Shall I spend an extra £120 for a better laptop?

[Lukey24]

I'm looking I buy a laptop for my first year of uni. I have two in mind. One of which is better than the other however I'm wondering whether it is worth shelling out the extra £120 for a laptop with higher specs. My uses will be for watching films, and playing up to date games. Is the gt635m with a 3rd gen intel i7 on this laptop good enough? Or shall I get the latter.

http/m.johnlewis.com/mt/www.johnlewis.com/hp-envy-dv6-7331sa-laptop-intel-core-i7-2-3ghz-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-beats-audio-black/p588399?un_jtt_v_pdp=yes&un_jtt_v_from_product=un_product_4

This.

http/h20386.www2.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=ECC_BUNDLE_4006686&opt=&sel=PCNB

If anyone knows of an alternative laptop with specs similar. (2gb dedicated graphics and full hd) feel free to post it.

Thanks
Luke

 

[jaguarskx]

If playing games is important, then it is always best to buy a laptop with a more powerful GPU. The more powerful it is, the more capable it is at playing games in the future. The GT 740m is rated between the GT 640m and GT 650m. Therefore, the GT 740m should be better than the GT 635m by a decent amount.

While the GT 740m is pretty good for games at a resolution of 1366x768 or lower, it's performance at 1920x1080 is considered to be very poor assuming you want to use high/max graphics quality in most games. The exception would be games that are not very demanding on the graphics card.

Games that are easy on the graphics card include (varying degrees):
Dishonored
Fifa 2013
F1 2012
Torchlight 2
StarCraft 2

Games that will not be playable @ 1920x1080 with high/max graphics (but may or may not be playable at medium)
Metro 2033 / Last Light
SimCity 5
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
Assassin Creed 3
Bioshock Infinite

 

[jaguarskx]

From a "hardcore" gaming perspective, if want to play games at 1920x1080 with high/max (or ultra) settings, then you need to at least consider a GTX 770m or the Radeon HD 7970m.

Compared to desktop graphics cards, those chips are likely to be somewhere between the Radeon HD 6870/ HD 6950.

 

[Prostar Computer]

635M won't get you very far. If you can afford the one with the 740M, go that route. If you're going to be into hardcore gaming and you want to run the games at high resolutions, then jaguar has good advice: opt for something tailored for 'high-end' or 'performance'.

 

[Lukey24]

Would also appreciate an opinion on the gtx660 in comparison to these two. I understand its not as good as other gtxs but I have no idea how it fairs against these two gpus.

 

[Prostar Computer]

660M is better than the 740M. In layman's terms: the higher the number, the more capable the GPU. Where things get sort of fuzzy is when you compare generations.

 

[jaguarskx]

Would also appreciate an opinion on the gtx660 in comparison to these two. I understand its not as good as other gtxs but I have no idea how it fairs against these two gpus.

A desktop GTX 660 Ti would be roughly equivalent to a mobile GTX 680m / GTX 780m.

The GTX 660m is a bit less powerful than a Radeon HD 7750 which in turn means it is also less powerful than a GTX 650 (which is about 10% more powerful than a stock speed Radeon HD 7750).