How should I go about getting a laptop?
- Thread starter Mouthwash
- Start date
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Right, of course. But I often don't play very long, and some laptops should have better cooling than others. What are these cooler laptops?
Don't bother with something specific for gaming for $600. You'll get something heavier, slower, hotter, with worse build-quality, shorter battery life and a worse quality screen just for some extra GPU power.
Just get the best laptop at the price, count any games that work on it as a bonus.
Best Buy or online are all pretty competitive for low-end laptops.
If you're in the USA I like the Lenovo Outlet, Lenovo laptops tend to be excellent for their price, and you get some great deals through the Outlet. Stock varies pretty much daily though, and there currently doesn't appear to be anything good in the $600 range.
Just get the best laptop at the price, count any games that work on it as a bonus.
Best Buy or online are all pretty competitive for low-end laptops.
If you're in the USA I like the Lenovo Outlet, Lenovo laptops tend to be excellent for their price, and you get some great deals through the Outlet. Stock varies pretty much daily though, and there currently doesn't appear to be anything good in the $600 range.
Zack
99% hot gas
IIRC Asus' gaming laptops are known for their cooling, but you pay a premium for it compared to Lenovo's line.
A $10,000 PC today is slower than a $2,000 PC five years from now. Unless you're getting a new $10k PC every couple years, you get better average performance for less money by just building a new $2k PC every couple years and selling your old one.
That's pretty good for $600. It's better than the one Zack linked in post #15 - the CPU is the same, and for the $20 difference, you get the dedicated Radeon R7 M265, which is roughly 2.5 times as powerful as the integrated Intel graphics on the Toshiba in post #15. I doubt you'll find too much better than that.
AMD did just release some new processors with pretty impressive integrated graphics this week, however. So if you don't need it immediately, it may be worth waiting to see what those go for.
The particular CPU model to watch for the is FX-7600P. It's quite a bit more powerful than Intel's integrated graphics in this price range (HD 4400) - about 250% as powerful in graphics performance, which would also put it just a little bit above the R7 M265 dedicated card in the laptop tokala linked to.
The CPU performance is not bad, either. It's nearly as powerful as AMD's top-end desktop CPU (A10-6850) from last year, and will outperform the i5-4200U in multithreaded tasks. In single-threaded ones, the Intel will still win sometimes, but unlike before, it won't win every time. Power use would be higher than the Intel, but by losing the dedicated graphics card overall power use probably will be slightly lower, especially in heavy use. AMD has said there may be laptops with this CPU and an SSD for $700, so if you leave out the SSD, $600 may happen.
I'd never get a laptop with a 1366x768 screen. The user experience for desktop use is cripplingly awful.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317007
For $500, you get a 1080p screen and a hybrid HDD with SSD cache, that's going to be way, way better for any non-gaming use cases than a 1366x768 machine with no SSD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317007
For $500, you get a 1080p screen and a hybrid HDD with SSD cache, that's going to be way, way better for any non-gaming use cases than a 1366x768 machine with no SSD.
tokala
Emperor
You will need to look up some reviews that do mention if and how badly the specific model will throttle under heavy load.
E.g. this site here does it usually, and for an example that doesn't throttle either GPU nor CPU:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Acer-Aspire-V5-573G-54208G50aii-Notebook.99264.0.html
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Looks pretty good. Within $1000 too.
Synobun
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2006
- Messages
- 24,583
Just a note if you decide to get this one Mouthwash, once you unbox it check the graphics immediately. Newegg is known (at least in my experience) to ship the models with just the integrated graphics when you purchase the model with the dedicated card.
I got a Toshiba E55-A from Best Buy with an Intel core (I5-4200U) and 6 GB of RAM. There's a 64-bit operating system (Windows 8.1) and a x64-based processor. It wasn't even $600 dollars. Is that worth it? My previous computer had 8 GB with an I5-2430m core.
The problem is, it seems to render the stuff you do incredibly slowly. So, if I mouse over a program or search for something it takes a good few seconds for it to even show. This gives you the impression that it freezes, but the actions I take are done at a proper speed. However, it only happens in the desktop mode. The "tablet" interface works completely normally. Is this is a software or hardware issue?
EDIT: Oh, and popups that appear when you right-click text are showing up transparent. I can't see the options.
EDIT2: Problem appears to have resolved itself.
The problem is, it seems to render the stuff you do incredibly slowly. So, if I mouse over a program or search for something it takes a good few seconds for it to even show. This gives you the impression that it freezes, but the actions I take are done at a proper speed. However, it only happens in the desktop mode. The "tablet" interface works completely normally. Is this is a software or hardware issue?
EDIT: Oh, and popups that appear when you right-click text are showing up transparent. I can't see the options.
EDIT2: Problem appears to have resolved itself.
Mr.WorldWide
Smugly Inferior
What happened to your previous laptop, if I might ask?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba...6895&skuId=3336005&st=Toshiba E55-A&cp=1&lp=1
It looks quite decent for the price and you have a full HD desktop but the integrated graphics appear to be the limiting factor when it comes to gaming. Do you plan on using the laptop primarily for gaming?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba...6895&skuId=3336005&st=Toshiba E55-A&cp=1&lp=1
It looks quite decent for the price and you have a full HD desktop but the integrated graphics appear to be the limiting factor when it comes to gaming. Do you plan on using the laptop primarily for gaming?
Bad virus, low disk space, outdatedness in general.
I'll get a graphics card separately. I'm thinking about this one, though I'll try to find it on eBay or something.
The graphics will be about 50% faster than your previous system. The same will probably be slightly slower, perhaps 5%, but will use considerably less power. The memory difference shouldn't make a big difference, and you may be able to transfer the RAM from the old system to the new one to cancel that out.
Whether it's worth, is up to you. The amount of upgrade for the price isn't great, but the 50% GPU increase may be enough to get quite a few more games playable.
The issues you are describing do sound odd, though. It sounds to me like either a driver issue or a hardware issue. I've run Windows 8.1 in a VM, and the responsiveness was always fine on the desktop, and the right-click options were visible. It doesn't sound normal, in other words.
Zack
99% hot gas
That's a desktop graphics card, it won't work. Why didn't you just buy a more expensive laptop if you're willing to spend $170 on a separate graphics card?
Mr.WorldWide
Smugly Inferior
In general you can't upgrade the graphics card in a laptop, the card you linked to needs a PCIe x16 slot in your motherboard.
timtofly
One Day
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2009
- Messages
- 9,445
That graphics card's physical space is about two/thirds the total space of that laptop.
Mr.WorldWide
Smugly Inferior
If you are happy with it there is no need to return it unless you bought it with the assumption that you could upgrade the graphics card.
