Does this look like a good budget gaming laptop?

[gtd2000]

Not a bad deal, this one, has a more powerful GPU, but has a less powerful CPU (gpu is more important for gaming)

I used to believe that as well - it's not that simple these days.

I've been playing TF2 for a while now and my gaming laptop is a Gateway FX series which did play this game very smoothly indeed, however, with all of the updates this game can now become a slideshow due to limitations with my CPU.

I'm led to believe you need both a reasonable GPU and a multicore CPU for the likes of TF2.

 

[WhiskeyD]

Thanks for all the help! I'm going to go with the Sager since it offers so much more than the competition for the money. I am worried about the quality of the Sager though. They seem to have mixed reviews. Some people have nothing but positive to say while others complain of cheap casing and very cheap keyboards. I'm also concerned about replacement parts down the road (keyboards and such). I guess the best way to find out is the buy one and make my own decision. This will be replacing a Dell Inspiron 9300 (pentium 4 w/ geforce 6800GO) so I'm pretty sure I will be pleased

 

[Rpger28]

You and I are looking at almost the same laptop.

It was STRONGLY suggested to me by a friend to look at upgrading the HDD to one of the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives. He said it was the best $50-75 upgrade he'd ever made in a laptop.

I've not seen many negative reviews about sager's clevo-based laptops that can't be applied to any laptop in the price range. I at least have heard that they don't have as many overheating issues as a lot of the dells, acers, and HP's in the price/size category.

I am planning to order my Sager through a reseller to avoid Sager's less than stellar customer service on the order side.

 

[gtd2000]

This will be replacing a Dell Inspiron 9300 (pentium 4 w/ geforce 6800GO) so I'm pretty sure I will be pleased

Coincidentally my Gateway FX replaced my trusty Inspiron 9300 and by comparison it was like greased lightning.

The Gateway FX is now approaching the end of it's "gaming laptop" life but continues to be a very decent machine.

One thing that I made sure of when upgrading from the Inspiron 9300 was to avoid a 1920x1200 resolution with a 17" screen - text was way too small (or it was with XP Pro) to be practical for my liking and I have 20/10 vision.

I think the FX has a 1440 x 900 screen and was great for gaming at native resolutions

I'm not sure whether to go for another gaming laptop or not yet...decisions decisions...

 

[WhiskeyD]

Rpger - I would really like to get a SSD right away but I just cant afford the extra $100. In the future I'm defintely going to add 8 gigs of ram and a nice SSD to it though.

Qtd - Yeah I agree with the text being hard to read at 1920x1200 but the image quality is soo much better than almost all of the laptops I saw at Bestbuy this past weekend. After shopping around and getting a hands on feel with some laptops locally I decided to buy the Sager. I upgraded to the quad core i7 and the 1080p screen for a total of $850 + shipping. Hopefully I will get it by mid April, I cant wait!

One last question, Do you think this laptop will be faster than my current desktop? Its a i7 920 w/ gigabyte UD3P motortherboard (either the ep45 or 55, cant remember), 6 gigs of ram in triple channel, and a 8800GT (dinosaur but plays all my games great at 1920x1200). I'm thinking the laptop will be faster and may just replace my desktop?