Thin and light laptop for gaming

[myoclonus]

1. What is your budget? No specific budget but would like the best deal possible in terms of price/performance

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13 inch screen preferred. up to 15 inch ok

3. What screen resolution do you want? Does not matter

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? portable. must be thin and light. under 5 pounds

5. How much battery life do you need? Does not matter

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)? Yes, starcraft 2, MW3, Skyrim.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) No

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? Does not matter

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. No

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 2-3 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Do not need optical drive

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. Do not want to pay just for the brand name.

13. What country do you live in? US

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. I was considering the new dell thin and light notebooks. XPS 14z

 

[madm8bh]

Look at the XPS15z. Reading reviews, the screen on the 15z is suppose to be fantastic plus you get a boost in vid card from a 520m to a 525m.

A brief description of the 525m:
"The NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M is a fast mid-range laptop graphics card and successor to the GeForce GT 425M. It is based on the GF108 core, which is related to the Fermi architecture. Therefore, it supports DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0. Compared to the GT 425M the clock rates were increased by 7 percent. "

520m:
As an entry level card, the GT 520M has to compete against the Intel HD Graphics 3000 in the current Sandy Bridge processors. In our tests, the card was only slightly faster, but the better driver support did make a difference. However, demanding games like Battlefield Bad Company 2 may not be playable fluently. Other modern games only run in low details, and therefore gamers wont be pleased with the performance.

This is from:

 

[madm8bh]

opps...from:

http/www.notebookcheck.net

You can also check out youtube as a lot of gamers post gameplay on their 15z.

 

[myoclonus]

thanks. the dell is off the list.

 

[AntiZig]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I took a look around newegg, here's what I think your options are:
4-4.9lbs range
$850 MSI 14" - i5-2430, nvidia GT540M, 6gb ram, 500 gb hdd. this is the thin design msi makes, optimus on 540m allows for longer battery life if you're not gaming. It's 4.3lbs and only 1" thick. I think this is the best performance you can get in a 14"

$700 MSI 14" this is pretty much same as above except downgraded to i3 processor and only 4gb of ram. This is still a very good option for mobile gaming laptop.

now the only problem with those 2 is MSI is a reputable company, so those chasis are really good ones, but if you really don't want to concern yourself with brand/looks/etc
and going yet cheaper:
$680 Acer 14" this is almost identical specs to the first MSI but as you can see is a lot cheaper. I think, the case looks horrendous, but the hardware should still be good for what it's worth. This guy is a little heavier 4.9 lbs and slightly thicker too 1.2"

all of the above come with 6cell battery, so battery performance should be the same.

if you drop down to below 4lbs range the laptops come up to 13.3" in size, this is where you start to see the price go up, due to cramped space inside:
$990 Sony VAIO 13" - i5 2430, ati mobility 6630 HD, 4gb ram, 500gb HDD. As you can see, same specs as above, this GPU is slightly weaker than 540, but it will run all the games you want on low settings. It's 3.6lbs and about 1" thick as well. Oh and it also comes in white color if that matters.

So, those are the choices, hope those help.

 

[AntiZig]

Oh and here's reviews for GPUs:

Ati mobility 6630 HD

nvidia GT540M

 

[myoclonus]

Thanks. You have answered my question.

 

[myoclonus]

Best answer selected by myoclonus.