Time for a new gaming laptop, request recommendations

[esm3x]

Hi all,

My Dell Latitude D600 is growing long in the tooth and showing its age. I am looking for a new laptop. I have a fairly new desktop. It does nicely for home gaming. I travel a lot and my laptop goes everywhere.

I want my new laptop to be able to play games as its primary use. :biggrin: All the business and personal stuff I use it for, though important, will be thought of as a secondary consideration.

So my budget sweet spot is $1000 delivered, but I can go as high as $1500. I want a nice big display (17" HD).

I play primarily flight sims: LO:MAC, IL-2, EAW, CFS 3, but also play other games like: Silent Hunter, Portal, Team Fortress, Gears, Halo, etc.

The new Razor laptop piqued my interest, but I think is way out of my price range. Also, I like a large amount of storage for my Photoshop work, so 350 Gb would be a minimum. RAM should be either maxed out or as large as can be with an option to expand without sacrificing the current memory (eg 2x4gb or 1x4gb).

Your recommendation(s) would be welcomed.

Thank you all!

 

[railer]

1) someone just asked this: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2188465

2) i'd get this, but I'm cheap. An I5 with a Radeon 6550 should do the trick for gaming, I would think: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AS7741G-6...pr_product_top

 

[Ultralight]

Are there any manufacture's you prefer and any that you wouldn't even consider? 17" laptops aren't exactly conducive for travel. They get old fast if you are lugging them everywhere. The 15" to 15.6" is a better fit for this.

Also, how much battery time do you need? What screen resolutions are you looking for? Do you prefer glossy or matte?

 

[esm3x]

@ railer:
I did look through those threads but the budjet was in the 500-700 range.

@ Ultralight:
I'm open to any manufacturers at present. Battery life should be at least sufficient to watch a 2 hour movie with headphones. Screen resolution should be at least 1280 x ###. Matte finish, but no real preference as performance is my #1 concern.

 

[Ultralight]

A lot of gamers like the Sager/Clevo offerings provided by the likes of Malibal, XoticPC, LPC Digital, Power Notebooks, and Mythlogic to name a few.

I didn't know anything about these laptop builders and wouldn't even consider them until I joined the Notebookreview forums and began reading their Sager/Clevo forum. I was looking for a laptop for my son for both college and animation/graphical software and the further I read and the more research I did I eventually ordered a Sager 5160 from Xotic PC. It was a great experience and the customer service was topnotch and if you read of other people's experiences from any of the ones I listed you'll read the same thing.

What is really nice is that every one of these sites has a good configuration option.

 

[Kevmanw430]

The budget slice of awesome on the market right now is the HP DV6z. A8 CPU, 6750M GPU is XFire with the IGP on the A8. They are overclockable and undervoltable through K10Stat, and several people on NotebookReview have broken 2200 3DMark11. For reference, a 560M and 2630QM scored around 1850 tested by AnandTech. Battery life is great, with up to 8 hours on the 9 cell battery. Best of all,with some good coupons, you can get it for around $850. There is also a 17 inch version, the DV7z.

 

[Ultralight]

The budget slice of awesome on the market right now is the HP DV6z. A8 CPU, 6750M GPU is XFire with the IGP on the A8. They are overclockable and undervoltable through K10Stat, and several people on NotebookReview have broken 2200 3DMark11. For reference, a 560M and 2630QM scored around 1850 tested by AnandTech. Battery life is great, with up to 8 hours on the 9 cell battery. Best of all,with some good coupons, you can get it for around $850. There is also a 17 inch version, the DV7z.

Wow! I've got to go check that out. Nice to see the A8 doing so well.

 

[esm3x]

OK, so as best as apples to apples as I can get are below. The Force has twice the video memory.
I'll have to research these. If anyone can review or recommend others I'd appreciate it. Warranties, shipping, and tax are erroding my budget !

**********
HP dv6zqe
Operating system: Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edit
Processor: AMD Quad-Core A8-3510MX Accelerated Processor (2.5GHz/1.8GHz, 4MB L2 Cache) edit
Graphics card: 1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD Dual Graphics [HDMI, VGA] edit
Memory: 8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) edit
Hard drive: 750GB 7200RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection edit
Primary battery: 50% OFF! One 6 Cell and One 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery edit
Display: 15.6" diagonal Full HD HP Anti-glare LED Display (1920 x 1080) edit
Primary optical drive: FREE Upgrade to Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner edit
Networking: 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R) edit
Accessories: 25% OFF! HP Pavilion additional 90W AC Adapter edit
HP Care Pack Services: HP 4-year Care Pack House Call Service with Accidental Damage Protection for HP Pavilion Laptop PC edit
$1458 + shipping & tax


**********
FORCE PBL21 / Compal PBL21
15.6" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen w/ 95% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080) (SKU - X1R306) ( + 167 )
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2860QM, 2.5-3.6GHz, (32nm, 8MB L3 cache) (SKU - X2R209) ( + 479 )
nVidia GT 540M 2048MB PCI-Express GDDR3 DX11 with Optimus™ Technology
(1024MB Included on HD (1366x768) Screen Model / 2048MB on FHD (1920x1080) Screen Models) (SKU - X3R701)
8GB DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (2x4GB SODIMMS) (SKU - X4N132) ( + 79 )
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Buffer (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s) (SKU - X5R302) ( + 20 )
4X Blu-Ray Reader + 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive (SKU - X7R502) ( + 45 )
Intel® Advanced-N 6205 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module (SKU - X8R103) ( + 35 )
Spare Smart Li-ion Battery (6-Cell) ( + 95 )
ADD Extra AC Adapter ( + 77 )
Windows 7 Home Premium - 64-Bit ( + 105 )
3 Year Complete Care Warranty - 3 Year Parts with Next Day Shipping, 24/7 Telephone Tech Support & Lifetime Labor Warranty (SKU - X9R006) ( + 159 )
$2051 + shipping & tax

**********
Sager NP5160 / Clevo W150HN
15.6" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen w/ 95% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080) (SKU - S1R305) ( + 145 )
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache) (SKU - S2R202) ( + 240 )
nVidia GT 540M 1024MB PCI-Express GDDR3 DX11 with Optimus™ Technology (SKU - S3R408)
8GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (SKU - S4P368) ( + 50 )
750GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache) (SKU - S5R308) ( + 45 )
6X Blu-Ray Read/8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive - Special! (SKU - S7P557) ( + 80 )
Intel® Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth (SKU - S8R111) ( + 25 )
Spare 6 Cell Battery (62.16WH) ( + 95 )
Sager NP768x Spare AC Adapter ( + 55 )
~Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Installed (64&32-Bit CD Included) w/ Drivers & Utilities CD's + Microsoft Office Starter 2010 - Included with OS Purchase ( + 80 )
Sager 3 Year Parts & LIFETIME Ltd Labor Warranty, Lifetime Sager Toll Free Support (SKU - S9R214) ( + 129 )
$1663 + shipping & tax

Looks like I'm leanig to the HIGH side of my $1500 budget!

TIA

 

[Ultralight]

Hey, I ordered the Sager 5160 from XoticPC for my son back in August (as Imentioned earlier) for college for his school work and the fact that he will be studying for graphics illustration and running animation software as well as running CS5.

I configured with the 1600x900 matte, i7 2630 quad (best bang for the buck), 4 gigs of RAM, 500 gig harddrive, and the Intel 6230 which you'll love because it connects to Wireless N @ 5GHz (if available) as opposed to the standard 2.4GHz (I have a NetGear N600 wireless router that provides both and everyone can connect anywhere in the house; I love this router). And you can't beat the fact that you can get Windows 7 64 installed as well as then getting the full disk as part of the package (I already had a brand new disk though).

He loves his system and I was really impressed with the customer service from XoticPC (but really, all the ones I listed earlier have outstanding reputations for their customer service; Larry from LPC-Digital is one such person that has earned high respects). They also have very active forums.

Since I am a member of the NotebookReview forums (a place I frequent and post) I was able to work through Justin who is a very frequent contributor on the Sager/Clevo forum. By doing so he got me free shipping and there is no tax unless you are in Nebraska or California.

I too really like his laptop. After I build my next PC I will begin saving up for one of these Sagers. If you want a more powerful video card the 5165 as well as the 8130 and 8150 offer them but otherwise the configuration options are pretty well the same and the 540M is no slouch.

Hope this helps.

 

[fire400]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

[Shmee]

I ended up also getting a sager from xotic PC. NP8170 I believe. 8GB, 1920x1080 glossy, seagate hybrid drive, GTX 560M. I got it without the OS, got win7 pro from a M$ pal for about 45$. Installed my adata 64 GB s599 SSD for the boot drive, which I had earlier from frys for about $130.

All was totaled around 1750 or so. Not bad, considering I also got an SSD. Came with a carrying case too.

Awesome laptop, only complaint is that booting from the SSD can be a bit eratic at times, but that might just be the SSD. It keeps wanting to boot from the seagate.

This may require more tweaking, but I will report back.