A laptop for gaming that will not cost the world
Community Forums/General Help/A laptop for gaming that will not cost the world
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| My son is considering purchasing his own laptop with his savings. I'm going to do a [EDIT] some significant research myself, I appreciate that for a laptop that is equivocal to a desktop that is capable of running some RPG games you have to spend some serious coinage. If you have bought a laptop in the last few years with the goal of also using it for gaming, can you please share whether your happy with your purchase, or whether you'd have spent that little bit more to secure a laptop that would have had that little more grunt. I'm also curious if anyone has a laptop with E-SATA hookup for back up purposes. I'll post my own findings later, any feedback appreciated. My son has just started high school - I have a Hewlett Packard we bought 8 or 9 years ago that still works great of the power supply - however the battery is goosed. Still, 8/9 years for a laptop that has seen all sorts of use is not too bad. I appreciate you may pay a premium for a HP, but any feedback appreciated. My son has done some research himself and he rather fancies a Sony VAIO for 600 british pounds..... |
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| I've never bought a gaming laptop; however, I have heard that connecting external hard-drives via eSATA can be problematic as you can be stiffed by the motherboard not recognising the hard-drive which it will not have a problem with via USB1/2 or FireWire. |
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| Thanks puki (;-) Might steer clear of an E-SATA port. this one looks promising:- http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/generic/satellite-l670-laptops/ & there is this:- http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/ASUS_X5EAE-SX047V_Windows_7_Laptop_X5EAE-SX047V/version.asp &:- http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Compaq_Presario_CQ61-406SA_Laptop_WD428Ea/version.asp |
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| It features not the fastest graphic chip on earth. But it is cheap anyway. Got my wife this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egva-O1UKt4&feature=related She loves it, and me too :-)) |
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| Nothing with an intel GPU for a start. |
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| Generally spoken: SONYs are more expensive but great in the long run. Toshibas are a bit weaker on the quality aspect but offer more bang for the buck. Continuing this route, there comes Asus. |
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| It features not the fastest graphic chip on earth. But it is cheap anyway. £1,700 is considered cheap in the world of gaming laptops? I'm glad I never really got into laptops, if so. |
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| I would go for a Vaio, if you want the computer to last. |
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| Thanks puki (;-) Might steer clear of an E-SATA port. this one looks promising:- e-Sata does have a major advantage: a USB external drive can do 480 MBit/sec, which is ~25MB/sec actual throughput speed. With e-Sata you'll get the native drive speed, which is easily 100MB/sec.... Plus many of the external drives have dual connectors, allowing you to hook them up over either USB *or* eSata, giving you the best of both worlds. |
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| Don't buy a gaming laptop, they are not worth it. You pay too much and get too little and if the screen is a decent size for games (17" or more) then the laptop will be too big and heavy. They are also difficult to upgrade. You can of course, buy a small, under powered laptop that will at least support some games at low to medium settings but is that why you are buying it, to pay a lot of money to play some games on a small screen with poor detail? I've had one (from Rock Direct) and wouldn't buy one again. Darkheart |
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| I have an acer laptop with a nvidia 240m gpu in it, cost me just over £500 from laptopsdirect.co.uk. So far so good, it runs everything really well and is a great little machine. I just upgraded it with an SSD drive and now it's the fastest PC I've ever used. |
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| I have an acer laptop with a nvidia 240m gpu in it, cost me just over £500 from laptopsdirect.co.uk. So far so good, it runs everything really well and is a great little machine. I just upgraded it with an SSD drive and now it's the fastest PC I've ever used. thanks for the suggestion Andy. |
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| I bought an Asus A4K that, for the time (2005) was a decent laptop which ran games of that era on medium settings (Doom 3 for instance/original Dawn of War)..with an ATI Radeon 9700 64MB.. While it no longer plays anything gfx intensive from the past few years it still runs most blitz3d apps fine. Spent about $2300 (Australian Dollars) at the time so it was not cheap. I was happy with it when I was still using it. Actually, that makes me think..maybe I should give it away or something since I rarely ever use it any more... |
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| I love Sony laptops, but when it came to have stuff fixed, I had regret it. A replacement powersupply (SONY) cost me 190 Euros 4 years ago. |
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| I think quite some companies are making a reasonable amount of their money with way overpriced powersupplies and batteries. |
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| I think quite some companies are making a reasonable amount of their money with way overpriced powersupplies and batteries. Perhaps, but not forever... Like the European Union has pressured the phone industry to voluntarily standardize on charger hardware or face legislation mandating a universal standard ( http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10274953-94.html ), they have also been looking at the laptop industry in this respect. |
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| I read about this, hopefully it will change something. |
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| Yeah the EU is good for some things :D You can always buy a multi ended multi output generic charger for about 50-80 pounds. I have 2 of them and can power any of my laptops no trouble (hp, dell, acer, fujitsu) the only one that doesn't like it is my IBM. (they are a bit bulky though) |
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| A replacement powersupply (SONY) cost me 190 Euros 4 years ago. Damn! That is insane! |
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| I love Sony laptops, but when it came to have stuff fixed, I had regret it. A replacement powersupply (SONY) cost me 190 Euros 4 years ago. gulp... thats quite a bit, will be passing this onto my son as he does semm quite keen on the Sony VAIO. It is his money, I've just got to present him qith the performance figures in an 11 year old's digestable fashion.Just need to maybe persuade the bang for his bucks.... |
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| I bought a $1100 laptop with all-around high specs last summer to use for gaming and programming, and it's served me very well. I use it very frequently, so for me it was worth the cost. However, if he's only going to be using it a few hours a week or something, it'd be best to stick with something with a decent HD, for game storage, and a good graphics card like an ATI or NVidia, which is absolutely necessary to play most games. A decent processor is good, but a mere Intel i3 should be able the job done; games rely much less on processor power than they do the graphics card. If he programs, though, he might want to invest in an i5 or else suffer from long compile times. |
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| Thanks folks for all the advice, we'll be choosing/ordering one this weekend |
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| Well, my son has one of these in bound:- Acer Aspire 7540 Laptop Specifications: Processor: AMD Athlon II M300 Dual-Core Processor Speed: 2.0 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache Operating System: Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD graphics card Memory: 3GB DDR2 RAM Hard Disk; 320GB Optical Drive: DVD-RW Optical Drive: 17.3″ Widescreen LED Backlit TFT LCD Display Connectivity: Wireless enabled Camera: Built-in Webcam Other Features: HDMI connectivity External Ports: External display (VGA) port, 4x USB Battery Life: Up to 2.5 hours Next, internet lock down parental type thingy. Will be invoking filtered words on the router first of all. |
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| Will be invoking filtered words on the router first of all. Okay then, let's start the list of filtered words you need to include!!! I'll start...: "monkey juice" |
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| Never buy Acer. Someone I know worked there and he told me why their laptops are cheaper: They use second-hand components and brand them as new ones. Everyone I know that bought a Acer laptop was having problems with it within 3 months from the purchase. And unless your son isn't at least 10 then don't bother with word filtering. I knew all the bad words since I can remember myself but doesn't mean that I also use them. Education is better than just preventing. |
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| I have had two Acer's now and they have been fantastic. My fist one is getting on now and still been used for heavy 3D work with 3DS Max and 2D work with Photoshop. The only reason I passed it on was because I wanted a bigger screen and a bigger hard drive. I now have a Acer 7535 (an older version of the one above I guess). It gets used, again, for heavy 3D and 2D work. This is professional work too. It also plays Team Fortress 2 very nicely :) My 2 have outlasted my friends Dells (XPS and Inspiron) and she now uses my old Acer. Yes, there will always be some shoddy examples (like the Dell's) but I have been more than happy with them and will probably get one again, so don't write them off. |
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| I have a Acer 6935 and never had single problem in 1 year already of owning the laptop :) |
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| We bought this Sony Vaio last week, should be okay for gaming as it has a Nvidia GT330 GPU, the cost is about £1000 ... |
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| Hi Dodo, that's a nice laptop! I see the i7 runs at 1.73GHz normally, have you noticed it going upto the 2.93GHz ? Just asking because if it does then it is a very fast laptop, even a desktop replacement. Have you been playing any games on it? Jim |
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| hey Hotshot, I had the same laptop, but it got stolen. I've got a 5739g now. |
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| Hi Dodo, that's a nice laptop! I see the i7 runs at 1.73GHz normally, have you noticed it going upto the 2.93GHz ? Just asking because if it does then it is a very fast laptop, even a desktop replacement. Have you been playing any games on it? Jim Hi Jim, we haven't installed any games on it yet, it was primarily bought for word processing and internet access since my desktop PC failed last week. My desktop machine arrived today after a week of servicing and now there's a fault with the monitor which IIyama will replace tomorrow. It's very bad without internet access and I can't live without it. As for the laptop, it's pretty nippy speed and booting wise ... I presume it should clock at 2.93Ghz when playing full screen games but I haven't tested it out yet. Obviously there's a lot of Sony installed junk on the machine which can be removed but I have just left them as they are. |
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