Gaming / Programming Laptop ~850-1000e

Anima

Hi,

As the title says, I'm looking for something that could handle games like Battlefield 3 and can comfortably use some programs like Visual Studio essentially for less than a grand.

I'm not finding it too easy mainly because I'm not too well up on mobile graphics or even mobile processors.

So far this has caught my eye, http://www.computeruniverse.net/products/e90462355/msi-ge70-i547.asp. Seems good for the price but the amount of RAM seems low. I figured upgrading that myself could work out cheaper.

Any thoughts? Any alternatives?

Thanks

Torqay

This Acer for €999 is the far better deal. Same 17.3 full HD display, same GPU but 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD and an Ivy Bridge Core i7 quad.

Anima

Yeah that seems better for the extra 100e alright.

How are Acer as a brand?

Anima

http://www.computeruniverse.net/products/e90470082/lenovo-ideapad-y580-m772jge.asp#data

This seems better except for the screen size. 1920 x 1080 on a 15.6in screen, is that normal? Don't think I've seen that before.

Lenovo would be a better brand as well no?

Torqay

Anima wrote: »

This seems better except for the screen size. 1920 x 1080 on a 15.6in screen, is that normal?

Not normal bur not unheard of... you'll need a pretty good eyesight.

As for how brands fare in terms of failure rate:



MSI as a brand are to small to be listed here, but they are quite renowned for gaming laptops and motherboards (used by a many of the big OEMs).

Anima

Ok thanks, that's useful but is there really much practical difference between say 15.6% and 18.3%? With those numbers, I'm probably more likely to drop the thing than get a defective unit no?

One last thing, as a gaming laptop, what's the minimum NVidia card I should be looking at? GT 640?

Cheers, sorry for all the questions :P

TheAmateur

Anima wrote: »

One last thing, as a gaming laptop, what's the minimum NVidia card I should be looking at? GT 640?

Really depends on what you want to play, what resolution/fancy stuff you would like to keep enabled, and how likely you want it to be that your laptop melts whatever it's sitting on :P (the last one's a joke.... kinda.... I still remember the old Lenovo Y560 debacle...).
Use this chart here for comparing laptop graphics cards, it's usually accurate: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

Anyways, you know those computeruniverse.net laptops will have German keyboards, doncha? (just checking). Also, Dell just released their Inspiron 15R SE laptops, you can get one with a Radeon 7730M for €780. Just thought I'd throw it into the mix, confuse you more :P.

Anima

Hmm seems like a decent deal but not enough power for me I don't think. Laptop screen would ideally be 17in.

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dfh&cs=ukdfh1&puid=fb40f271

This seems good no?

Torqay

Anima wrote: »

Hmm seems like a decent deal but not enough power for me I don't think. Laptop screen would ideally be 17in.

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dfh&cs=ukdfh1&puid=fb40f271

This seems good no?

I don't know... the 15R SE with a Core i7 quad costs €998 and the HD 7730 can't hold a candle to the GT 650M.

Dell don't do gaming laptops, they don't want you to cut into their Alienware sales.