Gaming Laptop

[Ozymandiaz]

I am considering replacing my old Dell MPX 1520 laptop with a new one. Its getting a bit worn, and needs constant external cooling to function without overheating. I also want more power.

However, I have been out of the loop in the market for a while. So my start point is a ASUS G73SW 17.3".

Any experiences or recommendations?

[x4000]

My wife has a gaming laptop from ASUS, though I don't recall the model number (it's about a year old), and it's been really great.  Was great for Left 4 Dead 2 in multiplayer, minecraft, and of course AI War.

[Echo35]

I am considering replacing my old Dell MPX 1520 laptop with a new one. Its getting a bit worn, and needs constant external cooling to function without overheating. I also want more power.

However, I have been out of the loop in the market for a while. So my start point is a ASUS G73SW 17.3".

Any experiences or recommendations?

Personally I'm a huge fan of Maingear, though MSI and Dell are putting out some nice new Sandy Bridge laptops (Well, they WILL be once they fix that whole "they tend to melt" thing )

[Ozymandiaz]

Indeed, the Dells I have used have that metling thing going on for them, so not sure I really want a new Dell (my friend has teh same Dell as me and he also need external cooling. When the CPU nears 100 degree... well its not good for it) ;P As for Sandy Bridge, did they include that hardwre layer DRM thing? Or was that a rumor?

Never heard of Maingear, I need to look into that. Not sure they are widespeard here in EU.

The Asus looked nice since it had taken cooling into account, but even tho its a quad core 2 GHz does strike me as somewhat low when 3.3 GHz can so easily be made.

And I am glad to hear L4D2 is working well on the Asus, I like L4D2 and would love to test it at higher settings then I currently have

[Nalgas]

When the CPU nears 100 degree... well its not good for it

Unless you're using a MacBook, in which case that's just standard operating practice.  It's not exactly on-topic, because sweet Jebus are they awful for games (AI War runs fine, but I can't even get Portal to run smoothly at the native resolution on the lowest settings, and this thing's less than a year old), but they are super under-aggressive about cooling, and I can never resist a chance to rant about it.  Oh no, we can't have the fan run any faster, or that would make audible noise, and that would be sad.  It's really funny watching it decide that it's perfectly acceptable to lower the fan back to the low default speed after it gets the CPU back under 90 degrees.  Or at least it was, before I changed the settings so the poor thing wouldn't burst into flames...

I'm not entirely up to date on laptop hardware, either, but when I was looking last year, Asus did indeed have some pretty decent stuff.  You can get fancier and more powerful hardware from some of the smaller "enthusiast" companies, but I didn't look into most of those too much, because they mostly cater to the "I don't care if it sets my pants on fire if I put it on my lap or the battery only lasts 15 minutes on a full charge" crowd.

The quad core laptop CPUs are all pretty slow (in terms of clock speed), for heat reasons.  You can get dual core ones at higher speeds, which may or may not be better, depending on how much stuff you do that is heavily threaded/highly parallel and can use more than one or two at once effectively.  It is finally starting to make a difference for some games, but still not most of them, and I don't know that you can fit a burly enough video card in a laptop yet for it to really matter anyway.  Although I also don't really know to what extent, if any, the laptop chips can take advantage of the "turbo" auto-overclocking feature, because I've only really looked at it in a desktop context (where it works great on my i5 750 and easily makes up for its lower base speed in single-threaded stuff), which could make a pretty noticeable difference.

[ShadowOTE]

http://www.powernotebooks.com/

I got mine from them after a friend recommended them. They're high quality, professional, and were great to work with. Not sure what your price range is, but it's definitely worth a look.

[RogueThunder]

Mmmm.

I would double the suggestion of an ASUS Notebook. Something in the G53/G51 range is a hellava notebook tho a bit on the heavy side.
I would avoid Dell/HP/Apple like the plague. Dell... is dell. HP has the highest 3 year failure rate in the industry with their laptops. And apple is... Apple. I really don't wana take the time to explain apple and dell...
The statistics on HP actually surprised me a bit... I kinda like some of their line. But they were pretty drastically high industry failure rate wise.

Other good brands for gaming laptops that are less known overall... Sager is a good one. MSI actually makes some decent stuff too. Toshiba makes a few nice mid-end gaming laptops cheap, though they're not the most durable physically if yer gentle they last.

I preticularly like the ASUS tho. Register the bugger(short reg really, not a big long form) in the first 30 days if its new, and ya get 2 year warnetee 1 year accidental in most countries...

The ASUS G73SW is btw, a beautiful beast. But a bit large and chunky. Long as ya don't mind it being a light tank... Well. It wont disappoint you.

[Ozymandiaz]

Thanks.


Seems the G73SW is a decent bet tho. Just so happens that my normal supplier went out of stock for G73SW last week and have no intention to bring em back :/. Guess I have to look at other stores

[Echo35]

Thanks.


Seems the G73SW is a decent bet tho. Just so happens that my normal supplier went out of stock for G73SW last week and have no intention to bring em back :/. Guess I have to look at other stores

HP is also putting out a cheaper version of the Envy in the DV7 line, both of which look neat, but I'm not so sure it would be called a "gaming" laptop.

[RogueThunder]

Thanks.


Seems the G73SW is a decent bet tho. Just so happens that my normal supplier went out of stock for G73SW last week and have no intention to bring em back :/. Guess I have to look at other stores

This is because of a delay on the sandy-bridge chipsets I bet. Either wait a month or two... Or go for the G73JW based on the older version of the cpu/chipset.

Intels fault. One bad transistor.

[zespri]

Are there any advantages of having laptop versus desktop? ( I mean apart from being mobile). If I don't need to take a gaming machine with me on the go, what are the other reason I might want to buy a laptop?

[Nalgas]

Are there any advantages of having laptop versus desktop? ( I mean apart from being mobile). If I don't need to take a gaming machine with me on the go, what are the other reason I might want to buy a laptop?

If you don't need it to be portable, there are no advantages, only disadvantages (unless you have very limited space to fit it into, I guess).  You can get something more than twice as powerful for less than half the price if you don't need mobility.  I personally take what it would cost to get a gaming laptop and split it between a burly desktop and a smaller, slower, but more portable laptop, but that doesn't work for everyone.

[ShadowOTE]

Yeah, it really boils down to what you're going to do with it. Travel a lot? Then you might want something you can take on flights. Don't want to do much heavy lifting, just need internet access? Get a tiny laptop like the ones Asus sells. Need almost desktop level performance? Then you're talking about paying a big premium in price and weight, but you get a very good machine out of it. But if you dont need it to travel or fit into a tiny space a desktop is much better - cheaper, more powerful, etc.

[zespri]

Yep, this what I was thinking as well. I hardly ever travel, perhaps once a year. And I like my computer being powerful. So I buy desktops. On the other hand, it's like there is no reason not to have some kind of laptop as well even if it's a netbook. iPhone is great but a computer can be more convenient in certain situations. So my thinking was to get not too expensive laptop and upgrade the desktop (for gaming) when I feel it's needed. This will be right for me.

Thank you for the opinions.

[Ozymandiaz]

Are there any advantages of having laptop versus desktop? ( I mean apart from being mobile). If I don't need to take a gaming machine with me on the go, what are the other reason I might want to buy a laptop?

Nope.

I actually do plan on bringing my laptop with me tho, when I visit friends or such, or if I go on a long business trip and need some entertainment on the evenings.

But I also plan to get a rather super desktop to have in my appartment as well