Question for Oppo computer nerds

"Blondude" (Blondude)
09/11/2013 at 19:42 • Filed to: Calling all computer know-it-alls!, I have no idea what I'm doing, Gaming

I'm looking into getting a gaming laptop. I know nothing about computers or what to get. Can anyone with some knowledge help me out?

When I say I know nothing I mean I have no idea what kind of graphics card, processor, etc. I should be looking for. Being a gearhead I have a tendency to play a lot of racing games if that makes any difference. I'm looking for a laptop in the $1200 or less range that can still competently play most games. Can anyone point me in the direction I should be looking, or better give some suggestions?

Muchas gracias in advance.

DISCUSSION (22)

Decay buys too many beaters > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 19:51

Does it absolutely have to be a laptop? For that price you could put together one hell of a gaming desktop yourself. Same price will yield a laptop that falls decidedly in the middle of the pack as far as performance goes.

nobody > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 19:52

I shared this to Whitenoise (Giz's Oppo), maybe someone over there can help, too.

Blondude > Decay buys too many beaters
09/11/2013 at 19:54

I doesn't absolutely have to be a laptop but it would definitely be preferred.

Blondude > nobody
09/11/2013 at 19:54

Sweet! Thanks.

Klaus Schmoll > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 19:54

I just shared your post to Whitenoise. They have helped me with some great insight on tech stuff. Give it some time (traffic seems to be slower there).

Blondude > Klaus Schmoll
09/11/2013 at 19:55

I think nobody (the person, dang that gets confusing) just did that. :/

Casper > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 19:59

Look for something with a good amount of cache on the processor and reasonable number of clock cycles (I have had good luck with later gen i7s). It is hard to get true numbers for laptops because they use all kinds of trickery for efficiency. They will usually list the specs for the cache in the details.

Quantity of RAM isn't as important for gaming as people seem to think. Most systems come with plenty of RAM, I would say anything over 6GB is good. Personally I like to have extra so I can have a lot of crap left open while I'm playing. More important than quantity is speed of RAM. Shoot for the latest generation and highest speed you can get in your budget. The numbers are displayed like DDR3 3333. That means it's DDR3 (a more modern memory) and it's 3333 mhz speed.

Look for something with dedicated video. Generally you will see it listed with a separate amount of memory in the specs. This means your graphics card doesn't have to fight the general system for memory space or input/output responses.

Storage is up to you. I personally try to get machines with either a RAID 0 of two drives or something with an SSD main drive and a standard 7200 rpm secondary drive for storage. SSDs are much faster, but cost a lot more per gigabyte than standard spinning drives. One perk to SSDs though is that they don't suffer damage from drops like spinning disks (although a lot have auto-parking heads) and are very energy efficient. If money is no object, just get a system with a medium sized SSD for the OS (80GB to 120GB) and a big secondary drive as fast as you can, maybe even another SSD around (256GB to 500GB).

Screens are up to preference. I plug my laptops into monitors most of the time, but I still buy larger screens (17" to 19"). This one is a matter of preference.

A good place to start is looking at something like these specs wise and seeing how much more you can get for the money. For instance I would replace the hard drive if budget allows or possibly shoot for something with multiple drives out of the box:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc…

Leoz96, It's a Car! > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:02

I don't know a lot about laptops, I would rather recommend you to buy a desktop since gaming laptops are a bit overpriced, but if you want to play your games on the go it's still a good idea. I know it's a bit difficult but try to look for laptop with an Nvidia 760m-765m, if not the 6xx series cards are still pretty good, there's even some laptops with dual Graphics Cards that come in pretty cheap . Newegg.com is the best place to find that kind of stuff, and you can always ask someone on Tom's Harware.

Phyrxes once again has a wagon! > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:04

A couple of my students (high school) have gone this route and purchased "laptops" to do anything from video editing to 3 modelling and of course the high end video cards are pretty good at running games. Battery life on the other hand while doing this stuff is laughable.

Depending on you definition of "laptop" you may wish to look at Asus and Lenovo.

Leadbull > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:09

Don't get a gaming PC.

If you need to waste time, browse oppo.

Decay buys too many beaters > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:10

I'm not that familiar with what is good among the current gen of gaming laptops (my portables are all tablets now). But what I used to do, when buying manufacturer systems, was look into what the best off the shelf components were and see how close I could get to that. For modern systems I would focus on Graphics card > Processor > Memory (speed more important than quantity), in that order.

You'll probably get some good answers from the whitenoise guys though.

Montalvo > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:17

I would recommend either an Asus, Samsung, Dell and possibly MSI. Get around 6-8 GB of ram with an i7 and a Nvidia GTX 6 or 7 series. Toshiba also makes a decent laptop a bit out of your range but if you shop around you might snag one for $1200 called the Qosmio.

Intel works well with Nvidia and AMD likes to keep to AMD. Other than that, this should be good enough to narrow a search. Just shop around if you find something you like, chances are somewhere there is a deal to be had.

dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:39

Under $1600, lenovo y series y410p or 510p clock in between 800 and 1000. I just bought one, gt750 with the option of running dual 750s. Over $1600, one of the razer laptops. There is one more manufacturer that makes a slim gaming laptop, but other than that they're all too bloated to really call themselves laptops.

deekster_caddy > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:42

The entire budget of a gaming laptop starts with the graphics card, which is determined by the intensity of the games you are going to play. To get a system with a great graphics card check out alienware (a little overpriced), ASUS has a few. There are some one-offs that make really good gaming systems whose name is escaping me, but they are generally similar to the ASUS. Look for Nvidia GeForce GFX-something (780 is the highest right now I think) graphics card. Anything better than 760 should keep up with the most demanding games.

Once you get into that price range of a machine, don't overlook the 15" Macbook Pro - it's a surprising price for the hardware it gives you. Start up in "Boot Camp" mode for full power in Windows and it's quite a gaming system.

$1200 makes it a harder target to hit though. Add a couple hundred more and you can put that money into the graphics card where it needs to be.

edit - it's sager I was trying to think of: http://www.sagernotebook.com/

DCCARGEEK > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 20:43

I agree with most. Best gaming laptop is a DIY Desktop.

Seriously, if you want to game, do it on a desktop and pick up a cheapo $250 1-2 year old netbook to write emails and stuff on while your out and about.

deekster_caddy > deekster_caddy
09/11/2013 at 20:45

Here's one really close to your price range:

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page…

Joe_Limon > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 21:23

My advice, get familiar with http://cpubenchmark.net

Find a laptop, search for the processor/graphics card and you can see a fairly unbiased view of how that laptop ranks.

Random Commenter > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 21:36

Downside to laptop: Can't be upgraded.

If you want your PC to be able to run games which tax your memory/processor for more than the next year or so, a desktop PC is the way to go.

Blondude > Random Commenter
09/11/2013 at 21:37

I'll definitely keep this in mind.

JasonStern911 > Blondude
09/11/2013 at 22:31

No personal experience with it, but:

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetlan…

$450 off, 1080p display, impressive CPU benchmarks for a laptop , same GPU as in Alienware's M17X, plenty of RAM, big hard drive, BluRay drive...

j4066 > Blondude
09/12/2013 at 11:53

I'm surprised. I would expect Gawker media offices, and the Giz office in particular, would have mountains of quality notebooks piled for you to choose from.

There's techie talk and there's non-techie talk. Most people who ask me about a system are not techs. I've been working on computers since they were the size of a bedroom. My first question is; "What do you want to use it mostly for?", but you told us.

That said... (puts on Nomex jockey shorts) just go out and get a higher-end Alienware system. Even if it's a year old. Nothing nowadays is 'future-proof', but one of those will last longer than about any regular brand. Second choice, though not very pretty, would be an industrial model, like a Dell M6700 (these can be ordered with enhanced graphics, and an improved backlit display. We use them even for CAD stations.

There's a lot of technical spec jargon people will throw around, but in a notebook, people want to open it, chuck a disc at it, and quit worrying about it.

Now desktops... (rubs hands together and laughs maniacally), that's an entirely different story.

dan7gtar > Blondude
09/12/2013 at 12:40

Nearly 3 years ago I opted to buy a balls awesome laptop. I paid 1,500 for a 17 inch Dell XPS with full HD (1080 resolution) 3D (yes with glasses) screen.

This computer came with a blu-ray burning drive, 8 GB of RAM (which in most cases is more than enough), dual hard drives (at 500 GB each, but I swapped 1 for a 120 GB Solid State Disk Drive [SSDD for short, these have incredibly superior read/write speeds, so buying an SSDD for the main Operating System is often a good idea to help load everything faster]), 2nd gen Intel i7 processor at 2.2 Ghz with speed boost tech (which is totally useless and I'm fairly certain they don't do that anymore), and it has a Nvidia GeForce 555m video card (which was the best at the time). Needless to say, 3 years later this computer still is great and runs like a dream.

Currently, from Dell, this is the computer I would recommend to most fit your desires in a laptop and should be a good longevity use computer. http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-…