Looking for a gaming laptop (budget inside)

[Stg-Flame]

Asking for someone else. Their budget appears to be $900 as one of the laptops they are looking at costs $899, but they are looking to play games like The Witcher 3 (use that as a baseline). I really only know PCs and don't know too much about current gaming laptops so any input is greatly appreciated.

 

[Oyeve]

I just got my Lenovo ideapad Y700 yesterday and i'm loving it! So far I have played Witcher 3, GTAV and fallout 4 at high and ultra settings with no issues at all! Got it from newegg business for 899. 8gb of DDR4 ram, Nvidia 960m, 17.3" screen, kick ass soind system with a sub woofer built in. 128 ssd drive and a1tb 5400 rpm drive. I am swapping out the 1tb spinny drive as I have a few 1tb SSD drives laying about. So far in loving it. Oh, and the KB is backlit.

 

[JeffMD]

That lenovo looks bad ass and hard to beat. The cpu on it is a monster. Searching through all the y700 on new egg you might find one with a ULV processor if you are willing to sacrifice cpu power for battery life if you need, too.

 

[paperwastage]

might find one with a ULV processor if you are willing to sacrifice cpu power for battery life if you need, too.

Not necessarily

If you do the same light tasks on battery mode, the fullpower CPU should down clock and stop unnecessary cores, giving you similar power draw as a ULV chip. You can adjust turbo clocks in power options as well - Intel has been doing a good job in power gating unnecessary components

 

[RossMAN]

Dell Outlet currently has a sale which ends soon:

Dell Outlet Alienware 15R2 Laptop
English Keyboard
8 Cell 92W Hour Battery
Intel Core 6th Generation i7-6700HQ Processor (Quad Core, up to 3.50 GHz, 6M Cache, 45W)
Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1
15.6inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS Anti-Glare 220-nits Display
1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Windows 10 Home 64bit English
Alienware 6 programmable Macro module key
8GB (2x4GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Memory
2.0 MP HD Camera with MIC
NVidia GeForce GTX 970M with 3gb

 

[Bubblehappy]

I briefly had the 15" version of the Lenovo Y700. It wasn't a bad machine at all, but you will want to replace the stock drive with a SSD, as it ran like ass without one.

 

[mollyfreelove]

Not sure of his reasoning, but my son narrowed his choices down to either the lenovo y700 and the dell inspiron 7000 and he went with the dell. Keep in mind this was a big purchase for him and he took a good month to research pretty much every aspect of these laptops.

 

[Oyeve]

I briefly had the 15" version of the Lenovo Y700. It wasn't a bad machine at all, but you will want to replace the stock drive with a SSD, as it ran like ass without one.

Yeah, the 128gb SSD on mine was ok but the other 5400 drive was crap. Swapped in a 1tb ssd last night and now its near perfect.

 

[JeffMD]

Not necessarily

If you do the same light tasks on battery mode,

No amount of battery saver settings is going to get you the same performance while throttling to the 15 watt tdp design of a ULV chip. Intel wouldn't MAKE ULV chips if you could just turn regular chips into one with a toggle in windows.

That said, the i7 6th gen ULV is pretty much HALF the power and still only 2 "real" cores compared to the HQ line. You are giving up a lot of high end performance for a much more battery friendly PC. I really wish the i7 ULV line at least spat out 4 cores.

 

[Oyeve]

No amount of battery saver settings is going to get you the same performance while throttling to the 15 watt tdp design of a ULV chip. Intel wouldn't MAKE ULV chips if you could just turn regular chips into one with a toggle in windows.

That said, the i7 6th gen ULV is pretty much HALF the power and still only 2 "real" cores compared to the HQ line. You are giving up a lot of high end performance for a much more battery friendly PC. I really wish the i7 ULV line at least spat out 4 cores.

Did not know that. My y700 has an hq in it.

 

[paperwastage]

No amount of battery saver settings is going to get you the same performance while throttling to the 15 watt tdp design of a ULV chip. Intel wouldn't MAKE ULV chips if you could just turn regular chips into one with a toggle in windows.

it can be close if you do roughly the same nondemanding tasks in HQ vs ULV

HQ chips contain the same low-power enhancements as ULV chips. HQ chips just have more cores (core parking can disable the unnecessary ones on battery mode)

If you compare idle (or low workload) battery life tests for HQ chips/laptops, they can delivery pretty low power draws.. let me try to find some hard data (in a few hours)

 

[JeffMD]

I read the afore mentioned HQ chip does have a special toggle which will make its TDP 35watts, my guess is its like an ultrabook mode laptop makers can use. Still its hard to beat 15 watts. My i7 4500u runs cooler then my phone. -_-

 

[JeffMD]

Looks like a fully loaded y700 popped up on microsofts store for $899, https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...ure-Edition-Gaming-Laptop/productID.333088800

15.6-inch 4K UHD touchscreen
Intel Core i7-6700HQ
16GB memory/256GB SSD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M graphics

 

[blankslate]

from what I've read if Witcher 3 is the baseline then the Nvidia 970m GTX is preferable over the 960m since that requires turning down a lot of settings. the 980m would be even better but those are very expensive.

the cpu is less important but these days I'd recommend a 6th gen i-5 or i-7.

It'd be hard to find the 970m paired with a skylake cpu less than $1,000 without a sale though imo.


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