I see is the SSD which will make it faster to boot and launch programs, but I'd personally rather go for the Toshiba given they're equally priced.

>gaming
>laptop
>$900

There is a reason the general consensus is that laptops don't run games well, especially at the $900 price point. That being said, I doubt you'll be able to run BF3 smoothly on any settings, Skyrim you might get away with it (on low).

I would suggest looking for laptops with a GT650M GPU (see benchmarks for your games here), as it's about the bare minimum required for an enjoyable experience.

I've had good success with HP and Lenovo (Thinkpads), so those are my first recommendations, however thinkpads aren't really gaming PCs and I don't know how good HPs offerings are either.

I don't know how good Lenovo's consumer offerings are, but you could take a look at their Y-Series: here. The third one listed (59360243) is $920 (+ tax and shiping), but gives you a GT650M GPU, quad core CPU, 8GB RAM and a 1920x1080 15.4" display (although you'll have to run the games at a lower resolution, 1366x768 is just lime (lol word censoring) on anything larger than 12"). You also get a 16GB boot SSD for the OS, which will help.

On the downsides, it's going to be heavy and have poor battery life (just the nature of the beast, official specs are up to 3 hours battery life). The screen appears to be glossy. The 1TB HDD being only 5400RPM will be a bottleneck for sure (though you can upgrade to a faster one/large SSD for a reasonable price nowadays), although unless the game has a lot of loading screens you should be okay (Skyrim will likely doddle around a bit).

If you want an ultra-portable laptop, you won't be able to run your games very smoothly at reasonable settings. If you want a true-er gaming experience, you sacrifice portability and battery life.

That being said, do you still need good portability and battery life? If so, you may be better off building a cheaper gaming rig (~$600 will outpace most laptops if done properly) and putting the rest towards a netbook.

Thanks for the input so far guys, I've definitely been considering the Toshiba I'm just looking into there warranty and stuff now.

@Scoutie Yeah, I know gaming on middle class laptop is pretty stupid however I won't be doing any intense gaming, maybe 2 hours at a time and I don't expect the best I just it to preform mediocre on low settings for demanding games. As for the Lenovo, people seem to be complaining a lot about the keyboard and mouse so that might be an issue for my programming work/classes but I'll look more into it nonetheless.

Asus G74sx, I use it and it's definitely the best laptop I have owned. It is quite bulky but it makes up for it by having an Intel Core i7, GTX560M and 16GB ram.

It's very nice indeed, however it's a bit out of my price range

You can normally pick one up for ~$900, how much were you looking at spending?

(2013-01-07, 01:36 AM)Berlo Wrote: [ -> ]Asus G74sx, I use it and it's definitely the best laptop I have owned. It is quite bulky but it makes up for it by having an Intel Core i7, GTX560M and 16GB ram.

Great, that was one piece of awesomeness.
Indeed i am planning to buy one, as its for sale in Amazon.com.
link : click

---

@jessie : check this : link

(2013-01-06, 04:54 PM)Scoutie44 Wrote: [ -> ]That being said, do you still need good portability and battery life? If so, you may be better off building a cheaper gaming rig (~$600 will outpace most laptops if done properly) and putting the rest towards a netbook.

^ this.

You can get a netbook or tablet to surf the net etc.....

You want a desktop to game.