Most times when I recommend laptops I just tell people to take the best deal at NewEgg in the $500-600 range for Toshiba or Acer. In the past I have recommended Dell when they were on top of the market, and then HP, both more expensive, but right now Acer build quality seems to be the best for the money.
However I've got a couple of friends who are gamers. Here is a recommendation I made in 2010 for one of them: http://iponderus.com/2010/09/gaming-laptops.html . We're going to build on and update that post today, as one of those gamers had their custom-built desktop die and they are looking for a laptop.
Gaming laptops are a breed apart. You really have to dive in and understand the current market to get the best deal and the best machine. You have to get the ebb and flow of each key part in order to understand their relative merit to the whole.
I started out looking at MSI and Asus machines at NewEgg. The MSI machines had great specs but seemed to be really poorly put together- lots of flimsy plastic with LEDs flashing everywhere. The Asus machines looked better but had a fatal flaw - the video card they were using, the Nvidia GTX 560M, had been choked from a 192 bit pipeline to 128 bit, even though the video memory was bumped from 1.5 GB to 2 GB. All the forums indicated this would hobble the card.
From there I was able to guess at a current price range for a low-end-of-the-high-end gaming laptop, $1100-1500. I prefer to stay one step down from the deluxe, and one step behind the cutting edge. That avoids what I call the stupid tax on both of those levels. The next step was to see what that would buy me in the custom laptop market, where you get to choose the parts that go into your Compal or Clevo base model (see my earlier post mentioned above for the background on them).
In order to hit that target price, I decided on a particular base Clevo model that had been out awhile, but had been updated to the latest chipset, so that it could take the latest and greatest video cards and processors. I also preferred the build quality of that model to anything else out.
http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=308
Next I began to compile a list of the latest custom builders, and which ones were still offering that platform:
- http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=30027
- http://www.mythlogiccorp.com/configure.php?id=84
- http://www.avadirect.com/shopping_cart.asp
- http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X6-9300_Gaming_Notebook/
- http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=285
I should note that the one I decided on, based on lowest price, everything else being pretty similar across the vendors, was Malibal, the last in that list.
I also checked out a couple of other builders, who didn't offer that model, but did have a slightly newer one:
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8150-clevo-p150hm-p-2972.html?wconfigure=yes
I couldn't compare Sager, where I bought my last gaming laptop, because they only had a much newer model at a higher pricepoint: http://www.sagernotebook.com/
Now if you are coming to this post awhile after it is written, then those links will probably fail, however you can still check out the builders by just going to www.<builder>.com, or whatever the root of the domain is.
Thoughts on parts:
You can compare performance and specs on parts at http://www.notebookcheck.net . They'll show you how the cpu or video card you are interested in compares to others that are currently out.
Here's what I decided on from all the options:
- Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080
- Cpu: Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.2-3.1GHz
- Memory: (8GB) 1333MHz DDR3 (2 of 4)
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5
- Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
- Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
- Wireless: Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Display: I've had both 12" and the 17" machines. The tiny ones are impossible to see or get anything done with, and the big ones are too big to haul around or use on your lap. This is a high resolution for a 15", but I don't expect the screen to be used much at a desk (where there will be a big external monitor). The key is this is native 1080p resolution, which at some point is going to be good for watching movies.
Cpu: This is an i7, and the 2 in the beginning of the model indicates 2nd (the most recent) generation. Q means quad (four) cores rather than 2, and the M is for Mobile. It "turbos" from 2.2 to 3.1 if a single core is getting used heavily. This seems like the current sweet spot - way up there because it is i7 quad , but not in the upper echelon with the "hyperthreading" models.
Memory: I'm interested to see the machine making use of this much RAM, it wasn't that long ago that 2G was plenty, and you only got 4G if you were planning to run VMs. But now there are consumer (gaming) machines with 16GB and 32 GB. I went for 8 because like I said, I'm unsure how it is going to use all that. There are two open slots in this machine, so I can bump up later if need be.
Graphics: GTX 5XX is Nvidia's most recent high-end mobile series. There are two more bumps above the 560 (M again is mobile), 570 and 580. They tend to cost another $100 and then another $300-400. Looking at the performance gains it seemed to me you didn't get much more for the extra money. Furthermore in reading reviews, it seemed like any current game screamed with this card, and so there should be some future-proofing there (as much as you get with any video card).
Storage: I just picked a middle of the road 7200rpm drive, as what is really needed is an SSD, but the prices are still insane. This would be a good future upgrade, and in fact I think there's an extra bay, so you can have both (SSD for speed and HD for size).
Optical: Blue Ray is still so expensive. I would look at adding an external one later if it was needed.
Wireless: This is a small matter, but it shows the kind of attention to detail you need to have for this. If you take the lower standard option, or the deluxe option above this, you do not get internal Bluetooth. Only this option includes it for some reason.
Finally, I’ll note that I was able to put together a screaming system (in my opinion, and just based on specs) for the low end of my price range. Everybody will have their own preferences, but I hope some of the reasoning presented, will aid in making informed choices. I do believe when you start talking higher-end laptops, that going custom is a good decision.
