Help me buy a laptop.

TheBigDaddyDowd

My wife's laptop just died so now its time to buy a new one. She wants to play games on it and do school work. Right now her game of choice is the Sims 3. I'm looking for something with 4 gigs of ram and a 14-17 inch screen. Our price range is $500-$800 but we could go higher if need be, but we don't want to. So anyone have any recommendations?

Troy

I just bought this laptop for my wife. It plays TF2 pretty well, hell I even got it to run the witcher decently.

Edit: also it's an Asus which I find comes with far less bloatware that bogs down the system. This is a huge plus in my book.

TheBigDaddyDowd

is the NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS on that thing a chipset or an actual video card?



I was also looking at this HP. Is this a jump up from the Asus?Is it worth the price jump?

warmep

The 9300 is better than the HD3200, so I would rather go with the ASUS out of those two.

Notebookcheck is a great website to check out when looking for mobile GPUs.

TheBigDaddyDowd

Wow thats a great website. Thanks for the info.

Ego

Edit: wtf? how did I get in THIS thread. Sorry.

TheBigDaddyDowd

Ok I think I have two picked out, can someone give me feedback on the specs on them, I found this one with a 9600m GS and this one with a Radeon HD 3650.

Ego

The first Acer has a marginally better CPU and marginally worse GPU than the second one. Both are actually really well equipped to be multimedia laptops. Neither will do spectacular for games but both will be able to pull off games like TF2 / War3 / WoW / Fallout 3. Stuff like Dawn of War 2 will tax both systems but be manageable with graphics tweaks. Don't buy either if gaming is an important task for the machine. If gaming is important to you and you MUST buy one of those machines, I'd say go for the second acer with the superior 4650 GPU (as more games are GPU limited than CPU limited.)

Both, for the price, are actually nice machines. I like Acer. I've worked with variations on that (first) Acer model, and can vouch for it being generally reliable and having a nice build quality.

This, by the way, is my atonement for accentally posting in your thread earlier .

Edit: because somehow I thought the second machine was an Asus and referred to it as such.

Pirusu

Ego's having all kinds of problems with readin' comprehension! It's a 9600M GS vs. a 3650, not a 4650. After looking at reviews, both cards are actually pretty comparable. So I looked at the other specs. Personally, I'd take the first one with the C2D. The tradeoff is the C2D machine is $50 more, and has a slightly smaller battery. (6-Cell vs. 8-Cell) Though honestly, I'd say you make up for it in the 45nm chip vs. the 65nm AMD one. And the AMD machine has a larger hard drive. The machines are pretty comparable, though, so it's honestly up to you. Neither would be a poor choice.

Ego

I think it's a case of writing comprehension in the case of putting 4650 instead of 3650, but I sure am having issues with this thread. I think it's bugged.

I place the blame squarely on all the hookers.

TheBigDaddyDowd

Thanks for your help everyone. I bought the c2d machine yesterday when it was $649 like the other one. So I ended up saving $50 bucks.

SirToasty

Since this thread is here and the OP has his problem worked out, I am in the market for a laptop as well. I'd like it to be able to run games at high settings (not necessarily max). Basically, a good processor and a good video card. Budget is up to $1200-1300

I was going through HPs custom build thing and found some stuff I liked but found cheaper pre-built stuff on Newegg. There was this one and this one. Unfortunately, the HP is 64bit which I don't need and the Asus is "open box" so no accessories, but those are along the lines of what I am looking for.

Any suggestions?


edit: Upon more searching on Newegg I have found a couple more Asus laptops including a non-open box one shown above. What is the word on Asus? Good, bad, or average?

e2: How's this? Notebookcheck says the card on that is pretty good. It's in the class 1 list if that means a whole lot.

Pirusu

Nothing wrong with Asus. At some point, it's all the same components anyways. The last one you found is good, for a little more (though still outside your budget by $50) you can get this MSI with a better video card and a larger screen. But there is nothing wrong with the Asus you picked out! Though, you may want to keep an eye out on Dell's/HP's website, because with the right "weekly deal" (instant rebates, free upgrades, etc) thing you can get a beefy machine on the cheap.

SirToasty

I like the MSI but I'm not sure that I want a screen that big. 17" seems, well, enormous.

Pirusu

Haha, 17" is small! I game on my 22" LCD monitor, I can't imagine enjoying it on 15". Granted, though, at those sizes, it is definitely a desktop replacement system, and I wouldn't wanna carry it around in a backpack for school or anything.

SirToasty

Pirusu wrote: »

Haha, 17" is small! I game on my 22" LCD monitor, I can't imagine enjoying it on 15". Granted, though, at those sizes, it is definitely a desktop replacement system, and I wouldn't wanna carry it around in a backpack for school or anything.

And that is exactly what I will be doing with my new laptop as I am leaving for college this fall.

edit: Also, just noticed, NC represent dude.