New Gaming Laptop

[AngryPixel]

Even i'm looking for a decent gmaing laptop. Though I'm looking to spend somewhere between 2000$ to 2500$. In that range Asus G74SX stands out as the best choice. Though I'm torn between Asus and Dell XPS 17 3D.
both have almost similar specs except the GPU. XPS has 555m and Asus has 560m. So i think i'll go with Asus cuz of better GPU and awesome cooling.
I'm not in a hurry to buy it though. Need it for my college which starts in July. So i'll wait for a month or two. Lets hope Asus refreshes its lineup with Ivy Bridge and drop prices of current gen lineup.

 

[puddleduck]

Yeah they probably will. Fact is with laptops at the moment, gaming one's in particular, parts are getting smaller and more efficient and they will only get more powerful. If you can wait, then you will of course get a better deal for better specs further down the line.

However Sedition has correctly realised that you could be waiting indefinitely as technology moves at a rate that will always supercede

I have a 550M and it's ok. You would be best served getting the most powerful gfx card you can (once the 680 launches, perhaps the 675 will be cheaper) and sticking with an ivy bridge i5 instead of the i7 like I did. No need for an SSD either if you're just looking for a powerful but affordable gaming laptop.

Always comes down to what you want to spend and what you want to play

 

[AngryPixel]

I'm not going to wait for long. Just gonna wait till the end of this month. If they refresh the lineup then good otherwise I'll go with G74SX 3D as that suits all my needs. It has 560M, 16 gigs of RAM, 1.5TB HDD, 2.2Ghz core i7 2670QM. That should be enough to run current gen games at medium on Full HD and last gen game at ultra. I play Fifa 12 most of the time and my 3 year old ATI 4870 handles it pretty easily on 1920X1080 at high settings. So it should be a cakewalk for 560M.
Although I'm gutted that I'll end up paying around 2000$ for a laptop which is available for 1600$ in US

 

[puddleduck]

Yeah Fifa doesn't use anything since they barely did anything to optimise it beyond consoles. What you're getting will play most things, although as I said, you'd get more performance if you could find a similar laptop that offers a 670 gfx card and maybe an i5 processor and 8gb of ram instead

 

[AngryPixel]

There is a better alternative in MSI but they don't have 3D I needed a lappy which is able to play most of my favorite games and 3D movies. G74sx fits the bill perfectly. Other option is Alienware m17x. It has a better GPU in 570m but its price is around 3500$ in India . Fling you Alienware.

 

[puddleduck]

But Alienware "pwns" I believe was the exact quote

Fair enough you want the 3D element, personally I wouldn't bother investing anything into 3D tech for at least another 5 years as there's absolutely nothing worth seeing in 3D yet. I also can't stand that anything I've seen in 3D just looks like a SD film in 3D. The resolution and quality of picture is so much worse that in the end I'd rather see a crisp 2D film.

I will admit to enjoying watching sport in 3D, but films? Meh, so far they've been the equivalent technological advancement of books to pop-up books

 

[AngryPixel]

I just compared the specs of M17 with G74sx and its appalling how overpriced m17 is
I think 3D varies from person to person. Some people are able to enjoy it better than others.

 

[puddleduck]

Well you saw how with some research we knocked off $500 dollars and added in far better parts to Seditions gaming laptop (although had he ordered Alienware when he was going to he would actually have it by now )

 

[AngryPixel]

Even Dell's XPS brand is slightly overpriced. I configured a rig similar to Asus on dell's site and price was 200$ more than Asus.

 

[puddleduck]

Dell and Apple both work from the same box of marketing strategies

 

[AngryPixel]

I'd take the masculine look of Asus any day over the feminine look of Mac

 

[puddleduck]

Looks sturdy... although I don't understand the need for two scart sockets on the back

 

[AngryPixel]

Hahaha. Some people may think that Asus did the overkill on cooling but its a very good design for a gaming laptop. All the gaming laptops tend to run hot due to all the hardware they have. So if they push all the hot air out in a traditional way then you would feel uncomfortable using them in the lap

 

[puddleduck]

Yeah I fully agree that's a good design, not to mention that a lot of laptops don't exactly have legs and as such don't exactly give much airflow room underneath anyway

 

[Sedition]

The Asus and MSI laptops that I've looked at are all under the 4kg mark too. I think Alienware was around 5kg and the Clevo Metabox was 6kg.

I looked into Clevo a bit more and it seems their mission is to be the first to cram all the latest hardware into their chassis. This might be why they tend to be bulkier and also why they've run into problems and been delayed with the latest model.

I really hope Asus or MSI will come through with what I'm looking for by the end of next week. At least Rome is still keeping me amused for now.