Entry Level Gaming Laptop

RaT · Post by **RaT** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 12:20 pm

i'm looking for a decent laptop that can actually play some games (Half-Life 2, COD 4, etc.) on occassion or when i'm travelling. i'm not looking to max the settings, just want to get some decent framerates when i'm away from my desktop.

i think anything under $1,000 would be decent.

i found the following from Gateway.. what do you guys think

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 4&CatId=17

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:52 pm

Not a bad laptop configuration. For your games, the graphic chip is what matters the most. Best to find out how well that one stacks against desktops if possible. I wouldn't expect to run Crysis on max settings, but you could get some games to play pretty well.

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:57 pm

I have an Acer Travelmate 5520 w/Radeon X1300 and it plays WoW just fine. About 25FPS in most situations. I actually play more on my laptop than my home PC haha.. So that video card should be MORE than enough for the games you mentioned to make them playable.

eGo

wvjohn · Post by **wvjohn** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 3:48 pm

that looks fine.

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:34 pm

Too bad too cuz I sold my XPS M1710 a few weeks ago.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:40 am

From GotApex.com:

XPS M1330 & M1530 laptop coupons & deals:
http://shrunklink.com/awiv

Select one of the $999 laptops and upgrade the vid card and battery, plus anything else to get it up to $1249, then apply the coupon for 20% off which will knock it down to $999. Select free shipping and all you pay is tax maybe (depending on your state):

Coupon codes:
* 20% off a $1249+ purchase, use code: K54SDRK72$L6W3
* 25% off a $1499+ purchase, use code: 0$?X8RJ0$G3XLB

NOTE: Offer expires 8/13/08 at 5:55AM CT or after a limited number of redemptions (so the coupons could easily expire long before the expiration date if they're used up).

You enter the coupon after the computer is in your shopping cart (there's a place to enter the code in the shopping cart) and if it takes it you should see the discount reflected in the shopping cart.

RaT · Post by **RaT** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:30 pm

thanks for the suggestions... i went ahead with the gateway from tigerdirect.com

never purchased from them so let's see what happens.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:46 pm

Not a fan of TigerDirect, but that's because they screwed me a LONG time ago back when they were a very shady company. They have a decent Reseller Rating nowadays though. Still, I have a long memory and will never deal with them again because of my bad experiences with them in the past.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 12:45 am

Is that Gateway a decent laptop? The wife wants a new laptop, so I'll probably be picking one up around Christmas time.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 7:59 am

I just looked at the specs and it seems like a decent rig. Gateway used to make a decent laptop, but I have no idea what they're like anymore.

Plus the other concern is the warranty. Laptops are like Swiss watches. Anything (other than something simple like the hard drive) breaks, you want it fixed under warranty and preferably on site. You don't want to have to box it up and send it to the factory and maybe not even get the same laptop back and lose all your data. I don't know if Gateway has on site support or not anymore.

I have had good experiences with Dell's on-site warranty service in this area, but be aware they use different sub contractors around the country and service quality can vary. If you buy from Dell's business division (NEVER buy from the Home division!) you have the option for a 1 year or more NBD (next business day) on-site warranty. Some laptops come with a mail-in warranty as the default and you need to upgrade $30 or $40 for the on-site, but it's worth it. I always recommend the on-site warranty to my clients.

I've had numerous good experiences with them. Call them at 3pm on a Wednesday and they're there with the part in hand the next day ready to swap it out. If you want to do it yourself, they're happy to just ship the part overnight with a prepaid label so you can send the old part back in the same box. Just be aware they will NOT deal with software issues short of re-installing Windows if your drive is replaced.

RaT · Post by **RaT** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:56 pm

maybe i should have waited.. just saw this deal from Compusa.. Yes, it's refurbished but considering the specs at $699 is definitely something i would have jumped on..

http://www.compusa.com/applications/Sea ... bEuVKSe0IQ

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:23 pm

They were almost sold out instantly. Nice lappy although it's a pretty weak CPU.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:15 am

Keep in mine, being refurbished, it doesn't come with much of a warranty, and most credit card extended warranties do not cover used products.

If you had to contact CompUSA to handle that 3 month warranty good luck on that. I think you would really be happier with the one you already got, even if your bank account isn't all smiles.

RaT · Post by **RaT** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:41 am

ZYFER wrote:Keep in mine, being refurbished, it doesn't come with much of a warranty, and most credit card extended warranties do not cover used products.

If you had to contact CompUSA to handle that 3 month warranty good luck on that. I think you would really be happier with the one you already got, even if your bank account isn't all smiles.

true i don't think i ever purchased a "refurbished/recertified" item so even if i was really tempted, my common sense would always come through.

btw, I ended up selling the laptop i got from TigerDirect to my brother at the same price I bought it for less shipping.

I really like the "FX" models from Gateway and ended up buying another model, the Gateway M-6864FX from Best Buy. It's currently on sale now at $749. I just got it yesterday and funny thing is they weren't even on display yet.

Similar specs but this FX model has more RAM and a speedier hard drive.

For those curious, it is very capable of playing most recent games. Although I haven't tried Crysis yet, TF2 ran and defaulted to mostly max settings and COD4 ran very smooth at medium to high settings.

Only thing that confuses me is although is says the video card has 512mb dedicated memory it seems to still pull some memory from the system ram. If i remember right, I think the system info mentioned the video ram was well over 1gb.

Is there a way to disable it or does it really need to still pull some extra memory from the system?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:42 pm

The vid chip either has onboard or shared memory but not both. If it uses shared memory it's a cheap card no good for serious gaming. I would assume you have a video chip with it's own dedicated 512Mb.

I think you're mis-reading the system info report. The Windows system info wouldn't even see any system ram that was assigned to the video if the video used shared memory (it's shared at the BIOS level not the OS level).

Now vid cards will pull system memory though Windows if they need it for extra texture storage, but that's different than shared memory, and most games will never do that if you have more than 256Mb of video RAM since it's slower than using the video RAM.

Now it's possible you have one of those new hybrid laptops with TWO video chips. One low power one just for the desktop, and one high power one for 3D gaming. This saves battery life. No sense running the power hungry 3D GPU if all you're doing is typing a letter in Word. If that's the case then yeah, the low power video chip MAY be designed to use shared main system memory. If that's the case then you can adjust the amount of memory it steals in the BIOS menu. No need to set it for anything over 64Mb for desktop use. It may need more if you're playing back HD video though.