Looking to buy a gaming laptop help!!!

[MasterDante]

Right im looking to upgrade to a full desktop replacement so i wana watch movies, play games and complete work on the go so ive been looking into DELL's XPS range and built this online how would this fair?

Included in your system:
COLOUR CHOICE - Silver Anodized Aluminum Cover
PROCESSOR - 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM processor (2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEM - English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
SYSTEM RECOVERY OS - Windows® Recovery Media Not included
OFFICE SOFTWARE - Microsoft® Office Starter: reduced-functionality Word & Excel w/ads. No PowerPoint or Outlook
SERVICES AND SUPPORT- 1Yr Next Day Hardware Support edit
ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE PROTECTION - No Accidental Damage Protection
DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP DataSafe - Online Backup 2GB - 1 year licence
SECURITY SOFTWARE McAfee® - SecurityCenter 15 Month Subscription
ADOBE Adobe® Photoshop® Elements + Premiere® Elements Bundle
LCD- 44 cm(17.3") FHD WLED AG (1920x1080) with 2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera
GRAPHICS CARD - 3GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M Graphics Card
MEMORY - 8192MB 1333MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM [2x4096]
OPTICAL DRIVE - DVD+/-RW (DVD, CD read and write)
HARD DRIVE - 750GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
MOBILE BROADBAND - Mobile Broadband Not Included
PRIMARY BATTERY - 9-cell 90Whr Lithium Ion battery
KEYBOARD - Backlit UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard
WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY - Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 (2x2 b/g/n+ Bluetooth Combo Card)

[rover214]

How much is it?

How much do you have to spend?

[rover214]

http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics...e_notebooks_21

Better GFX, less memory, slightly smaller hdd, blu-ray, not full hd screen

[MasterDante]

i have up to a £1000 and that XPS system comes in at about £974

[ik9000]

I'd up the drive to blu ray if you think you'll want it but it's £90 so take ur choice (easy enough to upgrade later).

Contact Dell and make sure they put in one of the decent GT-555M chips. There are two different sorts and one is substantially better than the other: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4475/a...-summer-2011/3
(You want the B version with the extra cores)

Stick at 1920x1080 screen but I wouldn't however select the 3D screen as SFAIK this means you can't have Optimus which is far more valuable in my book. IMO what you want is the 3D capable GPU since it's the higher spec but to have optimus enabled on the laptop. Quite why they can't get optimus to work at 120Hz is annoying, (perhaps the onboard IGP isn't able to sustain 120Hz?)

I would also upgrade the CPU to i7-2760. It's got more meat to it, better cache* and various other features IIRC (compare cpus here http://ark.intel.com/compare/53476,53474,53469). No need to go to i7-2860 that isn't worth the extra IMO - unless they have it on a mega offer or something.

Also check out www.dmxdimension.com - they give links to dif base config codes you can use AND then also use the voucher code at the top of the page to get a further % off.

Oh, and good luck finding a carry bag for it - if Dell offer you one take it take it take it. I have a nightmare lugging my 17" laptop around.

* sorry not better cache, but supports faster memory, virtualisation and other features plus it has a faster clocked IGP which is definitely desireable IMO

[ik9000]

Also worth noting the 17" XPS also has two drives bays so you can fit an SSD at your leisure

[ik9000]

Lastly, it's prob worth metioning that the GT-555M isn't going to give amazing gaming performance at 1080p so be prepared to sacrifice either resolution or graphics settings for gaming. It you want 1080p and high graphics you need to start with the GTX560M or head north to the 6970M or GTX580M for performance equivalent to a desktop GTX460/6850. Ref here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4363/n...s-with-optimus

[Pob255]

I'm not massively up on laptop cpu's but I'd question the need for an i7 over an i5
if it's anything like the desktop cpu's then it's just adding in HT and there's almost nothing that'll make use of the extra cores over the extra speed (HT mean they'll actually run slower because of interrupts, two or more threads sharing the same core switching between the pair)

Also I don't know if it's costing you any thing but I'd also question "ADOBE Adobe® Photoshop® Elements + Premiere® Elements Bundle", premiere elements is ok if you're looking to do video editing, it's better than windows movie maker but that is part of windows, it's very simple to use and works well for basic editing. There are a couple of other free movie editors but I've not found one quite as good and easy to use, I've found some which are as good but not as easy to use.
photoshop elements is however very basic, it's better than paint for photo editing, but you can also download paint.net or GIMP for free and both are better the the elements version of photoshop.

[ik9000]

I'm not massively up on laptop cpu's but I'd question the need for an i7 over an i5
if it's anything like the desktop cpu's then it's just adding in HT and there's almost nothing that'll make use of the extra cores over the extra speed (HT mean they'll actually run slower because of interrupts, two or more threads sharing the same core switching between the pair)

Also I don't know if it's costing you any thing but I'd also question "ADOBE Adobe® Photoshop® Elements + Premiere® Elements Bundle", premiere elements is ok if you're looking to do video editing, it's better than windows movie maker but that is part of windows, it's very simple to use and works well for basic editing. There are a couple of other free movie editors but I've not found one quite as good and easy to use, I've found some which are as good but not as easy to use.
photoshop elements is however very basic, it's better than paint for photo editing, but you can also download paint.net or GIMP for free and both are better the the elements version of photoshop.

I imagine the ADobe thing is just thrown in as a Dell offer. For the model the OP's looking at the lowest CPU Dell offers is the 2670QM so not a lot the OP can do regarding going to an i5. I'd rather they offered the i7-2640M dual core than the i7-2670QM quad as the base option as I actually think it would be better for some people as you suggest, but alas Dell is not the configure-your-own-machine fest that it was 6 years ago.

http://ark.intel.com/compare/53450,5...69,53474,53476

Stop press - you can get the dual core i5-2430M and the i7-2640M but you have to go in using the right codes eg N00X7M03 and N00X7M01 both offer these options in the CPU list. Others on dmxdimension might too, I haven't time to check. Sadly as these codes carry less discount, even by switching to these chips you'll likely still pay the same overall. What you might get is better battery life since TDP is lower, but RAM bandwidth and speed, and max RAM capacity are less so it's a trade off as to what you want. All are HT CPU so this is a moot point for the mobile CPU.

[ik9000]

To the OP if you do get one of the better chips that support 1600Mhz RAM consider reducing the RAM you add in from Dell if it would be cheaper to buy 8GB 1600MHz online and install it yourself.

[Jasp]

I'd up the drive to blu ray if you think you'll want it but it's £90 so take ur choice (easy enough to upgrade later).

Contact Dell and make sure they put in one of the decent GT-555M chips. There are two different sorts and one is substantially better than the other: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4475/a...-summer-2011/3
(You want the B version with the extra cores)

Stick at 1920x1080 screen but I wouldn't however select the 3D screen as SFAIK this means you can't have Optimus which is far more valuable in my book. IMO what you want is the 3D capable GPU since it's the higher spec but to have optimus enabled on the laptop. Quite why they can't get optimus to work at 120Hz is annoying, (perhaps the onboard IGP isn't able to sustain 120Hz?)

I would also upgrade the CPU to i7-2760. It's got more meat to it, better cache* and various other features IIRC (compare cpus here http://ark.intel.com/compare/53476,53474,53469). No need to go to i7-2860 that isn't worth the extra IMO - unless they have it on a mega offer or something.

Also check out www.dmxdimension.com - they give links to dif base config codes you can use AND then also use the voucher code at the top of the page to get a further % off.

Oh, and good luck finding a carry bag for it - if Dell offer you one take it take it take it. I have a nightmare lugging my 17" laptop around.

* sorry not better cache, but supports faster memory, virtualisation and other features plus it has a faster clocked IGP which is definitely desireable IMO

Their are currently 4 types of 555m, I believe dell use one of the better less crippled ones. Either way a laptop with a 560m would be a better buy.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.41933.0.html

It might be worth checking with Dell first via phone as their can be quite a difference between 555ms.

Also if you don't mind getting a dell certified refurbished their are some good offers to be had if you have a noisy through, eg a M17x R3 for £1006

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/I...did=7&fid=1311

The outlet updates roughly around 2:15pm each day I believe.

[ik9000]

Their are currently 4 types of 555m, I believe dell use one of the better less crippled ones. Either way a laptop with a 560m would be a better buy.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...M.41933.0.html

It might be worth checking with Dell first via phone as their can be quite a difference between 555ms.

Only 2 dif GT-555Ms (type A and B determined by the number of cores) but each ships with either 1.5GB or 3GB of RAM. Given the GTX560M has 192 cores I'd be surprised if they were able to up the number of cores in the GT-555M to make another variant past B's 144 cores, nevermind another two without impinging on the 560M. see previous anandtech link http://www.anandtech.com/show/4475/a...-summer-2011/3

[MasterDante]

Thanx for the help guys (or girls) but i dun have much f an idea on computers so call me a noob aha so talk noob to me please aha and to Pob i was thinking about asking could i get rid of the photo shop thing also see if they might take some money off bugger all proberly thanx again guys

[ik9000]

ok I'll talk noob, let's start at the beginning, what do you want to do with the laptop - which software packages, which games, what are your priorities for what you want the laptop to do?

please can you rank the following in order of priority for you:

Battery life
Portability
screen size
future upgradability
power
graphics for gaming
photo editing
office applications
computer programming
science/maths computations
internet browsing
watching movies (DVD)
watching movies (BluRay)
watching TV
storing movies on the computer
storing photos on the computer
time taken to start-up and shut-down
video editing
music editing
ripping movies to ipod etc

[MasterDante]

1) graphics for gaming
2) screen size
3) internet browsing
4) watching movies (DVD)
5) watching movies (BluRay)
6) office applications
7) computer programming
8) future upgradability
9) science/maths computations
10) storing movies on the computer
11) storing photos on the computer
12) Battery life
13) Portability
14) video editing
15) music editing
16) ripping movies to ipod etc
17) time taken to start-up and shut-down

[ik9000]

can I suggest then that the XPS17 while a very good all rounder, is not the best thing for your priorities. If you want to game on the laptop and have a 17" screen then in the Dell range you want to be looking at the Alienware M17x R3 whose GPU selections are better for gaming on the resolution of the 1080p screen.

The cost of these machines can get quite large however.

Depending on your want, you may find the hybrid solution of 13-15" laptop for working and light gaming on the road, and full-on desktop for gaming back at the ranch wins the day for the same budget overall.

Alternatively you can watch the outlet offerings like a hawk as a previous poster suggested.