Gaming laptop

[The Hentagonist]

Since I'm a noob at what's inside a computer I thought I'd get some help choosing a gaming laptop. I was thinking the Alienware M11x would be nice, but I'm open to any suggestions. I don't really want to spend more that $1500 though.

 

[Woody2371]

Suggestion: Just send an email to noodle/myself

 

[Cub_Nake]

But then we can't tell him to download ridiculous amounts of RAM D':



Edit: I guess that's what vip gets you

 

[Woody2371]

Nope, the fact that he is our friend IRL gets him that

 

[Laithes]

I've heard bad things about Alienware in terms of laptops, but their desktops leave nothing to complain about except the price tag. I could maybe find one for you if you tell me of any companies you absolutely won't buy from.

 

[M1_Mercenary]

Alienware is ok but is expensive and flamboyant. Not my preferred brand.



Sadly its out of stock currently on the site I use, but I personally like the Asus G Series.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230027

 

[Laithes]

Sorry M1, mine's got same everything except an i7 at 2.70 Ghz rather than your 2.0. Mine's also 30$ cheaper Note: Dell's being gay so you have to go to the processor tab and move it down one to see exactly what I'm trying to show you.



http://configure.us.dell.com/dellst...VDRW&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&model_id=xps-l502x

 

[M1_Mercenary]

That dell is slightly cheaper, but that is due to it using a Geforce GT 525M, which compared to a GT 425M. The GTX 460M in the ASUS laptop does make up for the slower CPU and higher price



GT 525M Specs:

Codename N12P-GE

Pipelines 96 - unified

Core Speed * 600 MHz

Shader Speed * 1200 MHz

Memory Speed * 900 MHz

Memory Bus Width 128 Bit

Memory Type GDDR5, DDR3

Max. Amount of Memory 1536 MB

Shared Memory no

DirectX DirectX 11, Shader 5.0

technology 40 nm

Notebook Size medium sized

Roughly Compares to Radeon 5650M



GTX 460M Specs:

Codename GF106

Pipelines 192 - unified

Core Speed * 675 MHz

Shader Speed * 1350 MHz

Memory Speed * 1250 MHz

Memory Bus Width 192 Bit

Memory Type GDDR5

Max. Amount of Memory 1536 MB

Shared Memory no

DirectX DirectX 11, Shader 5.0

technology 40 nm

Notebook Size large

Roughly compares to Radeon 5870M

 

[Laithes]

But mine is smaller so more portability with out sacrificing too much performance. And I'd rather have a 2.7Ghz processor over a 2.0Ghz, much higher speed gain for all around tasks.

 

[M1_Mercenary]

But we are discussing a gaming laptop in which the 2.0GHz i7 with a 460M would walk all over a 2.7Ghz i7 with a 525M. You can get a 540M for the Dell for 100$ more, but then the Dell costs more, and still doesn't have that graphics power.



the Dell weighs 6.51lbs/2.7kg

the ASUS weights 8.8lbs/4.01kg

-So Dell is quite a bit lighter.



Oh, this hurts the dell in use for gaming, its max resolution on the standard screen is 1366x768

Asus has a Max resolution of 1920X1080

 

[Laithes]

My res is 1366x768, I play all kinds of games on it. And it doesn't matter if your graphics card is the most beast thing in the world if your processor can't keep up with it.

 

[M1_Mercenary]

It may be due to me being used to 1680x1050, but I feel higher resolutions generally are better for games.



and a 2.0GHz SB i7 should keep with pretty much any graphics card you can put on it, unless you can put SLI GTX 590's in a laptop

 

[Laithes]

Well what about other parts of a game? Like physics engines?

 

[M1_Mercenary]

a jump from 2.0GHz to 2.7GHz wouldn't change too much

I know overclocking my i5 from 2.66 to 3.2Ghz only yielded 1-3FPS boost in all the games I play. Even testing with disabling turbo boost to force it to run 2.66GHz on game engines that uses two cores, then enabling turbo boost and overclocking so it runs 3.6Ghz, maybe only a 5FPS change.



Also PhysX is becoming more popular, which hands off physics to the GPU. Direct X11 also can hand off CPU work to the GPU if needed, so a slightly slower i7 wont change much, but a slower GPU could kill its gaming performance in some situations.

 

[Laithes]

Let's see FPS help with map generation during loading screens and other similar non-graphics related game engines.

 

[M1_Mercenary]

Loading screens would be based more on your HDD ability.



Map generation is one of the few things that would depend mostly on the CPU, but how few games require a map generation. Although testing with the new family PC which has an Athlon X2 2.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 6250SE (all for 280$ <.<) with minecraft classic, the map generation doesn't seem too much off compared to my i5.



Even my Pentium 4 laptop throttled to 1.5GHz seems to not take long with mincraft map generation.



But also you cant have a gaming PC that is great at everything, unless you go the K3 way and get a machine worth $6,000

 

[Laithes]

Or we could compromise, get the dell with the graphics card you suggested which means a better processor than yours and a better graphics card than my original one for only 70$ more than yours.

 

[M1_Mercenary]

true, but this is for Hentagonist, who has probably already talked to Tom about this so we need to see what he likes, or decides (Hell we don't even know if he likes Intel or AMD)

 

[Laithes]

Well I can understand not liking AMD, but he has to like one of them, I mean where else would he get a processor?

 

[M1_Mercenary]

VIA?

...PowerPC?



xD