Decent gaming laptop

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Hello,

I am in search of a decent laptop for school work. I will mainly use it to edit videos, do homework, some programming, and the occasional gaming (skyrim, guild wars 2, etc.) my budget is no more than $500. I've looked around but I'm basically lost. Any help would be so greatly appreciated

 

[aloof11]

With that budget you should look for a laptop featuring an A10-5750M CPU, it'll be difficult to find a laptop that features a separate and stronger GPU.

Try looking for a laptop like the Lenovo G505s as they seem to have great value, there are a few variations (some feature the weaker A8 CPU) but the value for those are great. Just a quick look Ive found one like this, it features the A8 not A10 but the price is quite low and Im hoping with the new driver support having two weak GPUs, which it has, might provide good performance in unison: http/www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-G505s-59378837-AMD-A8-5550M-HD-8570M-4GB-DDR3-500GB-HDD-15-6-Notebook-/321321506226?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item4ad04115b2

Here one that has an A10-5750M (its a refurb though): http/www.ebay.com/itm/HP-E1X77UAR-ABL-Pavilion-15-e084ca-AMD-Elite-Quad-Core-A10-5750M-2-50GHz-No-/370997162444?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item56612771cc

UPDATE:
Found it!: http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312829

 

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Thanks for the reply and suggestion.
I am not so sure about Lenovo, I have had friends that didn't like theirs. I was looking at Asus but am not sure if some of their models around $500 would be worth it for what I need.

How hard is it to change out the video card in no laptop?

 

[aloof11]

99% of laptops dont allow for the changing of the video card or GPU, the 1% that do are quite expensive and also can have some trouble after changing GPU.

I personally like Lenovo, had a Z585 laptop that was great, was able to upgrade the CPU on it as well with no problems. Also the G505s model had some issues but Lenovo eventually released a BIOS update that fixed the problem

Normally if I have a strict budget I look for a laptop that has the best components then check if that specfic model has any known problems (and if they are serious problems or not), if its not that serious Ill buy