Gaming PC Laptop $1200-1700

[opticsnap]

1. What is your budget?
$1200-1600

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
17"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1080p

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
4-5 hr

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)?
Civilization V high
Sim City 4 max
Sim City (2013 release) high
Sims 3 high
Psychonauts max
Left 4 Dead mid - max
Skyrim mid-max
Diablo 3 mid-max
Gears of War 2 mid-max
Bioshock 2 mid-max

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
3+ layers in Photoshop CS6
Zbrush (digital modeling)
Painter
Sketchbook Pro

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
150-300GB SSD would be nice, but not necessary.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Bestbuy, maybe newegg (skittish about long distance customer service)

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
4 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD read and write

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.
NO TO - HP - Remember that 15" stylus touch screen with the rotating screen - I had one and it over heated at given opportunity. Photoshop CS3 crashed it once with 3 layers at 600x800. Yeah.
NO TO - Apple - Seem to be out of my reach financially. Used them in school and didn't like them. Long time PC user.
NO TO - Acer. While my current computer is an Acer Aspire One - So many problems. Charger issue, battery issue, easily cracked screen, bios update problem, keyboard, trackpad sucks imo, resolution. Sims 2 and Sim City 4 don't run well too well on medium, low is not much better. Temperamental.
YES TO - Dell - good experience with a 17" laptop already
YES TO - Origin - But common that's not really gonna happen, is it.
TENTATIVELY - Alienware. Last I read, Dell may not be doing that well with them?
TENTATIVELY - Sager. Didn't hear of them until reading other recommendations.

13. What country do you live in?
USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed
I will be attending college as a fine arts major and may need to take this computer with me to class. Granted, it will be highly unlikely that it would be put to the grindstone in that situation. The new computer will be my only machine. Even if the battery life comes up short I'm willing to buy a back up, but it would have to still come in under 1700. Will be buying in/around October. Looks do not matter.
I'm not sure if the 1 GB video cards and lower end i7's would be able to handle all that would be thrown at it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[WR2]

Will be buying in/around October. Looks do not matter.

It's just a bit early to be getting specific about models and prices. But for your gaming needs Sager/Clevo is going to be hard to beat for performance, quality and reliability. You can look over the models in your price range @ XoticPC.com
They also have the other 'usual suspects' in gaming notebooks - Asus & MSI.
It's good for comparison shopping and pricing out the various options.

 

[WR2]

I'm not sure if the 1 GB video cards and lower end i7's would be able to handle all that would be thrown at it.

For your non-gaming needs. There will be a LOT of your classmates getting by just fine on the student workloads you describe with $800 dual core notebooks.

There are NO limitations on getting work done on a mid-spec dual core $800 notebook vs a high spec quad core $1600 notebook. The only difference will be that one notebook will finish extended heavy processing runs faster. And that the $1600 notebook will run games decently.

 

[opticsnap]

Best answer selected by opticsnap.