Gaming Laptop

[Tmbryant91]

Trying to move away from my Desktop and get a laptop. I'm mainly switching to a laptop for school but I still want to be able to play games without any problem. Was wondering if these would accomplish that or if you have any suggestions then please post them. Don't really have a budget but I don't want to spend anymore than $1,500 and would like something I could just go pickup today without having to wait.

[lordmatthias]

Well first I would like to say you just set a budget . Just because it wasn't imposed on you doesn't mean it isn't a budget!

Secondly I if you can wait I would highly recommend looking at Sager laptops. They have a good quality design (excellent airflow, and you can even get a desktop CPU in them if you want), and they offer really good component selection in general. Whatever final budget you end up choosing I would recommend you get the best GPU you can budget for as that is usually the biggest bottleneck when it comes to laptop gaming, along with a quad core intel CPU, which for a laptop usually means an i7.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

Otherwise if you really can't wait Best Buy actually has a decent selection of gaming laptop now perhaps something like this

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-gt72...&skuId=9855342

The thing I would say with the above system is that is is fairly expensive for not having an SSD, and I think you could get an SSD and the GTX 980m from sager for the price point you are looking at. Since this is for school and you are going to be lugging it around, I would also recommend getting a warranty on it. I used a gaming laptop through high school (I was in a program that basically allowed me to go to college instead of high school) and then all through college. I was literally on mine all day, between class, gaming, and work (I worked in IT at my university) it was running pretty much all the time, and I ended up burning through 3 laptops in 6 years (the no lemon policy is AWESOME), and each time I got a new system I just bought another warranty.

[Deleted]

Complete waste of money! Get a cheap laptop for school and a Desktop for gaming, you can't combine both! Laptops are not made for gaming! Even these "Gaming-Laptops" who cost 3000€ can't compete with 600€ Desktop-PCs!

[lordmatthias]

Complete waste of money! Get a cheap laptop for school and a Desktop for gaming, you can't combine both! Laptops are not made for gaming! Even these "Gaming-Laptops" who cost 3000€ can't compete with 600€ Desktop-PCs!

That is totally untrue with this generation of hardware. 8 years ago yes I would totally agree with you. That being said there is still a gap, but with current processors and graphics cards things are getting closer. You are absolutely right you will get more bang for your buck in a desktop, however that price/performance discrepancy has been getting MUCH closer. Current gen laptop processors are VERY close to desktop processors now (usually the only major difference is that I would likely not OC a laptop processor) but in terms of base performance they are VERY VERY close (because desktop chips have been getting smaller and run cooler the architecture is quite similar now). Graphics cards still have the biggest performance swing, but that being said current laptop graphics cards are currently approximately 70% as fast as the equivalent desktop card (source-http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) to continue with my example of systems from 8 years ago, graphics cards (if you could even find one in a laptop) were usually 30-40% as good as their desktop equivalent. Pretty much all the other components are going to be identical for all intents and purposes other than having an adequate cooling system (which is something Sager does quite well usually).

All this to say, yes you do still pay a bit of a premium for a laptop, but it really isn't that bad. for $1500 perhaps slightly more you can get a laptop that should be able to play any current game you want and play it pretty well. The only other major downside with laptops is that they you can't upgrade them like you can a desktop (at least the graphics card and processor) which is why I usually recommend you get the best cpu and graphics you can so it will last as long as possible.