Ideal Portable Laptop (also for light Gaming)

splice123

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
5
0
10,510
I've got a friend that wishes to purchase a laptop for college that's both portable and can play some recent games, like Bioshock Infinite, on relatively decent settings.

We've already found this Asus http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230597 which is both relatively powerful and fits the budget constraints of around 1k.

Although, I believe there may be a better laptop for budget, though I'm not entirely sure what laptop could fit the criteria of being relatively light, inexpensive, and powerful enough to play games.
 

splice123

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
5
0
10,510


I see what you mean with the Macbook pro, but I accidentally forgot to mention that the buyer wishes to nab a laptop with an i7 processor. The pro does have an i7 processor with one of their models, but it seems slightly on the expensive side.

I searched a little bit more and found this deal on Lenovo http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/y500/ for their weekly deal, which seems pretty nice.
 
A 635M should be able to handle Bioshock Infinite on Medium settings with good frame rates. You can get a much more capable system for that budget, though. MSI and Sager/Clevo have some well priced systems with a better GPU; MSI has the GX60-3AE-216US right at $1k with an AMD A10 (5750M) and a 7970M. If you're okay with having an AMD system, then the 7970M is very capable card.

P.S. Lenovos are great (agreed with IownaLAPTOP there), but there ARE differences between the i5 and i7. An i5 is perfectly suitable for gaming, still.

P.S.S.

Those are desktop processors, not mobile. :) i5 CPUs are fine but in benchmarks and synthetic tests, they really are not quite as good as their bigger brother CPU.
 

splice123

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
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10,510


Yea, and with due consideration to it being a mobile platform, I would have waited to see later developments this year or early next year in the entire processor fiasco to see if these prices would have dropped more, but it's not my call of course.

I am, on the other hand, a little bit iffy with AMD's processors, not so much their GPU's, but their processors. The core by core performance doesn't seem as powerful as a conventional Intel processor, as indicated by various benchmarks, though I can't discount the prices of the individual AMD processor, which is fairly inexpensive.
 

splice123

Honorable
Jul 18, 2013
5
0
10,510


Of course. I wouldn't consider AMD a bad brand by any measure. Although, if I were to choose a processor for a desktop or laptop between AMD and Intel, I'd usually go for an Intel branded one instead because of my familiarity with it.
 
Funny - while I stand by what I said about the 7970M being a good card, I have more faith in AMD's CPU/APUs than their GPUs. ;)

I suppose as the maxim goes: you get what you pay for. Definitely agree that AMD APUs do not stack up against Intel microarchitecture these days. But! They're still reliable. Where AMD needs to improve most is their driver compatibility. They lost a lot of market penetration with laptops due to their Enduro problems.

Whichever you go with, I hope it serves you well. :)