Laptop purchasing help

[Mc. Lovin']

Hey guys!

I am in a bit over my head after trying to find a new laptop since my old one broke. I have no idea what to look for! What makes a laptop good or bad?

I'd like it to be able to run games fairly well, since my old one couldn't (nothing huge, HDminecraft without fog, LoL on max settings, able to handle Amnesia), but I don't know how I can tell if a laptop would do this.

Could someone who DOES understand all this be able to advise me? I'd really appreciate it if possible

Thanks in advance :smallsmile:

[OracleofWuffing]

Personally, I prefer starting with a price range.

Stuff to decide on:

Doubt you're planning to play games on a netbook, so you're probably going to choose between ~15 inch and ~17 inch. 17 inchers usually have a built-in numberpad if that's a concern, 15 inchers can but don't usually have them. Some people don't like 17 inch screens 'cause they're heavier, I think they're crazy but are entitled to their opinion.

I don't know what the requirements for Minecraft/LoL/Amnesia are, but generally speaking, if playing games beyond Flash is a concern, you probably want dedicated video RAM (meaning a dedicated video card, but I know someone's going to jump on me if I call it a video card). I'll let someone else who actually follows video cards tell you what's a good card and what isn't.

Windows 7 Home Premium is fine. You'd use 7 Professional if you want XP Mode, but I don't see that as a concern. If you're using Ultimate, you're probably wasting money. Generally speaking, you want 64-bit, unless you have a program you know, for certain, will not work with that.

Hard drives come in 5400 speeds and 7200 speeds (there's more but I'm ignoring them for now). Generally, people will say that the 5400s give you better battery life while the 7200s are marginally faster. I really don't see the speed tradeoff worth the battery life, but that's my opinion. Solid State Drives are much faster, help the battery last longer, but are much more expensive and have smaller capacity.

2 GB RAM is passable nowadays, but it should be cheap enough to go up to 4 GB.

Processor you're probably going to look at, at least Intel-wise, is a high-end i3 or a medium i5. i7 if you want the best. I don't follow AMD, though, so there might be a better competing processor there.

[ShadowHunter]

I just decided to update my desktop PC after it failed to run The Witcher 2 worth a darn at the lowest settings, and ordered about 700 dollars worth of parts (everything, including case, except my hard drives, monitor, and keyboard/mouse. Basically a new PC), so I suppose I'm pretty up to date at the moment. I've never bought a laptop before, and the parts aren't exactly the same, but I'll try to do some research as I type this... (also it would help immensely if you put your budget)

Value-wise, I think the 2nd generation intel i5 processors are about as good as you can get. I don't think you save enough money to warrant getting anything slower or older, IMHO of course (i3s of any generation, or first-generation i5/i7s), and for gaming you don't need an i7. The speed difference actually isn't that much and i5 and i7s are both quad-cores. The true difference is that i7s have hyper-threading, so the application you are running can treat the 4 cores like 8. That's really cool except that it's still a bit on the cutting edge and will be a couple of years before games are even really taking advantage of it.

The number designations ARE different, but it looks like the convention of i5-xxxx (vs i5-xxx) still represents the second-generation chips. AMD is also out there, but I don't know as much about them. They are generally cheaper, but don't perform as well on cpu benchmarking tests as their intel equivalents.

Now there was a time when "gaming pc" was synonymous with "most over-powered PC ever assembled" but that really isn't the case any more, at least for CPUs. You don't need to go out and get the fastest CPU with the most cores. No, what matters these days more than anything for gaming is the video card, and this is where laptop users generally get screwed if they aren't careful. Video cards are big, hot, and are often the most expensive component, all contrary to the very idea of a laptop! But they are entirely necessary for any kind of modern gaming. Worse yet, on a laptop I don't think you have the option of replacing or upgrading the video card, so you really need to plan ahead. You want to avoid integrated/on-board graphics

Video cards really only come from two companies these days, NVIDIA and Radeon. The number designations really diverge here, so sites like this: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

will help.

I need to run right now, so a few other quick points: Might as well get 4 gigs of RAM. Actually I think you SHOULD get 4 gigs these days, and 6 or 8 gigs is the de facto "might as well" value. To use more than 3 gigs, you need a 64-bit Windows, so Windows 7 64-bit, home edition is the logical choice. There was a time when 64-bit OSes had compatibility issues but that time is pretty much gone.

I don't know how much freedom you get when configuring hard drives but if you can afford it, get a small solid-state drive for the sole purpose of holding your OS, and a traditional hard drive for holding everything else. Solid-state drives are very fast and quiet, and anything involving your OS will load very fast, most notably booting. Compared to what you're probably used to now, booting windows 7 on a SSD will be crazy fast. It's a luxury, but anything else you put on the SSD will load fast and you'll consume less battery while loading.

[NOhara24]

Hey guys!

I am in a bit over my head after trying to find a new laptop since my old one broke. I have no idea what to look for! What makes a laptop good or bad?

I'd like it to be able to run games fairly well, since my old one couldn't (nothing huge, HDminecraft without fog, LoL on max settings, able to handle Amnesia), but I don't know how I can tell if a laptop would do this.

Could someone who DOES understand all this be able to advise me? I'd really appreciate it if possible

Thanks in advance :smallsmile:

You're not asking too much from your future PC. LoL is probably the most resource intensive out of all of them.

Here's what you should be aiming for:

Intel Core i5/7
Nvidia GeForce 460 or better (AVOID THE 520)
8 GB of RAM. (4GB is really the minimum these days.)

You'll probably be able to get all that together for under $1500 bucks, which may seem expensive until you realize that you will NOT have to upgrade again for a long while.

[Karen Lynn]

I can't remember the model number right now, but head to best buy. Last I was there, they had this nice Asus brand laptop with dedicated graphics/vram for about 575-650. Midrange price and worth it for the features. Next comparable laptop was a sony vaio for a thousand.

[OracleofWuffing]

If you can't get down to Best Buy... Saw this online (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230111), but that's a refurbished model, which is sometimes a huge turn-off. Has the video card NOhara24 recommended, though.

Do you currently go to a school? Some brands have educational discounts you might qualify for. For which you might qualify.

Couple of other quick selections... I don't recommend any of these out of personal experience (as I said before, I wish to remain blissfully ignorant about the minutiae of video cards), I'm just throwing them out there in hopes someone can offer more advice or point you in a better direction.

Dell Vostro 3550 (http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bqct52a&m_2=I52430&m_3=4GB1D&m_6=6630M&m_8=32072K&m_10=WLED&m_11=W7P61E&m_16=8XDVDO&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&model_id=vostro-3550) Radeon HD 6630M Video Card 1GB / 4 GB RAM / 320 GB Hard Drive / i5-2430M 2.40 / $739
Lenovo Ideapads (http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:category.details?current-catalog-id=12F0696583E04D86B9B79B0FEC01C087&current-category-id=F41BC8E1656C5F85171FBDB172571912&truechoice=) NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M 1GB / 4-8 GB RAM / 500-814 GB Hard Drive / i3-2330M - i7-2630QM / $639.20 - 983.20
Toshiba Satellite L7550 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834214495) nVidia Geforce GT 525M 1GB / 4 GB RAM / 640 GB Hard Drive / i5 2430M / $699.99
Asus K52 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220865) NVIDIA GeForce 310M 1 GB / 4 GB RAM / 500 GB Hard Drive / Intel Core i5 460M / $724.99

[userpay]

Actually I posted for help on finding a laptop not to long before you did so my thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12106963#post12106963) might help a bit. Personally I'm planning on getting the HP Pavillion dv7t (http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Category&v1=High+performance&series_name=dv7tqe_series&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/High_performance/dv7tqe_series). Right now you get a large instant rebate, free upgrade on RAM and free upgrade of the cd/dvd drive to blueray. I've been shopping around for the last few days online and this seems to be one of the the best deals I've found thus far for a gaming laptop. Only reason I haven't bought it just yet (was gonna do it tonight) is I began dithering on which Windows 7 OS and Microsoft Office packages to go with.

edit: And if you're in school you can get another discount as well.