Tasked to buy laptop - Budget $900

[Mr.WorldWide]

I'm supposed to find a laptop to buy for a younger sibling with a budget of no more than $900. This laptop will be used to play some older games such as Skyrim.

Below are a couple required specs:

-Windows OS
-17.3" screen (desktop replacement)
-1920x1080 resolution

I've seen Lenovo recommended around these forums and have been looking at them but am open to any brand suggestions.

Thanks

 

[leif erikson]

That shouldn't be too hard.

Here is a Lenovo, i7 and graphics card for $800.00.

Or a Dell, also i7 but with integrated graphics for $900.

Don't think you need an i7 though, an i5 with a dedicated graphics card should be enough.

And that isn't looking for sales.

Would think Dell or Lenovo would be fine, as well as Acer or Asus.

 

[tokala]

With those requirements a i5 and the best possible GPU is the thing to look for.

At the moment this pretty much means a GTX 850M GDDR5, which is roughly as fast as a desktop GTX 750, in other words really, really good for a laptop GPU. With a bit of luck you might even get a 860M into the budget, which is only margianlly faster, though.

An Acer for $850, probably $800 soon-ish

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll defiantly consider the Asus as I felt the i7s were a bit of an overkill myself.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Well it's been almost a month now and after budget revisions it turns out I've only got $800 at my disposal, not $900.

Any thoughts on this Acer? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2814-_-EMC-082814-Index-_-na-_-34314594-L024B

The gpu looks to be a bit old and is DDR3, not 5 and of course the HDD sucks but I can swap in a SSD easily enough.

 

[leif erikson]

Specs look pretty good, even with what you noted.

Went looking around for i5 alternatives and there really isn't very much.

 

[timtofly]

Specs look pretty good, even with what you noted.

Went looking around for i5 alternatives and there really isn't very much.

Do they even manufacture i5's any more? It would seem that eventually the new ones will be used up and only available as a "used" product.

 

[Zelig]

Yes, every generation of Intel processors has a mix of i3/i5/i7 branded models. A newer i5 can be faster than an older i7. Or a desktop i5 can be faster than a laptop i7.

Actually, the top-end desktop i3 is the i3-4370 dual-core 3.8 GHz Haswell chip, significantly faster than say the i7-620UM, which runs at 1.07 GHz (turbo to 1.57) on an older architecture.

 

[leif erikson]

When I was looking around, there aren't many i5 laptops with dedicated video cards. They seem to mostly be in i7 models. Seems kind of crazy to me.

 

[Zelig]

Well i5 mobile chips are only dual core, if you're only playing games that don't benefit from more than two cores, they're old enough that they won't benefit much from better graphics than you can get with an i5. The Iris 5100 is about on par with the Geforce GT 620M.

 

[leif erikson]

NotebookCheck, love this site btw, says that is really only good for 1024x768 or 1366x768 at low to medium detail settings. A relatively fast Core i5 can equal the performance of some slower i7's (even the quad cores as they crank down the frequency and not all software can take advantage of the multi-cores), except for the graphics. So why not pair them with graphic cards for 1920x1080?

 

[Zelig]

Probably there's not much market for laptops that sacrifice general usability for gaming framerates, it's too cannibalized by high-end laptops, desktops and consoles.

 

[leif erikson]

I'm sure you're right. Too many people are focused on the processor speed.

I was checking around Dell's site and it seems that to get a discrete video card requires that you go into the Alienware line of laptops. Nearly everything else is integrated graphics now.

edit - Had more time this evening to check into this a bit more. It is interesting that I actually found quite a few core i5 machines with graphics cards, but they also had screen sizes of 15.6 and 14.1 inches. There were only a precious few 17 inch screens.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

I pretty much arrived at the same consensus after a month of searching, thanks for all the input, I do believe this is a purchase I won't regret 3 years down the road. Last time I messed up and bought someone a laptop for $700 that wasn't full HD, to be fair though the person in question didn't notice that until I pointed it out.

 

[leif erikson]

Good luck.