Laptop for Skyrim, GW2, and Titles for the future?

[Sciopero]

Hello everyone,
I'm a student and I'm looking for a laptop that would be able to run Skyrim, and Guild Wars 2. I only have about $1200 to spend and my desktop that I used to play Skyrim on is out of commission, and I don't want to spend $300 making it workable if I'll only be home to use it 3-4 days a month, if I'm not doing school studies.

I've never had a laptop before, and I don't fancy them much, but I need one for university. I'm looking for it to have an HDMI port, so I can use my TV at home to watch it. Mic for online gaming here and there.

I don't know if this is a power problem, or what it may be, but I'm using my sister's laptop from awhile back as my home PC atm, I con only play guild wars 1 haha. But I cant plug in my WoW cataclysm gaming mouse, my merc stealth illuminated keyboard. If I use these with a USB flash drive the whole laptop just turns off without warning, no screens or anything, like a fuse tripping in a house.


Does anyone know of anything I can buy for this?
Thanks, Matt

 

[smakadopolis]

gaminglaptopsjunky.com

I always suggest this place to anyone looking to buy a gaming computer.
Has prices and some pros/cons.
Nothing too in depth, but still has some valid purchase suggestions and reasoning why.

 

[ram1009]

Like many people you seem to think of laptops as portable desktops. They're not. If laptops could do everything desktops can do there would no longer be desktops. I predict you will be sadly disappointed with any "gaming laptop" you purchase especially in your budget range. Others will shortly tell you differently. It's your money. gaming laptop=oxymoron

 

[smakadopolis]

That's not entirely true. Gaming laptops exist and are fairly functional. I have a friend who brought over his alienware after he got it for school/gaming use and we ran some basic test runs on DA2/Wow/GTA4 just to check fps. He was running DA2 on ultra at 1600x900 at 60fps. Wow at 60(not that that's saying much) in org, and the GTA4 benchmarks he was having issues with. He kept running it off of the integrated graphics and not the gpu cause he's a bum, so i wasn't there for the benchmarks for that. The thing did get a little hot, but with a cooling pad is working fine for him. Does the price/performance outweigh a desktop? Hardly. But to say it's still not a viable solution isn't accurate.

 

[dudewitbow]

That's not entirely true. Gaming laptops exist and are fairly functional. I have a friend who brought over his alienware after he got it for school/gaming use and we ran some basic test runs on DA2/Wow/GTA4 just to check fps. He was running DA2 on ultra at 1600x900 at 60fps. Wow at 60(not that that's saying much) in org, and the GTA4 benchmarks he was having issues with. He kept running it off of the integrated graphics and not the gpu cause he's a bum, so i wasn't there for the benchmarks for that. The thing did get a little hot, but with a cooling pad is working fine for him. Does the price/performance outweigh a desktop? Hardly. But to say it's still not a viable solution isn't accurate.

if you want to know average laptop to desktop discrepencies on price:

A laptop with a 7970m gpu is about the same performance as a Gtx 570 card

The price of a laptop with a 7970m is ~1600$
The price of a Computer build with GTX 570 now should hover around maybe 1200ish if you mirror everything in the laptop.

then you calculate the performance differences between laptop and desktop cpus, since laptop cpus are designed to work under a lower tdp and lower ghz rate than their desktop equivalents as well as the graphics cards are lower in tdp, so overclocking cannot be done as much compared to the desktop counterparts.

Gaming laptops are viable. but they will never be equal to the desktop counterpart.

 

[smakadopolis]

Oh yea, I agree entirely. Like I said, the price/performance comparison just isn't there. And if Matt here wanted a dedicated gaming rig, I'd totally steer him towards going desktop, especially since he can get a lot more with that budget. However, he needs a laptop in specific that meets both the student needs and gamer wants. Is it going to be expensive? Oh for sure. But to say you can't game on a laptop is silly.