'Gaming' Laptop for about £700 (+/-)

[Deadpæce]

I ended up buying a Dell Outlet Laptop for £800.

Studio 1747, Win7 Ultimate, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, 1 GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650
Core i7-820QM(1.73GHz) Mobile CPU, 8 X DVD +/- RW, 17.3in Full High Definition (1920X1080) LED with TrueLife
State: Certified Refurbished

This seemed OK value, though the various Asus clearance deals seemed tempting

This might upset you a bit...

http://www.kikatek.com/product_revie...ucts_id=135096

http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...ld=#productTop

Both with an i3 proccy and the ATI 5650 and both under 600 quid.

...and they're new.

[Covenant]

This might upset you a bit...

http://www.kikatek.com/product_revie...ucts_id=135096

http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...ld=#productTop

Both with an i3 proccy and the ATI 5650 and both under 600 quid.

...and they're new.

I think aeonf242 will live, as he wanted something with a bit more cpu grunt and I think he ended up with the Core i7-820QM.

Re: Acer
Review suggest screen to be quite weak - which is normal for cheap Acers. Also, I'm never that sure about build quality of Acers, the budget ones seem to use very low grade plastic and feel a bit... well, cheap. Might just be might just be personal preference (having had my last acer slowly fall to pieces on me - literally, over the course of 3 years).

But still, if you can live with build quality and the cpu bottleneck (i3@2.13Ghz), there is certainly plenty of bang for your buck there, and should be very game-able with the HD 5650 gfx:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mob...0.23697.0.html

Re: Toshiba
Great price. Build quality prob better then Acer, but that's subjective. Just budget in for an extra 2gig ram. Potentially, may need to budget for the whole 4gig if they've been cheap and stuck 2 sticks of 1gig in there!

[Covenant]

Not sure if this thread is dead now, but did see Sony Viao are doing free cpu upgrades and free blu-ray writer upgrade (worth £160). Looks like this could be the best offer out of all the ones previously posted:

https://www.sonystyle.co.uk/SonyStyl...ries-14-15-17/
(select the E series 15.5inch)

I managed to spec up the following: VPCEB2X5E: £ 678.99

Intel® CoreTM i5-450M, 2.40GHz (turbo boost to 2.66GHz)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
320 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
4 GB 1066MHz DDR3-SDRAM
Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer
39.4 cm LCD, 1366x768 + webcam
ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB

If screen res is a bit on the low side, an additional £40 upgrades to the 15.5" Display Plus HD1080 (1920 x 1080 pixels) (16:9).

If you want even more CPU grunt, then for £30 you can switch to the i5-520M, 2.4Ghz which turbo boats to 2.93GHz.

[jamena]

Sony Viao E series 15.5inch

Looks interesting - am very slightly concerned by reviews suggesting that the 5650 is underclocked in these by some margin (450MHz?) and that the screen (they had the lower res 768 version) is below average in terms of black level, visibility in sunlight and reflections? I am otherwise very tempted by it so comments from anyone with experience of a vaio would be appreciated! :-)

Anyone with actual experience of a 5650 for gaming? benchmarks look quite good but can fall down in some games, but to get much better than this or the dell studio alternative (i.e. stuff with 260M or 5850 mobile gfx) seems to jump up the price a lot, to 1200-1300 or more (Alienware 15x, Asus G51J)?

[slowmonkey]

Bump.

Anyone have any additional experience/review on the sony VPCEB2X5E mentioned in the earlier posts?
or the 5650 graphic card.

I'm thinking of getting it.
Hoping to play Starcraft 2 with it.

Cheers.