Looking for the best bang for my buck...

[satindemon4u]

Hey all! About a year ago I purchased a laptop and it is that time again to purchase a new one. This time around though, I have a bit more money so I can get something nice! I hope.

The short of it: I am looking for a laptop that is $1200 or less with well, as much power as I can get. I plan to play various games on it so a dedicated card is a must. This is what I have decided on unless someone can steer me to something else?

Here are the three I have narrowed it down to...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834233042
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152571
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834198031

 

[Vayra86]

That 850M GPU is midrange at best, and will not push you past medium settings (even that may be a tough cookie on demanding titles).

As far as Im concerned you should be able to find MUCH better for 1200. If you expect another 1 year life span, that's 100 dollars/month for mediocre gaming.

Consider your options well, I would say. I would personally never invest so much to see such a small return. Gaming laptops are just crippled by design ( unless you go all out for something high-end. Find a similar offering at half the price and use that for year, you may be forced down to an 840M or similar GPU but I would personally take that performance loss considering the price difference. Or up your budget to 1500-1600 and get something that will work comfortably. Alternative: build a gaming beast desktop for half the money and twice/ 2,5x the power.

I've owned an Asus K53V with 650M in it and that really didn't work out as far as gaming is concerned. Old games, or newer ones at the lowest settings at 768p is about as much as it could handle. GW2 at 15-20 fps on low... painful. And throttling, so, so much throttling. Your MSI equivalent won't have that I reckon (build is a lot better) but still.

 

[Jetster]

Yep if you insist on a gaming laptop go big or go home.

 

[P4-630]

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-850M.107795.0.html

 

[satindemon4u]

Well thank you guys. For whatever reason I had my scope of view way too narrow. I have opened up my search to also take a look at ATI cards and it looks like if I want bang for my buck that may be the way to go....

However, it seems if I do that then I will be sacrificing CPU power...

Also, Open-box....Yes, no?

What about this?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152554

 

[15th Warlock]

How about this one:

http://www.xoticpc.com/phantom-x1-p-7527.html?wconfigure=yes

It comes with a quad core 4700HQ and a GTX 860M at less than $1200, does this sound like a good candidate to you?

Although, IMHO if you want to game with settings maxed out, you don't wanna consider anything less than a 870M

 

[satindemon4u]

How about this one:

http://www.xoticpc.com/phantom-x1-p-7527.html?wconfigure=yes

It comes with a quad core 4700HQ and a GTX 860M at less than $1200, does this sound like a good candidate to you?

Although, IMHO if you want to game with settings maxed out, you don't wanna consider anything less than a 870M

Doesn't look too bad. That one I linked to just before your post actually does have an 870m. To get it I had to push up the price a bit. Worth it?

In all honesty here is my problem. I would love to build a desktop because I have a really nice one to be built all picked out for $1300 and that includes after market cooling, mechanical keyboard and monitor. Only problem is, if I do that then I will be spending a straight $1300. If I get a new laptop I can sell my current one and put the funds from that into the new one that way I'm not spending the full amount shown. What would be great is if I could have both but funds don't allow for that right now.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

I was in your situation 3 years ago, and I regret picking the laptop option. If you already have a laptop to do non-gaming stuff and that works fine and is not going to die in the next year, you should just get a desktop. The only reason to go with a gaming laptop is if you don't have the space, even then just get a nice ITX build and a smaller screen, or you NEED NEED NEED to be able to move it around a lot, my friend for example who's parents are divorced would not want to have to lug a desktop and all the related between his parents house 4 times a week.

In two years, I probably only spent around 10-15 days gaming in places other than my house, and all of those were within half an hour car ride and lasted for at least 36 hours. And I ended up taking my secondary display (23 inch) and keyboard to more than half of them, so it would have been just as easy to take a lan box, and i would have either saved a LOT of money or been able to have GTX770 performance rather than GTX560 performance.

 

[satindemon4u]

This is such a hard decision. I don't have the greatest place to put a desktop but if I had to I could probably make something work. The only place I can put it right now is the man cave and the girlfriend is not a fan of me spending hours on end in there haha! So with the laptop I can take that anywhere including our bedroom.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Pls don't play games in bed >.>

I think she'd actually hate that even more than you sitting in the basement all the time..

 

[satindemon4u]

Oddly enough, its the opposite.

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

Heh, turn man cave into couple cave :3

problem solved

 

[eidairaman1]

Build a potato cannon

 

[GhostRyder]

When it comes to 1200 bucks and a laptop you can get a pretty decent one if you look around. My suggestion for you at the moment is below:

Lenovo Y50 with GTX 860m and 1tb drive with 8gb SSD
This one is good value to money and is pretty portable.
Gigabyte P27Gv2-CF1 with 860m
No SSD period, but gives you a better processor (Little higher clock speed)
CyberpowerpowerPC Fangbook EVO HX7-250 with GTX 780m
Out of the others this has the most power because it contains the GTX 780m (Which is same as the 880m minus the clock speed and some ram) which is the second fastest notebook GPU at the moment and would give you near the best gaming experience. It is based on the MSI GT series case and has extra space for more ram, another HDD/SSD, and comes with Windows 7 (If you do not like windows 8.1). Honesty this is the one I would get but the major downside is that it has a 1tb 5400RPM drive inside as the main drive which could be a little slow. Might suggest grabbing a small SSD if you can add it in later and making it your OS drive.

But I would definitely of the choices go for the 3rd one if you can!

 

[GorbazTheDragon]

I have a GT 60 and personally I have found Sager to do a better job. I think they have one with a 870m for around 1200 USD on xoticPC.

 

[satindemon4u]

When it comes to 1200 bucks and a laptop you can get a pretty decent one if you look around. My suggestion for you at the moment is below:

Lenovo Y50 with GTX 860m and 1tb drive with 8gb SSD
This one is good value to money and is pretty portable.
Gigabyte P27Gv2-CF1 with 860m
No SSD period, but gives you a better processor (Little higher clock speed)
CyberpowerpowerPC Fangbook EVO HX7-250 with GTX 780m
Out of the others this has the most power because it contains the GTX 780m (Which is same as the 880m minus the clock speed and some ram) which is the second fastest notebook GPU at the moment and would give you near the best gaming experience. It is based on the MSI GT series case and has extra space for more ram, another HDD/SSD, and comes with Windows 7 (If you do not like windows 8.1). Honesty this is the one I would get but the major downside is that it has a 1tb 5400RPM drive inside as the main drive which could be a little slow. Might suggest grabbing a small SSD if you can add it in later and making it your OS drive.

But I would definitely of the choices go for the 3rd one if you can!

Thank you very much! I am seriously considering that third one.

Here are the other two that I have narrowed it down to...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834233042
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152571

 

[GhostRyder]

Thank you very much! I am seriously considering that third one.

Here are the other two that I have narrowed it down to...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834233042
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152571

I will say this, for the money avoid the GX series because that last gen A10 just does not hold up well in mobile gaming at those low clocks. Its much better to have an i5 or i7 mobile over that if your going for a dedicated card because that A10 holds the M290X back. The Gigabyte is fine but I still stand by saying get the best GPU you can which the GTX 780m is higher than the GTX 870m (Which is a great card mind you) because that is the hardest part to upgrade in all honesty and the first part on a gaming laptop most likely at this point to get dated.

 

[satindemon4u]

Yeah the AMD was really a shot in the dark. I know the processor holds it back pretty hard so I was hardly considering it. I may end up going with that Cyberpower one that you linked me. It has 3/5 eggs but that's only because a couple of other people had petty problems and gave it one egg, so I don't even count them.

 

[GhostRyder]

Yeah the AMD was really a shot in the dark. I know the processor holds it back pretty hard so I was hardly considering it. I may end up going with that Cyberpower one that you linked me. It has 3/5 eggs but that's only because a couple of other people had petty problems and gave it one egg, so I don't even count them.

Generally speaking when I read reviews from places like newegg I normally only look at verified owners and of course see what the negatives say while looking for a pattern. If I see tons of DOA, that points a flag at me or if I see something like driver issues (etc) then I take them into account more. Many people have one thing happen and review something as being horrible with a 1 "egg" review on the site. So you have to decide for yourself if you want to believe those types of things but in all honesty with the MSI platform I have not had much to complain about (case and cooling).

 

[satindemon4u]

Yeah I like to read through the 1 eggs as well just because you get "those" people that are like "There was some bloatware, 1 egg." To me that says you're an idiot lol.

Also looking around I haven't been able to find out if that Cyberpower has more than 1 space for a hard drive. From what I can tell it only has one. Is that correct?

 

[GhostRyder]

Yeah I like to read through the 1 eggs as well just because you get "those" people that are like "There was some bloatware, 1 egg." To me that says you're an idiot lol.

Also looking around I haven't been able to find out if that Cyberpower has more than 1 space for a hard drive. From what I can tell it only has one. Is that correct?

Well these notebooks by cyberpower are basically the MSI GT series cases with some of their own pizzazz and customization thrown in. So according to the website they have the options for multiple HDD's including "Super Raid" so you should have the same spots like my laptop which contains 2 hard drive bays.

Normally the only problem is that they do not put the extra HDD/SSD carriage inside unless there's one in there so you end up having to order one or just improvise like I did lol.

 

[satindemon4u]

Will probably just end up improvising haha. But glad to know there is space for a second that way I can throw in an SSD for the OS and larger games and things of that nature.