Currently have an old Intel core 2 duo laptop and the screen finally died out on me so I guess its time to get a new one.

Budget is to keep it under $1300 USD ish

Will be used to play Wow, StarcraftII, Civ V, and possibly a few FPS games (only one I currently own for a comp is CSS but that will probably change).

No professional work so I wont need more then 4 gigs of ram or hyper-threading ~ although obviously both are a plus

Screen size 15.6-17.4 ish ~ bigger is better

I've noticed that Dell and Sager are both selling their sandy bridge chips, but haven't noticed any others.



Dell XPS 17 ~1249.99
i7-2720QM processor 2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.30 GHz *****
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 550M 1GB graphics with Optimus *****
17.3" HD+ (900p) LED Display with 2.0MP HD Webcam
4GB ram
500GB 7200 RPM
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery *****
Intel© Centrino© Advanced-N 6230 and Bluetooth 3.0


Dell XPS 17 ~1234.99
i7-2630QM processor 2.00 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz ****
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M 3GB graphics with Optimus ****
17.3" HD+ (900p) LED Display with 2.0MP HD Webcam
4GB ram
500GB 7200 RPM
Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD) **** (no others have blue ray)
92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery ****
Intel© Centrino© Advanced-N 6230 and Bluetooth 3.0

Sager NP5170
i7-2720QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz) ***
1GB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU with Optimus Technology / Embedded Intel HD Graphics *****
Vibrant 17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) LED-Backlit Display ***
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MH (doesn't state if the Dell ram is 1333 or 1033?)
IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU ***
500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module
6 cell battery


All have the same warranty, was curious which one y'all would suggest ~ the blue ray and the larger battery are not a big deal to me but obviously a plus. If you think my builds suck feel free to recommend your own! Also let me know if you would suggest going with a faster dual core i5 or i7 then one of these quad i7s

Thank you for the advice! Please let me know if you need any more information

---------- Post added 2011-02-26 at 07:00 PM ----------

Somewhat surprised, no responses?