Advice on laptop. Budget €850ish.

yimrsg

I've been doing a good bit of research and I found that Komplett offers the best value for my budget over saveonlaptops/laptopsdirect/pcspecialist/etc. I know about Komplett having only US keyboards and I'm not really bothered by it. My budget is €850 though I'd like to stay under it as I'd like to add an ssd in the future, so the more I can stay below the better the ssd I can get. My other big requirement is that I'd like to play BF3 with it on low to medium settings.

I've narrowed it down to 3 models.

Acer V3-571
Asus N56VM
Lenovo Z580

They're all pretty similar and because of this I'm bogged down choosing between them. They've all got 750gb hd and 15.6" screens. I read as many reviews of them all as I could find and the Lenovo and Acer aren't as well regarded as the Asus.

The Lenovo seems very cheap considering in comparison to the others and it's build looks a bit drab. The Acer was mentioned to run hot under load, perhaps due to it's larger graphics card which could be a double edged sword. The Asus seems to have the best build quality of the 3, has higher resolution and is well rated but it's the most expensive. To mess my head up further I've also found an Asus i7 with Blu ray player just outside my budget for €875.

Acer: i7 3610. 1366x768 resolution. 6gb ram. Gt 640m. €799.
Asus: i5 3210. 1920x1080 resolution. 8gb ram. Gt 630m. €829.
Lenovo: i7 3612. 1366x768 resolution. 8gb ram. Gt 630m. €729.
Asus: i7 3610. 1920x1080 resolution. 8gb ram. Gt 630m. Blu ray. €875.

My dilemma is am I best off increasing my budget to breaking and get the high spec Asus? Any advice welcome.

MJ434

Hi whats the link of the ASUS i7?

yimrsg

MJ434 wrote: »

Hi whats the link of the ASUS i7?

It's from box limited and is on pre-order at the moment, due in the 25th. They've got several websites but it's the same product.

http://www.simplyasus.com/ASUS_N56VM-S4034V_1218891.html
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/ASUS_N56VM-S4034V_1218891.html

I ended up going for it in the end after seeing a similar one in currys in the flesh and not being impressed with the lenovo or acer. It comes to ~€900 with delivery and exchange rates. There's a 3% surcharge on credit cards but debit cards didn't have one. I had to ring them up afterwards to do a security check for delivery to Ireland, just basic stuff like bank name, last few digits of the card and confirm delivery address.

sebastianlieken

I just bought this Acer V3 the other day. It's a leviathan of a laptop. It's a nice build quality, nothing major stands out for me other than the mousepad is a bit funny at times. (when I say funny, it could just be different and i've to get used to or change the sensitivities)

2.5ghz (3.2 with turboboost ) is LOADS for most applications. excessive even. 8gb of DDR3 RAM, lol why not! again, quite excessive though. my one has the 1gb nvidia which is perfect for my minimal uses, what's nice is that there is also an integrated intel card which is used under low load for energy saving. I like the keyboard aswell, has a handy number pad on the right aswell. in terms of temperature, I haven't even noticed it getting warm. but then again the most i've put it through so far is converting a few songs which took about an hour, and playback of 1080p video which doesn't even break a sweat.

the important question that needs to be asked is what your laptop will be used for? sure internet itunes blah blah blah, but what stressful things will it be doing? video rendering, games? - I just see that bf3 is your requirment.... how did I miss that? ninja edit?

sebastianlieken

if wanting to play bf3 on low to med settings, any of those laptops will be fine. i5 will even be grand.

temperature wise, all laptops are gonna get significantly hotter under that kinda load. Wouldn't hurt to get a laptop cooling stand just for games?

MJ434

What would be better a i5 3210 with 8GB ram OR i7 3610QM with 6GB ?

sebastianlieken

well if it's pure gaming performance you're after, i7 + 6gb is the way to go. (if budget allows)

6gb or 8gb of RAM ain't gonna make no difference! it's more than you need in any case. (besides, if 6gb feels inadequate down the line, you can upgrade this yourself at minimal cost, you cannot upgrade to i7 from an i5 though)

heirarchy for gaming is GPU - CPU - RAM

difference between the i5 and i7 is that the former is dual core and the later is a quad. Most games are probably still coded for dual core but newer and future releases are and will be quad core. (bf3 is quad I believe) so i7 is winner. there's a slight difference in clock speeds; i5 = 2500Mhz (turbo to 3100Mhz), and i7 2300Mhz (turbo to 3300mhz). it's the turbo that is important here. so i7 is winner even in dual core games. The reason the i7 clocks lower as standard is because it's thirstier for electricity at 45W as opposed to the i5's 35W. it's just an energy saving device.

real world the difference will be around 5-10fps in the difference.

like I said though, if this is a gaming laptop, GPU takes precedent.

yimrsg

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3210M+%40+2.50GHz

I5-3210 average CPU mark 3921

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3610QM+%40+2.30GHz

I7-3610 average CPU mark 7547

I don't know how much of effect the above difference between the two represents in the real world but ram is very easily upgraded in a laptop but a CPU or GPU isn't. I ended up going for the i7 asus because it had the best build quality and the more powerful processor which would be better long term.

MJ434

yimrsg wrote: »

It's from box limited and is on pre-order at the moment, due in the 25th. They've got several websites but it's the same product.

http://www.simplyasus.com/ASUS_N56VM-S4034V_1218891.html
http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/ASUS_N56VM-S4034V_1218891.html

I ended up going for it in the end after seeing a similar one in currys in the flesh and not being impressed with the lenovo or acer. It comes to ~€900 with delivery and exchange rates. There's a 3% surcharge on credit cards but debit cards didn't have one. I had to ring them up afterwards to do a security check for delivery to Ireland, just basic stuff like bank name, last few digits of the card and confirm delivery address.

You know that model has been discontinued...and its been taken down off those sites now....

yimrsg

I got the asus yesterday. Delivery took 2 days. Chuffed with it so far.