Ok I've found my last christmas gift. Its for a gamer and I'm looking at a limit of $1000. I've tried some custom websites like dell.com, alienware, and some others. Nothing comes close to this and the price. http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16834115410 What do you think? Is there anything better? Buying this or something in a week. I need to commit to something.
No, laptops aren't good for gaming. This one has a weak graphics card and it's only possible to play older games with it. If you're looking for a laptop with good gaming capabilities you need to spend around $2k-3k for it. Unless that you're stuck with desktops in gaming.
Older games? Haha heres my personal current laptop. http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/tm4400.htm As you can see the one I posted for a christmas gift has much better specs. I can play dark age of camelot, World of warcraft, empire earth 3, call of duty 4, world in conflict, command and conquer 3, simcity 4, sims 2, and many others at maximum graphic settings with no remote issues and you think the one I just posted can only play older games? Ha ok thats funny. I'm not a computer expert, thats why I posted here. Thanks for the reply. Anyone with a little bit more experience able to help? Also... is this a weak video card? As you can see the one above is very much weaker and it runs up to date games fine. NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G 256m
That is indeed a weak video card, you'd be better off finding something with an 8600M GT at the very least for gaming on a laptop. If you could stretch to ~$1400 you could get a Sager NP2090 from www.powernotebooks.com which would be much more suited to the role of a gaming laptop than the Acer. Anything based on the Compal IFL90 should do the job for a gaming laptop, but don't expect blistering framerates in newer games as the 8600M GT is still just a mobile GPU. Also, just for the sake of being fully-informed, this article should give you an interesting insight as to why it's generally a waste of money to pay the premium added to the price of a laptop by the big names such as Dell and Alienware: http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?action=fullnews&id=17
Ah very good information thanks. So let me ask you this. This laptop the acer that Im considering as a gift. Is clearly better than the one that I have and I can play all those games I listed at the highest resolutions with no problems. The only game I had a problem with was Bioshock. Are you saying the current laptop that I have listed from newegg will not better? It should be from my understanding. I looked up at that Sager NP2090 on that website. Looks like the only thing I'm paying more for is the graphics card. Am I missing something? It starts off at $1078 with nothing on it really. So after you add some things it gets to the 1400 price Im guessing. All confusing. I guess I should change my question. Will the listed laptop thats on newegg be able to play most games out with the exception of some of the newer higher demanding games like umm I think oblivion is one of them.
It will, but the problem is that Oblivion is no longer a new game and BioShock could almost (arguably) be considered last-gen already. Crysis (which is already out) and newer titles on the way won't play well on the 8400, if at all. A video card that can't handle last-gen games such as Oblivion really couldn't be qualified as adequate for gaming, especially when it's running Vista Home Premium (which will decrease the already-mediocre performance in comparison to the same system running XP). On top of that, the Acer on newegg uses an AMD turion which is inferior to the Intel Core2Duo in the Sager. The only advantage of the Acer is its 17" screen, but that's a double-edged sword as it means that performance will suffer further still if the user tries to run games in a resolution native to that screen, as well as the extra size making it (slightly) less portable. The sager starts off around 1000 because it's a barebones laptop that allows you a high degree of customisation when you order, you get to choose a lot of the components in the finished system. The Sager NP2090 is a rebranded Compal IFL90 - Have a look around online and you might be able to find one cheaper. Alternatively, there's the Compal FL90 which has a 256mb 8600M GT instead of the 512mb model in the IFL90 - The price difference should strike a good compromise.
To put things in to perspective, the graphics card on my desktop struggle with Crysis at 1400*1050 (medium & low settings), with a 7950gt. The cards you were looking at, whilst being "next gen" are slower than that. On the other hand, I think you will struggle to get better that an 8600GT for $1000, and it will be a big improvement over what you currently have. I don't know if you could stretch to this, but it is something else to consider, it has a 8600GT http://www.zepto.com/Shop/Notebook.aspx?notebookid=674 One major problem with mobile GPUs is that the higher end chips (8800GTs) have only just come out, so there aren't very many of them at the moment, and they are very expensive. If you could find an older notebook with a high-end, last gen card, you may be better off with that.
Asus G1S @ Best Buy is $999...but you have to go to specific stores and there's no way to tell where. For the money, it's a decent computer, but don't expect to do much gaming with anything post Summer '07
On another forum it was suggested that I get a vostro from dell with a 128mb video card that is a intel duo. Would that be better?
No. Dell = bad Vostro = 'Budget-conscious range', therefore not for gaming. 128mb = Very poor and I'd be worried that the card would be something like an Intel GMA or X3100 which uses up system RAM for video purposes. Awful. Everything Cupboard said = Truth. Either way, the person receiving this gift is lucky.
