Get $500-700 Gaming Laptop or just wait a bit

[Guest]

yea proabably another $500-700 question you guys get but...
I was searching through the internet today and looked a bit into gaming laptops. I built my own desktop close to 2 years ago and I am now thinking of upgrading my 7 year old laptop with..... Intel integrated graphics . However it can play a few games on it seeing a lot of indie devs make games in an 8-bit style
lol, anyway back to my topic:
I found this laptop
It looks decent and yea 4gb of ram can be bumped to 8gb however the thing that worries me with this laptop is the processor. Do a lot of laptops atm still run on 2 core processors (also 2.6 ghz seems low)? However an AMD Radeon HD 8850M 2GB seems good.

Will a laptop like that be able to run games on the highest settings or will it be limited to medium settings? Like I'm assuming skyrim unmodded will run on high but something like metero last light or fear cry 3 will run on medium settings?

What's the desktop equivalent to the Radeon HD 8850M ?
Any suggestions on other laptops?
What is the market like for laptops atm? Should I just wait on buying a laptop seeing the new consoles were released maybe some major innovation will be made???

Yea ik a lot of questions but I don't keep up with laptops so I hope you guys can help

 

[vinaykumar5320]

yea proabably another $500-700 question you guys get but...
I was searching through the internet today and looked a bit into gaming laptops. I built my own desktop close to 2 years ago and I am now thinking of upgrading my 7 year old laptop with..... Intel integrated graphics . However it can play a few games on it seeing a lot of indie devs make games in an 8-bit style
lol, anyway back to my topic:
I found this laptop
It looks decent and yea 4gb of ram can be bumped to 8gb however the thing that worries me with this laptop is the processor. Do a lot of laptops atm still run on 2 core processors (also 2.6 ghz seems low)? However an AMD Radeon HD 8850M 2GB seems good.

Will a laptop like that be able to run games on the highest settings or will it be limited to medium settings? Like I'm assuming skyrim unmodded will run on high but something like metero last light or fear cry 3 will run on medium settings?

What's the desktop equivalent to the Radeon HD 8850M ?
Any suggestions on other laptops?
What is the market like for laptops atm? Should I just wait on buying a laptop seeing the new consoles were released maybe some major innovation will be made???

Yea ik a lot of questions but I don't keep up with laptops so I hope you guys can help

The laptop you mentioned have a good HD 8850M GPU, which is good for gaming, but the processor is a weak one, since it is U-series, which means it is underclocked to increase the battery life.

The best budget (Value-for-money) gaming laptops are the Lenovo Y-series. Yes, it's a little over your budget, but, it's worth it. Check out the 1st/2nd models.

http/shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y410p/

The GT755M is better than HD8850M in gaming. However, there isn't significant difference.

 

[Guest]

Yea i was unsure of it so i posted here. I'd need to save a bit more for the one you mentioned but it seems nice

 

[jaguarskx]

Unfortunately, it seems the Dell Latitudes have all been sold.

The Radeon HD 8850m is actually pretty good, based on the following link it sits between the GT 750m and GT 755m.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8850M.87118.0.html

The nice thing about the laptop is that it has a 1080p screen. Great for productivity and multitasking, bad for games since the Radeon HD 8850m is not powerful enough to drive games at that resolution. 1366x768 and 1600x900 would be more suitable for most games.

The main drawback I suppose is the CPU. Core i5 CPUs in general are pretty good dual core + Hyper Threading CPUs. However, the i5-4200u is a ULV (ultra low voltage) CPU which means without Turbo Boost the clockspeed is rather low at 1.6GHz. However with Turbo Boost 2.6GHz (one core stressed) / 2.4GHz (both cores stressed) is respectable. It likely allows for long battery life as well. In most cases it should be able to hit 2.4GHz / 2.6GHz as long as the laptop does not overheat.

The recommended IdeaPad Y410p is a good laptop (I would get the 1600x900 screen version; $779) for games and the quad core i7-4700MQ packs plenty of power. But I would say that for $570 the Dell was actually an attractive deal given the specs of the laptop.


*** EDITED ***

 

[jacobian]

Start with HP Envy 15z-j100 customization on HP's web site. The base price is $530. Upgrade the CPU from AMD A8 to A10, the screen to 1080p, and graphics to Radeon HD 8750M. The final price is $730. It's barely there budget-wise.

However, to be honest, I'd wait until you can spend $800-900, start with the same portable with a Core i5-4200M CPU (15j-j100), upgrade the screen, and graphics to Nvidia GeForce 750M (not available with AMD portable). The price will be $855 but this would be a significantly faster gaming laptop.

And correction to jagurskx post: i5-4200M is the regular power 35W TDP CPU. That's the one you want. i5-4200U is the ULV.