Portable Gaming laptop advice required

Hi Guys,

I work away a lot and am not really in one place enough to invest in a decent gaming pc.

So, I need some advice on good candidates for a gaming laptop; what spec to go for, suppliers, whether to go to a custom builder etc.

I know of Alienware and that many people say they are good, but ludicrously expensive. What to do, what to do!?!

Help me bit-tech forum, you're my only hope.

 

MSI are supposed to be the best gaming laptops. Lots of complaints with Alienware, GPU's dying etc.

have a look at these MSI Gaming Laptops

 

Rocking an Alienware M14x, pretty decent spec when I got it last year, with discounts/cashback cost around £850.00 for an item spec'd value of around £1,200, solid BF3 performance on medium. The new version with the ivy bridge cpu and Nvidia 6 series gpu should be a lot better.

To drive down the cost, with Dell/Alienware remember to get the daily/weekly deal, discount voucher deal AND cashback (aka 'triple discount, bitches' )

http://www.dmxdimension.com/ posts all the latest deals for the dell website, these offers are already better value than just configuring a machine on the website. They also post discount voucher codes (today I see 10% off orders and free shipping). Use this site to browse a deal you like, make a note of the voucher discounts and follow the link and make a note of that too, then delete your browser cache and cookies to get cashback...


Topcashback.co.uk (<- my referral, I got kids to feed) will pay you cashback after a few months. All you need to do is sign up, then click through to Dell from them. Dell would pay a referral commission for this, topcashback passes this on to you for a further discount. Also check this site for discount codes. It is not foolproof, the site must recognise topcashback as the referer to do cashback which is why you should clear cookies before clicking through again, you can paste in the url of the deal after that.

This is the best way to get a very competitive price out of Dell. Other things to remember are Dell rinses you on upgrades, as a member of this forum if you can install RAM and hard drives these are aftermarket DIY upgrades rather than pay dell's extortionate price for often sub par spec upgrades. Identify things you cannot upgrade yourself so easily (eg screen resolution) and prioritise that instead.

 

You missed the biggest bit of info we need, your budget.

 

Alienware all the way mate. got a m17x r3 but the r4 is out now with the 680m gpu a monster that is a true 680 just down clocked, about the same as a 670 desktop
The trouble is gaming + laptop = expensive

 

I'd suggest primarily focusing on the gfx chip as this is likely to be the most limiting factor in gaming performance, esp in a laptop. Modern (non-Atom) CPUs are all pretty capable, RAM is easy and cheap to upgrade so I'd make the secondary consideration the size and quality of the display followed by the keyboard. You may find new laptops with decent gfx highly priced so perhaps looking second-hand for a slightly older generation would get you more performance for a reasonable price. Best info I found was:

Notebookcheck

TechArp

 

Proud owner of an MSI GT60-0NC feel free to fire any questions you have about it my way.

 

I am personally a big fan of the Asus G75 models. If you can get one whilst in the US and bring it back then it can be had for about £1200 with a global warrenty and very decent spec.

Have a look here:

http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-g75vwds72-p-4325.html

It can be had without the SSD (but a 2nd HDD) and with 3d for the same price.

Remember that if you order from the US you need to pay VAT at customs but it can still work out cheaper.

 

Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses, gives me something to go on. For the record I am in the UK so preferably suppliers in the UK would be good. Budget wise: anything up to £2,500.00. Obviously if I don't need to spend that much it would be awesome as then I would have more money to spend on pie.

I have noted that though it is possible to get dual graphics cards in some laptops, Alienware and some of the other larger suppliers don't offer them. Are they worth seeking out? Or am I throwing money away there for not much gain?

I see from above that going for high spec permanent features then upgrading things like RAM as I go is mentioned. Are these laptops (Alienware, MSI, Asus etc...) easy to upgrade without sending them off? I have upgraded my own desktop in the past so I am not a total noob (please karma, let me have that one) butI have no experience with the insides of a laptop (the laptop I have been using to date for mobile gaming is a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge which handled everything up to Skyrim ok but failed on Witcher 2. As it belongs to my employer I am loath to start fiddling around with its innards).

 

Hve you seen truegamers thread? http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=232799

I have m17x r3 and its the easiest laptop i have ever worked on, upgrades do not void your warranty and alienware even post videos showing you how.

The M18 (alienware) can have dual GPU's so i'm not sure where you got the info they can't?

Another good forum Alienware

The best bit of advice is get the biggest warranty you can from the start.

Hope this helps

 

get a malibal Nine series if youre going over to america. Theyre the "tanks" of gaming laptops, but use desktop CPU's, have SLI, 3 hard drives and are great value for money compared to alienware and the likes (www.malibal.com)

failing that, go for the Asus G75 (Ive got a G73 and its been great, only selling it due to having a desktop now), be sure to get the extra years warranty for the G75 to boost it to 3 years though

 

have you got one now?

 

Those malibal laptops look good! Looking into those.

 

http://www.novatech.co.uk/laptop/range/novatecheliten1717.html

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/vortexIII-Elite-3D/

There is a couple to look at.

 

General rule of thumb in laptops

As high a spec as you can afford is gerenally the best idea as whats in it is there to stay.

 

nope get the best CPU/GPU with the smallest HDD, RAM ODD option and upgrade yourself.
It is almost always much cheaper way to do it especially with SSDs.

 

I find this about gaming laptop comparison between different brand and price range, some are really great items, you can take a look and choose one

 

That's what I've been using for just on 11 months now.