NVIDIA card buggered - new laptop help required

Kajor

HP Pav DV6 is gone all Matrix on us. The NVIDIA card just popped it's clogs, system is 7 years old anyway, so thinking about getting a new laptop instead of refurbing the old one.

The budget is c €600 (there's a bit of give) and the laptop is used for the regular stuff as well as some gaming though not live gaming.

I've been looking around and the verdict on Windows 8 seems to be quite poor, so perhaps a Windows 7 Premium sys, any opinions on this?

So overall looking for decent sound, decent graphics, a bitto RAM, I suppose an i5 processor would be very nice to add to the list and an i7 would be the bomb.

PCSpecialist has some nice stuff, but I don't know about their returns and repair record. I was messing about with the Enigma IV putting in all the requirements I listed above to get an idea of price and it's coming in at about €850 for the i5-3230M, 8GB RAM, 500GB HD(7,200) with NVIDIA & SB Pro incl del to Ireland

Any further help would be appreciated

Kajor.

Torqay

Some off-the-rails Core i5/GT630M combo is the best you can hope for with your budget. Of course, the GT 630M, though OK for light gaming, is no match for a GT 650M (Kepler). Unless you find some stock clearance deal, Windows 7 is no longer an option with major OEMs/retailers. PCS apparently still have some Windows 7 licenses left, hence you can choose in the configurator.

PS: You'll find the X-Fi Surround 5.1 PRO a little bit cheaper elsewhere. Here for example.

Kajor

Thanks Torquay.

Is it worth searching out Windows 7 or should we just go for Windows 8? Are there any favourable reviews from Boardsies at this stage?

The budget has been upped to c €750 what can i get in Ireland for that, or are PCSpecialist worth it?

Kajor

Any opinions on this from Dabs.ie?

Lenovo Ideapad

Overheal

Kajor wrote: »

Thanks Torquay.

Is it worth searching out Windows 7 or should we just go for Windows 8? Are there any favourable reviews from Boardsies at this stage?

Most like it, its still not as 'stable' as 7 preceding a service pack but once you familiarize with it, you won't regret the plunge. Even if you use third party tools to retrograde the UI the stuff it does in the background is worth it. The addition of a system refresh is one such example, others include an again-improved search engine, when the engine in 7 was already exceptionally bad ass compared to the Vista implementation, and makes navigating in XP seem downright archaic.

Remaining 7 choices are too pricey in most circumstances. The prices play off the demand of people who aren't ready to switch. Like a customer said to me last night, he'd rather stay in the 'ten year cycle', he ran XP for ten years and plans the same for 7, irrespective of the fact that you wind up having added stress in trying to find retro hardware replacements and eventually a sudden learning curve vs a gradual one. That's the equivalent of going from a Nokia 3210 to a Galaxy SIII

Torqay

Overheal wrote: »

Remaining 7 choices are too pricey in most circumstances.

Not true for PCS, the price is the same for Windows 7 and 8.

Kajor wrote: »

Any opinions on this from Dabs.ie?

Lenovo Ideapad

You'll get the same model for 26 yoyos less at LD.

The price is about right. But IMO, the graphics card is neither fish nor flesh. If you're looking for a gaming laptop, the GT 630M is rather disappointing and for the rest, Intel HD 4000 is more than good enough (even casual gaming is possible to a certain extent). In the olden days, Intel's integrated laptop graphics were rather poor but that has changed quite a lot with the introduction of mobile Sandy Bridge processors. So if you're not interested in gaming, you'll be wasting money (and the dedicated GPU will draw more juice from the battery when it kicks in) but if you are, you want better than a GT 630M.