Little help choosing a new laptop

[implicationmmo]

Hi all,

My old laptop is getting a bit out of date, and it is time for a new one.

My office has provided me with a small laptop for excel use mainly, and I want a more powerful one at home for gaming use.

I do not have room, unfortunately, for a proper desktop, so laptop it is (although it will not move, so weight isn't really an issue).

My theory is to spend an extra few hundred pounds now so that it will not be outdated in 1 year time.

Here are some of the model I was looking at:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hp-pav...83805-pdt.html
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/sony-v...96552-pdt.html
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/sony-v...90375-pdt.html

The latest is quite a bit more expensive, so need to get that into account.

I am no expert in technical abilities of the graphics cards, etc ... So I would like to know which one you would recommend (doesn't have to be in this list, but similar price tag).


PS: before any flaming, I am just talking about the laptop in itself, not where to buy it. Once I know what I should get, then I will go looking for the best deal.

Thanks for any help possible

[Mr Gnomage]

I've been browsing / looking at laptop GPU's lately, and http://www.notebookcheck.net/Compute...s.13849.0.html is a really good place to go to compare different GPUs. I wouldn't suggest the 540m according to that site's info, but I found (also looking to buy a laptop atm) that you can get a 560m GPU for not much more, and would run games alot smoother. Also, the AMD Radeon HD 6490M looks to perform a little worse than the 540m. The 540m is decent, it'll run WoW or comparable game's just fine, but games like Skyrim or Battlefield 3 will have to be ran on Medium settings, max.

Like I said, I'm currently looking to get a laptop and I've decided to go with something with a 560m, just for the extra "umph" that I'll get out of it, especially playing newer / more demanding games. I'll post the specs I was looking at for a casual gaming laptop I was interested in.

15.6” FHD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1920x1080)
i7-2630QM, 2.0-2.8GHz
nVidia GeForce GTX 560M 1,536MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (4 SODIMMS) (Not Supported by Intel i5 CPUs)
500GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache)

That was a built on xoticpc.com for around $1,000 USD.

Also, 2 of the links you posted are 1600x900 resolution, which won't end up looking quite as good as 1920x1080, from a strictly gaming standpoint.

Disclaimer: Not nearly as knowledgeable as some of the tech gurus on this site, just also looking heavily for a few weeks now into laptops for gaming, so I figured I'd post my findings. Hope it helped!

[implicationmmo]

Thanks for the response, I did help.

Any additional help from other people would also be appreciated

[Idrinkwhiterussians]

I bet you could find a better price, but the Asus G53 is supposed to be decent. It is supposed to have a GTX 560m, and a 1920x1080 resolution screen.

[implicationmmo]

Thanks very much for that.

Will definitely look into that ASUS, the 560M GPU seems really quite good

---------- Post added 2011-12-23 at 03:19 PM ----------

Just one quick question, which may be very stupid, but I still want to be sure:

if you have a 3D screen on your laptop, you can still play in 2D, yes?