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High Performance Gaming Laptops On A Budget?
Cory Tunney writes "In my quest to find a gaming laptop that will fulfill my gaming fantasies, but not kick me in the wallet at the same time, I've come across many options. Alienware is out of the question, as are companies like VooDooPC, but out of the rough comes companies less known but with impressive hardware. Sager seems to have won over a pretty large group of fans, and iBuyPower also seems to put out a decent amount of bang for the buck. However, when it comes down to it, I am still left with several options and I do not know what road to travel. So here's the jist of it - a system with a price tag around $2,000, a high-end video card (Radeon or the equivalent NVidia) and a system with an AMD would be a plus, but I will not rule out Intel if they can offer similar performance. So, Slashdot readers, what systems can you recommend?"
" So, Slashdot readers, what systems can you recommend?"
A desktop computer and a midget to carry it around?
To be honest, I haven't checked benchmarks for it yet, but I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 5150 (should arrive on the 18th). The reason I picked this one in particular was that it was dell's lowest-priced laptop that still had decent video hardware.
The specs I got were as follows:
- 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 HT
- 15" SXGA+ LCD
- 512 MB RAM
- 60 GB HD
- 64 MB nVidia GeForce FX Go5200
Adding a more powerful battery and a 4x DVD burner put me up to CDN $2200 after tax and shipping.
The 5150 on the US website starts at 256 megs of ram, 3.06 GHz P4, 15" XGA at $1079 after a 10% discount.
Another Dell option is $2319 USD after 15% off (about $400 savings) for the Inspiron XPS - a little more than your target price, but the specs are impressive to say the least.
I don't know how well my system is going to handle games - they're mostly a secondary priority, and the system is going to have enough power to run FFXI at least, so that's all I'm really concerned about - but as far as a mixture of cheap and effective (assuming you're not going to want to play Doom 3 on it), Dell is probably the best way to go.
I'm sorry, but you have GOT to be kidding me. You just can't realistically find that in your price range. Sure, you can skimp out on HD space, or maybe drop the pre-installed software, but as soon as you sacrafice a brand name, you lose things like a decent warranty, and quality parts.
Bottom line.
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
I know this isn't exactly on topic, but don't get a laptop for gaming. My last two computers have been "gaming" laptop. It just isn't worth it. It really isn't. The cost of a laptop is so much higher than a desktop, and the performance is so much lower. A Geforce4Go 5600 isn't anything like a Geforce 5600 FX. Laptops are essentially crippled by their graphic cards, no matter how hard Ati and nVidia try otherwise. My biggest argument against laptop is that the graphic drivers aren't updated. nVidia specifically states on their driver pages that laptop users should get updated drivers from their manufacturers. Maybe this issue is limited to Toshiba, but my graphics card's drivers have not been updated once by Toshiba since I bought my laptop a year ago. If you get a laptop, it will be fine for the first 6-8 months, but as soon as new games come out which rely on updated drivers, you will start missing out. I've tried upgrading my drivers, and all that does is create sub par performance and quite a few artifacts. Simply put, the graphic drivers are not optimized for laptops.
Mayhem. Nice stuff outfitted with ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 or 9700s. Your choice of Intel Pentium 4, Pentium M, or Athlon64, in order of least-to-most expensive. I'd go with the Pentium M version, based on your budget. The Athlon64 machine is $2100 with only 512Meg of RAM, whereas the Pentium M model is $1900 with 1Gig of RAM. That would also leave you enough money to upgrade to the 7200rpm HD.
I know you say you're looking for a laptop, but for that price range, you're not going to find what you really want.
/much/ less than a laptop. The downside is that you'll need to haul / find a monitor wherever you go.
I'd say build yourself a small form factor pc. The plus side of this is that you get something that's still portable and will cost
I have a Shuttle SN41G2 (http://www.shuttle.com/) and it works wonders.
I haven't checked them out for a while, but these guys seemed to have good prices: http://www.powernotebooks.com/
The NP4790-C seems to be a good deal, and just under the $2000 you wanted to spend.
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
wtf? read the summary much?
I've had this sig for three days.
While that may result in a machine with great specs, it's unlikely to be a LAPTOP. Reading the summary is hard, I know, but do try the title next time.
I've had this sig for three days.
The PowerBook G4s are far and away the best laptops on the market, but I wouldn't buy one for games unless I specifically wanted the games offered: there are far fewer Mac games, they release later, etc.
That said, Macs seem to be substantially faster MHz for MHz. I've owned several OS X machines and recommend them without hesitation to anybody who doesn't want specific software not available.
Have you tried going to CompUSA to play with one? They tend to have a popular game or two.
I've only seen one or two kernel panics using Macs as my main computers (including while a full-time software engineer) since 10.2. Those I saw were identified bugs and fixed in short order. I believe the other poster, but strongly suspect he has a hardware flaw in his video card.
Contrary to popular belief, when you consider the whole package, including weight and typical use patterns, the PowerBook laptops tend to be the best financial value. I helped a family member buy a laptop recently and PowerBooks were actually cheaper than similar PC laptops. This may not be true in math-intensive applications like gaming.
Generally you pay 2X for a laptop what you'd pay for a PC equivalent. For $2000, you'd be better off just buying a $1500 gaming PC and a $500 laptop to do work on. Towers, especially with LCD displays, can typically be carried in a backpack (normal cases) or smaller (small form factor). Battery life really isn't an issue since a gaming laptop dies after about an 1-2 hours anyway.
That, and you can't upgrade laptops easily. It's cheaper to go buy a reasonable GFX card (~$200) and then buy a new one when you need it for a game than buying $600 card to start out with. You don't have that freedom with a laptop.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
9 times out of 10 this is the best deal on desktops and laptops anywhere, especially when you consider the quality of what you're getting (I'm sorry, but Dell is better than most of these fly-by-nite operations by a long shot). The inventory changes almost daily, so if they don't have what you want, try again the next day.
That being said, I *have* had a Dell refurbished part fail on me, four months after purchase. Of course I thought "well, you can't get something for nothing..". However, after a quick chat with customer service they had a replacement on my doorstep two days later, with a RMA and a box for the old part. I'm so happy about this that I'm writing this post.
Excellent performance for an unbeatable price! Check out the all-new series of P-P-P-Powerbooks!
Operating System:
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
Processor:
Low-power mobile AMD Athlon(TM) 64 processor 2800+
Memory:
512MB (256/256)
Hard drive:
80GB
Optical drive:
(Slot loading)Super Multi Write Plus (DVD -RW, +RW, -RAM)
Display:
15.0" TFT SXGA+ (1400 x 1050)
Graphics:
ATI® MOBILITY(TM) RADEON(TM) 9700, 128MB DDR
Connectivity:
802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth(TM), Gigabit LAN, V.92 modem, 4-in-1 card reader, infrared, 4 USB 2.0 ports and Firewire.
Did I mention that it's RED?
CyberPower Xplorer X64-8000
I don't know about tech support or quality (never bought from these guys), but you could configure a nominally good gaming laptop for about $1700.
Athlon64 3200+
1GB RAM (the low-latency Corsair stuff, even)
Radeon Mobility 9700
802.11g mini-PCI
XP Pro (wimp...)
$1774.00
Again, on paper this is a steal. YMMV.
As of the 2.6.7 kernel, all of the stupid bios issues with this laptop are fixed, so you can turn acpi and speed governing on and it works. The only problem I still have is that it doesn't know when I plug it in or unplug it without restarting acpid (doesn't affect charging, just power profiles and the battery meter)
My company used to seel Sagers about 10 years ago. Yes they have been around that long. We had to take back more systems with them than I can count. It was a nightmare to deal with them. Unless you know for a fact that they have changed I would stay far a way from them.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Actually for gaming Centrino is a twosided sword. The Pentium-M kicks with 1.7 GHz every other Intel Prozessors butt, litterally spoken. This thing is faster than a 4 GHz P4 and uses only a fraction of energy the P4 uses. But most centrino notebooks blow the gaming performance away with the dog slow and under linux rather problematic i855/xTreme2 graphics processor. Which is fast enough for occasional games (nwn still runs ok on this one) but never try it for high end gaming, you will end with a slideshow.
Fast / Cheap / Good
Pick two. You cannot have all three. This is a universal law of computing (and life in general).
PC Torque has about the best customer service in the laptop industry. They sell both Sager and Acer notebooks. I got a Sager 5680 from them a year ago and it has been the most solid machine I've ever owned (and I've owned A LOT of machines, from Macs to store-boughts to homebrew). You aren't going to find a better place to discuss laptops than NotebookForums.com.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
No, if you're a true retrogamer, you want one of these, and that's most definitely an AMD chip. 386DX-40, and that's 40 FSB * 1, w00t! If you can't find the 40MHz chip, then Intel's fair game too - their chips are identical to the AMD chips.
It also seems that other PGA132 chips (even 486DLC chips) had the same Dhrystone performance at the same clock speed, though, on this benchmark (reading graphs, don't know French).
If you need a 486, it gets trickier. Intel was probably the way to go at a certain clock speed, but didn't hit the highest clocks. Still, the Intel DX4-100 was the fastest on Dhrystone. However, Cyrix's 5x86 100MHz owned the Intels on Whetstone. AMD was slightly slower at 100MHz, though.
If you need a Pentium-class chip, determine how much Quake-playing there is. The more Quake, the closer you need to be to Intel (careful about PPros, but it might be 16-bitness on the part of the benchie app), and the further from AMD or Cyrix (and forget NexGen - there are no mobos that take the Nx587, and the Nx586FP is quite rare). However, with integer work, the AMD K6 0wns the Pentium. Then again, anything other than a Cyrix/IBM/ST or a PPro 0wned the Pentium (something tells me the benchie WAS 16-bit).
So, here's what you should have for each situation:
386: As long as it's 40MHz, it doesn't matter. AMD or some 486DLC, IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you can't hit 40MHz, then all 33MHz chips are the same performance according to this benchmark.
486: If you're doing Quake, get a Cyrix 5x86. Otherwise, go Intel.
Pentium: If you're doing Quake, get exactly that - a Pentium. If not, go AMD (but not a late K5).