Recommendations for "reasonable" Gaming Laptop

[Meaker10]

If you are travelling around a lot the bag becomes far more important than the weight of the machine itself.

 

[thespyder]

If you are travelling around a lot the bag becomes far more important than the weight of the machine itself.

Anyone know where I can get a bag of holding?

 

[taltamir]

Anyone know where I can get a bag of holding?

buy an original 1e D&D PHB. Learn real magic. Craft it.

 

[thespyder]

So I held off on this decision. Only now my PC is in imminent decline.

Looks like Sager PC is getting ready to release their NP9270. this would be the Ivy Bridge chip set. The web site says "Mid April" for release. Anyone have any inkling as to if that target date is reasonable?

this might be exactly the laptop I am looking for and just want to gage if I can wait for a reasonable release.

 

[Skott]

Reading the XoticPC forum board they release the actual CPU and GPU offerings in the 9270 and 8151 models April 5th and orders start being filled April 15th I think it was so I'd say the info is spot on.

 

[rpanic]

OP I am in the same boat, I do 95% of gaming away from home. I have a Gateway 7811fx that has a 9800m, but am thinking of upgrading to something newer. Looking at the MSI barebones with 570m for around 1100.00, or waiting to see the new GPU and CPU’s that are coming out this month. Here is amazon link to the new Asus G75 but the price isn’t listed yet.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B007MW73C2

 

[kbp]

I have the Asus G53sx and like it very much. It has the 560m. This machine seldom get warm let alone hot while playing. Cooling design is great.

 

[thespyder]

Reading the XoticPC forum board they release the actual CPU and GPU offerings in the 9270 and 8151 models April 5th and orders start being filled April 15th I think it was so I'd say the info is spot on.

glad to hear. I had seen the dates you post, but wasn't sure if they were "Projected", "Hopeful", or solid.

 

[DooKey]

Used early 2011 Macbook pro 15" with the 6750m switchable graphics. I purchased one for my daughter and it is a great machine.

Very portable, but the graphics are a bit weak. Will play older games well and current console ported games at decent settings.

 

[taltamir]

Used early 2011 Macbook pro

A mac gaming laptop?

 

[rabbitz]

Used early 2011 Macbook pro 15" with the 6750m switchable graphics. I purchased one for my daughter and it is a great machine.

Very portable, but the graphics are a bit weak. Will play older games well and current console ported games at decent settings.

How much did you get it for?

 

[T_Yamamoto]

A mac gaming laptop?

mac, gaming? bwahahaa:biggrin:

 

[DooKey]

mac, gaming? bwahahaa:biggrin:

Yes, you can dual boot the laptop with Lion and Windows 7. Believe it or not more and more games are being ported to OSX.

The battery life is great and I love the form factor.

 

[thespyder]

Yes, you can dual boot the laptop with Lion and Windows 7. Believe it or not more and more games are being ported to OSX.

The battery life is great and I love the form factor.

Thanks for the input. Not interested in going Mac or doing a dual boot.

 

[Rerednaw]

Dunno if you are still shopping around (it's been 3 months).

If you are, here is my experience with laptops/desktops.

I find that I spend more and more of my time mobile and while I had a decent tower gaming rig I find I need the portability of a laptop more.

For the $700-1000 range I would seriously consider a Dell XPS or a HP dv6t series laptops. Both companies run weekly deals. Sign up on a discount site like slickdeals.net and you'll get notices fairly often. And don't forget Lenovo they also have comparable products.

I find that if I look at an Alienware for the hardware specs, then downgrade a little bit, I can find a HP/Dell/Lenovo laptop in the $1k range.

Last year I picked up a new XPS 17 from Dell. It had fairly decent specs (i7 2nd gen, 6 GB, 1920x1080, Blu-ray, GTX560M, and some bells and whistles like a backlit keyboard and enhanced speakers.)

While I mainly use it for productivity, it runs Skyrim, SWToR, and other games at medium to high settings just fine (70 fps on medium, 40 fps on high).

I picked it up for $799 ($863 after shipping/tax/etc.) It also came with a $100 coupon for extra software/hardware so I picked up Skyrim

It's been a year so you can get the same or better by now.

Personally, I feel > $1k for a laptop is not worth the cost-benefit. As others have mentioned, their specs are always about a year behind desktops and they are more difficult to upgrade. YMMV of course.

Good luck with whatever you choose!

 

[xapo99]

+1 on an XPS 17. The one I had a 550m (which is just like a superclocked 435m or 540m or 630m if you like), 1920x1080, 6gb ram, SSD and 640gb Samsung drive (dual slots) and an early Sand i5. I clocked the life out of the graphics and it NEVER got hotter than 67 degrees on the gpu whilst gaming....which it ran the stuff I wanted like Company of Heroes and BF2 PR at the time on high settings, obviously it would have struggled with newer games....but it was just great, so great I swapped it for a Z68 board, gtx570 and a 2500k D:

 

[thespyder]

Finally got my Sager a few months back. Loving it. Quite a bit more expensive than I had planned, but still well worth the money (for me). I haven't encountered a game that I play that doesn't run on it. And although it is slightly less portable than some laptops. I have already taken this on two business trips that would have been dullsville without it.

Woot.

And thanks again for the feedback.