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Looking to Buy a Gaming Lappy - Opinions?

S

s0me0nesmind1

Lifer
Ok Folks, it's Holiday buying season and we are in need of a new laptop. My wife would like to start gaming more, and would like a laptop that has some decent gaming to it. I figure a videocard is always a must? Or has integrated made enough headway to not really be needed?

Anyhow, I found some ASUS laptops that seem to be the best "bang for your buck" that I can find. But sadly I'm not sure how good of a deal I am getting. Especially given that it's Cyber Monday and I'm not seeing much.

Link: http://www.microcenter.com/product/434740/N56JK-MB71_156_Laptop_Computer_-_Black_Aluminum
Specs:
Intel Core i7-4700HQ Processor 2.4GHz
16GB DDR3 RAM
750GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M
15.6" Full HD Display


1) Does this look like a decent deal? Price vs. performance perspective?
2) How big of an issue is an SSD? Because that seems to be one of the few things I want that is missing in this lappy.
3) Is this not really a good deal? Am I getting screwed? Is there something better considering it's Cyber Monday?



Moved from OT

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent
 
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s0me0nesmind1 said:
It's also a downgrade from 16GB to 8GB memory so that's probably part of the price difference too 🙁 I'm also curious how useful 8GB vs. 16GB is.
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Not terribly useful. Not many programs make use of more than 8 frankly. Why not go with the Acer's in the black friday thread? That's what I did - those have the 2.5ghz i7 instead odf 2.4, and have the 860M. Major difference is lack of an optical drive, but I already have an external anyway so that doesn't bother me any.
 
Lappy????
Here you go.

1625547
 
Not sure why so many are bringing sub-forum topics to OT.

Without knowing the games she is interested in, we can't really say.

In general, for the best games as far as graphics go; most laptops are barely adequate.

For things like Bejeweled and Candy Crush, 10 year old tech can usually handle them fine.
 
alkemyst said:
Not sure why so many are bringing sub-forum topics to OT.

Without knowing the games she is interested in, we can't really say.

In general, for the best games as far as graphics go; most laptops are barely adequate.

For things like Bejeweled and Candy Crush, 10 year old tech can usually handle them fine.
Click to expand...

It's going to be the likes of Blizzard Games - Starcraft 2, DOTA 2, Team Fortress 2, WoW, etc... not exactly Crysis material.
 
OverVolt said:
Buy a gaming desky and get a cheap lappy, IMO.
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This. Gaming and laptops are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Laptops you want mobile and power sipping. Gaming wants big and massively powerful. Gaming laptops end up the worst of both worlds. Fun bit is you can probably buy a desktop AND and laptop that do their respective jobs better for cheaper than a single gaming laptop.
 
OutHouse said:
Wow is very video demanding, especially LoD.
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It's been a few years since I've played WoW (WotLK), but WoW was more CPU intensive than anything then. Has that changed with the following expansions?

Also, in general, I've always found blizzard games to not require that powerful of setups to run decently. Not sure if it's how they are coded or whatnot, but I've always been able to run sc2, d3, etc, on laptops (non-gaming) on med/med-low settings pretty well.
 
Midwayman said:
This. Gaming and laptops are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Laptops you want mobile and power sipping. Gaming wants big and massively powerful. Gaming laptops end up the worst of both worlds. Fun bit is you can probably buy a desktop AND and laptop that do their respective jobs better for cheaper than a single gaming laptop.
Click to expand...

The newer laptops that have a dual video card (intel 4400 + gtx 860) actually do quite well at sipping power. A lot of people need a powerful laptop anyway - I travel and do robotics programming + 3D cad. So while it isn't the best for throwing in your back pocket, a small chromebook or slow laptop simply isn't acceptable.
 
Midwayman said:
This. Gaming and laptops are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Laptops you want mobile and power sipping. Gaming wants big and massively powerful. Gaming laptops end up the worst of both worlds. Fun bit is you can probably buy a desktop AND and laptop that do their respective jobs better for cheaper than a single gaming laptop.
Click to expand...
If you're at home all the time, I'd probably agree. If you're out and about, and want to game, or do anything intensive, gaming laptops most certainly exist for a reason.

Nowadays, I'd consider gaming laptops a better deal than they were even 5 years ago, the performance of Nvidia's latest mobile GPUs is actually startlingly close to their desktop counterparts. We don't have to worry about not running next year's games, that's for certain.
 
Zodiark1593 said:
If you're at home all the time, I'd probably agree. If you're out and about, and want to game, or do anything intensive, gaming laptops most certainly exist for a reason.

Nowadays, I'd consider gaming laptops a better deal than they were even 5 years ago, the performance of Nvidia's latest mobile GPUs is actually startlingly close to their desktop counterparts. We don't have to worry about not running next year's games, that's for certain.
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I wonder how the Nvidia 840M would do in past games. Doubt it could handle modern games.
 
Remobz said:
I wonder how the Nvidia 840M would do in past games. Doubt it could handle modern games.
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The 840 and 850M are still below what you want. I had a Lenovo Z50 for a week with an 820 and it struggled to play Legend of Grimrock II (which is not graphically intensive). The 860 on the other hand, which is now coming in most decent gaming laptops, can play modern games with good settings. There's a pretty big dividing line when you jump to the 860.
 
OverVolt said:
Buy a gaming desky and get a cheap lappy, IMO.
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This is probably the best advice unless you actually travel a lot for work and would like to game during downtime.


Remobz said:
I wonder how the Nvidia 840M would do in past games. Doubt it could handle modern games.
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AFAIK, for Nvidia a higher first number just indicates a newer "generation" of videocard and the 2nd number indicates the actual performance intentions of the gpu.

For example with an nVidia card a Geforce 780GTXm might very well outperform the Geforce 860GTXm (and will almost certainly outperform an 820 or 840) and be just missing some features that the 8 series has.


...
 
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Pulsar said:
The newer laptops that have a dual video card (intel 4400 + gtx 860) actually do quite well at sipping power. A lot of people need a powerful laptop anyway - I travel and do robotics programming + 3D cad. So while it isn't the best for throwing in your back pocket, a small chromebook or slow laptop simply isn't acceptable.
Click to expand...

There are exceptions to everything. However for most people's use cases its true. I'm going to take him at his word that he wants it for gaming, not CAD.
 
I decided to finally upgrade my gaming laptop as it was pretty old. If I needed to travel, I'd use my old Dell M1530, which has a nice Core 2 Duo and a GeForce 8600m GT. I decided that I'd take my go big or go home approach, and since I was already home, I went big! :biggrin: I also have a potent desktop, so the idea is that I don't want my laptop to fall so far behind my desktop that it becomes more of a hassle to play the same games. That's exacerbated by the fact that I upgrade my desktop far more often than I do my laptop. I ended up going with a MSI GT72 Dominator Pro, and it's nice so far. ...and its heft also doubles to provide a decent workout! 😛

blankslate said:
AFAIK, for Nvidia a higher first number just indicates a newer "generation" of videocard and the 2nd number indicates the actual performance intentions of the gpu.
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With the way AMD and NVIDIA release cards these days, you may need a few more quotes around "generation". 😛 For example, there are two variants of the 860M: one is Maxwell (V1) and the other is Kepler. How do you tell them apart? The amount of RAM. Most stores don't even tell you which you are getting! Also, while the 860 had a Maxwell variant, the rest of the lineup was chock full of Kepler parts. Only the 9xxM series GPUs are all Maxwell (V2). It's also worthwhile to keep in mind that I put that V1 and V2 notes beside them because they support different features (you can read more about that here).
 
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