New Gaming-Capable Laptop with ~2K Budget

I've always had a desktop PC (like, always! Going back to the Vic 20...) but I think this buying cycle I'm finally going to make the switch over to a laptop. I can afford more but want to shoot for the vicinity of $2K. I'm a consummate gamer at heart but I've got a toddler who's one and a half years old so I've been in a bad place for gaming lately. My copy of Skyrim is still shrink wrapped from last xmas. :(

However I foresee that easing up a bit within the lifecycle of my next PC, (especially if it's portable enough to come to the living room or den) and I want to make sure it can run stuff like XCOM and Guild Wars 2 really well so that I know it'll run newer stuff at least competently over the next few years.

I've successfully broached the topic with my wife but I'm not going to be making the purchase until March (for my b-day.) There are a couple of general questions I wanted to put the the hive mind here as I consider what I want to buy.

1) Laptop as gaming machine. Is this a reasonable thing now? Assuming I am only buying one machine for the next several years, can I expect the graphics card in a high end laptop today to have decent performance for at least a few years? If not, are laptop graphics cards upgradable nowadays or are you still pretty much stuck with your initial purchase?

2) Windows 8 or 7? I don't use my home machine much other than for gaming and some light word processor/spreadsheet stuff. My general mindset is to just get the latest OS because I'm less likely to run into bullshit limitations due to MS wanting me to use the latest thing. Any gaming related incompatibilities that I should worry about with Win8? Metro sounds annoying but other than getting to the latest game I want to play or updating drivers I don't expect to interact with any of it too much.

3) Is SSD worth it? Seems to still be priced at ~1$/GB. At that price I'm thinking of going with a 250GB SSD with a larger non-SSD for bulk storage like pirated MP3's and pr0n viruses. Is the performance really worth it? If so, is the performance so good I should blow my budget out of the water and get a 500GB SSD?

4) Should I bother with a docking station? When I'm at my desk and want to use a larger external monitor and a full sized keyboard, is there any reason to have a docking station these days or can I just plug my peripherals directly into the laptop without a hitch?

Thanks in advance for any buying tips you folks can offer.

I picked up an Alienware m17xR3 laptop for gaming about a year ago - the combination of Dell offering their lowest prices of the year along with a 25% off any Dell laptop (including Alienwares) promotion I got in on net'd me a $2,400 machine for $1,700. It plays blu-rays, has a 3D screen, and has been able to play Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 without trouble on medium settings. I put in quite a lot of research a year ago, so here's the best I can answer your questions:

1) It's reasonable provided that you're not looking for playing the newest games on Ultra-High graphics. If you're okay with Medium to High settings you'll be taken care of. I've not found anything that my year-old machine can't run, and I expect it'll be good for another year at least. Laptop graphics cards are not upgradable.

2) I use Windows 7 and have no plans to upgrade to 8. I see nothing compelling about Windows 8 whatsoever, whereas I'm quite happy with 7.

3) SSDs are a very respectable performance gain. If you feel comfortable with such things, you can save some money installing the SSD yourself. You can get a 256GB SSD for under $180 now, but you'll pay twice that to have any laptop manufacturer install it for you.

4) Convenience. A docking station means you put the laptop down in a specific spot and plug one thing in and it's now basically like a desktop machine. It gets frustrating connecting and disconnecting and managing 4-5 cables every single time you want to switch between mobile and desktop usage. If I intended to completely replace my desktop machine this would be a must for me.

The biggest thing is going to come down to a battle between how portable you want it to be as a laptop and how much performance you're looking for. My 17-inch gaming laptop is as powerful as a number of gaming desktops, but it's portable without really being "mobile" if you know what I mean. There's a lot of hardware packed into that chassis, and the graphics cannot operate and full power unless it's plugged directly into a wall using a fairly hefty 240W AC Adaptor. I can use it in different rooms in the house, and I can pack it to take on trips, but it's never going to be the machine I take down to the local coffeeshop for casual use. It at best got 2-3 hours of non-gaming use on battery.

The other end of the spectrum would be to go the ultra-portable gaming laptop route. Something like this: http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np6110-clevo-w110er-p-4343.html
That's quite a bit of power built into an 11-inch laptop. Kinda crazy really. Plug it into a dock and you'd think it was maybe a year-old gaming desktop, and it's extremely light and portable with a decent battery life. If I had to do it over again this would be the direction I would have gone.

I hope next year will bring some game-capable portables with touchscreens. Microsoft's own Surface Pro is an option but at the lower end of being acceptable for games (Intel HD 4000). There should be some OEM systems with real (mobile) graphics cards, though. The crucial part is the touch screen because that's what makes Windows 8 usable and the system future-proof.

Ooh, thanks! In my initial research I hadn't thought of looking at seperate component prices. I have no problem with doing my own install if I can have better performance without breaking the bank.

Okay, this is what I thought. For me really it's just the monitor and keyboard. (The mouse I intend to keep corded regardless. Don't want to run out of batteries mid-gank.) Hmmm... Maybe I will go for a dock though. I'm thinking a direct cable connection from the laptop to the router may get me better network performance than wireless. If so, that might put the hassle-factor of cable management over my threshold.

This is mainly a home machine. I don't see it traveling very much so I'm not too worried about size and weight in that regard. Also, that means I should usually be in easy reach of a power outlet to stay corded for (the rare) longer gaming sessions. However, my wife has a 17-inch widescreen Dell laptop (not gaming capable) and I don't think I want to go that big. It's great for her because she has poor eye sight, but it is very unwieldy. Especially with the 9-cell battery which is bulkier than the original battery. I'd prefer to have something more in the 15" range and just use the external monitor when I feel like going large and in charge.

Now, I'm off to rationalize a 500GB SSD purchase... :)

Several of the Dells I looked at are now touting thier touch screens. Maybe this is something that I might try out and love and wonder how I ever did without it, but right now it seems like a solution looking for a problem. At least in terms of gaming which will be this PC's main purpose. I guess I should stick with Win7.

I have the same machine Reldan has, about six months old. It is the bees' knees, and Dell's always got some kind of discount going. I would avoid Windows 8, but that's just an untutored opinion.

Asus G-series. Mine has been awesome for two years. Great value for money.

One thing you do have to be aware of with Dell is that they have the worst customer service I've ever encountered. Pray you never run into a problem that you can't fix yourself, because you'll want to kill yourself around the 3rd or 4th hour spent getting passed around between guys in India who cannot solve or diagnose anything that would be more complicated than a driver installation and reboot.

My most incredulous experience came from getting the premium WirelessHD upgrade and 3D screen, with with the WiHD was dead on arrival. Every time I called I had to start over with level 1 tech support, and 3 out of 4 times they transferred me to level 2 tech support my call mysteriously got disconnected. Upon dialing back in they would not acknowledge I had already troubleshot through level 1 support and pass me up to level 2, so I had to start over. The one time I did get to level 2 support he remote logged into my machine, did the exact same thing I did (which was to run the WiHD exe which did not work), and then diagnosed that WiHD and the 3D screen were incompatible with each other. I asked for a refund of the WiHD upgrade, but he said that was impossible because the WiHD they installed was working fine, I just wouldn't be able to have it connect to anything because of the 3D drivers being installed. He did offer to replace my machine with a machine that was the same as my existing machine but without the WiHD installed if I'd mail my laptop in and pay the difference of $250.

Hilariously, I finally fixed it myself months later when I completely removed the Nvidia drivers they had installed and reinstalled everything from scratch myself. At which point it just started working. Can't complain about the build quality or the performance of the machine, but I'm leery getting in bed with Dell again because I know if I did have a legit problem I'd be shit out of luck on a $2k machine.

I've been pricing systems here and there and right now the leader is Mythlogic which I've seen some good word-of-mouth for in another thread here somehwere. I can get a pretty top notch i7 laptop with a 500GB SSD for about $1900 though I'll probably pick up the SSD on sale seperately. (Not buying till sometime after xmas, but just want to get a feel for the pricing.)

I was wondring if there is any reason other than cost that most default gaming builds include a "small" SSD (anywhere from 16GB to 250GB) and a larger standard HD.

If I can afford a 500GB SSD (which happily I can) and I'm confident that will suit my storage needs, should I bother with a secondary HD?

Also, does anyone have recommendations on other outfits like Mythlogic that I should be pricing?

My recommendation on OS, 7 vs 8, is that 8 is nothing to be scared of, so if you come across a laptop the comes with 8 for a good price, I wouldn't worry about it.

So I've been eyeing the following two systems for a new high-end gaming laptop:

I've been looking at SSD's as well and for a ~500GB drive it looks like $400 is the general neighborhood which makes these two systems about the same price when factored into the ASUS price.

The biggest draw for the ASUS is that is has a larger screen. I'm sure that would be enjoyable, but frankly 17" is a bit on the large size for me. My wife has a 17" widescreen Dell and it is unwieldy to actually have on your lap. I plan to use a docking station so if I feel like going large I won't be limited to a laptop screen. Still, bigger is better! Also, I've been buying ASUS motherboards for my desktop PCs for the better part of two decades. They have consistently produced great hardware.

Mythlogic would provide the SSD right off so I don't have to hassle with re-installing everything. Not a huge deal, but nice. Performance wise, everything else looks comparable between the two. The processor and RAM are slightly better on the Mythlogic but I'm not sure it's enough to count as a difference.

Dell's prices start at over $2K for anything near these system specs.

12GB is an odd number for an Ivy Bridge system, what's up with that?

I'm a big fan of the Asus gaming laptops. I'm on my 2nd one now, which is about a year old G74Sx. The old one has been a media server since I got the new one, and will hopefully be the basis of a MAME cabinet later this year.

I figured I'll probably upgrade to 16GB at some point when I'm no longer sore in the wallet from the initial purchase. The Mythlogic has four memory slots and that configuration was 3x4GB so I can just buy an additional stick. I suspect the same of the ASUS though I haven't looked it up.

I should mention that they weigh a fucking TON. Mine is like 5 macbooks.

Somehow I overlooked Reldan 's XoticPC link above.

They have some good prices:

I can't vouch for XoticPC as I've not ordered from them before, but the stuff they list is certainly consistent with the pricing and components I'd expect from a high-end gaming-capable laptop. If I didn't already have a gaming laptop that's only a year old I'd consider getting something from them.

I'll throw in and recommend the MSI GT70 series laptops.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=-1&isNodeId=1&Description=msi gt70&x=0&y=0

I am very happy with mine. It handles everything I've thrown at it. My only complaint is that the 3D card is completely disabled when it's not plugged in, so you're stuck on intel integrated graphics, but really no 17" screen gaming laptop is going to last long playing anything without AC power anyway. It does well as a desktop replacement or portable gaming computer.

I was heavily leaning toward an ASUS because I like their hardware in general but after reading up on graphics cards it's a big turn-off that the ASUS high-end models are limited to the GTX 670M. Apparently there's a significant performance difference between the 670M and the 670MX/675MX cards and ASUS doesn't accomodate the better models. Their newer G75VX models are due out anytime and may have the 670MX, but still not the 675MX which is what I'm drawn toward now. The graphics card is going to be one of the main factors in how this thing ages as a gaming machine.

Also, the ASUS models don't have a factory option for a 500GB SSD which means it gets highly marked up if I have someone like Xotic do it. Not a big deal as I was just going to start off the a 250GB then add a second drive when I found a good SSD sale, but the Sager I've been pricing against has a pretty good price for including the 500GB SSD off the bat.

Time to price MSI's against the Sager/Clevos. Anyone have experience with a Compal laptop? I don't know anything about those yet.

My MSI GT70 has the 675m. Driver support was pretty spotty initially but seems to have improved a great deal in the last few months.

Damn you, Murg! I love my Asus, was planning to replace it, but now I am going to have the niggle of "not the best" video card weighing on my mind!

Yep, thinking of going gaming laptop myself - I have an old desktop rig that is fine, but for various reasons (well, mostly because I just like being in the same room as my wife) have been using a i3 13.3" business type laptop exclusively for the last year or so.

Oddly enough, HK seems a really bad place to buy gaming laptops - there are desktop builders a plenty, but for laptops it so far seems to be only Dell/ Alienware, or consumer/ business laptops Sager will ship to HK, and still beat Dell handsomely on price/ spec, but seems odd as the laptops are coming from Taiwan in the first place... E.g. can't find MSI or Gigabyte laptops

I love the whole "gaming next to wife" thing. She can enjoy some foodTV or singing competition, I can game, and we can have a chit-chat during the ad breaks. It is quite a nice compromise, IMHO.

Alright, I pulled the trigger. A little earlier than I'd intended but I should get it just in time for a two week vacation I have scheduled.

Ultimately this is the best I could find within my $2K budget. ASUS should be a lot more relevant once they can accommodate the GeForce 670MX but even then they'll be a little behind the curve for high-end gaming. The Sager/Clevo build was comparable to what I got but came out just a tad more. It was about the same price except at the end where you get to the OS the MSI came with Windows 7 and the Sager came with...nothing! You had to add an OS for a minimum of $80 which made the difference. I checked a few other brands but nothing has the combination of components and price that these three brands have.

I was very open to getting a smaller display but it just didn't make sense when it was all priced out. I would have paid nearly the same for a comparable system. Might as well go large! Though I should qualify that a bit. Most of the 15" machines didn't have a secondary drive which means I either have to buy a larger SSD up front or wait till some SSD sale comes along who-knows-when then re-install everything as I replace the only drive. I put preference on having at least a couple hundred GB of SSD to start out and the capacity to add more. If I sacrificed my SSD preference I could have gotten a 15" that was a bit cheaper.

I am looking forward to delving in to Dark Souls on my vacation!

EXACTLY why I need to decouple my gaming from my desk.

For a happy marriage one should still avoid MMOs, by and large (unless her/him indoors is also an MMOer, obviously) as you can't easily hit pause. NO MATTER WHAT YOU TELL YOURSELF about how casual an MMO is, they aren't.

Also, shock-horror, I like being around my wife!

That's why I switched from LOL to WOT as my MMO of choice. 15 a side matches that last 10-15 minutes max, and no respawn. Worst comes to worst, you just "passive scout" for your team.

And yep, being in same room/ on same sofa with wife is a nice place to be.

Eador is working out great for this sort of thing, if only because my wife really likes it so she's often the one playing it next to me while I'm watching Top Chef. It also, ironically, runs best on slower machines.

What is this Eador thing? The screenshots don't give me much of a clue - some kind of Masters of Magic type game?

If you derive any enjoyment out of fantasy-themed turn-based strategy games it's the best $6 you'll ever spend. It's not altogether dissimilar from Masters of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, and King's Bounty, but there's a tremendous amount of depth to the game that isn't readily apparent, but you keep peeling back the layers as you go.

By the way Calistas , don't feel hesitant about ASUS at all. I spent an idiotic amount of money to eek out some additional performance but for $1400 the ASUS I linked up-thread is a good gaming machine. Assuming comparable pricing, when the G75VX becomes available it will be a great update for the money.

I hope you dig that computer. I got the 202 model, which is pretty much the same thing but a HD instead of the paired SSDs. I had some issues out of the box with network drivers not playing nice with GFWL, but MSI has drivers up on the site that fix it, assuming they don't ship preinstalled.

Ended up buying Lenovo Y500 at the weekend. The Y580 would have been much cheaper (they had run out special) but was veto'ed by the wife on the grounds of aesthetics & noise (fan noise was noticeable, on the Y500 they are gently wafting, the cooling seems well designed. So overclocking can be done, if required)

17.3" was just too big, as I want a laptop, not a desktop replacement. This is a 15.6" HD screen, I7 3630QM, 8 GB 1600MHz ram, dual GT650M SLI (which seems to give performance of a GT675M). The HD is meh (1TB 5400 with 16 gig mSata cache) but the laptop is designed to be modular, so when 512GB SSD gets cheap can swap that in. Weight 2.6 kg (5lb, 12 oz)

Windows 8 - no issues so far. Lenovo bloatware (apps) are acceptable, but will look at cleaning some of them off

Haven't tested on Skyrim yet, but WoT was giving me 120 fps at medium settings.

Overall impressions- it is a high end multimedia machine not a balls out gaming laptop, but am happy with it so far. Looked at importing a custom build sager/ clevo, but the support was an issue. ASUS gaming laptops not sold here, and Dell Alienware wouldn't have passed the "sitting next to my wife on the sofa" test, plus 17" too big. Looked at XPS 15, but this had better feel/ specs.

Congrats on the satisfied purchase! That's way too sensible for me, though. Mine will likely sound like a hair dryer under load, weigh a third again what yours does and be unwieldy on the lap due to the size. And yours probably cost a good chunk less.

But I'm an American! Fuck yeah!

Have overclocked the GPU's a bit, still cool enough to have on lap, Skyrim looking pretty & playable

I only had 11 hours in Skyrim, as old laptop just wasn't really up to making it a good experience

I am going to hijack this thread for my own laptop hunting.

I have a laptop. It is about 5 years old now, and it is really beginning to frustrate me. It's constantly out of memory, and it's too old to get worthwhile upgrades for it. It's enough to make me avoid using it for work unless absolutely necessary, instead of using it to go get some work done outside the house, which I really ought to be doing. So I think it's time I looked at getting a new one.

I'm not really bothered about doing 3D gaming on it, although it would be a nice extra. Stuff like portability, noise, and battery life would be more important. I'll mainly be using it for Unity game dev, and other programming, and I really just want it to be better than my current one, for as little cost as possible. I have savings, but no income, and am losing money every month, so while I could spend a lot, I really shouldn't.

I've mostly been searching for laptops with 8GB RAM, and any graphics card that isn't integrated. I'd like to have a solid state drive, because I keep hearing they are amazing, but the only laptops I see being sold with them are ultra-small ones with lower specs. I guess they figure that people who want more powerful laptops also want more space. So I guess I'll have to buy a machine with a regular drive, and then buy my own SSD separately.

Other than those requirements, I'm not really sure what I want. My current laptop has a 15" screen, which seems ok. I've been figuring any CPU will be better than my current one, and therefore be fine.

I know there's stuff like build quality and battery life that you can't really tell from a list of specs, and getting advice from others on brands is probably the best way to judge that side of things. Someone in another thread somewhere suggested ASUS as making good laptops, which lead me to my current favourite:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE
£489
15.6" display
Intel Core i5 2.5 GHz Processor
8GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 610M 2GB Graphics card
Windows 8
Weight not listed

Are there any flaws in my thinking here?

That looks like a good amount of computer for ~$655. Not too heavy either at ~5.5 lbs (2.5kg).

On that machine you won't be playing any current games on very high settings, let alone future titles but that doesn't appear to be a priority.

The battery is a 6-cell which is pretty standard. I have no idea how long that will let you run unplugged with that graphics card. With the higher performing cards you can't even run them properly while unplugged.

If you are able to excercise some fiscal restraint, getting a SSD later on would definitely be the way to go. It's an order of magnitude more expensive than standard HDD storage.

I haven't had an Asus laptop but I've been buying their desktop motherboards since the mid 90's and they have a good reputation for both the performance and reliability of their hardware. From what I've read in my own laptop search that is still the case with their notebooks. BTW, in my search for a gaming laptop I found that searching YouTube was a good way to get a nice look at the various models I was interested in.

Edited for spelling.

Thanks for that suggestion. Checking some out now.

I just bought one of these and put one of these in it. I have done very little actual performance testing, but, at a minimum, it's real purdy.

I will be in the US later this year and I imagine that this is pretty much what I will buy too.