9 replies to this topic

[Fred03]

I'm in the market for a new laptop, ideally under $1,000. I need this laptop to be able to handle a fair amount of internet traffic (tumblr), do the usual business oriented kinda stuff (Microsoft Office) and play newer games like Simcity 5 and the newer mods for Emergency 4 and Sins of a Solar Empire.

Now here is where I need you guys: I am a simple man, installing a Emergency 4 mod is about the extent of my technical abilities (Sins almost killed me lol) so anything that requires removing the stock laptop components and replacing them on my own is out. If you guys would post suggestions on here I'll check them out and then make a short list to pick from.

Thanks

[res4cue]

here's a list http://lappylist.com...gaming-laptops/

[MikeyPI]

^not a very comprehensive list there, they clearly favor certain manufs and in one case are out of their flipping mind. I had a C-55-D Satellite, calling that thing gaming, even ultra-low is stupidly insane, the integrated video card held that thing back in many many ways, only because of other hardware was it even semi competent.  To call it "gaming" in my book requires it to be versatile in the games it can handle, that one was not very versatile in how it behaved on some fairly common games. 

 

I've never used them but at the price point the lenovo's are worth looking at, avoid touch screens they bump the price up significantly for something you probably won't be using for gaming.

http://shop.lenovo.c...o/y-series/y50/

Only dell at your price point with a better vid card is this one.... I prefer XPS but I think they're out of your range with a vid card.

http://www.dell.com/...-17-5749-laptop

Toshiba you have this one: Satellites arent bad just be forewarned the cases are not "toughbook" materials, if you're going to beat it up severely then it's probably not a great idea. I've put mine through moderate handling and experienced no damage what so ever, but I am cautious to not beat them up insanely bad.  In reality it probably is on par with the others listed, but I prefer really old computers that could kill someone when used as a club.

http://www.toshiba.c...P50/P50-BBT2G22

http://www.toshiba.c...S70/S70-BBT2G23

 

Each of these computers can do most current gaming with little to no issues, you want to get into things like GTA5 we'll see, perhaps upgrade the ram option on each of them to 16GB if you're really looking for a hardcore gamer computer, since you said you don't want to have to do anything technical (though you can get someone else to do this for you at a later date if you decide it worth it).  I did not include HP computers in spite of them being more "mainstream" brand computers because mostly everyone I've known that had them had complaints about the excessive software bundled onto them (among other issues).  These are your options for the more brand name computers, you can go with a cheaper brand, but realize that when you go with a more "budget" company, quality of the other components will probably be reduced, the "big ticket" items like processor, vid card, and things like that are usually decent enough, but the other components can be pretty mixed-bag.

 

These are my suggestions at your price point, but since they are from the manuf. direct the prices will probably change over time, so you will have to watch them should they jump above your price point since the current "deals" are probably temporary.

[Fred03]

Thanks for the suggestions gentlemen, anyone else want to chime in?

[Chris07]

Look into Lenovo and Asus. Some solid options there. That and do your homework. Find out about any problems before you buy it, lol.

 

Just something I found real quick to atleast point you in the right direction:

 

http://www.hardware-...der-1000/#GC350

 

The laptop I had before my current one was a Dell XPS 1530M...loved that thing. Then when I was in the market again...I looked at the XPS...and at the time it had a fatal Wifi issue that essentially rendered wifi useless unless you sat on top of the router...so I ended up getting a laptop on the opposite end of the spectrum and don't really game on it for a multitude of reasons.

 

If I was in the market for another PC laptop...I would look at the new Dell XPS...but unfortunately that seems to be out of budget for a dedicated graphics model.

 

I have a friend who has a Lenovo ultrabook...and he absolutely loves it. The Lenovo ThinkPad still seems to be the brute workhorse of the line-up at a decent price...provided you don't care about how ugly or old-school it looks on the outside.

 

I hate HP with a passion for several reasons (I'll spare you the drama).

Asus is another brand that I've heard some really positive feedback about.

 

Whatever you get....just make sure you have an AMD or Nvidia graphics and not Intel HD graphics...but that's pretty common sense.

[theparanoid]

MSI GP Series GP60 $849.00
NVIDIA GeForce GT 940M 2GB
Intel Core i5 4210H (2.90GHz)
8GB Memory 1TB HDD
15.6" 1920 x 1080
Windows 8.1 64-bit
DVD Super Multi

http://www.newegg.co...2-745-_-Product


MSI GP Series GP70 $899
NVIDIA GeForce GT 940M 2GB
Intel Core i5 4210H (2.90GHz)
8GB Memory 1TB HDD
17.3" 1920 x 1080
Windows 8.1 64-bit
DVD Super Multi
16.45" x 10.60" x 1.53"
2 Year Warranty
http://www.newegg.co...2-743-_-Product

This one over the one grand but only by $50.
MSI GP Series GP70 1,049.00
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 2GB
Intel Core i7 4720HQ (2.60GHz)
8GB Memory 1TB HDD
17.3" 1920 x 1080
Windows 8.1 64-bit
DVD Super Multi
16.45" x 10.60" x 1.53"
2 Year Warranty

http://www.newegg.co...2-742-_-Product

[MikeyPI]

The laptop I had before my current one was a Dell XPS 1530M...loved that thing. Then when I was in the market again...I looked at the XPS...and at the time it had a fatal Wifi issue that essentially rendered wifi useless unless you sat on top of the router...so I ended up getting a laptop on the opposite end of the spectrum and don't really game on it for a multitude of reasons.

 

If I was in the market for another PC laptop...I would look at the new Dell XPS...but unfortunately that seems to be out of budget for a dedicated graphics model.

 

Whatever you get....just make sure you have an AMD or Nvidia graphics and not Intel HD graphics...but that's pretty common sense.

I had the same computer previously, that thing was wonderful for gaming and built like a tank, unfortunately the new ones are wayyy expensive (essentially they are the alienware with the dell logo slapped on it).  I went with a Satellite S70 generation for the replacement for my dell, I have not been disappointed in it's capabilities one bit yet, but my particular system is way outside of his price range.  When the dell XPS 1530 existed it would've been about in his price tag out of the box, I believe I paid an extra 50 or 100 bucks for mine over the 1k mark, but it was worth every penny imo.  They claimed our XPS' (the 1530) had wifi issues as well, my particular machine was extremely good at getting signals, but many many users complained about the reception of it.  In the end I think that for most of them it was their access points were junk, but who's to say.

 

The most important take-away for gaming is no integrated graphics chips, AMD and Intel both make them, so you want to make sure it's dedicated memory for the video card if you're really serious about gaming.  A good number of new computers have hybrid setups, with both an integrated and a dedicated card for "heavy" applications, these work pretty well as long as you remember to swap to the dedicated card on games that try to run the integrated card.

[Fred03]

I'm by no means "serious" about gaming, I'd just really like to play Simcity 5 lol since I have it and can't play it. 95% of the use of my machine is web browsing or word processing kinda stuff.

[Chris07]

SimCity will still perform much better with a dedicated graphics card. While running it on intel graphics is possible...good luck getting a consistently smooth frame rate.

Plus "Cities: Skylines" is where it's at. It's what SimCity V should have been!

[MikeyPI]

Hey, I like SC well enough once you get over the insane learning curve of how to handle the "specializations" for your cities and how they interlink other cities along with the insanely small map size (which wouldnt be a problem without those huge specialization bldgs).  Either way chris is right on the money, the integrated card with enough machine under it can play SC, but really it is meant for a dedicated card in order to get good graphics settings and a solid frame rate all the time.  Integrated cards are much much cheaper but they basically have you on medium settings at on most games if not low, shadows and dynamic lighting off all the time.  At least with a dedicated you can run med-high on most games and not have to worry about FPS drops.  Some games just arent that optimized so pretty much you could throw a supercomputer at them and they'd still screw up, not every game dev tests every single config out there, but most of the laptops use the same 2-3 dedicated cards now so it's a pretty solid bet that newer games will support them out of the box.