Recommend Best Gaming Laptop for 1200 US$ or less.

[yogurt_21]

I told my wife my i7 950 gtx480sli rig would be my last monolithic Gaming rig and I meant it. I put it up in parts for sale last night (mobo already sold) combine that with b-day money and I can see a budget ~ a grand but possibly up to 1200 if I stretch it.

I find it a bit ironic that even 4 years later the top end gaming laptops (ie the ones I can't afford) can't match a 4 year old sli rig at stock but I'm willing to take a bit of performance loss (read 20% drop for gtx 870m, or 45% drop for 860m) for the power savings and semi-portability.

The MSI dominator looks intriguing if unfortunately a shade too expensive for the 870m the Lenovo Y50 is also interesting but also caps out at a 860m.

I actually like the 15.6" better than the 17" ones simply because at 17" it starts to feel like carrying a desktop around and the pixel pitch is better on the 15.6 anyways.

not looking for uber cpu my work laptop has a core i5-4300U and it feels plenty fast. So a quad core would be nice, but not required at this point.

so tell me you're favs. I looking for ideas or advice.

Thanks

 

[LaytonJnr]

Hello,

According to Notebookcheck.net, one of the best 15.6" gaming notebooks is the MSI GE60-2PEi781B with a quad-core I7, 8GB RAM, GTX 860M, 1080p display, for about ~$1139.

You could always go down a custom built route.
www.cyberpowerpc.com
www.ibuypower.com

Layton

 

[yogurt_21]

The msi's do look nice. I'm wondering if going to a M290X but paired with an amd cpu would be worthwhile. The M290x seems to fall in between the nvidia 860m and 870m. But MSI has the GX60 Destroyer-280 which is in the budget and has the m290x which is a significant boost over the 860m. The trouble is it drops to an amd A10-5750M cpu and I'm not exactly sure how that will impact things.

There is also the Lenovo Y510p which is 150$ cheaper than the destroyer 280 and has gt755m sli. It also sits between the 860m and 870m but maybe just not quite as powerful overall as the m290x.

It's quite a conumdrum for me. I'm planning to run this thing into the ground before I replace it so I'd like something that can stand up to time. My 480 sli did that nicely.

So I need to know if what is basically a 7870 (m290x) will stand up to time better than what adds up to 1.25 times a 650ti (m755 sli) or should I stick with the seemingly standard for the price range 750 ti (860m) or should I save and wait till I can afford the beefier gtx 670 counterpart (870m)?

The 1400$ msi dominator 424 (15.6") or 895 (17.3") look pretty sweet overall. Solid gpu, fast cpu, a viable desktop replacement. But how much better are we talking in real world gaming? 200$ worth?

 

[yogurt_21]

So I made the horrible mistake of taking a look at what that gets me in desktop parts...needless to say that was a bad idea. 4790k, z97, R9 290, new mem, plus 3 free games with gpu, and an IPS display plus some games bought outright...
(complete it with things I didn't sell like case, windows 7 pro, Microsoft office 2010, gobs of 1tb sata disks, and etc)
I can't buy anything till my amazon does a final disbursement for the items sold on july 6th. I've got until them to make up my mind.

So those with gaming laptops, pls bring me back from the dark side. The new shiny's are calling to me. They say "look how fast we are" and "you'll never be satisfied with gaming on a laptop"

 

[GhostRyder]

The msi's do look nice. I'm wondering if going to a M290X but paired with an amd cpu would be worthwhile. The M290x seems to fall in between the nvidia 860m and 870m. But MSI has the GX60 Destroyer-280 which is in the budget and has the m290x which is a significant boost over the 860m. The trouble is it drops to an amd A10-5750M cpu and I'm not exactly sure how that will impact things.

There is also the Lenovo Y510p which is 150$ cheaper than the destroyer 280 and has gt755m sli. It also sits between the 860m and 870m but maybe just not quite as powerful overall as the m290x.

It's quite a conumdrum for me. I'm planning to run this thing into the ground before I replace it so I'd like something that can stand up to time. My 480 sli did that nicely.

So I need to know if what is basically a 7870 (m290x) will stand up to time better than what adds up to 1.25 times a 650ti (m755 sli) or should I stick with the seemingly standard for the price range 750 ti (860m) or should I save and wait till I can afford the beefier gtx 670 counterpart (870m)?

The 1400$ msi dominator 424 (15.6") or 895 (17.3") look pretty sweet overall. Solid gpu, fast cpu, a viable desktop replacement. But how much better are we talking in real world gaming? 200$ worth?

Heres my advice with the APU laptop machines with an M290X

The M290X is still the second highest mobile GPU you can buy for gaming, the 880m is the best and the 870m is just barely below it. If your comparing the gaming performance then of the A10 APU verus the i7 on a laptop you will be pleasantly surprised it will hang in there but it does get pretty easily beaten by the i7 in overall performance which is why I stay away from those GX laptops. It really is not the best and needs to be higher clocked to catch up considering.

That being said, here is my recommendation to you based on up to a 1200 buck budget, I must warn you though a GTX 480 is pretty powerful and going from SLI those is going to be a drop in performance unless you spend way more than your current budget.

Lenovo Gaming
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...4317539&cm_re=GTX_860m-_-34-317-539-_-Product
MSI GE70 Apache
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57X1N23830&cm_re=GTX_860m-_-34-152-559-_-Product
MSI GT70
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57X1MX6704&cm_re=GTX_870m-_-34-152-554-_-Product
Note: Last one is a bit over budget

THose are some of my persona favs that keep around your budget.

 

[krusha03]

So I made the horrible mistake of taking a look at what that gets me in desktop parts...needless to say that was a bad idea. 4790k, z97, R9 290, new mem, plus 3 free games with gpu, and an IPS display plus some games bought outright...
(complete it with things I didn't sell like case, windows 7 pro, Microsoft office 2010, gobs of 1tb sata disks, and etc)
I can't buy anything till my amazon does a final disbursement for the items sold on july 6th. I've got until them to make up my mind.

So those with gaming laptops, pls bring me back from the dark side. The new shiny's are calling to me. They say "look how fast we are" and "you'll never be satisfied with gaming on a laptop"

Check out clevo laptops. For example this one is just a bit over 1200. But yeah for the same budget a normal PC will always be better

 

[LaytonJnr]

So those with gaming laptops, pls bring me back from the dark side. The new shiny's are calling to me. They say "look how fast we are" and "you'll never be satisfied with gaming on a laptop

It all just depends on how portable you want your gaming system to be. As I see it, there are three stages; a tower PC, which is rarely moved and stays in one place, so gaming on the go isn't possible, however is the most powerful. A LAN PC, which is much more portable, and doesn't lose out to much on performance, but still requires lugging a monitor around, and requires a couple of power sockets. And then you have gaming laptops which have the best portability, can play (almost) literally everywhere, but lose out on the performance for the same price. Up to you.

Layton

 

[Vario]

Yes could you do an ITX rig instead? You can build a very powerful and small computer and cooling isn't really a problem anymore with the small all in one liquid coolers.

 

[yogurt_21]

It's been a decade since I've gone to a LAN so outside of desk space savings there isn't much benefit to mini ITX for me. The laptop could come with me to allow playing games in the living room while I watch TV with the wife after the kids go to bed. Mini ITX would most likely benefit from acting like a console in that scenario and I want to watch TV and game, not just game.

The trouble is this also brings up other issues with laptop gaming. Sweaty hands/sweaty lap syndrome that comes from gaming for a few hours on a hot laptop. Then there's plug mania issue, as in you can't really game unplugged without seriously sacrificing performance and game time, that means trying to run a cord halfway across the room to the nearest outlet. Around a pregnant wife that's a trip hazard I don't want. Then there's peripheral city to try and patchwork all the hardware shortcomings. USB or wireless mouse at the very least, plus the headset, maybe keyboard as well to prevent sweaty hand syndrome. Maybe a cool pad or usb fan to blow on me and we're getting pretty ridiculous on a couch. Then you're trying to awkwardly play from a tv tray or something. All in all the biggest reason I wanted a laptop simply isn't as feasible as I had originally thought.

Travel? 8-10lbs not so nice to lug around. less than 2lb ipad? yes plus it has a verizon connection that work pays for. I also have a windows 7 core i5 based Dell Laptop mini for work I can take home and play around with any time I want.

So this leaves me with either going full bore back into the desktop...or seriously considering mobility over gaming.

The Y50 comes highly rated for its price, drops down to an i5 and 860m (you can get an i7 but it seems like a waste if you're targeting more battery life/less heat) and at 5.3lbs it's far more portable than the other gaming laptops I've been considering.

The Sager NP7358 also comes highly rated for the price jumps up to an i7 but jumps from a 6 cell battery to an 8 cell to compensate. It's 6lbs.

But with the gaming limitations and the fact that my work provides me with 2 verizon connected devices (ipad + droid phone) and a Dell laptop mini I can just leave gaming where it belongs, on the desk and go back to the monolithic PC.

I really hate not being able to have it all in one package, but that seems to be a common issue with this particular topic.

 

[yogurt_21]

I just ordered the parts from the egg for the desktop. The bang for the buck was there plus I already have portable devices.

i7 4790K - 4GHZ stock + 4.4 turbo is pretty nice out of box. Might have to drag out the phase change to see if temp is what's keeping people from 5GHZ.
MSI Z97-G55 board. 3 pci express slots means I can eventually run dual cards along with the raid card which requires an 8x slot.
GSKILL Ripjaw Z Series 2x4GB DDR3 2400
HIS IceQ R9 290
Benq GW2255 (VA base sure, but all reviews I've seen on it show it to be fine and if it becomes an issue I can convince work to sell one of the older U2211 dells, it'll be fine for now)

Thought about dropping the i7 for the i5 4690k but it wasn't enough to boost me into R9-290X or even GTX 780 range.

HD will be 4 x ST31000524NS raid 10 using a perc 6i controller. I'll go back to ssd when I can get at least get a 1TB (current cheap ones are 500$) as of right now outside of boot time I'd prefer the extra storage over cool benchmarks that net me barely any day to day gains. (former samsung 840 pro owner and we use many different types at work, what ssd's are great for the enterprise crowd far more than the gaming crowd)
Besides I absolutely hated moving games back and forth between low capacity ssd and high capacity raid.

Windows 7 pro 64-bit rounds it out and this should last me quite some time.

the gpu comes with a coupon for "150$" worth of free games (read like 30$ worth really) but it seems the egg has made an error in my favor. They took off the 150$ discount for the gaming coupon and then split the coupon into a different transaction that is showing up as "on hold payment declined". So I'm getting 1018.95 worth of hardware for 868.95... pretty sweet. Do you have any idea how far 150$ goes on a steam sale? I'd take that any day over what amd is letting me pick from.