I’m in the market for a laptop specifically for gaming and I need suggestions. The key things I need are the ability to play the various Feed The Beast modpacks and Skyrim and then as time goes on, I probably will add more games via steam. What I don’t know is what I should be looking for to ensure the laptop I buy will be able to handle those games. I was originally going to just drop 1500 bucks on an alienware laptop and be done with it but after looking at reviews I’m wondering if there are lighter laptops to be had for cheaper.
Desktops aren’t an option. I don’t game very often at home and having a portable computer is absolutely necessary.
My current laptop is an Inspiron N5050 and it does ok with vanilla minecraft and I played Portal and Portal 2 on it, but FTB lags like a sumbitch and I haven’t even dared to try skyrim.
When I was in the market for a gaming laptop four years ago, Sager was considered the “go-to” manufacturer of high-end laptops. I ended up going with a Gateway because it was cheaper, but if you have the money to drop, that was the company to go for.
I suggest you head over to the Notebook Review Forums; they have many users who stay current on the topic and could give you personalized advice.
8 milligrams of RAM? That’s hardly any RAM at all!
Anyway, one thing I would add is to avoid shitty screen resolutions. 1366x768 screens are common at the low end (even with fancy graphics chipsets and the like), and they look like ass. You’ll probably want a 1920x1080 screen, and at least a few ticks above the cheapest discrete graphics. I’d shoot for at least a GeForce GT 750M, 660M, or 570M, or on the AMD side, a 6950M or 7850M. These will give you good, playable framerates at medium-to-high graphics settings (at 1920x1080) in Skyrim. But, you might want to go higher. All these model numbers are awfully confusing, so NotebookCheck may be a good reference (I restricted the games list to Skyrim for you, but they have an absurd amount of info there, so go nuts. Note they’re listed from super-ultra-high end to cheap-ass low end.).
Also, regarding the RAM: Remember you can always upgrade the RAM yourself if you find an otherwise good laptop that inexplicably only has 4 or 6 GB; it’s easy and fairly inexpensive.
Some handy links here. I’m looking for a laptop mainly for web and teleconferencing, but I’d like it to handle at least a few games to keep me entertained… so I will be poring over Notebook Check.
I find that, even though most games severely overstate their minimum requirements, a lot of modern ones say the 4000 is good enough (some even going as low as the 3000.) I think the bigger reason to avoid the Intel chip is because we are on the cusp of a new console generation, and so graphics requirements are going to go up rather quickly.
Still, if anyone has to go cheap, the 4000 is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. In laptops, you’ll have to go at least $100-$200 more to beat it.