Buying a gaming laptop in May

RageSaul

Honorable
Feb 3, 2013
4
0
10,510
Hello, I want to buy a gaming laptop, basically one that can run a few games on max settings:

Minecraft
Just Cause 2
PayDay the heist
Planetside 2 (medium is fine)
Blacklight Retribution
Killing Floor
And other releases on medium - high settings, not Crysis 3 or Battlefield 4 when they come out, I have an Xbox for them, I just need a laptop that I can run some of my Steam games on.

Things I need to put:

-Budget is £600 ($1000)
-17.3 Inch screen
-1080 x 1920 I think (a good one)
-Probably desktop laptop but I will take it places
-Considering I will take it places, at least 4 Hrs running no games I guess unless it's too much to ask.
-Listed the games, all on med-high settings.
-I might do some animation, Source Filmmaker and such, and I have photoshop, they don't matter too much. Media watching and music sorting. Lot of youtube and some flash games.
-Around 750GB - 1TB space
-No specific sites, but, if you link one I don't know then add something proving that it's safe to buy from.
-DVD ROM would be good
-I like Dell because I own a dell inspiron 15r that I bought in December 2011 but it is slow and can't run games, but I Dell overprice their products. And Toshiba because I have purchased stuff off them in the past. Any brand is fine as long as it is well known.
-I live in the U.K
-3 or more USB ports would be good and so would a headphone jack on the same side as USB because atm my turtle beach headphones can't reach :cry: . Also the cheapest possible with all these things is needed. Obviously a dedicated graphics card with around 2GB graphics RAM

I found this: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=76653&vpn=SVE17125CDB&manufacture=Sony%20VAIO&promoid=1200

Which looks really good but a lower resolution then I was expecting :(

Thanks a lot, if it too early in advance for May then tell me and I'll repost this nearer the time.
 

whyso

Distinguished
Jan 15, 2012
253
0
18,960
That is a fairly weak computer for gaming, For $1000 you should easily be able to get a gt 650m or 660m which will be roughly double the performance of the 7650m (which will have trouble gaming at 1080p). Sony tends to be overpriced and really plasticky (shiny plastic yuck) Asus,MSI or lenovo make good computers. Dell has a competitive product compared to the sony here (http://configure.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=ni17ra7t_ft_031&model_id=inspiron-17r-se-7720&c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1) but dell will not allow you to upgrade drivers properly.

With a laptop, 1GB vram should be fine. There is no way you will every use more with a 650m
 

jumbolkna

Honorable
Mar 28, 2012
2
0
10,510
Have a look at the clevo laptops. Clevo are a brand that makes ODM laptop shells and then a manufactuerer adds its own branding to it. Most of the time they are completely customizable and excellent value for money.

They are sold under sager, metabox and horize. Possibly even more names that I don't know about.

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/2850/
 
It is really too early...

And Intel is expected to officially announce the release of their Haswell CPUs in June. I believe some of the existing laptops based on Intel's Ivy Bridge will soon have price reductions to move existing inventory to make room for Haswell based laptops. Therefore, waiting until June when new laptops are released could mean a "fire sale" on existing laptops.

Haswell will have a new graphics core; I think it is called the Intel HD 4600. Last September a pre-production Haswell based laptop was shown playing Skyrim at 1920x1080 resolution with high quality graphics. While no benchmarks were made available, the game did seem to run very smoothly. Anti-Aliasing was likely turned off.

Actual performance result probably will not be released until late May since there is typically a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) on "soon to be released" electronics. The NDA may extend to the day just prior to the official release announcement so that could mean early June.