Gaming desktop to first laptop

N

nonis

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Jun 22, 2009
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Hey. I used to be a big gamer, but I'm pretty bored of most games lately. I'm thinking about parting out my gaming desktop and getting a laptop. I can probably make a bit over 500 off the desktop parts. Maybe a bit more.

Anyway, I've never bought a laptop before. I've always built my desktops off the best deals for the decent gaming parts, but I don't know anything about laptop hardware.

I want something mostly to use for school, music production, art, and maybe a little bit of gaming (I know I'm going to have to play SC2...). I don't want to spend too much more than the 500-550 I'll get for my desktop, but I'm willing to shell out a bit more.

What's good these days in the laptop world? Any suggestions?
 
Unless I'm missing something, those are all in the ~1500 price range...
 
well if you have to play SC2, you will need a semi decent machine. Unless you intend to only play 1 on 1 and the details set on low
 
Search eBay for HP Envy 15 with the 5830 GPU and use the Bing cashback. I think I saw one that can go under $1,000 budget. Not sure if it's there anymore.
 
I just did this exact thing a couple months ago. I sold my old box (for $500 oddly enough) and went laptop for all my needs. Personally, I think if you get a laptop in the 500-700$ range to replace a gaming box you're going to hate it. It'll be slower than you're used to and frustrating. But not everyone has the cash lying around for a fat laptop.

For my own laptop, I chose the Asus G51. It's great as a desktop replacement, plays the few games I've thrown at it so far... the only downside is that it doesn't have a port so I can make sweet love to it. :eek:
 
I have an asus g50vt-x6 from newegg of March '09. Good laptop overall for the $1,200 I paid for. I primarily use it for coding (C++, C#, python, etc.) and games (until I got back into desktops again 2 months ago).

Things I've noticed about high performance laptops.
1. They run hot - make sure yours has a vent where your hand WON"T be.
They also get hotter over time I've noticed - so performance gradually goes down it feels like (even with clean format etc.)
2. Battery life your looking at 30 minutes usually. I got a 30gb ocz vertex for my g50 because it has two hdd bays (WHICH IS GREAT!). I use the ssd as boot drive and other as storage - I would say this has made my batter life much much better.
3. Drivers are more of a pain for laptops (windows 7 was a nightmare to get on my g50 - I must have spent a full week of f'n around after work with my laptop). I'd check before you buy the manufacturer's website for drivers to see what is on there.
 
I sold my Q6600/ATI 4890 desktop and moved to a Asus G73 ($1199 at Best Buy) and have been loving every minute of it.
 
I just replaced my aging Core 2 quad/9800gt rig with a Acer Aspire 7740G Got it for $1199 from frys

It runs my games at least as fast as my desktop did and the proc seem a bit faster at superPI, dvd crunching, etc

stats are
Win7 home premium
Intel core i7 620 2.66ghz
8gb ram
640gb hdd
ati mobility radeon 5650 1gb
17.3" 16:9 widescreen

It runs crysis on high in dx10 with no problems. Even wide open playing crysis it still manages just over a hour of battery life or if you turn it to max battery and just web browse it hits 2.5 hours easy.

Granted its not a cheap rig.. but you'll be hard pressed to find a decent DTR for under 1k
 
outsida said:
I sold my Q6600/ATI 4890 desktop and moved to a Asus G73 ($1199 at Best Buy) and have been loving every minute of it.
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That looks pretty decent, I think I'll get that G73. My Macbook Pro , which is great is showing it's age
 
I just picked up a G73-A1 from tigerdirect with 15% bing cashback. They're out of stock now on the A1 and A2 models. If you are patient and keep an eye out, that would be your best bet. With the cashback, the A1 only cost me $1440 shipped.
 
outsida said:
I sold my Q6600/ATI 4890 desktop and moved to a Asus G73 ($1199 at Best Buy) and have been loving every minute of it.
Click to expand...
Yup!!! Same here! Sold my Q6600/260GTX system and got the Best Buy G73! I'm loving every minute of it. Better performance and way more portable (and the best part is I didn't even pay tax! :D Bought it in Portland wooo!
 
Well for $500, you aren't going to get an acceptable gaming laptop. Sorry, but in that range you are talking mid-low end office type laptop.

Just the way things go, laptops cost a lot more than desktops and get you less. You pay a premium to get portability.

If you want a reasonable gaming laptop, you need to set your sites to about $1000. That's around as low as you can go and still have a good gaming system. You might be able to push it down to $800-900 but don't count on it. Budget for $1000 to make sure.

If you do decide you want to buy, I'd look at MSI. That is where I personally spent my money. Their laptops are cheap and good. Only real problems are they don't have a lot of options, and their service is the "Send it in, we fix it and send it back." So if you need fast service, may have to look elsewhere like Dell or Lenovo.
 
I just got the Asus G60jx for $899 and according to beta benchmarks it will play SC2 easily. I can play Crysis on it just fine. If you don't believe it then search on youtube and you can see people playing Crysis on the G60.

My only gripe? The resolution is kinda crappy but that's probably why the GPU performs so well.
 
As its been said here many times, you will have to spend closer to $1000 if you want to play Starcraft 2 on a laptop, even at low settings. I dunno, save up, that or get a $500 notebook that will do web and video but not much else past that.

Since you want to do music production and art, that will also dictate the resolution of your display. You won't want to go smaller than 1440x900, not unless you plan on keeping your external monitor and using that for those applications.
 
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