Looking to Gaming/College Laptop

luyolo

Budget: €1000
Intended use: college work Doing Computer science. Going to b using it for gaming too, Bf3, Call of duty, League of Legends, Mass Effect, Skyrim etc.

Mobility: Well 15.6 in or 17.3inch nothing smaller. weight isn't a problem for me.

Warranty: 1 year minimum
What Operating System do you use? I use windows but the laptop need not come with windows already installed.

Battery life doesn't really matter to me as i will be using it plugged in all the time.

I'd like it to have a gt 555m or better if possible.
I'm fine with an i5/i3 processor.

Buying in about 2 weeks

Torqay

Two nice MSI 15" here, if you're willing to strech your budget a little bit.

Core i7, GT 555 for 1,129 Euro

Core i5, GTX560 for 950 Sterling

Torqay

You'll hardly find a Core i3 with a top-end graphics card, that configuration would a bit of an overkill.

Torqay

Samsung Core i5 with a Radeon HD 6750M for 1049 yoyos.

The HD 6750M benchmarks somewhere between the GT 555M and the GTX 560M.

Dell offer their XPS 15 for 800/900 Euro (i5/i7), unfortunately, their GT 540M is a bit too slow. It's not upgradable either, I suppose they're afraid to cut into their Alienware sales then.

Torqay

Not a great HP fan, but certainly a very good deal:

17", Core i7, 8 GB RAM w Radeon HD 6770M for 1,099 Euro

The HD 6770M even beats the GTX 560M

luyolo

Torqay wrote: »

Not a great HP fan, but certainly a very good deal:

17", Core i7, 8 GB RAM w Radeon HD 6770M for 1,099 Euro

The HD 6770M even beats the GTX 560M

Not a HP fan either. my last lappy was a dv7 and it's battery died after 1 year.
My budget is already stretched as i'm a lowly student.
Thanks for all the suggestions.

Torqay

luyolo wrote: »

Not a HP fan either. my last lappy was a dv7 and it's battery died after 1 year.

Unfortunately it's really the best deal re specs.

Now, I wouldn't blame this particular mishap of yours entirely on HP... Since you're using the laptop mostly on mains, remove the battery. The heated casing of a laptop (even more so a gaming laptop) is the worst place to keep a rechargeable Li-Ion battery. Better keep the battery appr. 45% charged in cool storage when you're not using it. Heat surely is the battery killer no. 1.

It's hard to find a laptop with a top of the range graphics card for under 1,000 Euro, nobody would throw in an entry-level CPU just get the price below that. Mid-range GPUs with i5/i7 processors you'll find for 600-800 Euro, no problem.

Torqay

Well, well...

Here is a Gigabyte 15.6" laptop with a Core i7 and a GT 555M for 850 Sterling (€1,020) plus delivery.

Don't know much about their build quality, but their boards enjoy a good reputation.

Still not as good as the HP with a 17" screen, faster GPU and free delivery.

luyolo

Torqay wrote: »

Unfortunately it's really the best deal re specs.

Now, I wouldn't blame this particular mishap of yours entirely on HP... Since you're using the laptop mostly on mains, remove the battery. The heated casing of a laptop (even more so a gaming laptop) is the worst place to keep a rechargeable Li-Ion battery. Better keep the battery appr. 45% charged in cool storage when you're not using it. Heat surely is the battery killer no. 1.

It's hard to find a laptop with a top of the range graphics card for under 1,000 Euro, nobody would throw in an entry-level CPU just get the price below that. Mid-range GPUs with i5/i7 processors you'll find for 600-800 Euro, no problem.

I found the site deviltech.de it says they deliver from ireland their laptop came with
15.6 "Full HD 1920 x 1080 LED backlit
obile Intel ® Core i7 2670QM / 6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz - 3.10GHz Turbo mode
GTX 570M 1.5 GB GDDR5
500 GB 7,200 rpm
4GB - 1 x 4096 MB High Performance - DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
Intel ® High Definition Audio (24-bit, 192KHz) with surround sound
Bigfoot Killer N wireless LAN
For €1007 with free delivery and 2 years warranty
Only bad thing is it doesn't come with windows as standard , but i know you can get 2 months free trial of Windows 7. And after that i will have saved up the €80 it cost for W7 Home Premium.

http://www.deviltech.de/deviltech.php/sid/ab775d71e5302ff5016ad0b2844b1b56/cl/details/cnid/8a142c3e4143562a5.46426637/anid/0a947da3aecec8cc5.59351058/Devil-5700/

Would you advise against purchasing from them?

I used Chrome on their site for the translate feature.

Torqay

luyolo wrote: »

I found the site deviltech.de it says they deliver from ireland their laptop came with
15.6 "Full HD 1920 x 1080 LED backlit
obile Intel ® Core i7 2670QM / 6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz - 3.10GHz Turbo mode
GTX 570M 1.5 GB GDDR5
500 GB 7,200 rpm
4GB - 1 x 4096 MB High Performance - DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
Intel ® High Definition Audio (24-bit, 192KHz) with surround sound
Bigfoot Killer N wireless LAN
For €1007 with free delivery and 2 years warranty
Only bad thing is it doesn't come with windows as standard , but i know you can get 2 months free trial of Windows 7. And after that i will have saved up the €80 it cost for W7 Home Premium.

http://www.deviltech.de/deviltech.php/sid/ab775d71e5302ff5016ad0b2844b1b56/cl/details/cnid/8a142c3e4143562a5.46426637/anid/0a947da3aecec8cc5.59351058/Devil-5700/

Would you advise against purchasing from them?

I used Chrome on their site for the translate feature.

If you're prepared to put up witth a QWERTZ keyboard... You'll get pretty good deals if you're shopping around in Germany alright, your call.

Just spotted another HP for 820 Sterling, the AMD A8 is as close as AMD will get to a Core i5, the Radeon HD 6755G2 is probably somewhere between the GT 555M and the GTX 560M.

luyolo

Torqay wrote: »

If you're prepared to put up witth a QWERTZ keyboard... You'll get pretty good deals if you're shopping around in Germany alright, your call.

Just spotted another HP for 820 Sterling, the AMD A8 is as close as AMD will get to a Core i5, the Radeon HD 6755G2 is probably somewhere between the GT 555M and the GTX 560M.

They have an option for an English keyboard.

I don't mind a Qwertz keyboard because if you put UK keyboard in windows settings the keys have the same effect as on a Uk keyboard.

If it's gonna be much cheaper i'd rather go German.

Torqay

In any case, you should look up their warranty/return policies before you buy.

hardwareversand.de seems to be very popular around here.

luyolo

Torqay wrote: »

In any case, you should look up their warranty/return policies before you buy.

hardwareversand.de seems to be very popular around here.

Hwvs doesn't have any good laptops. The have everything else though.

Torqay

Check computeruniverse.net, they ship to Irelend (€25)

Lenovo Core i5 w GT 555M 619 Euro

Or this one:

Acer 17.3" Core i7 w AMD Radeon HD6850M for €745

Doctor_Socks

That Lenovo ideapad looks great! Does anyone know how long that company takes to deliver?

bouncebouncey

I'll put my hand up as not really having a clue about these things. I was asking about getting a good laptop for games. I'm more of a Total War man myself which obviously wouldn't require massively high end specs. However I'm told the laptop I got is pretty nifty.

It's a Toshiba Satellite P775-s7215 - 17.3" - core i7

I think that exact brand might be discontinued now but I'd say looking into the brand would be worth a go.

srsly78

bouncebouncey wrote: »

I'm more of a Total War man myself which obviously wouldn't require massively high end specs.

Hahah what? The new TW games need a monster machine, Shogun 2 brings my desktop to it's knees.

bouncebouncey

shows what I know

Well then my laptop must be a bit flashier than I thought! All my total war games run fine and dandy on it. In which case I'd doubly recommend looking into a toshiba

Morbert

I rememer a friend of mine having an issue with Total War games and nVidia optimus technology (It wouldn't switch on the dedicated graphics card for TW games)

Andy!!

Yes, this. I had the same issue. STAY AWAY FROM OPTIMUS!!!

_AVALANCHE_

Andy!! wrote: »

STAY AWAY FROM OPTIMUS!!!

Is that problem still on going?

Andy!!

nVidia will never ever fix it. They did it deliberately to nerf the GT cards and make people buy the GTX cards.

Jaafa

_AVALANCHE_ wrote: »

Is that problem still on going?

While the problem persists, and it affects a lot of people, it's not a massive issue. The majority of people have no issues with optimus that they can't fix.

As you can see from steams hardware survey The Gt 555,540 and 525m have all increased in use.

In fact the the Gt540m had a huge jump in use from 0.12% in January to 2.80% in March. So the problem can't be really that bad because if the card wasn't being used to run the games on steam it wouldn't show up on the survey.

_AVALANCHE_

Jaafa wrote: »

While the problem persists, and it affects a lot of people, it's not a massive issue. The majority of people have no issues with optimus that they can't fix.

As you can see from steams hardware survey The Gt 555,540 and 525m have all increased in use.

In fact the the Gt540m had a huge jump in use from 0.12% in January to 2.80% in March. So the problem can't be really that bad because if the card wasn't being used to run the games on steam it wouldn't show up on the survey.

Good link that.

Biggest surprise there is Intel HD Graphics 2000 increased.:eek:

_AVALANCHE_

Jaafa wrote: »

While the problem persists, and it affects a lot of people, it's not a massive issue. The majority of people have no issues with optimus that they can't fix.

As you can see from steams hardware survey The Gt 555,540 and 525m have all increased in use.

In fact the the Gt540m had a huge jump in use from 0.12% in January to 2.80% in March. So the problem can't be really that bad because if the card wasn't being used to run the games on steam it wouldn't show up on the survey.

So do you reckon it's just people unfamiliar with the "debugging" end of a Laptop....ie, it doesn't work out of the box and they can't/don't want to try and fix it?

Jaafa

_AVALANCHE_ wrote: »

So do you reckon it's just people unfamiliar with the "debugging" end of a Laptop....ie, it doesn't work out of the box and they can't/don't want to try and fix it?

Large part of it yes, like for a lot of cases simply white-listing the game will make it work. But I've seen with many people, even ones buying high end laptops like Alienwares m11x and such, don't even know about white-listing, so I'd say that's a common cause.

Sometimes I'm sure however, as with our friend Andy, you get a faulty card or something else and it just doesn't work at all.

Andy!!

Jaafa wrote: »

While the problem persists, and it affects a lot of people, it's not a massive issue. The majority of people have no issues with optimus that they can't fix.

As you can see from steams hardware survey The Gt 555,540 and 525m have all increased in use.

In fact the the Gt540m had a huge jump in use from 0.12% in January to 2.80% in March. So the problem can't be really that bad because if the card wasn't being used to run the games on steam it wouldn't show up on the survey.

What backwards logic. It is showing up so much because the card features in so many laptops! No other reason. The games run, but insist on running off the integrated graphics. Steam is scanning the whole system, not what the actual games are running off of...

partyatmygaff

Just a heads up on laptops without Windows. Seeing as you're doing CS, your college more than likely is part of MSDNAA (Microsoft developer network academic alliance) where you're entitled to one free Windows 7 Pro licence (And other software licences such as Server 2008).

Jaafa

Andy!! wrote: »

What backwards logic. It is showing up so much because the card features in so many laptops! No other reason. The games run, but insist on running off the integrated graphics. Steam is scanning the whole system, not what the actual games are running off of...

I'm using optimus at the moment, its working fine. You got bad/defective card or the drivers weren't as good back then, get over it.

Andy!!

Jaafa wrote: »

Andy!! wrote: »

What backwards logic. It is showing up so much because the card features in so many laptops! No other reason. The games run, but insist on running off the integrated graphics. Steam is scanning the whole system, not what the actual games are running off of...

I'm using optimus at the moment, its working fine. You got bad/defective card or the drivers weren't as good back then, get over it.

Lol. Yeah, it's only my problem, not the hundreds who have raged in threads all over the nvidia forums over its craps implementation. Faulty card me arse. Just because you're logic is messed up and you can't admit it doesnt mean I have to 'get over it' after dropping a grand on a game machine that doesnt use the graphics card.

luyolo

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Just a heads up on laptops without Windows. Seeing as you're doing CS, your college more than likely is part of MSDNAA (Microsoft developer network academic alliance) where you're entitled to one free Windows 7 Pro licence (And other software licences such as Server 2008).

Thanks for telling me, I'll ask next week whether i'll get one or not.