So, I recently have found myself with a bit of disposable income, and I’ve come to the decision that I am tired of running various games at 15-20 fps on medium settings. I’m interested in buying a gaming PC, but for space reasons it has to be a laptop. Ideally, I want a laptop produced by one of those high end gaming PC manufacturers, but I’m not sure who makes the best product. Does anyone have any recommendations on what manufacturer to go with? Also, what options give the most bang for my buck in terms of performance?
I was thinking of going with a falcon northwest TLX 15’’ laptop. Where I’m confused is on how fast a processor I need, how much RAM i should get, and what graphics card I should use. Ideally I’d want to spend no more than 2500 dollars or so, but I’d be willing to fudge a few extra hundred if I felt I’d get a commensurate amount of performance from it.
With infinite money, Alienware (now owned by Dell) usually offers the best specs, but not for the buck.
Falcon NW, Voodoo PC (now HP) are similar competitors usually offering overpriced systems with a brand name attached.
Otherwise, if you don’t care about the name, consider Asus, Sager, and iBuyPower. Asus makes a lot of laptops globally, but good luck navigating their website to find the model you want. Sager updates their models infrequently and has limited selections, so sometimes they’re ahead of the latest performance curve and sometimes they’re behind. No experience with iBuyPower, but I hear about them from time to time.
Cheaper than that, Dell’s XPS line can play some games, but they’re far from the bleeding edge. Some Macbooks can also play games, but you’re paying for the brand and for the build quality, not for the horsepower.
Have you considered smaller-form-factor desktops, placed below your desk and out of the way, combined with a flat panel LCD? It won’t take up that much more room and would be much better bang for the buck… not to mention upgradability.
And also, in terms of CPU, you don’t have that many choices to begin with… the Core i-series plus whatever graphics card you can configure (ideally in SLI) plus a solid state disk and plenty of RAM should get you what you want. Sadly, in a gaming system, you can’t really skimp on any one component or it’d just become a bottleneck.
The big thing is to make sure it has a discrete graphics card. The rest of the stuff is not as important as that.
And, of course, that discrete graphics card needs to be good. I usually look around passmark.com. For me, anything around 500 is okay. But I’m guessing you’d want something at least above 1000, if not 1500.