ADVICE needed on gaming laptop

N

Neutral767

New Member
So I have a pretty decent gaming desktop that I'm happy with. However I recently moved to the States and I tour full time in a band now so I'm constantly on the road and therefor in need of a laptop I can game on.
I was looking for advice on my best options and I figured there'd be some people that can help me out on here.
I've done some research and it seems the most popular options are either Alienware laptops or the ASUS gaming laptops.
I am tight for money though so it will have an effect on my choices. Obviously I want to go as cheap as I can but I'm aiming to spend between 1300$-1500$.
There are small things I can do without, like I don't need a blue ray disc drive or anything like that.
The purpose of this laptop will primarily be gaming. I'm not a WoW player. I enjoy maxing out graphics when I can and I'm constantly getting new games. Examples of games I'd like to enjoy without any issues at the moment: Crysis, Black ops, Arcania gothic 4, Risen, Fallout new vegas, starcraft 2 ect.
So as for Alienware I've been looking at the M15x. Can anyone tell me what are my best options for customization to make it as efficient and affordable as possible?
Unfortunately I can't quite find my way around the ASUS G series laptops, so many different models and I think you can only buy them in stores? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway if anyone has any suggestions or can help guide me I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
 
Ok. Going off of your statements about the Alienware laptop, I will set it up for you as best as I can.

-Processor-
Intel® Core™ i5-540M 2.53GHz (3.06Ghz Turbo Mode, 3M cache). Dual core that will handle pretty much anything taht you throw at it.
*or*
Intel® Core™ i7 740QM Quad Core Processor, 1.73GHz (2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6M Cache). Quad core. You will not really notice a big differance on the windows speed, but multithreaded games will definatly benefit from the quad core setup. (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the i7 is 4 core and 8 threads)
-RAM-
the standard 4 GB will handle most games. You may want to upgrade to more, depending on how it preforms with the 4GB. Just remember that you can always add more later, as you may want to do as you are on a budget.
-GPU-
1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon™ Mobility HD 5850. Should handle what you are going to be doing and is $150 less than the nvidia option.
*or*
1.5GB GDDR5 65W NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460M. Double the price of teh ATI card, this will handle any game with ease.
The rest of the options are really up to your choice.

Asus has good build quality, but (AFAIK) you can only buy in store or from an online retailer such as amazon.

you may want to look into Toshiba also. I've had good luch with them in the past, and they are less expensive than alienware.
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cdetland.to?poid=496203
 
Thanks so much for your help man, really appreciate it.
If I wanted to upgrade to more RAM after I have the laptop (alienware) would I have to send it in or d'you know if you can just order and put it in yourself?
 
with the aleinware, you can order DDR3 ram and install it your self. Just remember to slide it in at a 45* angle and push down on both sides until it latches.

@dsisymtc
the M15x is a 15 inch.
I think that he is straying tword the alienware because if the self configure options.
 
Thanks.
I wanted to ask what you meant by multithreaded games? What does that mean?
I'm happy being able to just upgrade ram whenever I want. But I'm not sure what to go with graphic card wise.
I'm leaning towards the 5850 bugdet wise but I really don't want this notebook to be obsolete next year. I want to be able to run stuff like crysis 2, diablo 3 maxed out. Say I were to go with the i5 processor and the ati 5850 would I be able to do that with ease or would it be struggling to keep up ?
 
Most games made in 2008 forward are multithreaded. That just means that they are able to run more than one processor core. Every one of the ones that you stated above were multithreaded to at least 4 cores.

I would suggest the i7 for gaming, but the i5 will run them.

The ATI card will run games well. I use a HD4*** series laptop and it runs games at max with ease.
 
Really?
Im currently using an ATI HD4870 4gigs of ram and I can run most stuff fairly high settings however I wouldn't say with ease. Black ops chokes from time to time same with fallout new vegas.
 
The laptop card that I have is a HD4*** card, however it dynamically uses ram as memory. This helps as it has a 2 GB max, and it only uses 1366x768, so it doesn't really push it that much.
 
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