New 400 euro laptop or second hand M17 Alienware

XsApollo

http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2057777076/1/#post104423629

Can anyone advise on the laptop linked in the thread I made in the laptop section linked above?
I'm thinking I would get a better reply here.

Basically I was going to buy a cheap laptop to for my daughter to play sims and said I would have a gander first for a second hand machine with better spec.
Is that laptop in the thread above outdated now ? I'm thinking it would smoke anything I could buy in my price range and would it be good for a few more years of general usage and playing sims and stuff?

Thanks.

A2LUE42

That seems a really old machine. You can see the unique service tag in one of the photos. Look it up on the Dell website.

Alienware M17x
Service Tag: 1K9V4K1
Ship date: June 19, 2009

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ie/en/iebsdt1/products/

A2LUE42

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienware

17 Inch

M17x (Discontinued) - Introduced in 2009, it is the first laptop released by Alienware after the company was bought by Dell. The name and some of the design is based on the Alienware 17 inch laptop, the Alienware M17.
M17x-R2 (Discontinued) - 2010 Revision of the M17x, adding support for Intel i5 and i7 processors, dual MXM 3.0B graphic cards.

XsApollo

Yea it's old I know that.
He says he bought it as a refurb.
Would rather have that or a 400euro new laptop?

XsApollo

As for the processor and GFX cards in it , says they were released in 2011

A2LUE42

Its a refurb, so no way of knowing condition of whats in it, but that old would put me off. It is only as good as the weakest link.

A2LUE42

What are you considering new compared to it?

TerrorFirmer

That is a pretty old laptop and he's trying to pull a fast one, claiming he paid almost 2K for it last year!

It would be a lot faster than a €400 laptop for games that said, but Sims is not demanding at all and a €400-600 laptop would rip through it at high settings in any case.

Better off sticking with a new one in this case I would say.

XsApollo

I didn't look for a new one yet.
I was going to spend around 400euro for a laptop for my daughter.
She wants to play sims 4 on it , I bought a cheap Lenovo at Christmas for 130euro that is lagging on stuff now, so I can pass that one to her younger brother.
But I presume the Alienware would be better than anything I could buy now at 400euro?
It wouldn't struggle with sims would it or roller coaster tycoon and them games?

And I could possibly get a bit of use out of it myself.
I was big into gaming about 15 years ago playing RTS, don't have a clue about specs and stuff now.

XsApollo

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That is a pretty old laptop and he's trying to pull a fast one, claiming he paid almost 2K for it last year!

It would be a lot faster than a €400 laptop for games that said, but Sims is not demanding at all and a €400-600 laptop would rip through it at high settings in any case.

Better off sticking with a new one in this case I would say.

Yea I know it's old and I'm not paying heed to when he says he bought it.
But seems it has been refurbed with different equipment added to it later in its life if the specs listed are what's in there now.

Anyway I probably won't bother.

Serephucus

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That is a pretty old laptop and he's trying to pull a fast one, claiming he paid almost 2K for it last year!

It would be a lot faster than a €400 laptop for games that said, but Sims is not demanding at all and a €400-600 laptop would rip through it at high settings in any case.

Better off sticking with a new one in this case I would say.

Actually, I don't think it would.

I actually owned one of those back in the day. At the time, a stonking fast machine. Now though? Get something new.

TerrorFirmer

It doesn't have a 260M though - it has HD6970M.

Also I don't get why we're using the €400 price point - the seller says he won't take lower than €670 or am I missing something? If he was willing to sell for €400 it's a pretty OK deal all things considered but he's clearly not.

For the money he's looking for though, €670, you could buy a brand new, lightweight and slim laptop that would run Sims at ultra settings effortlessly. (something with an i5 + GT940M)

Why would you buy a big, bulky, hot and loud 2nd hand laptop with no warranty for the same money, it just doesn't really make much sense.

But I still wouldn't trust the seller at all with all the blatantly obvious mistruths he's posting on the thread though.

XsApollo

He has said he will give it me for 450.
Anyway I will take the advice and back away.
Thanks.

Serephucus

I haven't a clue. To be honest I just looked at the specs on the tag then threw that GPU into UBM with a crap sounding IGP. :P

10/10 would buy new, anyway, was my point. Whatever the hell that laptop is.

XsApollo

Anyway my thinking was that I have bought many **** and cheap laptops over the years that havnt lasted a year and go to crap pretty quick.

What could you buy for 400euro now that would be better than that?

After A clean install of windows would it be nice and quick.
It's Just going to be used for browsing and hooked up to the tv, kids games and stuff.


Edit : there is still one for sale new on amazon :-)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Laptops/Alienware-Gaming-Laptop-i7-2820QM-HD6970M-Windows-Ultimate/B0054QJ2FY

TerrorFirmer

XsApollo wrote: »

He has said he will give it me for 450.
Anyway I will take the advice and back away.
Thanks.

Look at this feedback as well. 33% negative.

If it was a trustworthy, reliable seller offering that laptop at €450, it would be a pretty OK deal for what it is.

But that guy - I just wouldn't touch it.

Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon are really not demanding games at all.

A decent i5 laptop around €450 would run them just fine. Have to remember as well that the Alienware is a huge, thick and bulky machine compared to a normal laptop.

TerrorFirmer

Something like this for €450 would be nice and light, super fast due to having an SSD and would run Sims 4 at high settings well enough.

The Alienware would still be more powerful - but it would be taking a chance from a dodgy seller, not to mention the Alienware machine is a giant, hulking beast compared to something like the above and would not be very portable at all in comparison.

XsApollo

Yea I know it's big.
It won't be going anywhere. Will be sitting on a table going from the sitting room to kitchen and bed at most :-P

All thing considered, regardless of the seller and portability , which Laptop of the one you linked and mine would be a better machine.?

K.O.Kiki

I'd bid on this: Lenovo Thinkpad W530
Intel i7-3740QM
Nvidia Quadro K1000m
8Gb RAM
128Gb SSD

Should run Sims 4.

TerrorFirmer

XsApollo wrote: »

All thing considered, regardless of the seller and portability , which Laptop of the one you linked and mine would be a better machine.?

All considerations aside, yes, of course it will be faster. It would have been about 2k in 2011 to buy new, and would have been top of the range in that year.

Now, for about €800 new you would get a laptop that would easily beat it in games, but there's a weird gap in the laptop market at present so it's very difficult to buy something to just match it for much less.

2nd hand though, there are any amount of sellers on Ebay selling faster, newer gaming laptops for around €450-500 - some even offer warranties.

lawred2

I have a seven year old Dell xps and it still pisses through whatever I throw at it.

Only thing I've upgraded over the years was swapping an SSD in for a mechanical disk.

Subcomandante Marcos

A new laptop with i5 with a decent amount of RAM and an SSD would cost less and be a better deal. It would be lighter, quieter, cooler, run almost everything faster and still have a warranty.

You'd be a fool to buy a six year old second hand room heater for that price.

TerrorFirmer

lawred2 wrote: »

I have a seven year old Dell xps and it still pisses through whatever I throw at it.

Only thing I've upgraded over the years was swapping an SSD in for a mechanical disk.

That's probably totally valid if we're talking about general desktop use but most definitely not for games.

Processors have not come on much in the general sense since the first i-series CPU's came out - an i7 from 2009 is still a very strong desktop processor.

Games are a different story though, graphics cards are always coming on leaps and bounds. A high end mobile graphics card from 2009/10 would barely be, if even, faster than modern Intel integrated graphics.

XsApollo

Are integrated graphics that good now?

I remember getting a Radeon 9800 ( I think) so I could play command a conquer generals back in the day :-D

TerrorFirmer

It's not that they're 'that good' - it's that the graphics cards in question are just simply that old. Graphics technology moves at a very fast pace, a high-end laptop card six or seven years later will simply be low-end at that point.

That's changing now as laptop cards are almost the same as desktop cards - which last much longer. So going forward, gaming laptops should last a lot longer than they have been until recently, at a cheaper cost as well.

The Alienware, for example, would have been a 2k model in 2011 - you would get broadly the same performance now from a €550 laptop new, and for €800-850 you would get one that would be twice as fast in any game.

Again, the Alienware card, HD6970M, would be faster than Intel integrated graphics in the latest games, but having said that, it would still be quite bad for playing the latest intensive games - it would be just less bad, if that makes sense, but far from good.

But again stuff like Sims would run on basically anything, and runs perfectly fine at high settings on the integrated graphics of new i3/i5, like the €450 laptop I posted a while back.

XsApollo

Alright Terror,
Thanks.
I know where to come now when I am going to buy :-)

pah

I bought this M17x-R3 in November 2013 for €850 iirc

I was looking for something with 16G Ram and dedicated graphics with an i7 for multitasking and the occasional bit of gaming when I get a chance.
It has been a great machine for me It's big but it is portable. I regularly take it to work but I bought a solid belkin laptop backpack for it.

The switchable graphics card option meant I could select the chipset graphics card to run and I would get nearly 3 hrs from the battery [not so much anymore] and about an hour on the radeon card.

Most of the time it sits on my desk hooked up to monitor, keyboard etc the only thing i upgraded was the ssd from 256 GB to 1TB as well as keeping the 750 GB secondary drive. It has fulfilled my needs very well for nearly 4 years although i'm not playing anything taxing on it game-wise atm.

If I was to sell it I would hope to get at least €400 for it. I wouldn't really consider selling it for less. I think the one you've linked to is an m17x-R2 looking at the hardware ports etc although the processor and graphics seem to be on par.

IMO it's worth about €300 at best but I would always put my stuff up for a fair price, especially when I get a good deal on it in the first place.

Take this guy for example looking for €2100 8 months ago dropped to €1500 now but really it's worth €1000

People generally think their goods are worth more than they are.

beauf

XsApollo wrote: »

...Basically I was going to buy a cheap laptop to for my daughter to play sims and said I would have a gander first for a second hand machine with better spec.....would it be good for a few more years of general usage and playing sims and stuff?
....

Laptops have the worst longevity when it comes to games.
Laptops have the worse bang for buck for playing games.

So bang for buck and longevity avoid a laptop unless it absolutely has to be portable.

beauf

XsApollo wrote: »

Are integrated graphics that good now?

I remember getting a Radeon 9800 ( I think) so I could play command a conquer generals back in the day :-D

If you are buying an integrated graphics buy the latest model, lots of places still selling the last generation. Every little helps. Check if the game you want is playable. Lots of youtube videos tell you what is realistic.