I need a gaming laptop

Hakoria

Laon King

Location: gmt+1

Joined: Apr 03 2011

Acer Aspire brand with i5/i7 does a good job from what I've been told, runs most games on high gfx settings.

musenji

Joined: Feb 02 2010

Six of these ten are significantly under 2k:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2020688,00.asp

try googling "gaming laptop"? I mean there ARE forums where this is ALL they talk about. :D

Overall, what I've heard is that people recommend the higher-end quad core AMD processors, with discrete graphics instead of integrated in the CPU. Everywhere I've looked, people keep saying that having discrete graphics is crucial.

PS, I'm not going to disparage i7s though, for sure. But I personally don't know.

Ennea

humhum..

Location: Germany

Joined: Apr 09 2010

2000$ ? You can get an Alienware laptop for that :O

Lemoncobbler

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Location: SoCal

Joined: Dec 22 2010

CpxAzn said

http://www.xoticpc.com/force-16f3-msi-16f3-p-4346.html?wconfigure=yes

http://www.xoticpc.com/force-16f2012-msi-16f2-p-3376.html?wconfigure=yes

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9150-clevo-p150em-p-4341.html?wconfigure=yes

Yes, I know, you have never heard of them, and you have been missing out.

Considering i've never heard of alienware, asus, and half the shit on bhaels link, you shouldn't be surprised I have never heard of them.
I have been living under a modern game free rock

Giogiogio4

For all the dreamers: Our planet's dream is not over yet...

Joined: Jun 10 2010

I had an Asus, forgot the model but it had the lighting Gfx on the back.

I got it "refurb" ( meaning any issues I would of had with it new were fixed ) And it cost me 700 bucks on Tigerdirect.com. Ran everything on max'ed out settings and even "crysis" on very high. Loved the thing, it even had a 2nd slot to hold another hard drive and ran 64 bit windows 7 ( so you could upgrade the ram whenever you could afford 4 or 8gb laptop sticks XD.

"also 8gb ram (This you will definitely need for your art programs)."

Since when? if you have a decent graphic card, Unless your running Video editing stuff like After effects is hardly needed. I used my 4Gbs just fine and I had the biggest project files in the entire degree program. photoshop, and AI and everything else in that category run just fine on normal systems. i even run them on my NETBOOK, that lacks a graphic card and only has 2 gbs of ram. Hell even my 3d sculpting software works fine.

musenji

Joined: Feb 02 2010

I just purchased a cheap-end ASUS and am very happy with it. One plus is that they make all their own parts.

Some of the ones in the link I posted ARE alienware. :-)

Ennea

humhum..

Location: Germany

Joined: Apr 09 2010

musenji said

Do you mean my link? I don't see a post by bhael.

Damn ninjas!

Giogiogio4

For all the dreamers: Our planet's dream is not over yet...

Joined: Jun 10 2010

Jacob31593 said

64bit OS + only 4gb ram = you crazy gio

you realize most and Allot "graphic design" studios still old computers right? A few colors, pictures and logos don't really take up much ram. It's video editors and intense 3d studios who are the hogs. And that primarily comes into play when they are rendering and previewing their work.

There's no real need to update every time adobe makes a new CS version, Hell I know an awesome designer who still uses the old photoshops before CS. And Most games run fine with 4 GBs of ram, Consoles have like 500mb, 200mb if your a ps3 user. It's the graphic card that takes the most of the work. Unless u want to bump of the Res to a retarded amount thats waay past your laptop screen and throw a billion shadows on everything then yes you will need 40 GBs of ram to play a game that runs fine at settings better then consoles with 4gbs.

Lemoncobbler

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Location: SoCal

Joined: Dec 22 2010

musenji said

Lemoncobbler said

Considering i've never heard of alienware, asus, and half the shit on bhaels link,

Do you mean my link? I don't see a post by bhael.

I-I'm going crazy... HELP ME

fatalfable

Location: New York, New York City

Joined: May 13 2009

to giogio: don't really know much about the art programs but when using some higher end music producing programs and using high quality vst's unless you have enough power & memory to run them the quality drops significantly. Also some programs use just alot of ram at once and if you wanted to use several programs at the same time the extra ram would be useful. I don't know that much about computers but I am more than happy with mine :D

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

Actually, you can generally get the same quality audio with less RAM. But what happens is, it gets really slow, and you have to freeze lots of tracks and do offline renderings (esp. with how big sample libraries have gotten), which can really detract from your workflow.

I'd definitely get 16GB in a new computer for audio work.

CpxAzn

Lurker

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Joined: Sep 21 2007

Lemoncobbler said

I don't think i'm quite ready to enter the next dimension, to be completely honest.
My friend got this laptop about two months ago, I got to see it for the first time yesterday
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Gaming_Powerhouse/G74SX/#specifications
He was running crisis 2 on ultra settings, looked absolutely amazing, technology man.
my favorite part of him showing it off was when he was playing it without it being unplugged, then he got the pop-up that said "You have two minutes of battery time left, time to plug in" And then it died within ten seconds. Good thing I don't ever use laptops away from an outlet.
I'd be very interested in buying a laptop similar to this one, except really though, you guys are confusing me, how much ram should I get? I'll be using this for gaming, 3d modeling, and really large photoshop files. (my friends was 12gb of ram.)

Those laptops I posted are faster than that laptop =)

Minus the 3D though. I have a 3D monitor and I never use the functionality just because it's not practical and gives you headaches. It is cool for the first few days though.

EDIT: About that battery life, I have a slightly older revision of that force/msi laptop, and when I am not gaming, the battery lasts 3-4 hours, which is good for a gaming laptop.

EDIT2: Forgot to mention, I had a 15" version of that ASUS laptop (G53SW), and the force laptop's audio blew the ASUS away because it has a built in subwoofer. Also, the webcam is 720p so it's better for recording :D

musenji

Joined: Feb 02 2010

...I've heard (perhaps from Auri, maybe elsewhere though, I forget for sure) that computer-turnover-rate is estimated to be much slower than it used to be--more like 5 years, instead of the old (late 90's through mid 00's) standard of 18 months. However, that may only apply to "standard use" as opposed to the kind of high-end gaming you're looking at, as graphics seem to just keep getting better.

Uh, this is kinda random. Oh well. I figure maybe it'll make you a little bit less nervous about the purchase?

Its times like this I really wish I knew more about computers hahaa.

PS, much less random: do more research then! I just recently purchased a laptop, and am incredibly happy with my purchase, partially because I spent so much time learning about what was out there. The best advice I can give you is to find a place where this is the main subject of discussion--Tom's Hardware Forum was a great resource for me. I currently forget the others but if you simply google "gaming laptop" and read everything you can find, you'll learn a ton. The more you learn, the more you'll know about what you're really looking for, based on what's out there.

fatalfable

Location: New York, New York City

Joined: May 13 2009

auriplane said

Actually, you can generally get the same quality audio with less RAM. But what happens is, it gets really slow, and you have to freeze lots of tracks and do offline renderings (esp. with how big sample libraries have gotten), which can really detract from your workflow.

Quality was the wrong word. What you stated was what I was referring to.

All I can say is that you should be spending money on a computer that will be able to handle today's and the future's demands.