Looking for a portable "Gaming" laptop.

[Boyiee]

Semantics.

Basically, my Alienware m11x that I got for a steal on black Friday a few years ago, the one with the core2duo that had great battery life for school yet could play BF3 and GTA4 at "lan" parties with friends crapped out on me recently. I was always against that brand until that black Friday deal, what a great machine that was for what I needed. I tried my best to repair it, ended up being the mobo and not worth the money to replace.

But in comes a new job and with that, a new toy.

I have a monster of a desktop, I'm not looking for a replacement or a mobile desktop by any means. I'm looking for a machine that can run WoW mostly with a bunch of addons and high settings at my girlfriends house. This is the main thing I'll be using it for. But I also need a machine that I can bring over to my friends house when we set up a makeshift lan party with 5-6 of us playing BF3, GTA4 and our steam libraries. I'm not looking for Ultra settings here, obviously. But I also need it to be portable and able to be brought to school as well as to work.

My last laptop was an m11x, 11 inch screen, and I loved the portability. So I'm partial to smaller and lighter laptops. Even 15 inch scares me. The m11x also ran a core2duo giving it better battery life over the i5/i7 models when I needed it at school (discrete graphics was a great option). Because of that, I'm sort of afraid of i7's and feel more comfortable with an i5.

I've been looking at the Alienware 14 for this reason, and, because of price/performance etc, the Lenovo y510p.

I'm not looking to spend 1500 on something like this. Both of these things run between 900-1200 and I'd rather not go overboard. Also, 1080p isn't a necessity because I'll probably be using a TV as a monitor at the gf's house a lot of the time.

If anyone has any other recommendations or can vouch for either of these machines that would be great. I was leaning towards the y510p but with it being SLI and all I'm not 100% sure. Plus, the 14 is a little smaller, although I believe its heavier.

[Yugl]

http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming...95_51_162.html

NP6670 should be comparable to/better than (Lookin at RAM) the Alienware 14 at $200 less than Alienware's base price.

http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-n550jvdb...wconfigure=yes

Not too familiar with this one, but same deal.

Haswell supposedly helps with your battery issue, but not sure how much.

[The Stig]

How's MSI's image in the states?

http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GE40_2OL.html#overview

I recently recommended Meryl on BG (from states) http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GS70_S....html#overview and he has good experience/use from it
But he wanted something big and thin so ...

Also I'm surprised a Core2Duo gave better battery than a i5/i7, unless, if I recall correctly, that was one of those Core2Duo "U" editions? Then fair enough. I don't remember what came with the 11x but r3 11x's had U edition i3/i5s

I'm not sure if it's possible to buy a gaming centric laptop with a i5 "u" CPU.. I've not personally seen one

[Asai]

Don't get the lenovo. I recently bought a laptop (I went with this) and was eyeballing the lenovo hard when I found out that they did not upgrade something for this new version and it causes it to overheat/BSOD often.

[Boyiee]

Don't get the lenovo. I recently bought a laptop (I went with this) and was eyeballing the lenovo hard when I found out that they did not upgrade something for this new version and it causes it to overheat/BSOD often.

A lot of forums are pushing the lenovo y510p hard saying its the best priceerformance "gaming" laptop on the market right now.

Still trying to stay 15.6" and under, preferably under, as well as under $1200. Heard both good and bad things about the MSI's in that range with lots of forums again steering towards the lenovo.

Also, I've been looking mostly through Amazon (Free 2 day shipping ftw), but certain laptop models have like 500 sub-models which is pretty lame.

[The Stig]

I honestly think Lenovo should be a decent brand to go for, they are owned by IBM afterall who makes the renowned Thinkpads?

I can see why y510p is being pushed though. Looking at my "go to" retailer the fact it's a bottom tier i7 (but "still good") and a GT 755m according to notebookcheck is basically a GPU that can play 2013 games at high settings makes a lot of sense (they even rank it #2 of tier 2; essentially a bottom tier 1 GPU).

[Niya]

I honestly think Lenovo should be a decent brand to go for, they are owned by IBM afterall who makes the renowned Thinkpads?

Nope. The Thinkpad brand was formerly owned by IBM, but they wanted to get rid of their PC/Laptop branch and sold it to Lenovo. Though, from what i've heard in the last years, Lenovo managed to keep the good quality and reputation of the Thinkpad brand.

[The Stig]

Ah crap I got it the other way around lol

In any case, Lenovo's done a good job then - one of the UK's leading departmental stores has 22 of their laptops for sale currently, followed by HP (16), Sony (16). Samsung has 5, Acer has 2. And due to Windows 8 and the bandwagon for "tablet laptops" Lenovo's got a large range of laptops covering a lot of bases. On top of that, I don't think Lenovo is a name people would think of when it comes to laptops besides Apple, Acer, HP and Sony in the UK.

Anyway, back to the discussion, none of the mainstream brands would carry a 15.6 or smaller laptop "gaming" style machine I don't think. It's unfortunate that I'm not familiar with US shops/brands but in the UK there's a variety of lesser known suppliers that do them. (13.3s or 11.6s fitted with a GT 750m combined with i5/i7).

If money is of no issue, your ultimate last resort is to look for Intel Iris laptops. Gaming grunt wise it's probably never going to be as good as a dedicated GT 750m.

Last brand I can think of that has a presence in the US is Cyberpower who does this 14inch laptop with Intel Iris:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Z...ming_Notebook/

If you go check the benchmark reviews it's significantly better than an Intel 4000 by something like 2-3 fold I think, depending on review. Just a thought/idea.

[Boyiee]

Getting a lot of recommendations for the Clevo W230ST which is a Eurocom M3.

13.3" FDH IPS screen 1080p, can upgrade to 1440p.
i7 4700MQ or i5 to drop a few $
GTX 765M 2gb
8GB RAM (max 16GB)
SATA3 + 2X mSATA3
2kg/4.4lbs
claimed 4h battery life

~$1100USD (without OS) Can get it under 1k if needed or add a couple SSD's if I want.

[Niya]

Yay for digging up a 2 month old thread xD
I'm in for a new "gaming" laptop too, my good old Sony 13" is getting 3 years old, and the radeon 6630m it has is hopelessly underpowered for recent games (especially FFXIV)...
Anything in the range of 13-14" is fine, have my reasons for not wanting a 15" one...
First though was the MSI GE40, especially since a co-worker recently got a 15" MSI laptop and is pretty fond of it. Then i stumbled across the Gigabyte P34G v2. By the stats it should be a real performance beast, the graphics chip should be from the brand new maxwell generation, and what I especially like about it is the low weight. Already read some reviews of the v1 which had a bit older hardware, only real thing people complained about was the loudness of the fans. But come on, what do you expect from such a compact case and such potent hardware...
Anyone have experience with Gigabyte notebooks? They seem to be pretty new to this market, so far i've only known them for mainboards and GPUs.

Other laptops i've already looked at, but didn't really like: Alienware 14 (way too expensive with SSD/HDD pairing, heavy/huge), barebone-based like from Clevo & Sager (too bulky for my taste, available hardware combinations aren't that great in europe)

The P34G v2 is supposed to come out in europe/germany this month, with 128gb SSD/1tb HDD, 8GB RAM, win8.1 for ~1400€. Not really cheap, but I hope it's worth the money. And it's still cheaper than the Alienware, builds with SSD/HDD start(!) at 1600 and have a weaker GPU...

Boyiee, was your final choice the Clevo or did you go with anything else?

[Boyiee]

I still haven't pulled the trigger on that clevo W350SS... It's by far the best machine under 17" and under $1200. I was able to configure it with a 256gb Samsung 840 ssd and 860m for that. But I haven't decided if I should go cheap and grab a y510p for 800-900 instead is all. Kind of a tight time financially. The better product is the clevo.

The W230SS is same price and specs but a 13.3" model instead of 15.6"

This seems to be the best site to configure it, it's Canada but free shipping to US. I have no idea what's best for you being EU, and the clevos require you to install Windows separately (which is nice cause you aren't locked into Windows 8).

http://www.reflexnotebook.ca/sager-n...7355-2234.html

Whatever you do get, make sure it has an 800 series gpu.

[Niya]

Ya, when you don't have that much money available it can really be a tough choice. Though, my personal opinion: since you can't upgrade laptops (that good), i'd tend to spend a bit more into stronger hardware so it lasts longer (performance wise). You can always have the bad luck of hardware dieing a week after warranty has run out, but gaming machines seem to tend to last long enough so you want to replace them yourself ^^;
Win8.1 (with the latest mini service pack) doesn't bother me that much any more, MS made enough adjustments to make it usable with mouse/kb again. And in worst case, as long as there are drivers available, I still have a few windows 7 MSDN licensed around here xD
800 series GPUs, eeyup. At least the maxwell chips (and not the relabelled kepler ones) seem to be real performance beasts for their TDP. But they're still VERY rare around here, pretty much all other laptops except the P34G v2 still have 760/765 chips.

[Plow]

the 8 series draw a LOT less power but...

765m runs right with and in some areas beats 860m; it blows 840m and 850m completely out of the water


I just got the MSI GE60 20E-003US; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152406

Core i7 4700MQ (2.40GHz)
8GB DDR3
7200 rpm hdd
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5
2 mSATA slots (I'm putting in 2x 120gig ssd's in raid)


It's at $999 on newegg and amazon, and there's a $100 rebate you can find on newegg that says it's valid no matter where you buy it.

I've seen nothing else that looks to come even close to that equipment at $900; only the sli lenovos at around 1000 seem at all competitive.


Supposed to get here on tues, I'll let you guys know how things look.

[Boyiee]

I think those sli lenovo y510p's are dropping to 800-900 soon with the y50 finally releasing. They overheat though.

[Kyten]

I have a lenovo y400 I got at the beginning of last year I believe. I haven't had any problems out of it at all. *knock on wood* Its nice and very portable. I got it for around $750 +tax.

[Oldskoolgamer2600]

I can't post links yet, but if you google this laptop: acer aspire v3-772g-9829
You will find it has these properties:
Brand
Acer

Series
Aspire

Model
V3-772G-9829

Part#
NX.M74AA.002

General

Color
Sophisticated Black

Operating System
Windows 8

CPU Type
Intel Core i7-4702MQ 2.2GHz

Screen
17.3"

Memory Size
8GB DDR3

Hard Disk
1TB

Optical Drive
DVD Super Multi

Graphics Card
NVIDIA Geforce GT 750M

Video Memory
4GB

Communication
Gigabit LAN and WLAN

Dimensions
16.33" x 10.83" x 1.22"-1.36"

Weight
7.05 lbs.

CPU

CPU Type
Intel Core i7

CPU Speed
4702MQ (2.20GHz)

CPU Support
6MB L3 Cache
Max Turbo Frequency 3.2 GHz

Chipset

Chipset
Intel HM86

Display

Screen Size
17.3"

Wide Screen Support
Yes

Resolution
1920 x 1080

LCD Features
LED backlight & Acer CineCrystal Technology

Operating Systems

Operating System
Windows 8

Graphics

GPU/VPU
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

Video Memory
Dedicated 4GB

Graphic Type
Dedicated Card

Hard Drive

HDD
1TB

HDD RPM
5400RPM

HDD Interface
SATA

Memory

Memory
8GB

Memory Spec
4GB x 2

Memory Slot (Total)
4

Max Memory Supported
32GB

Optical Drive

Optical Drive Type
DVD Super Multi

Optical Drive Spec
8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive

Communications

LAN
10/100/1000Mbps

WLAN
802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN

Bluetooth
Bluetooth 4.0+HS

Ports

USB
2 x USB 2.0
2 x USB 3.0

Video Port
1 x VGA

HDMI
1 x HDMI

Audio Ports
1 x Microphone Jack, 1 x Headphone Jack

Audio

Audio
High Definition Audio Support

Speaker
Two Built-in Stereo Speakers and Built-in Microphone

Input Device

Backlit Keyboard
Non-backlit

Supplemental Drive

Card Reader
Digital Media Card Reader - Secure Digital (SD) Card

Webcam
HD Webcam (1280 x 720)

General

Style
Standard

Type
Mainstream

Usage
Consumer

Power

Battery
6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh)

Battery Life
Up to 2.5 hours

Physical Specifications

Dimensions
16.33" x 10.83" x 1.22"-1.36"

Weight
7.05 lbs.

I found it is for sale on Amazon right now for less than $900. I can run the most sophisticated 3d MMO's at the highest settings and get 30 fps. It's leet
There is only one drawback... battery power runs out in an hour and a half or less. This computer is a monster.

[Boyiee]

This dipped down to 999 the other day:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00CU9GKTO

Couple that with the 100 off mail in rebate, and it was a steal. By far the best machine for the money, told a friend to grab one too but it's back up to 1099.

[shepardG]

surface pro 3

[The Stig]

surface pro 3

Can that really be classified as one? It still only has HD4400 based on my 10 min research. However, 1 UK site suggested it'll release an i7 and 512gb variant which is where I presume they'll stick the Intel Iris in? (no official specs were posted, just some baseline spec)