Best gaming/productivity laptop for around $600?

[kassuba39]

I am in need of a laptop and I have a budget of around $600. With this laptop, I am hoping to accomplish some light gaming and video/photo editing.

Being that I will play some games, a dedicated GPU or decent APU is essential. For the photo/video editing aspect, a quad-core CPU and 8GB memory is highly preferred. Build quality isn't super important but it's not unimportant either. I'm not super picky on resolution but 900p+ would be preffered.

Some examples of programs that I want to run:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe After Effects
- Adobe Premiere
- Sony Vegas

I know this is somewhat of a stretch but any help is highly appreciated. I already have a custom built desktop for my heavy-lifting. I just need sonething that is "good enough". If you have any questions, please ask.

Edit:
I have no problem buying used or refurbished.

 

[Solandri]

$600 is a really tight budget for what you're asking for. I picked up a Samsung Book 6 for $700 during Black Friday last year. Ivy bridge quad core i7 + AMD GPU which is slightly faster than a 750m. Beautiful screen too, which is important if you're photo/video editing (the Lenovo gaming laptops were close in price but had terrible screens). I see a few recertified for sale, but they could be i5 models.

If you already have a desktop for heavy lifting, you may want to consider dropping the quad core requirement and using remote desktop to connect to the desktop and do your photo/video editing on your laptop that way.

If you're in the U.S., you may just want to wait until after Thanksgiving. That's when the Black Friday sales begin. There are always some really nice laptop deals then.

 

[kassuba39]

I understand that I will find better deals come Black Friday but I need this as soon as possible. Dropping the quad-core requirement for the laptop is okay, but it needs to be a fast dual-core. Quad-core is still highly recommended.