Laptop Advice

[De@thknight]

Hi all,

I'm buying a laptop for gaming (CSS, WOW, Sins of a solar empire when it arrives etc..., spore when it comes out), bit of photoshopping , DVD's etc....I'd like to be able to run the games on high graphics as my desktop can't do that any more and i want to use this laptop through uni etc thats why i don't want a desktop.

Atm i'm looking at buying the Asus Laptop G2SG-7R014C from http://www.asuslaptop.co.uk/proddeta...op_G2SG-7R014C , i quite like the idea of the TV tuner in there and i don't mind a 15" or 17" screen . My Budget is around £1200 or £900 and then i buy myself a desktop PC for about the same price. If you could give any alternatives or suggestions it would be appreciated.

Thanks

DK

[staffsMike]

Well if you are willing to split the budget like that.. I'd compromise it a little more.

I'm not a laptop hater or anything.. love the things.. but You can get quite a lot of laptop for say £700 and a hell of a lot of desktop for around £500 right now.

Take for example the £699 laptop from this list
http://www.dmxdimension.com/dell-uk/...al-comparison/

the 8600GT is the DDR3 version and really quite nippy especially at the resolution of it's screen.

Then with £500 you could build the following.

Intel Q6600 + Scythe mine ~£150
Abit Ip-35 Dark Raider ~£65
2GB PC6400 DDR2 ~£30
Coolermaster CM-690 ~£45 (scans today only is a good one for that)
Corsair 450W VX ~£45
Samsung Single Platter 320GB ~ £40
Samsung DVD-RW ~£15
ATi HD4850 ~£130 (assumed)

All comes to about £520.. Very quick and very quiet

[De@thknight]

hrrm ok, my problem with that is i want a good improvement on my current system. Sorry i probably didn't give enough detail in the previous post. Atm i have a comp with:
2gb RAM
2.4 Ghz single core
ATi Radeon x1650 Pro Agp
and i run 1 19" and 1 22" monitor off that.

The £900 laptop is for finishing my GCSE's and the money for the computer would be mine, and as i'm about 3/4 yrs off uni i need a laptop that will last a bit, hence the more expensive g2. So if i go for say the G1 on the link above i then have about £800 - £900 to spend on a new computer in 1 month, and for that money i was thinking of getting something with a 3 Ghz duo or 2.66 ghz quad, 9800GTX, 2 Gb of ram then up to 4gb later on. As the £900 laptop will be quite powerful i decided it may be better to spend some computer money on the laptop instead of the new computer...if that makes sense, and so i thought the g2 would be a good compromise.

Thanks for the advice , but for now i think i'll see what other people say.

[Noxvayl]

As staffsmike says you can get a good laptop for £700-£800 as well as a good desktop for £400-£500.

And I wouldn't change anything in staffsMike's recommendation everything there is very good. Only personal preference would drive me to get Gigabyte motherboard and GFX and maybe change the drives to Seagate and Pioneer DVD-RW but that's just my preference

[staffsMike]

Right I think I understand now.. What you are really saying is.. you have a huge budget for both

Wish I had that much money at your apparent age.. lol

Just to get a few more details. Is this laptop supposed to be portable, like taking to school all day or lan parties, something like that?

What is the need for a high end laptop and a high end PC? Not judging if it sounds like that, just curious

[Noxvayl]

hrrm ok, my problem with that is i want a good improvement on my current system. Sorry i probably didn't give enough detail in the previous post. Atm i have a comp with:
2gb RAM
2.4 Ghz single core
ATi Radeon x1650 Pro Agp
and i run 1 19" and 1 22" monitor off that.

The £900 laptop is for finishing my GCSE's and the money for the computer would be mine, and as i'm about 3/4 yrs off uni i need a laptop that will last a bit, hence the more expensive g2. So if i go for say the G1 on the link above i then have about £800 - £900 to spend on a new computer in 1 month, and for that money i was thinking of getting something with a 3 Ghz duo or 2.66 ghz quad, 9800GTX, 2 Gb of ram then up to 4gb later on. As the £900 laptop will be quite powerful i decided it may be better to spend some computer money on the laptop instead of the new computer...if that makes sense, and so i thought the g2 would be a good compromise.

Thanks for the advice , but for now i think i'll see what other people say.

The HD4850 performs about the same as the 9800GTX for less... Quad would last longer(45nm ones being my personal choice over the older ones). For £900 on your second buy you can easily get 4Gb right away which would last longer and easily upgraded to 8Gb when the time comes. Another thing that would be good to note is that the AMD Puma laptops are coming out which provide the best gaming performance for your money. They would be something to wait for if you want a gaming laptop because even if you don't want to purchase the AMD notebook the Intel notebooks will drop in price because of the competition finally stepping up.

First look at the AMD Puma notebook from Toshiba:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4440

[De@thknight]

Portable is good but i don't need something very portable, because as i said i want to use it at uni when i get there. And yes i saw that there wasn't point in having both a high end laptop and pc so i decided that i should put some money from the PC on the laptop instead, hence the £1200 asus instead of the £900. So i would buy the £1200 asus laptop and not buy another desktop at all, probably running the 22" off the laptop and using the 19" on my current. Does that make more sense? And i'm looking to get this over the next month or so

[staffsMike]

Puma still doesn't compete on overall power really, its just a great all rounder when you consider it's IGP.

Hopefully it will produce some viable amd notebooks though

My favourite gaming notebook at the moment is this
http://www.alienware.co.uk/configura...de=SKU-DEFAULT

Gets a bit pricey with the 8800GTX and the slightly higher CPU's options but upgrade the RAM and HDD yourself and it works out quite fairly.

Rock were on dodgy ground but have been saved so they might be worth a look for higher end note books.

The problem with gaming notebooks is £1200 won't cut it. If you want a real gaming notebook you should spend about £1500 or not bother going over about £800 imo.

The 8700GT isn't worth all that money over something like the dell with the 8600GT.

[Noxvayl]

Portable is good but i don't need something very portable, because as i said i want to use it at uni when i get there. And yes i saw that there wasn't point in having both a high end laptop and pc so i decided that i should put some money from the PC on the laptop instead, hence the £1200 asus instead of the £900. Does that make more sense?

Spending that sort of money on a laptop will get you a very nice setup but I would definitely wait for the AMD's to come out as they have a large number of them going to market soon so it will do one of 2 things. 1 Drive Intel's current laptops prices down or 2 provide a better solution for you to use.

Well worth the wait since its only going to be a month at the most.

[fuddam]

WWW.ZEPTO.Com

got me a 6625WD - can customise, just like a Dell, but with better options. Bought the OS (Vista64) elsewhere as was cheaper

res: 1680 x 1050 on a 15.4" - BEAUTIFUL screen.
4GB, 2.4 C2D, 512MB 8600GT, 7200rpm 160GB etc

no doubt could choose from better spec now, but the screen res did it for me.

[staffsMike]

Zepto are quite good but keep running into over heating issues with the higher end components. You hear about it quite a lot over on notebookreview.

The 1440 x 900 True life screens are really nice and the 1530 should be updated with an LED screen soon, has been in the states anyway

[De@thknight]

Alienware isn't the kinda thing i'm looking at, because its got such a huge mark up on what the products are actually worth, and i'm a bit worried about spending so much (£1500) on one computer

[staffsMike]

realistically you will be spending £1350 with them. upgrade the RAM and HDD (£100 or so) yourself and in terms of gaming performance it will far out last the asus.

This is probably the most fairly priced Alienware I've ive seen considering it's the only 8800GTX system based on a 15.4" laptop.

If you don't want to spend that sort of money I really would cut your budget down to around £800. Anything spent in between there and £1400/£1500 is a bit of a waste really imo.

[De@thknight]

So, get the main laptop from alienware only getting a 880GTX gfx card and then finding the extra ram and hdd myself and installing it. (Where could i go for these)?

[staffsMike]

Crucial will sell you some nice RAM. Scan, ocuk, ebuyer.. anyone will see you the drive. Just look for 2.5" SATA drives. 7200RPM will be prefereable for performance .

You then have a spare HDD and RAM just in case anything goes wrong

If I had £1200 though I'd go back to my original post and do something along those lines I think. The alienware is great, but £1200, £1500.. it's all a hell of a lot to drop on a laptop.

In all fairness you could get a nice laptop to do the job for £600 and stick £600 in the bank and get a new laptop sooner than you planned. This sort of money causes all sorts of problems lol

[De@thknight]

i can see that how much better would the say Alienware, Asus or the £600 laptops be over my current setup?