Solved! Decent Gaming Laptop Choices

[darokal]

I'm looking for a decent gaming laptop around $600-800.

Main games I'd like to play are SC2, Skyrim and Battlefield 3.

I found a few that I liked and would like suggestions. There's a i7 2630qm w/ gt 540m, 6gb memory at $750 (new), and a i7 740qm w/ radeon hd 5870, 8gb memory at around the same price but refurbished.

Is there a big difference between the 1st and 2nd gen i7's?

 

[Pyree]

About half as fast. But then the 6750m is about 30% faster than the GT540m and the laptop is 40% cheaper.

 

[fb39ca4]

Yeah, there is like a 20% per clock difference, but in your case the second laptop is still better because it has a much faster GPU, in the first, the 540m is a huge bottleneck.

 

[Pyree]

http/www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1306296&CatId=4936

 

[darokal]

How good is A8-3500M compared to i7 2630qm?

 

[darokal]

Darn. It's out of stock. Thanks though.

 

[Pyree]

About half as fast. But then the 6750m is about 30% faster than the GT540m and the laptop is 40% cheaper.