She has had a tax refund so is looking to buy a new laptop,im more a pc type so I know little about laptops. Whats she is after is a above 15" screen Good cpu like a i5,i7 intel To play games on 1tb hd Windows 8 or above She has £500-600 to spend Thanks
It really depends on what games you are trying to play. To get the smoothest performance out of the majority of newer games you are going to need a dedicated GPU. This will impact battery life a bit though. Most the laptops around this price will be like the below: http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-z50-15-6-laptop-white-10107242-pdt.html It’s not a bad machine but it’s an Ultra low voltage CPU and weak GPU meaning it’s not going to be great for gaming. For best gaming performance I'd have aimed for an i5 post fixed with a H or M, 8gb Ram is really recommend these days and a GTX nvidia GPU. Something like: http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/MSI_GE60-663XUK_15.6_INCH_FHD__Anti-Glare_19201080_eDP__nVidia_Geforce_GTX_9S7-16GH11-663/version.asp You'd still have to factor in the OS as well though. You can see some FPS ratings for card here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-850M.107795.0.html You have to remember with mobile GPU's you pay a premium to get even a fraction of the performance of a desktop card. Most new entry level gaming laptops start at around £650+. Given your budget you might be better placed looking used, depending on how strenuous the games you want to play are.
Have you looked on ebay or other second hand markets? You can usually buy good conditioned, or refurbished last gen models for quite a bargain, and they still come with sandy/ivy bridge i5/i7 quads for well within your price range. I recently paid a bit under £500 for a used Clevo with a I7 3630QM, 15.6 1080p monitor as well as a GTX660M 2GB GPU.
So far she likes the Msi Gp 70 and the Dell 17 5000 Inspiron,dell looks like a winner for the warranty alone.
