Custom/High Power Gaming Laptop

[beastrace91]

Hey Guys,

I'm looking to put together a new laptop but I am decently picky on the specs... so far cyberpowerpc.com is the only place I have found that has what I am looking for at a decent price. I'm looking for at least the following:

Size: 15" or 15.4"
CPU: p9550 or Higher
GPU: 9800M GS or better
RAM: 4gigs DDR3
Screen Resolution: 1680x1050
Hard Drive: SSD 128gig - 210/170 read/write

I know its a tall order and I am looking to spend up to 2,000 USD on the system all together. Any input on other good companies or particular models that would be good is welcome! Also if it can come with no OS installed (or a non-Windows OS that is prefered but not necessary)

~Jeff

[MaxIBoy]

Get an equivalent gaming desktop for about half the price.

Then, buy a cheap (we're talking sub-$150) used laptop for portable work.


Money spent on "gaming" laptops tends to be money wasted. Considering the fact that my gaming rig currently has about $700 in parts in it right now, which is exactly the same as the price of my low-midrange laptop. And my rig is really nice, too (HD 4850 with enormous cooler, Phenom 9550, 4 gigs DDR2-1066 RAM, 410 gigs combined total hard drive space.)

You'll benefit from being able to get a 512-mb graphics card for under $200, whereas most laptop GPUs top out at 256 if they even have their own memory at all. There are exceptions, but none for anything approaching a decent price. And in any case, laptop GPUs and CPUs tend to be clocked far lower because of heating concerns.

[beastrace91]

I need/want my gaming system to be easily portable and I'm aware that desktops are much cheaper but I do not like being tied down by one. And your comment on the graphics cards is misguided, many laptop gfx cards have 512+ megs of ram. My current G1Sn has 512megs of DDR2 on the video card and the new ones I am looking at are sporting 1gig of DDR3

~Jeff

[Skripka]

Get an equivalent gaming desktop for about half the price.

Then, buy a cheap (we're talking sub-$150) used laptop for portable work.



Beat me to it.

Laptops run hot, and slow and are 3X the cost of a compareably priced tower.

[Grant A.]

Gaming laptops are a gigantic money sink. They're only good for about 2 years before you have to buy another one, because all of your hardware is outdated. Just get a desktop, it's a much better investment because you can actually swap out the old hardware for new hardware.

[LowSky]

Gaming laptops are a joke, they have nowhere the same power or ability of a equivalent desktop, and a 128GB SSD isn't enough space for a "gaming" machine... what are you looking to play just WoW?

Desktops can be quite small, you don't need a tower, get a mATX MB and many of these can fit full size graphics cards. a cheap duffel bag and it can move with you. Laptops are just not meant for gaming, regardless of what the manufacturers say.

Lastly no none-Windows gaming computer is needs to be that powerful, your just wasting money. Windows is PC gaming the whole industry is based around it, sorry Linux doesn't even compare, and running windows designed games in Linux is usually tiring and doesn't always work.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010090007+1054808292&QksAutoSuggestion=&Configurator=&Subcategory=7&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

[doas777]

even if your paying 5000$ for an alienware box, the words "Gaming" and "Laptop" are contradictory.

[Gizenshya]

what maxiboy said would be my recommendation (minus the phenom 9550... lmao. the intels out now are FAR faster (yes, once overclocked, but they overclock extremely well. the phenoms only get a couple percent). If you run only at stock clocks for desktops, though, it would be a decent choice.

BUT, that recommendation doesn't really answer your question.

I found this laptop (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220483) at NewEgg (http://www.newegg.com). The only thing is the processor, which is a p8700, and not a p9550. The p9550 is about 13% faster (in actual benchmark tests) than the p8700. I don't know if it would be practical to overclock laptop (never tried or researched it). My desktop core 2 duo at stock clock speed is only about 16% faster than the p8700. So I think it should be more than sufficient.

It comes with Vista :( but you'll need that to play the new games anyway, so ohh, well.

And it is an Asus! I love them! My sister has one of their gaming laptops from a year or two ago (8600gs I believe), and it rocks. It has been all over the world, most notably in the war in Afghanistan, where it survived an extended tour. It is still going strong and has never had any problems, so I strongly recommend their gaming laptops :)

Ohh, and the price: $1,550. And unless you live in a state where they have a distribution center, there is no sales tax. Only shipping is added to that. ;)

[doas777]

I need/want my gaming system to be easily portable and I'm aware that desktops are much cheaper but I do not like being tied down by one. And your comment on the graphics cards is misguided, many laptop gfx cards have 512+ megs of ram. My current G1Sn has 512megs of DDR2 on the video card and the new ones I am looking at are sporting 1gig of DDR3

~Jeff

are you certian that that GRAM is actually on the GPU? every laptop I've ever seen used shared system RAM. increasing that doesn't help anyone, since the latency is soooo much higher.