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The Best Gaming Laptop Money Can Buy
Parz writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their winners for the best gaming laptops money can buy as of Q3 2008. The analysis is broken into three sections to cater for three different budget requirements. There is a detailed explanation of why each laptop was selected, going into each hardware component individually. Regular Slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy. Prices may vary depending on where you live."
...until the next one comes out.
No sig today...
I always think that using Laptops for gaming is a bit of a silly idea. Every couple of months a new game comes out that requires more powerful graphics, and you can't upgrade the graphics cards in a laptop. So your top of the range laptop bought today will be a pale shadow of its former self when playing the latest game in a year's time. With a desktop PC, you can simply replace the old graphics card with a new one.
"Your hardware wonâ(TM)t function without an OS, so what better choice than Microsoftâ(TM)s latest offering. Despite the constant criticism, Vista is a very stable, secure and enjoyable platform to work with. In collaboration with the latest gear, games will play at high speed and detail to whet your gaming appetite!"
Nice to see they are still paid by Microsoft marketing arm. That entire statement goes against everything every reputable gaming site and expert says..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A Beowulf cluster of Eee PCs glued to a go-cart. ...what? Can't a man dream?
GPU - ATI 4870 X2
Price: ~$655
If Golem had a computer, this would be his precious.
The guy can't even spell "Gollum".
Geek license revoked!
I have no money, is there a list of laptops for people with large piles of string?
You can get one on eBay for like $6.50, with Tetris. What else do you need?
Not completely. Sure, they won't see all of the ram with 32-bit windows. But, in my experiences, windows will recognize between 3.25 to 3.5GB in a 4GB system.
Ideally, 3GB would be the config to use for modern gaming PC's running 32-bit windows (gaming benchmarks seem to indicate that 3GB is better than 2GB for current-gen games). However, if you don't run matched pairs, your ram isn't in dual channel mode.
So what do you do? Run 4GB across 2 or 4 sticks. It's your best, albeit slightly wasteful, memory config for gaming. And if/when you decide to migrate to 64-bit windows, you're in good shape memory-wise.
It's obvious from the article that the reviewer didn't actually use the machines in question, and some of the choices are really questionable - he recommends a machine with Vista 64bit. Given the continued instability of a lot of 64 bit graphics drivers even on desktops, buying a laptop - where custom drivers tend to rule (and ruin) the day - with the OS seems like a massive waste of cash. I think this is a case of Reader Beware.
I can see your point, but the question and the context was about laptops that run PC games.
Portables like the original gameboy or the newer DS, are a bit of a fixed target: a game either runs on that one configuration, or it doesn't. There are no games written for a DS with an upgraded graphics card, or with more RAM.
PC gaming doesn't really have such fixed targets. All games try to surpass last year's in terms of graphics, if nothing else because screenshots sell, and the hardware requirements are occasionally outright silly. I can think of some games (e.g., EQ2) which were launched to match hardware specs that didn't even yet exist. E.g., seriously, to run EQ2 with full graphics details you needed a 512 MB graphics card, and that just didn't exist yet. (Well, ok, maybe except as a high-end, professional OpenGL card for CAD.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Regular slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy.
Whereas regular Slashdot editors might remember how the last article was panned by readers, and might have ceased spamming us with articles from this site.
They might also remember to capitalise the name of their own site, but I guess all this is too much to hope for.
A gaming laptop review without reviewing one from Sager?
Ridiculous. I love my Sager, and the company is great.
http://www.sagernotebook.com/
Moo.
I question the sanity of sticking SLI/RAID0 configurations with enormous screens in a notebook formfactor. You're essentially giving up on the idea of portability, particularly given that the battery in one of those things can't even keep the machine running for an hour.
You still get portability. You just don't get to be unplugged. A notebook like this means that you can sit on your couch and play games, or move into your bedroom, or take your computer with you on vacation and play some, etc. Lugging around your desktop is probably not an option in many cases.
Well, it's just as valid a question...
You may want to look that word up some time.
In addition to the obvious mythological reference, which has nothing to do with Tolkien, the Hebrew word 'Golem' means 'fool', 'stupid' or 'clueless'. So, with that in mind, the review can be read as "If a stupid, clueless fool had a computer, this would be it."
The only way you could praise it more would be to say that it has "more schmaltz for your schlemiel".
will heat up like the center of the sun, whir like a 747, weigh a metric ton and never be moved from the desk upon which it will sit, consume as much power as a low end desktop, and work for about 6 months to 1 year until thermal stress takes hold and it becomes worthless for any use. much like jumbo shrimp, conservative republican, and tactical nuclear weapon, this "gaming laptop" capable of running crysis for all of 20 minutes before thermaling out, is an oxymoron.
the gaming laptop was contrived as a marketing competition tool to push the limits of the laptop form-factor with complete disregard for longevity and end user functionality.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Considering the author had blatantly incorrect things like:
I would bet you all the money I have right now that he didn't know the Hebrew meaning for golem, and was in fact trying and failing to reference the Lord of the Rings character. It's very nice that you give him the benefit of the doubt, but the writer gives way too many places to doubt to make that even slightly noble.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Don't waste your time.
There are no tests performed, no benchmarks, no comparisons.
The guy only went to 3 websites (Dell, Alienware and some other), read the specs, and said what he though of it.
Completely useless. Glad I use AdBlock. That site doesn't deserve a cent of advertisement money.
morcego
The biggest problem I have with laptops it the lack of driver updates.
My laptop has a nVidia graphics card, but is unsupported by nVidia.
The drivers need to be updated by the manufacturer and I cannot use the universal
driver. My old laptop with Geforce 2, hasnt had a driver update since 2002.
S