Gaming Laptops

Arromir

Arromir

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So I have a little dilemma on my hands. My desktop is getting ancient by today's standards, and having recently graduated boot camp I will not be in a position to lug it around with me. Therefore I'm considering purchasing a high end gaming laptop to hopefully cover my gaming needs for the next 3-4 years. I've never really looked at laptops before, especially with all the options available out there today. I'm hoping some of you guys will be able to offer some advice, or maybe direct me to some reputable websites concerning this issue.

As I said I'm hoping to get something that would last a while and be able to handle any current games at the highest settings. As a benchmark, The Witcher 2 is probably the most demanding game I currently own. My budget is $ 2,500, but I'm willing to put off the purchase for a couple months if getting something above that would be a better long-term option. As a bonus question, Win 7 or Win 8? Probably a highly opinionated one, but any educated opinions would be nice to hear.
 
I don't think you should be buying Windows 8 anymore.
 
Alienware is pretty much focused on them, here you can see their catalogue. Almost all of them are within your budget so it depends on how big you want it to be.

Windows 8 has somewhat better performance and it is still compatible with games, however I'd be wary of using an OS clearly designed for tablets. People say it's still good to use, but for me it's more about personal preference.
 
LamaGT said:
Alienware is pretty much focused on them, here you can see their catalogue. Almost all of them are within your budget so it depends on how big you want it to be.

Windows 8 has somewhat better performance and it is still compatible with games, however I'd be wary of using an OS clearly designed for tablets. People say it's still good to use, but for me it's more about personal preference.
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I always used to hear that Alienware is overpriced for what they offer compared to what you can find elsewhere. Is that still the case, or is their quality good enough to be worth the price?
 
Arromir said:
I always used to hear that Alienware is overpriced for what they offer compared to what you can find elsewhere. Is that still the case, or is their quality good enough to be worth the price?
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Every laptop is overpriced, however there aren't many other manifacturers who produce high-end laptops, and the mid-category M14X and M17X have impressive hardware while still being sold at a reasonable price.

Also Alienwares are FAR less overpriced than Macbooks
 
The only gaming laptops I'd consider are the Razer Blade or the Alienware M17x with the Geforce 680M.

Take your pick based on what balance of portability and performance you want.

Haswell is going to be a significant CPU upgrade. Availability is roughly March, but who knows when specific gaming systems with Haswell will actually be available. Go back and check availability after launch of Sandy Bridge parts if you're really curious, I expect it will be similar.

Windows 8 all the way.
 
If your new laptop sports a touch screen then I'd defiantly spring for windows 8 but if you will be using gaming mice and keyboards 90% of the time or so you might want to reconsider windows 7. Also it might help go to Best Buy, or a similar store, and try windows 8 out first hand if you are moving up from 7, 8 can take some getting used to. ;)
 
Windows 8 is way better than people say it is. I use it daily now and very rarely have to use the Metro thing.
 
Mr.WorldWide said:
If your new laptop sports a touch screen then I'd defiantly spring for windows 8 but if you will be using gaming mice and keyboards 90% of the time or so you might want to reconsider windows 7. Also it might help go to Best Buy, or a similar store, and try windows 8 out first hand if you are moving up from 7, 8 can take some getting used to. ;)
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There's nothing that Windows 8 does worse than Windows 7.

Take it to the Windows 8 thread rather than bringing this one off-topic.
 
Zelig said:
There's nothing that Windows 8 does worse than Windows 7.

Take it to the Windows 8 thread rather than bringing this one off-topic.
Click to expand...

Well the OP did specifically ask for opinions on Windows 8....



I had decent luck with a Gateway gaming laptop. It was pretty good for the price ($1800). I would look to see if they still sell gaming laptops. I will look up the brand and get back to after bit.
 
Check out Xotic PC.

It's hard to give a recommendation on such little information, but there are forms you can fill out on a gaming laptop forum (like Xotic PC's forums or notebook review), and they will give you good recommendations.

Alienware M17x is the best, and is actually not priced that bad. M18x is big and expensive, but can run Crossfire and SLI configurations. M14x is crap. Sager/Clevo NP9370, NP9170, NPR150 are a lot cheaper than other laptops, and have superb build quality.

The Razer Blade is obscenely overpriced - you can get a MSI GE70 with the same screen, graphics card, a better processor, and more customization options, plus it's half a pound lighter and it costs ~$1350 less (although build quality is questionable).

AMD 7970m gives very similar performance to 680m (and much better CAD performance) and costs half as much, although Enduro sucks and people have had trouble with the AMD's drivers.

Get the cheapest Intel processor with four cores (an i7).

For gaming, 8 gb of RAM is plenty.

An SSD helps loading times a lot, plus all of the other speed improvements. It's generally cheaper to do this yourself, though.

Generally, the bigger the laptop, the better the cooling.

New processors and graphic cards are due in a few months.
 
The Anandtech review on the Razer Blade sums up my thoughts pretty well - the only laptops worth spending $2k on are the retina MBP, the Alienware M17x or the Razer Blade.

If you're in for the highest gaming performance, it's still not the system for you—Alienware will give you a GTX 680M for the same price as the Blade, while Clevo and MSI can give you that GTX 680M for significantly less money. No matter how much compute and gaming performance have improved, the Blade still isn't a system that will win an out-and-out numbers game with the botique performance notebooks. The Blade is about more than that—it’s one of the most unique and interesting designs on the market, particularly in the world of mobile gaming systems. It's the best looking 17" notebook on the market, and it offers a portable gaming experience unlike any of its competitors. I used the term desirable to sum up the Blade last time around, and it's still probably the the best way to describe the new one as well. But this one has more performance to back up the style, and that just makes it all the more compelling.
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And we're never going to agree on 8GB of RAM being enough, the only way I see that working is if you close every single program every time you want to play a game.

My current RAM usage, nothing particularly demanding open and I'm over 11GB used:

Spoiler :
 
RAM is cheap as hell, anyways.

And I'm not denying the Blade is a great laptop, because it is - it's just badly overpriced, considering there are laptops such as the GE70 out there.
 
I haven't had any compatibility problems running any of my games on Windows 8. The games I tried ranged from AoE released in '98 to a couple new ones.

The more RAM you have, the more you use and like Zack said it's really cheap nowadays.
 
dutchfire said:
There are already cool games coming out which are Windows8 only and that will only become more and more prevalent.
Click to expand...

And what studies are you basing that on? Backwards compatibility with 1 or 2 previous gen operating systems has always been a concern of developers. As a matter of fact, until recently, many games released were still compatible with XP SP3. Besides, the game(singular, not plural) you linked to will also be released on windows smartphones, which speaks volumes about it....
 
Yeah, making a game Windows 8 - compatible only would be a bonehead move for a developer. And after all the things Gabe Newell has said about Windows 8, Steam definitely isn't going in that direction.
 
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