Gaming laptop for around $650

Jimbo81

Honorable
Mar 26, 2012
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10,510
1. What is your budget?
Around $650 no more and 700 unless its completely worth it

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
It doesnt matter really

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Open

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
I would like to use this laptop for class too. So portable

5. How much battery life do you need?
2 hours or more would be nice. Can always switch to integrated graphics

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)?
Yes, Wow, Starcraft 2, brawlbusters, Source games TF2, Counter strike. I would like to play at medium settings, low is ok too

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
School basically

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
250gb at least

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
any site have use newegg numberous times

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
2 or more years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Dont need blueray, basic OD will work

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.
Brand doesnt matter really

13. What country do you live in?
US

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
trying to decide between this laptop: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246327

I was going to possibly get this laptop from hp with this cpu:AMD Quad-Core A6-3430MX Accelerated Processor (2.4GHz/1.7GHz, 4MB L2 Cache

and this graphics card: 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics

650gb hard drive, 6gb ram

Any help would be appreciated.
 

piwifrut

Honorable
Mar 25, 2012
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10,510
That lenovo IdeaPad Z570 would be not a bad one for playing games. The GPU it has is pretty good.
The best resource I found for comparing GPUs is http://www.notebookcheck.net/
The AMD Radeon 7690M is a bit better than the one in the lenovo notebook
 

Jimbo81

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Mar 26, 2012
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10,510
Thank you! I guess the real question is am I willing to trade come GPU performance for the Cpu performance. I looked it up recently that the AMD Quad-Core A6-3430MX is considerably worse than the i5 in the IdeaPad. I could be wrong but thats why I am here :)
Thank you for your comment and any other ones about other possible laptops too!
 

piwifrut

Honorable
Mar 25, 2012
7
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10,510
If it were me, I'd go with the Intel CPU. I think it is better than the AMD one.

My laptop has an i5 430m processor (1st generation) and a Radeon 5650m Graphics chip, I play Skyrim on med details, Battlefield 3 on low-med, Modern Warfare 2 on Ultra.

Both processors and GPUs you have mentioned will definitely perform better than my laptop.

And I am quite happy with how mine performs in gaming.
 

piwifrut

Honorable
Mar 25, 2012
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10,510
Oh and those Steam games you mentioned, (I'm not sure about all of them) should run very well. Source games do not tend to be extremely demanding in computers.
(I can run Portal 2 (relatively new game) on almost max settings with my older laptop)
 

Jimbo81

Honorable
Mar 26, 2012
8
0
10,510
Thank You for your responses! I was thinking the same thing. I would rather get a better CPU and have my whole laptop run better. Sounds like both graphic cards can most games pretty well, I have always wanted to get the best GPU for the money but I'll make an exception this time. Newegg is great and I'm not planning on purchasing one for a couple weeks so I hope this laptop stays on newegg!
If anyone else finds a better laptop for the money or have another opinion on the two laptops I would appreciate it!
Thanks again!