Need help buying a new gaming notebook

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Raptor 597
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Need help buying a new gaming notebook

Post by Raptor 597 »

Hey, everybody figure I'd get your advice before I buy a laptop. I'm looking to only spend up to about $1200 and I plan on playing mostly RTS games like Starcraft II and Empire Total War. I have been leaning towards this ASUS laptop, but I've read that the Nvidia card is a bit crippled. Any suggestions? Thanks.
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Steel
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Re: Need help buying a new gaming notebook

Post by Steel »

My housemate has a 560M and that seems to have no trouble with skyrim on max in 1920x1080.

That card can also run BF3, something which my old laptop (which could run shogun 2 and SC2 at medium settings well) could not even manage on lowest settings at 5fps.
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Zaune
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Re: Need help buying a new gaming notebook

Post by Zaune »

These two questions spring to mind every time I hear the words "gaming laptop": "Do you really expect to need something with that much junk in the trunk on the bus, in Starbucks or anywhere else you carry a laptop?", and "Are you really prepared to fork out another twelve hundred bucks in five years when the graphics card is hopelessly outdated?"

Consider these questions very, very carefully before you commit to anything.
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Steel
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Re: Need help buying a new gaming notebook

Post by Steel »

Zaune wrote:These two questions spring to mind every time I hear the words "gaming laptop": "Do you really expect to need something with that much junk in the trunk on the bus, in Starbucks or anywhere else you carry a laptop?", and "Are you really prepared to fork out another twelve hundred bucks in five years when the graphics card is hopelessly outdated?"

Consider these questions very, very carefully before you commit to anything.
When has a graphics card ever "lasted" 5 years?

When looking into laptops recently I saw that I could get 2 £1200 desktops for either end of my commute with basically the same capability as one £2400 laptop.
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Psawhn
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Re: Need help buying a new gaming notebook

Post by Psawhn »

Have you looked into getting a refurbished laptop? I got a refurbished Asus G72GX from Tigerdirect a year and a half ago and I'm happy with it. Refurbished means it'll probably be cheaper than most other places, and you should be getting a warranty with a laptop anyway so reliability is less of a concern. I actually spent less on that laptop than my previous one, which was definitely not a gaming laptop in any way.

As to why you'd get a gaming laptop rather than a much cheaper desktop (or two)? In my case, I was looking for a 'portable desktop.' Sure, I never use it on the bus or at a coffee shop, but I never did that with my previous (normal-sized) laptop anyway. Yeah, it's almost too big to fit in my backpack, and it's a heavy pain to carry around when I do, but at least it's possible to carry in a backpack, compared to trying to cart around an entire rig twice a week.
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