Gaming laptops - What do you suggest?

Thanks Gorath. That's a pretty nice site there. What do you desktop guys think about the Radeon 7870? I've read that the 7970M is pretty close in design to that model.
Fast enough for 1080p gaming, but certainly not overkill.
You can find benchmarks for mainstream graphics cards on just about every hardware website.
 
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Nice. Yeah, it doesn't look like overkill to me (the 7970M, that is). Looks like some of those games on ultra even put it to the test already (some of the games are benchmarking low 30s in FPS).
 
Going overkill today guarantees legs for the laptop. My old Gateway FX made it 4 years on the 9800m GTX. 4 years is a loooong time for 1 computer. It ran Skyrim pretty well!
 
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Going overkill today guarantees legs for the laptop. My old Gateway FX made it 4 years on the 9800m GTX. 4 years is a loooong time for 1 computer. It ran Skyrim pretty well!

Nice. Just curious, on what level was the 9800m GTX when you first bought it? Was it comparable to a card like the 7970M now? Relatively speaking of course. If the laptop I'm building lasts 4 years before I have to upgrade it I will be very happy!
 
I'm trying not to skimp on anything, but I can't go over $2000 so I have to deal with that budget. That said, the 7970M saves me $250 to go towards upgrading something else and from the data I've reviewed online, the 7970M and the 680M are neck and neck in terms of performance. So it's really not much of a downgrade but it still saves me quite a bit of money which lets me add something nice like an upgraded processor or an SSD and still stay under budget.

From the review I read the 680m was about 20% faster on average than the 7970m and it ran cooler and used less power which are important with a laptop. I only read 1 review quickly though.

Never heard of psu requirements, what does that mean? From what I understand, the laptop I chose is considered a "desktop replacement" and very upgradeable as far as laptops go. I don't know much other than that though. I know you can slot a second graphics card into the laptop for increased performance and that is something I will definitely do in a few years. The other bits should be upgradeable as far as I know but you seem to be saying otherwise.

How do I find out how much psu my laptop has and how far I'll be able to upgrade it?

Sorry PSU is the power supply. Just because you have a slot to plug a new video card in to doesn't mean your laptop psu can power it. Not saying yours wouldn't but it's something that happened to me and I thought you should be aware. Make sure the psu will be powerful enough for future upgrades if thats an avenue you wish to pursue is all i'm saying.

Also as I said earlier don't under estimate the importance of the 2 extra GB of texture memory the 680m provides over the 7970m. A fully modded skyrim can push 1.5GB to even 2GB cards. So I don't think it's a stretch to think games 2-3 years from now will greatly benefit from the extra 2GB's. It wont matter how fast the card is if you run out of texture memory you either slow to a crawl or crash.

Anyway you might want to check out Cyber power laptops specifically the Fangbook x7-300. Here's the specs—

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Mobile Processor 2.40 GHz 6M Smart Cache, Max Turbo Freq. 3.40 GHz
HDD: 64GB SanDisk SATA III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 490 MB/s Read & 240 MB/s Write (Single Drive)
MEMORY: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR3-1333 SODIMM Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
MOTHERBOARD: Intel HM77 Express Chipset Mainboard
SOUND: Built-in 3D Premium Surround Sound
VIDEO: NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB PCIe Video

For $40 you can upgrade to samsung 840 120GB SSD for the boot drive and it comes with a 750GB second drive for games and programs.

I've heard good things about them but have never used them as I build my own systems. So do your due diligence.

This would get you a nice setup for under $2000.00

I can't help but think of the system you could build with $2000 and still have money for a laptop or tablet for your bedroom but I understand your reasoning and won't bother you about it.:)

Oh and there's no such thing as overkill when your talking about wanting it to last years.
 
Dude, sakichop, this Fangbook looks incredible! I just built a system on their website that is even better than the Sager equivalent and it is cheaper than the Sager. I must be missing something here. I didn't think I would find better value than Sager. This definitely makes me think about things.

The only question I would have is - is the Fangbook X7-300 upgradeable at all? The one thing I REALLY like about the Sager, is that it has room for dual GPUs, so a few years down the road I could add a second graphics card (maybe another 7970m) and get a nice performance boost to help extend the life of the laptop a little further. I have no clue if these Fangbooks are upgradeable at all. All I'm asking is to upgrade the GPU possibly.

Either way, I'm definitely going to consider this Fangbook. Thanks for showing me this!
 
I would scratch the idea of dual cards, either now, or as an upgrade. It sounds like a good idea now, but rarely works out that way.
 
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Nice. Just curious, on what level was the 9800m GTX when you first bought it? Was it comparable to a card like the 7970M now? Relatively speaking of course. If the laptop I'm building lasts 4 years before I have to upgrade it I will be very happy!

I'm still gaming on the laptop I bought back in 2009. It wasn't a "gaming" laptop, but it runs nearly every recent game I've ever tried at 1080p. The graphics card was a 5830m, which is based on the desktop 5770 card, much weaker than 7970m and certainly by no means top of the line back when I bought it.
 
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Here's the build I'm leaning towards. Let me know your guys' thoughts on this.

17.3" FHD LED-Backlit 1920x1080 Display
Intel® Core™ i7-3740QM Mobile Processor 2.70 GHz 6M Smart Cache, Max Turbo Freq. 3.70 GHz
Intel HM77 Express Chipset Mainboard
16GB (4GBx4) DDR3-1600 SODIMM Memory
NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB PCIe Video
60 GB Intel 330 Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s - 500 MB/s Read & 400 MB/s Write
750GB 7200RPM SATA300 Hard Drive
8X DVD±R/RW/4X + DL Super-Multi Drive
Built-in 3D Premium Surround Sound
Built-in Intel N2230 (WLAN802.11b/g/n + Bluetooth4.0) Combo Card
Microsoft® Windows 8 Pro (64-bit Edition)
 
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Looks good, if I were nit picking I'd suggest a bigger SSD for your C drive.

I used to have a 60 GB and it got tiresome making sure nothing installed to it, changing download location, temp files etc. also if your run a lot of win 8 apps that could add up.

Anyway 60GB should be enough if you keep an eye on it, I just got tired of watching it so I got a bigger one. Happy gaming.
 
It was either a bigger SSD or a better processor. I went with the better processor. Had to stay under $2000 and it wasn't possible to have both.

Just wondering about the SSD. What should I install to it? Games? Music? Apps? The OS is obviously going on it, but what else should I use it for? Will it enhance gaming at all? I imagine it's much faster than a regular hard drive so loading music should be much quicker on it. Just not sure what to even use it for....
 
Games until you run out of space. Your Steam folder will be a problem though because it can get big quickly.
 
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It was either a bigger SSD or a better processor. I went with the better processor. Had to stay under $2000 and it wasn't possible to have both.

Just wondering about the SSD. What should I install to it? Games? Music? Apps? The OS is obviously going on it, but what else should I use it for? Will it enhance gaming at all? I imagine it's much faster than a regular hard drive so loading music should be much quicker on it. Just not sure what to even use it for….

Probably a good choice you can always upgrade the SSD later. Before I got my extra SSD's I would just put whatever game I was playing at the time on the c drive and that would be about it as it typically fills up with misc. crap anyway.
 
Got the money a few days ago. Pulled the trigger today on a nice Alienware M17x R4, used but in excellent condition. Here's the specs.

17" screen Full HD
3610qm processor
8 GB RAM (going to upgrade to 16 myself)
AMD Radeon 7970M graphics
256 GB SSD
750 GB 7200 RPM secondary drive
Blu-ray combo drive
Killer wireless card
Windows 7 Professional
Still under warranty

All for the very reasonable price of $1600. Not bad considering the same setup configured new is over $2400.

It wasn't quite as nice as the Malibal Satori 170em I had configured, but that one cost $2000, so I saved a few hundred going with the Alienware. The money I saved will be going towards a next-gen console, possibly the PS4. Either way, I'm set for gaming for a few years anyway. Should be fun :)
 
Well, none of that is very good if you expect to be gaming. Just kidding:D, enjoy your new rig and happy gaming.
 
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