[Red_LightRanger]

Well im in the market for a new laptop, but i have no idea where to look. Basically I dont want to spend loads of money, but I know I wont get anywhere near the performance of my main rig. Im just looking for the portability / little gaming.

It doesnt need to be awesome at gaming, maybe just be able to play certain games like bf2 and run smoothly. This will help so that I dont need to haul my rig to my buddies house when we all play bf2/cnc generals/gw etc.
I also want good battery life and a decent quality screen (15-17").

If anyone could point me in the right dir, that would be awesome
Any suggestions?

[darkevilsta]

I would recommend Asus G2 and G1. Well not all of the four, but since there are so many of them, it will be easier for you to choose the one that fits in your budget. The price for each is around $2000 CDN, but they all have procesors T7500 or T7700. The GPU is the same in all-8600M GT. This would be a good choice because it comes with backpack and a mouse and has cool leds

[Red_LightRanger]

googled them, they are pretty cool, but thats too high for my budget. I was looking more around 6-800 dollar price range.

Edit:
Can anyone recommend a good site to purchase a laptop?

[jivetrky]

If you want to be able to play BF2 you will have a hard time spending $600-800.
THis is probably about your best bet at the high end of your budget:
ASUS F3 Series F3KA-X2 AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58(1.90GHz) 15.4" Wide XGA 1GB 120GB DVD Super Multi ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 NoteBook - Retail

You just won't find a laptop that's capable of playing decent games for much less than that.

You can get a dell with an 8600M GT (which is pretty decent for a notebook) but with a slowish CPU, for $849.

[Red_LightRanger]

ya i wish that laptops werent so expensive. I was wondering..since i can build a pc for cheaper, what about a laptop. Anyone have any experience with buying barebones?

http://www.avadirect.com/product_det....asp?PRID=9703

then i just need to buy proc, hd, mem.. Idk
found a good review too
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3895
I really like the screen on this one, Its got a great res.

[jivetrky]

I think you'd be better off buying it as a whole. building laptops doesn't really give you the same value that building a PC can.

[Red_LightRanger]

I think you're right. I just got done configuring it and it looks like im gonna be spending a lot more. What about ibuypower.com? It seems that they have some pretty decent prices.

http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/Store/C...=251&c=1174466
especially if I go with the T7250, and downgrade the hd


Edit:
Whats the difference between the T7XX series and the E6XXX series processors?

[Hardin]

The T series is the mobile series while the E6xxx are actually desktop chips. I wouldn't buy any laptop with a desktop chip in it.

[Red_LightRanger]

ic.
Im also getting a lot of warnings about ibuypower. Maybe I can stick to dell or something. I also think that I need to spend a little more money for what im wanting to do with this guy.
I know I want it to be dx10 capable and at least 2 gigs of ram. Im not too sure on what kind of proc i need or what is decent with oc'in. I also dont need any os since I have an extra vista and xp. Hd space isnt an issue either since I have a tb of space on an external + main rig.

[NettieZoom]

If you are on a budget with $800 tops you will have to buy used period, there just isnt such a thing as a gaming laptop for that little I am sad to say.

I just picked up a used Dell Inspiron 8600 for my son recently, it is a Pentium M 1.8ghz with 2GB of ram and a Radeon 9600pro with 128mb of ram, while it is no superstar it plays BF2, FEAR, Oblivian with very acceptable FPS and it only cost $400 off of Ebay.

It games maybe half as well as my newer Dell with a X2 Turion 64 and a 7900GS but ofcourse that one cost $1500 hehe.

I am sure with some searching you could find a good used laptop to fit your budget.

[Red_LightRanger]

ya i think im gonna have to raise my price to 1000 lol. Just checked some of the dell's out (XPS), very nice but the screen res isnt too great. Gonna check ebay like you said and see if i cant find a nice one for cheap.. Just a little skeptical about buying on ebay (reliablity etc). that inspiron you found is quite a deal! Hopefully I will have the same luck

[situman]

Check out the Vostro series. U can get a nice screen with a 8600GT and a fast cpu for around 1000.

[jivetrky]

Originally Posted by Red_LightRanger

ya i think im gonna have to raise my price to 1000 lol. Just checked some of the dell's out (XPS), very nice but the screen res isnt too great. Gonna check ebay like you said and see if i cant find a nice one for cheap.. Just a little skeptical about buying on ebay (reliablity etc). that inspiron you found is quite a deal! Hopefully I will have the same luck

YOu should check out the Inspirons, the XPS's are decent, but overpriced. You can get a decent Inspiron system for around the $1,000 price range.

And Dell's displays are awesome. You just have to choose the option to upgrade the display. I had an Inspiron E1705 17" laptop with a resolution of 1920x1200, it was a BEAUTIFUL display. In a 15" you can get a 1680x1050 display. (though the 15"ers don't come with a really powerful vid card.)

Plus, if you plan to game with this, you have to consider that with a higher native resolution you will have to game at a lower, non-native resolution. Which in some cases can make the display blury. But of course the high res is nice for normal desktop usage.

BTW, here's a good site to compare notebook graphics chips:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...&sort=3dmark06

They should be sorted fron highest to lowest performance in 3DMark06, so that should give you a good idea of high to low performance.



EDIT: Also I would really recommend that you try to get a system with Windows XP. Vista is great, but on a laptop that is already limited in performance, Vista will just slow it down more. You will get more performance out of it by using XP. Also, I don't know if the new Dells are like the old ones, but With my E1705, I could overclock my 7900GS to 7900GTX speeds (scored 5000 in 3DMark05, which is pretty decent for a laptop, especially over a year ago). So you might check into that, if you can OC the vid card, that can add a lot of performance!

EDIT #2: After a quick look over at notebookreview.com's forums, it looks like overclocking is still an option for many notebooks. So that can greatly increase performance, you just have to be careful with temps.

[jivetrky]

After looking at the Vostro series at Dell, it looks like you can put together a NICE system for $1,000. I customized a Vostro 1500 with: T7250 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo) 1680x1050 res Truelife display (looks amazing!), 2GB of RAM, 160GB HD, DVD burner, 8600M GT 256MB.


Pretty great deal if you ask me. And you can OC that 8600M GT and get 4-5000 scores in 3DMark06. I haven't really read much on it, so I don't know the highest or average clocks/scores. But 4-5000 seems to be a fairly decent average for those serious about overclocking. You might also want to get a $10-$20 notebook cooler to help with temps while overclocking.

[Red_LightRanger]

wow that aint a bad price! And the 8600 gt would do just fine. The vostro series is awesome, thanks for directing me there (situman/jiv)
I do like that I can get it in widescreen too!
I guess that the only reason that the xps series cost more is that its new.