Another Gaming Laptop Thread, Sorry Kids

[budpetrey]

1. What is your budget?
700-1000$, I'm willing to go 100 or so out of budget upwards
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

3. What screen resolution do you want?

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not really the biggest issue
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)?
I want to play LoL, Maybe Skyrim or BF3, maybe a run of the mill MMORPG online

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
I just want the basics other than the gaming. For music I could just stick a portable hard-drive in it right?

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Enough

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I'm fine with a good solid 2 years, but I wouldn't mind running a cheaper laptop into the ground and having it for a year
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD would be nice, other than that, nope.

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.
I want to avoid Toshiba, because the insides break fairly easily, and I am wary of HP
13. What country do you live in?
USA
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I play games with some friends to keep in touch with them, so that is where I'd like it to shine. I just want to play 2-3 of the games listed above at any quality as long as I don't have to deal with lag. I'm not super interested in the quality of the graphics on the games. It'd be nice but however it works out I guess.

 

[budpetrey]

It needs to be able to take some physical abuse too, such as sand, dropping it every now and then, stuff like that. Thank you !

 

[hapkido]

It needs to be able to take some physical abuse too, such as sand, dropping it every now and then, stuff like that. Thank you !

Sand and dropping? That is going to be terrible for any laptop.

Newegg sells a few brands of AMD APU notebooks. They're supposed to be coming out with their Trinity APUs in the near future. For $500 you can probably get something that will game decently at 720p. I wouldn't suggest spending more since you probably won't get a year of use playing catch with it at the beach.

 

[Plasmid]

Gaming laptop that is military grade for 700-1000 not going to happen bro. You might wanna take a look at hp Elitebook though, enterprise level. Those things are made to be runned over by cars and thrown on the ground.

 

[jaguarskx]

If you are looking for a semi rugged laptop for games you need to triple your budget. The ToughBook 52 is an example of a semi rugged laptop capable of playing games since it has a Core i5-2450m and a Radeon HD 6750M. Base price... only $2,770.

http/www.gettoughtoday.com/p-6-toughbook-52.aspx

Note: You need a fully rugged laptop (military grade) if sand is a real concern. Not sure if any of them are capable of playing games.

 

[drjiga]

My friend recently bought Alienware M14x from Dell.

Here's my assessment

1. Roughly $100+ than your budget.

2. Size is great for on-the-go gaming, 13in screen and does not weigh a ton (not sure exactly what the weight is, but I've held it in my hands and it seems very reasonable)

3. Not sure what resolution it's got.

4. Portable

5. My friend gets about 2 hours of moderate gaming on the battery charge

6. Skyrim would run on this thing fine (not maxed out, but wouldn't look like crap either), BF3 probably would run, but not great (medium to low settings perhaps).

7. --

8. --

9. He ordered directly from Dell.

10. --

11. It does not have a built-in DVD drive

12. --

13. --

14. We mostly play COH, TF2, Civ 5 -- for these games it works great, everything on max and running smooth

Hope this helps

 

[nbelote]

The closest you're going to get to sand- and drop-resistant, at that price range and still be able to game (somewhat, think low settings) is a Dell Latitude E6420 ATG. It's semi-rugged, can take the hits you're talking about, and has a Quadro NVS 4200m graphics chip in it. Not great, but you're asking for a lot when you say sand and drops.

http/outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dfb&cs=28&puid=271e25ec

 

[budpetrey]

Sand and dropping? That is going to be terrible for any laptop.

Newegg sells a few brands of AMD APU notebooks. They're supposed to be coming out with their Trinity APUs in the near future. For $500 you can probably get something that will game decently at 720p. I wouldn't suggest spending more since you probably won't get a year of use playing catch with it at the beach.

You seem like a real run of the mill cockwad.

I live across the street from the beach, hence...some sand. I won't be dumping it on the thing.

Also, I expect that I'll probably drop it from several feet a couple times during it's life time.

Everyone just ignore the sand and dropping part, it was just an extra thing I thought I might mention. Sorry for confusing everyone.

 

[hapkido]

The beach is not a good spot for a gaming computer. If letting you know that and offering a viable option makes me a cockwad, whatever. You probably won't get a lot of help if you ask questions and then insult people who try to answer them.

 

[Grand_Admiral_K]

You seem like a real run of the mill cockwad.

I live across the street from the beach, hence...some sand. I won't be dumping it on the thing.

Also, I expect that I'll probably drop it from several feet a couple times during it's life time.

Everyone just ignore the sand and dropping part, it was just an extra thing I thought I might mention. Sorry for confusing everyone.

First, don't insult people on a forum trying to help you, that gets you no where. And frankly makes other people, including myself, less inclined to help you.

Second, even though you're telling us to ignore it, dropping a laptop "several feet a couple of times during it's lifetime" is a pretty big deal. That's potentially disastrous to hard drives. For this laptop to have a shot at surviving what you're telling us, you will need at least a semi-rugged, which is going to cost you a pretty penny.

Third, if you decide to go with a regular gaming laptop at your budget, you're going to need to treat it differently than how you're explaining it. At the very least, you best not come back here and complain about it failing, because that's exactly what we warned you about.


I'm not trying to come of as overly harsh or judgmental, but you need to think about what I just said. Not everybody is as level headed as hapkido and not many people are going to bother to come back onto this thread to tell you the same thing over and over again.

 

[Bauwens]

gaming laptop=oxymoron

I disagree. A gaming laptop is a laptop specifically built to play games. They may not be able to accomplish what desktops can, but they are still built with the main purpose to game. There are those of us that do not have the privilege of being at home all the time, where portability is not an issue. Your comment is asinine does not help the OP, and does not belong here on toms hardware.

To the op.

The best thing you can do is research. I recommend

http/www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-7970M.72675.0.html

as a good source of researching what you can get for your money. They have benchmarks on several games for each graphics card, and the level of graphics that you can achieve with them. They also have links to reviews with notebooks containing each card that will help you in your decision on purchasing a laptop. I think you are better off researching what you want, or even a laptop suggested to you before buying it.

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

Has a graph of all the graphics cards put together with a list of games showing what they can do. So it is probably best to start your research there. Work your way up the list and see what you can get for your money.