Ok, I see laptop isn’t the best but I need it to be a laptop. Which one will be able to play games for the next few years have great processing power and RAM (thinking 5 gig) and won’t crap out on me? size and battery would be nice but they’re not the priority.
Any advice?
Gaming laptops are pretty much a contradiction. Unless you’re going to play the games with the AC plugged in(which defeats the purpose of being mobile), it is overpriced in comparison to desktops and it is also more likely to overheat compared to gaming desktops for a few reasons. Because of the shape and size of the laptop, the heatsink for the GPU will still be limited in size, so its going to heat up faster than most standard size video card heatsinks. Also, everything in the laptop is crammed inside for portability, so there is very little airflow which can cause the laptop to heat up over time. When the laptop starts having problems, say for an example that the video card fried, then the warranty is the best and easiest solution for this, but at some point all warranties will expire. Maintenance on laptops are horrendous and much harder than desktops in both obtaining the parts and doing the actual replacement, not to mention that the part would have to be the whole system board for the GPU(in most cases) and they will be overpriced to sh!t. Desktops are much cheaper to deal with when it comes to parts, and the replacement of a video card is as simple as pie.
Faster you learn how to build machines, more money you save along the road, and you get the ability to troubleshoot problems with your PC. Watch videos and do a bit of research and you’re set. Don’t buy parts that you’re not sure about, do the research and CHECK if it is compatible with other parts you’re buying. Simple as that. PC building is MUCH easier nowadays.
In general, if you want to play games, play on desktops. Stick to laptops for good performance but casual stuff like internet browsing or music. Personally, if you plan to take it to school, I recommend netbooks since their cheaper and more portable, but performance/battery life will suck.
i have an alienware laptop as well. if for some reason you still decide on an alienware laptop, make sure you pay attention to what you’re getting; mine had “radeon CLASS” graphics, which turned out to be “intel integrated 945m” graphics. pretty much useless for any game nowadays (sf4 won’t even start on it, nor will the benchmark; i can’t even run piecemontee’s sf4 assets explorer on it!). also, turns out except for ram & hdd, none of it is upgradeable. was very glad i still had a desktop that i knew how to upgrade.
in other words, don’t get alienware; nowadays “alienware” really is just another word for “dell,” and if you don’t know what “dell” means by now, you’ve clearly been under a rock.
Ok, I don’t want to start a new thread and apparently alienware isn’t the way to go but I MUST have it be a laptop and it MUST play all the new games for the next few years and be upgradeable (no matter how difficult). I’m gonna be running around foriegn countries next year and I can’t drag a desktop around, battery and weight/size aren’t a dealbreaker.
Any suggestions?
hmm if you have to get a laptop get one with a gtx 260m, bestbuy has a few in their gaming laptop section for sub $1000 but i think 899 is the lowest with a gtx260m.
Price isn’t a huge issue I’ve been saving for a while, can you get me a specific model number of the best gaming laptop I can get?
You can get good gaming laptops from brands like Toshiba or Sony. Alienware is overpriced. Unfortunately if you want to get the best graphics performance with games you have to do your research on laptop GPU’s and pick from there, because laptop GPU’s are what determines the gaming performance you’ll be getting(CPU/Memory does too, but only slightly). And if you didn’t read my earlier post, I’ll mention it again, but upgrading laptops is pretty much non-existent for someone that’s not tech-savvy and doesn’t have a bottomless wallet. When your new gaming laptop performs slowly in the games 2-3 years from now, only real option is to replace the laptop with a better one.
ASUS G60VX-RBBX05 (the lower end model), ASUS G72GX-RBBX05 (higher end model) the only difference slightly faster processer, more ram, and better battery. the graphics chip are the same in both models (gtx260m) but if money isnt a thing then go with the higher end model. my friend has an older model ASUS gaming laptop and hasnt had any problems with it, im not sure if you have bestbuy in your area if not maybe try checking out ASUS website. hope this helps :wgrin:
F* getting a “Gaming Laptop” because if it is labeled as such you will get raped.
Just look for the GPU to be something decent, and the CPU to be atleast a Core2Duo.
RAM and HDD are cheap as dirt and easily upgradeable so try to find the SMALLEST POSSIBLE IF IT LOWERS THE PRICE.
The Video card and CPU are the main things that you need to look at because those 2 items are not easily replaced (or replaceable at all in the case of video)
EG: 4 years ago I bought an Asus Laptop with a Nvidia 7600GT 256MB Video card and a Dual Core AMD CPU. It was awesome, and ran everything I threw at it, in fact it still can play most modern games with lowered settings. paid maybe $450
2 years ago I gave that to my brother and ordered myself a Vostro 1500 from DELL, it is marketed as a business laptop, but has a Core2Duo and an Nvidia 8600GT 512MB video card. Paid maybe $550 and I play SF4, COD MW2, and CSS on it.
I am not saying buy one of these, but use it as an example of how to properly purchase an economical portable gaming rig without getting raped.
I’m not the guy who said alienware, I may not know PCs but I’m not THAT noobish. (noobish enough not to know what good cpu is? yeah)
And again, I’m not looking for a gaming laptop I’m looking for a laptop that can properly play games and that won’t be totally outdated in the next month.