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Gamer-approved laptop recommendation thread
- Thread starter dLMN8R
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Ok, possibly final shortlist, appreciate the patience. Tbh the Lenovo is looking good here, and I like their new touchpad (tried out a similar ideapad today). Don't know about the clevo ergonomics. Just the odd SSD+ HDD setup, but I can fit a larger mSSD later, or reinstall windows on the included SSD if I feel the need for more speed.
- (£900) pc specialist Optimus III (clevo W150ERM/sager NP6165), i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB ram, 120GB Intel 330 SSD, 750GB WD Scorpio blue HDD, bluray reader/DVD writer, 1GB gt650m
- (£1000) Lenovo y580, i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB Ram, 1TB HDD + 64GB SSD (seems to be used as cache but I can reinstall windows on it), bluray reader/DVD writer, 2GB 660m
- (£1100) pc specialist vortex III LE (clevo P15EM/sager NP9150), i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB ram, 120GB Intel 330 SSD, 750GB WD Scorpio blue HDD, bluray reader/DVD writer, 1GB gt660m
- £1150 for a Gtx670m with 1.5GB
- £1250 for a 7970m 2GB
- (£900) pc specialist Optimus III (clevo W150ERM/sager NP6165), i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB ram, 120GB Intel 330 SSD, 750GB WD Scorpio blue HDD, bluray reader/DVD writer, 1GB gt650m
- (£1000) Lenovo y580, i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB Ram, 1TB HDD + 64GB SSD (seems to be used as cache but I can reinstall windows on it), bluray reader/DVD writer, 2GB 660m
- (£1100) pc specialist vortex III LE (clevo P15EM/sager NP9150), i7-3610qm, 15" 1920x1080 screen, 8GB ram, 120GB Intel 330 SSD, 750GB WD Scorpio blue HDD, bluray reader/DVD writer, 1GB gt660m
- £1150 for a Gtx670m with 1.5GB
- £1250 for a 7970m 2GB
So we don't actually disagree on anything right? Where we differ is that I believe one should compare current gen cards to current gen cards. Why go back to the 560Ti? Instead, we should be talking about where it stands against the 660 Ti and 670.
I still like the Lenovo.
Hard to say, because they just started doing them, but fwiw a coupon ended and a coupon ended and this new one came up within a week.
This could just be to spur initial sales, but only time will tell.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Lenovo does deals quite often. As with Dell, never pay full price for a Lenovo.
Good enough for me, I was leaning that way too
edit: ordered, should be delivered tomorrow.
even in the UK? its a new model and other than lenovo online, I've only found one place selling the same one. Dabs and ebuyer (my usual choices) show the same model number with a 3612qm and DVD writer (no bluray). Lenovo only show two skus though, so the descriptions might be wrong.
Rocket Scientist
Member
(Dutch-)GAF, how do you guys feel about Medion?
http://www.medion.com/nl/electronic.../30014012A1?category=performance_notebooks_25
Need a laptop mostly for school (3dsmax, AutoCAD and UDK). I've looked at the various online stores, but it seems hard to find a laptop with a 650m. Are there better deals out there for 900 euro's?
http://www.medion.com/nl/electronic.../30014012A1?category=performance_notebooks_25
Need a laptop mostly for school (3dsmax, AutoCAD and UDK). I've looked at the various online stores, but it seems hard to find a laptop with a 650m. Are there better deals out there for 900 euro's?
Unknown Soldier
Member
I don't know anything about how it works in the UK unfortunately. Everything I say applies only to the US.
flintstryker
Banned
So I got my y580 on Friday and so far i am very pleased with it, I am particularly impressed with how nice the keyboard feels as I generally dislike laptop keyboards. I am however thinking I should have just bit the bullet and bought the 1080p version...oh well.
When mine comes today I'll pretend all the icons and text is too small to read to make you feel better
but one upside of the lower res screen is that you should be able to play with higher detail or more AA.Any idea if 650€ is a reasonable price for a laptop with Intel Core i5-2450M and NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M, with 3GB memory (+ 1GB for the graphics card)? EDIT also, Win7 Premium, 64bit.
EDIT the model is HP DV6-7010EO
Normal prices for the model are about 750€+, apparently.
Notebookcheck's benchmarks for the graphics card were more or less adequate for me.
EDIT the model is HP DV6-7010EO
Normal prices for the model are about 750€+, apparently.
Notebookcheck's benchmarks for the graphics card were more or less adequate for me.
That's about the spec and price I got last year for my kids (i5-2410m, gt540m). So it feels a little expensive a year later. I'd try and see if you can either find an ivy bridge laptop for around the same price, or an older 2nd gen core i like that for a little less.
All the laptops with comparable prices i find here are considerable weaker (Intel HD3000 being the standard GPU...). Laptops costing around 750 are somewhat better but that's above my budget. I'll check again, but i doubt i'll find a better offer here. I just need to make the decision relatively fast because that is a sale price.
A year later, with luck, i'll be getting a proper PC, not just a laptop.
http://tech.woot.com/offers/samsung-15-6-amd-quad-core-6gb-ddr3
this thing is right in my price range if it can run quickbooks and Diablo III, the only problem is they tend to sell out real fast on Woot....so if anyone could hit me up with some quick advice I'd appreciate it
Thank you
this thing is right in my price range if it can run quickbooks and Diablo III, the only problem is they tend to sell out real fast on Woot....so if anyone could hit me up with some quick advice I'd appreciate it
Thank you
Can't find any similar laptop with similar price...
Dammit, should i bite (it's a sale so i've only a limited time to decide) or wait and hope for a similar or better offer later on?
EDIT, 50€ more and i could get a laptop that has more memory (8GB system and 2GB GPU). Otherwise practically identical. Worth it? Would still fit my budget.
EDIT THE FUCK? Different stores are giving it different specifications. WTF? Not the first laptop i was looking at but this second one. First store claims 2x4GB memory plus GPU having 2GB own memory, the second store claims 6GB memory plus 1GB for GPU.
EDIT ho, this looks good, ACER Ultrabook with Core i3-2367M and Nvidia Geforce GT 640M, 6GB memory (plus one for GPU), 20GB SSD in addition to 500GB hard drive, Win7 Premium 64bit, just for 675€. Very good... Normal price is 999€
Dammit, should i bite (it's a sale so i've only a limited time to decide) or wait and hope for a similar or better offer later on?
EDIT, 50€ more and i could get a laptop that has more memory (8GB system and 2GB GPU). Otherwise practically identical. Worth it? Would still fit my budget.
EDIT THE FUCK? Different stores are giving it different specifications. WTF? Not the first laptop i was looking at but this second one. First store claims 2x4GB memory plus GPU having 2GB own memory, the second store claims 6GB memory plus 1GB for GPU.
EDIT ho, this looks good, ACER Ultrabook with Core i3-2367M and Nvidia Geforce GT 640M, 6GB memory (plus one for GPU), 20GB SSD in addition to 500GB hard drive, Win7 Premium 64bit, just for 675€. Very good... Normal price is 999€
All I'm gonna say, my fellow laptop gaffers, is that whenever possible, upgrade your HDD to a SSD.
Just installed a Samsung 830 in my old, only sata2 capable XPS M1530 while I wait for the Precision (so not even a reformat, just copied the OS partition!) and good god, the thing fucking flies now X3
Just installed a Samsung 830 in my old, only sata2 capable XPS M1530 while I wait for the Precision (so not even a reformat, just copied the OS partition!) and good god, the thing fucking flies now X3
Unknown Soldier
Member
Yes, SSD is literally revolutionary in terms of improving performance of any computer. All my PCs at home have SSDs now, I can't imagine what life was like with HDDs anymore.
any comments on the differences between
- SSD for OS/some apps + HDD for data
- combined smaller SSD/HDD using the SSD as a cache?
my y580 has a 64GB SSD which 'caches frequently used files' to speed things up. Now in theory that sounds great. I can have my steam folder on my HDD, and if I only play one game over and over, those files should be on the SSD for fast access.
But with that size of SSD you could just install the OS on the 64GB and use the HDD for data.
Well i ended up buying a HP Pavillion dv7-7005 with Core i5-2450M, GT 630M (1 GB memory), 6GB memory, 650€ (normal price was around 750€.
Looked like a relatively good price-performance ratio, considering average prices in Finnish for similar laptops.
No SSD but not really bothered by that.
.Looked like a relatively good price-performance ratio, considering average prices in Finnish for similar laptops.
No SSD but not really bothered by that.
That is a good deal.
Spend an extra $100 to get a decent CPU and GPU, like the Acer V3 I've been suggesting.
I'll wait for Unknown Soldier to pop in, but I'm pretty certain he has that exact machine.
The GT 640M LE is a good card, especially when its overclocking potential is unlocked.
Sorry I wasn't around to advise you yesterday, so I'll just confirm for you that what you got for the price you paid is a good value.
I've got a $350 reward certificate for Dell, so I am limiting my choices to a Dell laptop with a 15" screen (17" is hilariously large).
The Inspiron 15R Special edition has the AMD Radeon HD 7730M 2GB but I've been seeing lots of reports of hardware issues and blue screens while gaming on that model.
The XPS 15 has the NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 630M with 1GB GDDR5 VRAM as an option.
Do I wait for them to resolve their issues with the 15R, or wait for a discount on the XPS 15 to get it down into my price range?
The Inspiron 15R Special edition has the AMD Radeon HD 7730M 2GB but I've been seeing lots of reports of hardware issues and blue screens while gaming on that model.
The XPS 15 has the NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 630M with 1GB GDDR5 VRAM as an option.
Do I wait for them to resolve their issues with the 15R, or wait for a discount on the XPS 15 to get it down into my price range?
If you have a 64GB (m)SATA SSD, I'd say use it as a OS and some few, heavily used software drive. The idea of cache is not bad, but it's more useful if the drive is smaller.
The 7730M is a DDR3 card, which sadly limits it's potential.
The XPS 15 has the option of a GDDR5-equipped GT 640M, but be aware that it has some throttling (apparently somewhat resolved) and wifi (still unresolved) issues.
I've been looking for a laptop during the summer. I want to know what Laptop-Gaf thinks of this notebook:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230404
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230404
flintstryker
Banned
When mine comes today I'll pretend all the icons and text is too small to read to make you feel better
Yeah that's definitely a plus.
I had that one for about 5 days before I had to trade it in due to faulty speaker. (I bought the GT70 afterwards for the same price, since they had none of the others in stock.)
But, from the 5 days I had it, it was a very good laptop and was running everything I needed it to (Diablo 3, Starcraft II, Warcraft, Battlefield 3) amazingly well. Once in a while in BF3 only did I feel it get sluggish, but other than that, no complaints about the laptop.
Very quiet too, which came as a surprise. I fully expected those fans to go crazy.
pillowpants
Neo Member
I've been looking at that laptop for the better part of a couple of months now. I actually found this model for $1206:
http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?m...id=20074624&ramid=80146322&batteryid=10130400
But I've never heard of this site before. The only difference in specs between this and the newegg model is this one has 250GB of more HDD space.
Hopefully he does, I wan't to know more about it because it seems great. Nice to know about the card too.
I'm really on the Edge about an ssd, but I feel that It would be more frugal of me to wait a while. A good old HDD should be fine for now, and I think I need the extra storage.
Can this thing take two storage drives?
Any particular one? I found them expensive for what they offer.
Wolf Dawgz
Member
Not sure where else to ask this. I'm planning on getting a laptop for university. I wouldn't mind doing some light gaming when I have to visit my parents and can't bring my desktop. My budget is under $700 CAD. Any suggestions for retailers, or laptops?
Edit: In Canada btw
Edit: In Canada btw
No problem man.
And thanks for the confirmation, removes the trace worries i had
Adjusting the OS (Win 7 64bit) to suit my needs will be annoying though. I will need to port all my passwords there, my bookmarks, copy all the important files (that is, a few hundred kilobytes of text files) from this laptop there... And then i'll need to get rid of all the extra stuff and install light anti-virus (heard MSE is good, true?) and firewall (or is Windows 7 firewall good enough?).
Oh, man, i hate computers...
EDIT oh yeah, the only thing i don't like is that the laptop i bought is 17.3" one... my brother has such a laptop and it is needlessy big. But didn't have much choice. Never keep the machine on my lap anyway so not a big issue, transporting it is going to be annoying though.
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/st...52921666457151&categoryId=8198552921644863998 this one, un-upgraded.
I had been looking exclusively at thinkpads for a long time, but I felt they lacked some things I wanted, and their price rose quickly when I upgraded them.
I had also been looking at some Asus machines, but when I found the Vaio S I feel in love. I need a slim form factor because I commute to campus. I'm also a computer science student so I'm hoping this will give me what I need. I had been thinking about the 13" version but the full 1080 ISP is such a great deal with this base model.
on a side note: the Vaio S had a deal for a free sheet battery, which as of today changed to a $150 prepaid visa card. So I guess that's a rebate of sorts. Either deal is nice for me, plus I'm a student so free Vita. The deal is almost too good for me for what I can get.
What setting were you playing Battlefield 3 on? I'm planning to use this laptop for a lot of FFXIV when that comes out. And for any other games that look interesting that I can play on the go, such as Civilization V.
Yeah it seems like they're locking into specific SKUs to layer and escalate the price. The explanation they give for 1GB vs 2GB is hilariously shameful. The extra VRAM is worthless.
Fortunately I found the detailed posts Unknown Soldier made on the notebook.
This.
I wouldn't worry about it anyway, the SSD prices are crazy. Just buy one aftermarket and upgrade yourself. Probably a good idea on a vaio to reinstall windows anyway, they come with a ton of bloatware
The price on injuran's one would buy you a quad core y580 with 660m, but it's not that slim and no free vita. I think that's a really good model and has a HDD bay + mSSD bay so you can have two drives
How do you get Steam games to run on the discrete graphics card if you have optimus? I tried running a couple of games and they're defaulting to the integrated graphics. Steam.exe is set to auto-detect (high performance Nvidia)
Don't tell me I have to dig through all the steamapps folders and guess which exe is for each game and set them manually?
Don't tell me I have to dig through all the steamapps folders and guess which exe is for each game and set them manually?
Unknown Soldier
Member
Hi guys, so you're interested in a VAIO S series.
1. Do not get the SSD upgrade from Sony, it's a huge ripoff. Buy any SSD you can get and install it yourself. Newegg has an SSD deal just about every day right now. I wouldn't buy anything made by OCZ but generally the Samsung 830 series, Crucial M4, Plextor, and Intel SSDs are regarded as being reliable. The current best option for both good speed and good reliability is the Samsung 830 series (IMHO), even Apple uses Samsung SSDs in Macbooks.
2. The BIOS mod for the GT 640M LE makes the clock speed the same as a GT 650M or better. Keep in mind the GT 640M LE uses DDR3 for VRAM, but I don't think you'll ever reach a point where even a GT 650M with GDDR5 will perform well with a bunch of AA at 1080p resolution, which is where the raw fillrate advantage of GDDR5 vs. DDR3 will be most evident.
3. You can install 2 hard drives in a VAIO S if you remove the optical drive and put the 2nd hard drive in a caddy that fits in an optical drive space. The VAIO S does not support mSATA.
3. You get the best value if you don't upgrade the RAM or HDD from the most basic option. In the US this is 4GB of RAM with an open SODIMM slot you can populate yourself with a $30 4GB DDR3-1333 stick from Newegg and a 500GB HDD you can replace with an SSD of your choice.
4. The thread at Notebook Review is huge and full of great information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...fficial-2012-sony-s-series-owners-thread.html
5. The battery life with just the built-in cell is only about 3 to 3.5 hours. If you are going to be away from a socket longer than that pretty regularly, get the sheet battery which doubles effective battery life. This of course will eliminate the laptop's advantages of thinness and lightness compared with other 15" laptops.
6. Only the 15" S series has the IPS screen. The IPS screen is still the Orangegate screen, if your work requires color accuracy in the realm of red and violet, look into the HP Envy 15. That laptop has an improved IPS screen that fixes Orangegate. The 13" S series has an ordinary TN screen and from what I hear it's not a very good one.
Final thought: I love my S15 but I have a powerful gaming desktop I use for gaming. I don't use this thing as a primary gaming laptop and it's certainly not meant to be one. Get a Sager/Clevo laptop if gaming is your primary activity. A GT 640M LE with the BIOS mod is still basically just a GT 650M w/DDR3.
1. Do not get the SSD upgrade from Sony, it's a huge ripoff. Buy any SSD you can get and install it yourself. Newegg has an SSD deal just about every day right now. I wouldn't buy anything made by OCZ but generally the Samsung 830 series, Crucial M4, Plextor, and Intel SSDs are regarded as being reliable. The current best option for both good speed and good reliability is the Samsung 830 series (IMHO), even Apple uses Samsung SSDs in Macbooks.
2. The BIOS mod for the GT 640M LE makes the clock speed the same as a GT 650M or better. Keep in mind the GT 640M LE uses DDR3 for VRAM, but I don't think you'll ever reach a point where even a GT 650M with GDDR5 will perform well with a bunch of AA at 1080p resolution, which is where the raw fillrate advantage of GDDR5 vs. DDR3 will be most evident.
3. You can install 2 hard drives in a VAIO S if you remove the optical drive and put the 2nd hard drive in a caddy that fits in an optical drive space. The VAIO S does not support mSATA.
3. You get the best value if you don't upgrade the RAM or HDD from the most basic option. In the US this is 4GB of RAM with an open SODIMM slot you can populate yourself with a $30 4GB DDR3-1333 stick from Newegg and a 500GB HDD you can replace with an SSD of your choice.
4. The thread at Notebook Review is huge and full of great information:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...fficial-2012-sony-s-series-owners-thread.html
5. The battery life with just the built-in cell is only about 3 to 3.5 hours. If you are going to be away from a socket longer than that pretty regularly, get the sheet battery which doubles effective battery life. This of course will eliminate the laptop's advantages of thinness and lightness compared with other 15" laptops.
6. Only the 15" S series has the IPS screen. The IPS screen is still the Orangegate screen, if your work requires color accuracy in the realm of red and violet, look into the HP Envy 15. That laptop has an improved IPS screen that fixes Orangegate. The 13" S series has an ordinary TN screen and from what I hear it's not a very good one.
Final thought: I love my S15 but I have a powerful gaming desktop I use for gaming. I don't use this thing as a primary gaming laptop and it's certainly not meant to be one. Get a Sager/Clevo laptop if gaming is your primary activity. A GT 640M LE with the BIOS mod is still basically just a GT 650M w/DDR3.
Beast Legacy
Member
What is the most stable driver available for a 675m? I've been getting screen flickering followed by a popup while playing on the Sager NP9170 saying "Display driver has stopped responding and has recovered." The whole machine including the speed of my mouse cursor would slow to a crawl until it would either freeze up or BSOD. I've tried the two betas on the Nvidia site (304.79 and 304.48) but they produce the same problem.
I'm able to run stuff smoothly (well, as smoothly as possible) by uninstalling the Nvidia driver and just playing on the Intel HD 4000 so it's either the Nvidia driver or the card itself. I'd want to test out any driver first before sending this in and any help would be appreciated as I haven't kept up with the driver releases for the 675m.
I'm able to run stuff smoothly (well, as smoothly as possible) by uninstalling the Nvidia driver and just playing on the Intel HD 4000 so it's either the Nvidia driver or the card itself. I'd want to test out any driver first before sending this in and any help would be appreciated as I haven't kept up with the driver releases for the 675m.
My beloved asus G73S laptop returned finally from repair!
It was still under warranty, and they had to change the motherboard and the videocard, I suspect it broke because of a heat problem, so I bought a nice cooler, but I'm not sure if its actually a good idea, given that the laptop's fans push the air horizontally, I don't know if the cooler (which cools from below) is going to help, or maybe even give the actual cooling system inside some trouble.
ok I think I might be being paranoid, I hope this cooler improves the longevity of the thing.
It was still under warranty, and they had to change the motherboard and the videocard, I suspect it broke because of a heat problem, so I bought a nice cooler, but I'm not sure if its actually a good idea, given that the laptop's fans push the air horizontally, I don't know if the cooler (which cools from below) is going to help, or maybe even give the actual cooling system inside some trouble.
ok I think I might be being paranoid, I hope this cooler improves the longevity of the thing.
My Asus (G74 model) is the one model that has never had heat problems. My screen is going, but that's because I've had to use it roughly a good bit, and it is showing it's age now.
I'm waiting to upgrade seeing if any sales are coming on G75's or maybe even N76, also wish I could get an SSD in there.
Try posting in the Notebook review Sager/Clevo forum.
No laptop battery can survive long if used gaming unplugged. Today's CPUs and GPUs draw more power than they can hope to provide.
if you get an ivy bridge laptop with discrete graphics, you might find that some games are playable enough on the integrated graphics, which would help with battery life. But if you're using the discrete graphics then keep it plugged in
dragonelite
Member
Just got my new laptop.
Intel Core i7 - 3610QM Quad Core
ATI HD7970m.
Rest is standard stuff.
Now i have to fuck around installing drivers manually because shitty driver cd doesnt support win8
Intel Core i7 - 3610QM Quad Core
ATI HD7970m.
Rest is standard stuff.
Now i have to fuck around installing drivers manually because shitty driver cd doesnt support win8
Just got my new laptop.
Intel Core i7 - 3610QM Quad Core
ATI HD7970m.
Rest is standard stuff.
Now i have to fuck around installing drivers manually because shitty driver cd doesnt support win8
Do you have Guild Wars 2? I have thought about buying a same-ish laptop for it and few other games. If you have I would appreciate what kind of performance you get.
dragonelite
Member
Sorry man cant help you really. But from what i heard a 7970m is equal to a 7870 desktop version. So im pretty sure you can max it out and still get 60fps.
But be warned AMD enduro drivers are shitty and dont put the 7970 to its full potential some times.
I just took the risk because with enduro problems the 7970 was still faster then a GTX675m and the 300 euro premium price for a GTX 680m wasn't worth it for nvidia drivers IMO.
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