Gaming laptop under 1000$

Noispaxen

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Sep 9, 2012
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18,510
Hey everybody!
I am planning to buy a new laptop in a couple of weeks and would like to see some suggestions and opinions. I'll copy the questions from FAQ and hope you can help :)

1. What is your budget?
<1000$

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15'6

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1366 x 768 is ok
1920x1080 would be awesome.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Pretty much desktop replacement.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not very important, mostly gonna use at home. 3-4hours would be cool.

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, I like to play a lot of games. Games like Dota2, Heroes of the Storm, World of Warcraft and I want to play Witcher 3 once I buy the laptop. I don't expect 100fps in it, but like 40would be nice.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Just regular use for listening to music, watching movies, doing school work and so on.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
At least 500GB. Also SSD for the operating system would be nice.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
I am in Poland and mostly use www.x-kom.pl

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I've been using my current one for 4,5year so far and expect around the same from the new one.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD is welcome.

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.
My favourite is MSI as thats what I have now and I am happy with how it performed considering relatively low price (MSI GE600).
But I can consider other brands...
13. What country do you live in?
Taiwan/Poland (after comparing prices it seems like Poland is the better place to buy one)

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
The laptop does not need to have operating system.

Thank you for help!
 
The best site I know of to compare gaming systems is www.xoticpc.com. However it's very likely you can't get them shipped to your area easily from them.

Witcher 3 is pretty demanding, you will need to go over your 1k budget for a laptop to run it. The nVidia card for minimum specs on it is GTX 660 which gets a score of over 4,000 in PassMark video test, a $1,000 laptop may have an 860m or 960m video card in it, which scores about 1600. That is a BIG difference. You'd need at least a 870/970 card with 880/980 being good for smooth play at past Low.

If you are OK with "maybe" running Witcher 3, just do a search on your available stores to by from for a laptop with an 860 or 960m video card, anything with those will be fine to get, just look over differences in reviews for how good the screen is and maybe keyboard/case/screen size to pick what you'd like.

For any other games you have listed, a $1,000 laptop will be fine.
 

Noispaxen

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Sep 9, 2012
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I am a bit surprised to see you saying it might not be able to run Witcher 3 at all. It can run with 49fps on medium settings on GTX960m according to this:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.13849.0.html

Anyway, I narrowed down some of my choices and would love if someone could help me choose the right one (with reasons for doing so). Here they are:
1. Lenovo y50-70 ~ $965.29 - i7-4720hq, gtx960m with 4gb ddr5, 8gb ram, apparently very good quality screen - mate LED IPS, 256GB SSD.
My thoughts about this one are: It has i7 and gtx960 at the same price as other laptops with i5 and gtx860m from other companies. However, it only has 256GB drive, so I would have to buy an external one and I have read some people complaining about bad ethernet card, making it have slow internet connection, as well as the laptops sometimes coming with factory flaws.
2. MSI GE60 Apache Pro ~ $913.73 i5-4210H, GTX860m 2gb ddr5, 8gb ram, Full HD, 1gb HDD, CD/DVD writer, slot for 2SSD discs.
Thoughts: It has slightly worse graphics card, it has only 2cores unlike the Lenovo's 4s, but it has big hard drive and a slot for SSD. The screen is not IPS, but I'm not sure if that is something very important. It has 1more usb slot and nice keyboard. Also, as I said above, I trust MSI :p
3. MSI GE60 2PE ~ $1017.48 i7-4720HQ, GTX 860m 2gb DDR5, 8gb, 128gb SSD+1000gb HDD with slot for 1more SSD, CD/DVD writer
Thoughts: this one already has SSD and big HDD so no need to add money. It has the same i7 as the Lenovo, but a bit worse graphics card.

My big questions for you are:
How big is the difference between the i5 and i7. Is the i7 with 4cores straight better than i5, or are there any drawbacks of having the 4cores?
How big is the performance difference between GTX 960m and 860m going to be in games? I read that the cards have around 10% difference, but when looking on the website I linked above, it seems like the FPS difference in games is considerably higher than 10%.
Finally, is there anything else important about the laptops, that maybe I can't see from descriptions but I should consider?

Thank you!
 
The cpu's shouldn't make that much of difference in games as most games are gpu intensive. I would say the same with the gpu's as well.

Just be warned that msi to tend to get very loud and hot very quickly as the ones you have listed are very slim. The lenevo has some screen issues that people have said.
 


Did you look in the right section? If you look under gaming laptops there are a ton with at least an 860m video chip.

As far as the 860m being able to play Witcher 3, I looked at the minimum requirements from the maker, and compared that speed video card to the PassMark results of the 860. The 960 is quite a bit faster, a system with the 960m will play it decently at Medium at 768 resolution.
 
I checked again and I couldn't find any the gaming laptop section on the website he linked. I am not saying that you can't get a laptop that can play witcher 3 under $1000.

Could you give me the link so I can see?



 


http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-gaming-laptops-ct-118_96_98.html

Just go to Laptops then Gaming on the site.
 
That is a different website than the one he linked.