Advice on a sub $600 laptop for sims 3 and light photo/video editing.

[orooe]

1. What is your budget?
No more than $600 including tax. Shipping, if necessary, is ok though.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15inches ish

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Unsure, higher the better i guess.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable

5. How much battery life do you need?
No restrictions

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
Sims 3 with all current and future expansion packs. Also a ton of custom content. High settings please.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Light photo and video editing. Mostly family and friends, home movies.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
at least 500GB

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
No restrictions

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Will be using for 5+ years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
at least, Dvd rom/writer

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
No restrictions

13. What country do you live in?
United States

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
If possible, a laptop in white or red would be nice. If not, a skinable one is ok. As long as it can play Sims on high and it can burn cds/dvds, will be using it until it breaks. Previous laptop was a HP dv4000.

 

[jaguarskx]

Based on what's available on Newegg and your restrictions ($600, 500GB HDD) you are limited to a laptop with either a Radeon HD 6650M or nVidia GT 520m. The Radeon HD 6650M is faster of the two. You can click the following link to see benchmarks of the two. The video cards are ranked by overall performance.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

Note that those are not "fair" benchmarks nor does it mean you will also get the same results. This is because some laptops will have faster CPUs than others. Unlike desktop video cards, you cannot simply have a single laptop testbed and swap out the video card, it is not possible.

ASUS A53 Series A53TA-XN1 Notebook AMD A-Series A4-3300M(1.9GHz) = $530. The dual core A4-3300M is relatively slow compared to a Core i3-2310m/2330m CPU found in other laptops using the same restrictions.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230098

MSI CX640-013US Notebook Intel Core i3 2310M(2.10GHz) = $570 after rebate. The Core i3-2310m is a much stronger CPU than the A4-3300m which means it will be much better for intensive CPU processes like video encoding. However, it comes with the nVidia GT 520m which is not as powerful as the Radeon HD 6650m. Based on the benchmark link I provided above. It provides 53 fps on medium settings at 1024 x 768 resolution. Most laptops in your price range have a resolution of 1366x768.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152289

 

[jaguarskx]

If you go a bit out of your budget, then you can get the best of both worlds; a powerful CPU and a relatively powerful GPU.

ASUS A53SV-NH51 Notebook Intel Core i5 2430M(2.40GHz) 15.6" = $680. That gets you the i5-2430M CPU and the Nvidia GT 540M which is ranked higher than the Radeon HD 6650m.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230132&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

[jaguarskx]

Oh yeah, forgot to add that Newegg does not charge taxes in most states.

They only charge tax in states where it has it's office (CA) or warehouses (TN and NJ to the best of my knowledge).

 

[orooe]

Thanks for your reply! $680 is really stretching my budget if i had to get one right now. But I think I can make it using coinstar lol. I will give it serious consideration. But thanks again for not only the suggestions but for the extra info that came with it. It'll make researching that much easier.