First gaming laptop. $1000 price range.

[Toppy]

I'm getting a gaming laptop for the first time: I need something portable, and my current computer is getting old anyway. The problem is, I've never been that great with figuring out what I need in a desktop (it took me a month of research to get my current rig) and I absolutly have no idea what I should be looking for in a laptop.

So far, I have it down to two:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834198056
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834232132

I don't really intend on playing anything too strenuous. I play mostly blizz games. And even when I'm not, I don't mind turning settings down: graphics mean little to me.

This will be my first laptop period at that, so any advice would be appreciated.

[lordmatthias]

You are on the right path, if I had to pick between the two I would go with the first option: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834198056. Its absolutely worth the extra cost for the better graphics card, the processors are nearly identical so you won't notice much of a difference between the two. 16GB of memory is great to have but in general somewhat overkill unless you plan on multitasking lots of software that takes up large amounts of memory, memory is also something that is extremely easy to upgrade in laptops.

The biggest thing in a gaming laptop is making sure you get an adequate processor (which you have selected a decent one) a good discrete graphics card, and proper cooling. The 860m is an OK mobile graphics card, it is ever so slightly above entry level gaming you will likely find you can run most games, but they won't be on ultra by any means, probably medium maybe some settings on high.

If you can splurge a little over budget I would HIGHLY recommend looking at laptops with the gtx 970 or above, like: http://www.sagernotebook.com/customi...?productid=406 the 970 and above have pretty much doubled the performance of the gtx 960 and below (the only 800 series card that gets somewhat close to the 970 is the 880 GTX which is a very expensive laptop card). Like I said if you can swing it would look at a laptop like that and either wait to get the SSD (if you have a little bit of skill it is usually EXTREMELY easy to replace the disk on laptops) or pay an additional $50 to get the 128GB ssd.

I also highly recommend Sager gaming laptops, in many circles they are considered the best build quality and value in gaming laptops.