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Gamer-approved laptop recommendation thread

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TurkishEmperor said:
Does gaf have experience with Sony Vaio Z? If so, how's the gaming on it?

I have the old but sexy FW series from 2008, I cant even run Tribes Ascend properly on low settings at 720p.
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The 2012 Z no longer offers discrete graphics as an upgrade option. If you will be gaming only in one place, the dock is a valid option. Most people won't drag a dock with them, defeating the purpose of an Ultrabook, so if you will be gaming on the go the Z is not a valid option. Then there are the hardcore guys who mod the Z for eGPU support, those guys are crazy but more power to them!

My review of the 2012 S is just a short ways back. If you flash the hacked OC BIOS you will get performance similar to a GT 650M w/DDR3 in a slim and light machine. It's not an Ultrabook but <1" thick and 4.4 lbs is nothing to laugh at even in the Ultrabook age.
 
Nerdy Fergy said:
Do you mean the NP63x0 models? I see the 17" is shipping soon. Price/feature wise it seems like a good deal. The 660m seems like it would be a pretty decent card for me as well.
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Oh snap, didn't know Sager had it for preorder already. Yup, that's the one. There's also a 15" version lingering, the W350ET.

Clevo really sprung these out of nowhere, as there was no advertisement or press release for these new models; it's like Clevo is actively improving the deficiencies of their line, within months of launch.

In these designs, they've included the Holy Grail: a manual graphic switching option! You can let Optimus do its thing, or you can push the switch (on the left, under the power button). Just with the inclusion of that, the 6165 and 6167 have become obsolete. It's kinda sick.

You can bet the farm on the NP9150/9170 successors having manual switching as well, which is why I hit the brakes on my order, and will just wait until that line appears in Q1 of 2013.
 
Pulled the trigger on a y580 last week. It came out to $1099.00 which is more than I was looking to spend.

Processor
3rd generation Intel Core i7-3610QM Processor( 2.30GHz 6MB)

Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GTX660M GDDR5 2GB

Memory
8.0GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600 MHz

As long as I can play The Witcher 2 at medium at a decent frame rate I'll be a happy camper. They are currently going for under $1000 so I wish i waited but the shipping time is a bitch.
 
K.Jack said:
Oh snap, didn't know Sager had it for preorder already. Yup, that's the one. There's also a 15" version lingering, the W350ET.

Clevo really sprung these out of nowhere, as there was no advertisement or press release for these new models; it's like Clevo is actively improving the deficiencies of their line, within months of launch.

In these designs, they've included the Holy Grail: a manual graphic switching option! You can let Optimus do its thing, or you can push the switch (on the left, under the power button). Just with the inclusion of that, the 6165 and 6167 have become obsolete. It's kinda sick.

You can bet the farm on the NP9150/9170 successors having manual switching as well, which is why I hit the brakes on my order, and will just wait until that line appears in Q1 of 2013.
Click to expand...

Huh. My VAIO S has a Speed/Stamina switch which does exactly that. Set the switch to Stamina and the dGPU is disabled, set it to Speed and the dGPU is enabled and controlled by Optimus. Nothing new to see here.

Apple copied the chiclet keyboard design from Sony too back in the day, now everyone thinks Apple invented chiclet keyboards. Sager/Clevo didn't invent the manual switch, VAIO S series notebooks have had it for several years now.
 
So I've got a GT 650M 1GB GDDR5 card in this thing. How far can I overclock it? And what utility should I use? Nvidia inspector is showing this

jOUWy.png


Should I even worry about that boost field? Anyway, no idea what I'm doing here.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Huh. My VAIO S has a Speed/Stamina switch which does exactly that. Set the switch to Stamina and the dGPU is disabled, set it to Speed and the dGPU is enabled and controlled by Optimus. Nothing new to see here.

Apple copied the chiclet keyboard design from Sony too back in the day, now everyone thinks Apple invented chiclet keyboards. Sager/Clevo didn't invent the manual switch, VAIO S series notebooks have had it for several years now.
Click to expand...

Where in there did I say this was an amazing innovation? It's just the first being machine released by Clevo in which one is installed.

High-end gaming notebook enthusiasts have been dreading the arrival of Optimus for years, and machines without manual switches have that as a major negative. So Clevo releasing a machine with a switch, just months after releasing flagships lacking such, is a big deal going forward.

DrBo42 said:
So I've got a GT 650M 1GB GDDR5 card in this thing. How far can I overclock it? And what utility should I use? Nvidia inspector is showing this

Should I even worry about that boost field? Anyway, no idea what I'm doing here.
Click to expand...
You can push it to 1000MHz on the core.
 
K.Jack said:
Where in there did I say this was an amazing innovation? It's just the first being machine released by Clevo in which one is installed.

High-end gaming notebook enthusiasts have been dreading the arrival of Optimus for years, and machines without manual switches have that as a major negative. So Clevo releasing a machine with a switch, just months after releasing flagships lacking such, is a big deal going forward.


You can push it to 1000MHz on the core.
Click to expand...

So 1000MHz for the GPU clock section? My 6175 has a UMA/Optimus switch too btw.

Edit: Nvidiainspector maxes out at 880mhz on the GPU clock for me. Should I be using a different program?
 
I was wondering... let's say I choose to have a 670M in my laptop. Why should I get the 9150 over the 9130? It seems like I'd be paying 200$ more for only a backlit keyboard.
 
DrBo42 said:
Hah, I was actually just read that when you posted it. I'm able to get into P5 and adjust up to 4000 (which is insane) but when I attempted to even reach 1000 it doesn't change the GPU Clock field. Maybe I need to mess with the config somewhere?
Click to expand...

When the card under load, does the GPU-Z Sensors tab register the new clock settings?
Giard said:
I was wondering... let's say I choose to have a 670M in my laptop. Why should I get the 9150 over the 9130? It seems like I'd be paying 200$ more for only a backlit keyboard.
Click to expand...
Well, the cost can really be split 50/50, between the keyboard and larger PSU. I believe the 9150 also has a 'soft-touch' finish.

These are the merits of the 6150 to the 670M user: the backlit keyboard is completely incompatible with the 9130, so you get one shot at it, and if you ever plan to upgrade GPUs, you'll have to buy a second and more expensive PSU at that time anyway.

I also hear that some people hate how the 9150's touchpad is coated in that same rubberized material as the rest of the notebook.
 
Flyguy said:
I'm looking to get a laptop for my son. He'll be wanting to do some gaming on it, but I don't want to spend too much money on laptop for a 13-year old. My budget is about $700. I was looking at this one http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0395057. Can I do better with my budget, or if it's a good machine get something comparable for less money?
Click to expand...

On Newegg, the same one is $50 cheaper and the 15.6" version is $100 cheaper.

For a 13 y.o., I'd take the cheapest option.
 
Is there any nice, small guide to video cards? nothing too extensive, or even extremely accurate, but something that lets you see whats in average better than something else. I hate how video card makers add letters and stuff like it that only confuse, they should limit themselves to numbers when naming them.
 
mantidor said:
Is there any nice, small guide to video cards? nothing too extensive, or even extremely accurate, but something that lets you see whats in average better than something else. I hate how video card makers add letters and stuff like it that only confuse, they should limit themselves to numbers when naming them.
Click to expand...

Have you seen NotebookCheck?

Flyguy said:
Thanks for the feedback. Is this gamer-approved? I'm unfamiliar with the brand, and out of the loop when it comes to specs.
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The i5 + 630M is fine for 720p and medium/high settings on most modern games. To do better, you have to spend $900.
 
Hello laptop Gaf.

I have about £1000 for a new gaming laptop.

I could use some advice. I'm hoping to get an i7 processor, 1 TB hard drive, 8gb of RAM and a GTX 660m for the price. Is that realistic?

Where is a reliable place to buy a laptop. The ones on Amazon don't seemed geared towards gaming. Should I go for a Dell or something else?
 
I'm at a loss. The Sager NP9170 with the AMD Radeon HD 7970M I just got (the second one as the first had constant blue screens and a stuck pixel) is stuck on the Starting Windows screen every time I try to install my display adapter driver, the one on the packaged disc. This is just the initial set it up, I haven't done anything except install windows and try to install the drivers. I can install the chipset driver (afterwards I reboot, but it is able to get past the Starting Windows screen and onto my desktop), but when try to install the AMD VGA display adapter, it goes through the installation, I reboot and it hangs once the Windows logo forms. I've done clean system wipes and every time when I get to installing that driver and reboot it freezes at the logo.
 
Right now, the M17x is the way to go if you want a 7970M.

Clevo and Sager have some bugs to work out.
tea_and_crumpets said:
Hello laptop Gaf.

I have about £1000 for a new gaming laptop.

I could use some advice. I'm hoping to get an i7 processor, 1 TB hard drive, 8gb of RAM and a GTX 660m for the price. Is that realistic?

Where is a reliable place to buy a laptop. The ones on Amazon don't seemed geared towards gaming. Should I go for a Dell or something else?
Click to expand...

Check out PCSpecialist
 
Unknown Soldier said:
Stop buying a laptop with ATI.

Seriously. Return it and get the one with the GTX 680M.
Click to expand...

K.Jack said:
Right now, the M17x is the way to go if you want a 7970M.

Clevo and Sager have some bugs to work out.
Click to expand...

I'm not attached to either brand of card or laptop at all. I went with the combination at the suggestion of people earlier in the thread when I asked. If there really isn't any fix then that's unfortunate, I'll send it in and get a refund.
 
Ya know what, strike what I just said from the record.

The issue is not exclusive to Sager/Clevo, as the Alienware has problems too.

It's simply an Enduro problem. Just like Nvidia, with the early implementation of Optimus, AMD is running into issues.

The difference between the Clevo and AW machines, is that the M17x allows you to manually disable the integrated graphics, running directly off of the 7970M and thus bypassing Enduro. But with Enduro enabled you are still likely to run into problems.

Both Alienware and Clevo-derivative owners are being told that a fix is coming.

Obviously, the way to altogether avoid the troubles, is to pay extra for the GTX 680M, which is sailing along smoothly under the winds of Nvidia's now more mature Optimus, in its 2012 developed 2.0 iteration.
 
Could anyone give input on how Win 7 running via boot camp on the new Mac Book Pro (or older) performs? I want to play Steam games and still be able to use the dedicated Nvidia card with full hardware-acceleration and use virtualization.

I looked at the instructions and it looks like a dual boot, but I want to make sure the boot camp drivers give access to the full hardware.
 
K.Jack said:
Ya know what, strike what I just said from the record.

The issue is not exclusive to Sager/Clevo, as the Alienware has problems too.

It's simply an Enduro problem. Just like Nvidia, with the early implementation of Optimus, AMD is running into issues.

The difference between the Clevo and AW machines, is that the M17x allows you to manually disable the integrated graphics, running directly off of the 7970M and thus bypassing Enduro. But with Enduro enabled you are still likely to run into problems.

Both Alienware and Clevo-derivative owners are being told that a fix is coming.

Obviously, the way to altogether avoid the troubles, is to pay extra for the GTX 680M, which is sailing along smoothly under the winds of Nvidia's now more mature Optimus, in its 2012 developed 2.0 iteration.
Click to expand...

Just because the Nvidia solution is more mature because it came first and was invented by Nvidia and the ATI version is a half-assed, poorly-implemented copy doesn't mean it will be that way forever. I mean, just look at the way CrossFire caught up with SLI after many years of diligent effort on ATI's part...oh wait.

The reality is that if you want a worry-free solution which is Optimus right now and probably far into the future, buy Nvidia. If you want to Enduro a painful life of endless broken promises that it will eventually one day work, buy ATI.
 
saveweyard said:
I'm looking to get a new laptop that can play modern games at medium settings. Need good portability because I'm at college and will be taking it to classes.

Was thinking about getting this:
http://shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/A6U26AV?HP-ENVY-15t-3200-Notebook-PC

Any suggestions or recommendations?
Click to expand...

The 7750M would suit your requirement, for a few years, and the Envy is a nice laptop.

I H8 Memes said:
Which of these laptops is the best one?
Click to expand...
I'd take the Dell. The Inspiron line is more reliable than all of the other low-grade crap linked there.

Unknown Soldier said:
Just because the Nvidia solution is more mature because it came first and was invented by Nvidia and the ATI version is a half-assed, poorly-implemented copy doesn't mean it will be that way forever. I mean, just look at the way CrossFire caught up with SLI after many years of diligent effort on ATI's part...oh wait.

The reality is that if you want a worry-free solution which is Optimus right now and probably far into the future, buy Nvidia. If you want to Enduro a painful life of endless broken promises that it will eventually one day work, buy ATI.
Click to expand...
Is there a comprehensible point wrapped up in here?
 
No need to escalate the argument, I appreciate both of your input. I'm just going to return this and figure out what to get in the future. I honestly don't have the money for the 680 right now so I was thinking of just going with the 675. What would be the most stable laptop to get the 675 with? At this point graphical horsepower isn't a concern and a laptop that can reliably play current games well, even at lower settings, would be fine.

I'll freely admit to being super green when it comes to gaming computers, but I've taken both laptops to a couple of friends of mine who aren't and have built their own gaming rigs and everything for years and they've said that both were borked no matter what they did to help.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
If you choose not to comprehend it, that's your own lookout. Have fun with Enduro and non-working drivers.
Click to expand...

We're on the same page though. I'm 100% against recommending Enduro at all, until AMD makes good on its promises.

I'm just saying that, if history repeats itself, they won't be "fixing it" until new laptops come out next year, with a new version of Enduro.

Beast Legacy said:
No need to escalate the argument, I appreciate both of your input. I'm just going to return this and figure out what to get in the future. I honestly don't have the money for the 680 right now so I was thinking of just going with the 675. What would be the most stable laptop to get the 675 with? At this point graphical horsepower isn't a concern and a laptop that can reliably play current games well, even at lower settings, would be fine.

I'll freely admit to being super green when it comes to gaming computers, but I've taken both laptops to a couple of friends of mine who aren't and have built their own gaming rigs and everything for years and they've said that both were borked no matter what they did to help.
Click to expand...

I'd definitely stick with the 9170 for the GTX 675M. The value is great.

The 7970M and 680M are massive leaps, but don't forget that the 675M is a downclocked desktop GTX 560 Ti, and is very accepting of overlocking.
 
I'm looking for a laptop/notebook/whatever and have 4 real requirements:
- Has place for a 2nd drive (SSD)
- Capable of 1080P/720P video playback without heating up so much that it increases noise significantly.
- 13"-15,6"
- Plays CIV V (doesn't need to be on high, I have my desktop for that)

The 2nd drive part seems to be problem for me because I really have no idea what laptops have space for such a thing.
 
K.Jack said:
We're on the same page though. I'm 100% against recommending Enduro at all, until AMD makes good on its promises.

I'm just saying that, if history repeats itself, they won't be "fixing it" until new laptops come out next year, with a new version of Enduro.
Click to expand...

Oh okay. Sometimes I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not TBH. My point was that ATI frequently makes promises to fix things and fails to do so, with CrossFire as a given example. They've been talking about improving CrossFire for years but it's still full of micro-stutter and many games just don't work with it because they don't have profiles and never will. Nvidia SLI has constantly been improved over the years, is generally stutter-free except at very low framerates, and works wonderfully even with games not specifically supported by an Nvidia official profile because you can create custom SLI profiles and change low-level settings to optimize them.

Optimus is implemented as a combination of hardware and software. Any software bugs, and there were many when Optimus was introduced, can be fixed with new drivers (and generally have been). Any limitations of how Optimus was implemented in your specific laptop's hardware obviously will always be there. I don't know of any specific cases where there was an unfixable hardware bug in Optimus though.
 
Is that Vaio S13 640m LE overclock mentioned a page ago really putting it close to the 650m's performance range?

Reading some benchmarks of the S13, the games performance is notably worse than, say, the w110er. It's getting anywhere from 10 to 20 fewer frames per second. Obviously it's not all on the GPU, since the w110er has quad core configs. Right now I'm leaning towards the w110er, but the vaio s13p is a bit more and for it you get a bigger and higher res screen, thinner body, and blu-ray drive. I wish Clevo made a solid 13 inch laptop with the w110er's power and then I'd be set.
 
It runs exactly the same as a GT 650M with DDR3. Remember that the GTX 660M, GT 650M, GT 640M, and GT 640M LE are all the same Kepler GPU (GK107). The only difference is the core clock and the type of memory used. If you get a GT 650M with GDDR5 you will gain anywhere from 10-40% more performance depending on how fillrate-intensive the game is. At higher resolutions (1080p+) the GPU with GDDR5 will really pull away from the GPU with DDR, especially if you start stacking AA.

Some manufacturers pair DDR3 with GT 650M, others use GDDR5. Clevo/Sager w110er pairs GT 650M with DDR3, so the BIOS-modded S13 will perform identically to it. The S13 has a higher resolution screen though so that will impact performance obviously compared to the w110er if you run games at native resolution on both.
 
Just brought the following for £899 (10% off specail deal and already down from £1200).

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-v3-571g-17-3-laptop-14893762-pdt.html

Intel i7 3610QM processor
16 GB DDR3 RAM
1.5 TB HDD (5,400 RPM)
Geforce GT650M
4x Blu-Ray Player

Would of liked to get a slightlt more powerful graphics card, but I dont think the extra £150 or so was worth it for a 670m.

Will I gain much performance from 16GB of RAM or are most games locked out at 8GB?
 
tea_and_crumpets said:
Just brought the following for £899 (10% off specail deal and already down from £1200).

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-v3-571g-17-3-laptop-14893762-pdt.html

Intel i7 3610QM processor
16 GB DDR3 RAM
1.5 TB HDD (5,400 RPM)
Geforce GT650M
4x Blu-Ray Player

Would of liked to get a slightlt more powerful graphics card, but I dont think the extra £150 or so was worth it for a 670m.

Will I gain much performance from 16GB of RAM or are most games locked out at 8GB?
Click to expand...
Games don't even strain 4GB yet, so 16GB is just a comical amount to have in a machine which is primarily for gaming.

If there's a significantly cheaper SKU w/ less RAM, I'd take it.

Wazzim said:
I'm looking for a laptop/notebook/whatever and have 4 real requirements:
- Has place for a 2nd drive (SSD)
- Capable of 1080P/720P video playback without heating up so much that it increases noise significantly.
- 13"-15,6"
- Plays CIV V (doesn't need to be on high, I have my desktop for that)

The 2nd drive part seems to be problem for me because I really have no idea what laptops have space for such a thing.
Click to expand...
Country?
 
K.Jack said:
Games don't even strain 4GB yet, so 16GB is just a comical amount to have in a machine which is primarily for gaming.

If there's a significantly cheaper SKU w/ less RAM, I'd take it.
Click to expand...

Will it be useful for anything in particular - for example running games and keeping I-tunes and Chrome up and running in the background (or is this also processor intensive)?
 
You need to be running VMs or rendering huge video or 3D modeling projects to use 16GB of RAM. As he says, that's a comical amount of RAM for something like iTunes, Firefox/Chrome, and games.
 
Need insight. Bro's picking a laptop. He found very similarly specced laptops, only differing in GPUs.
1) 640M DDR3
2) 640M LE DDR5 (+$60)

The difference is that #2 has a slower core clock, but better memory clock. I cannot find any benchmark comparing the two. Is it worth the extra $60?
 
Hi all. Looking for some recommendations for a relatively inexpensive laptop for a friend that can do some basic gaming. She's been stuck with one of those 10-inch Netbooks for the past couple of years, so anything is going to be a significant improvement over that.

Basically, based on what she's looking for, looking for something that can play Portal 2 (and some other Steam games), Left 4 Dead 2, and Diablo 3, on low-ish settings (minimum settings if need be, as long as they work alright). Doesn't have to be anything too fancy, just enough to run them and for it to not be horrible. And, probably something in the 14-15.6" size range.

Not quite sure of what exactly is needed to be able to pass that relatively low threshold though, in particular on the graphics card end (seems like something an integrated video card might be able to handle, but don't know too much about that). Don't think it would take too much, but don't want to go with a super-cheap laptop and have it not be able to do them at all. But, as long as it can manage that, whatever's the cheapest way to go for that, since, don't really have too much money, but, the netbook hasn't been the most fun thing, and would like to move on from that.

Oh, and US for country, if that helps too.
 
Just want to thank the denizens of this thread for making me aware of the new(ish) Sager Ivy Bridge laptops. I got mine and really enjoy it. Well I did enjoy it until I got a BSOD, restarted, then got a disk read error and couldn't boot to Windows anymore. I'm working with Xotic to get it fixed right now, just sucks to be without a laptop again. :(
 
K.Jack said:
Can I get a least a ballpark on where the budget stands?
Click to expand...

Hoping for under $500 (hoping that's realistic..). I mean, if we could do something for closer to $300 that would be fabulous, but understand that probably isn't possible (although if it is, hey, that's great). So, as cheap as possible while still being able to at least manage those couple of things, but understanding that we can't go ultra-cheap like last time and ending up with a netbook which can't do much of anything, and realizing that we may have to go a bit higher.
 
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