Gaming Laptop under $1000

Figgy

Looking around for a "gaming" laptop for my girlfriend's brother. He has about $1000 to spend and wants to be able to play Diablo 3, basically.

From Dell, this came to $999 before taxes:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6500 (2.10GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

Thoughts?

Wezoin

As somebody whose been living with a "gaming laptop" for 2 years, my advice is don't do it. Buy a netbook for portable computing, and a desktop for gaming, should come in about the same price and its alot easier to live with. In class my fan constantly buzzes away and people look over, its heavy, it gets hot, etc.

That said, if he's absolutely set on a gaming laptop, thats not a bad deal.

Figgy

They've also got a refurb (scratch & dent) for $879:

XPS M1530 Laptop:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB, 3MB Cache)
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

Edit: Mmm that's the US Outlet store, so nevermind.

Lemming

The problem is that for a thousand bucks you can get a desktop that is much more powerful than the laptop. It already starts out heavy, loud, and with a shitty battery life, and in a year or two it's heavy, loud, has a shittier battery life, and it's slow. Unless you really need to have that much portable power, getting a desktop and a netbook or something is a much smarter option.

1ddqd

I have a HP HDX 18 and I would say even with the 9600M GT it's not worth it. I have to play 1080p resolutions at 1024x768, with barely any AA or AF. TF2 gives me MAYBE 35 fps. The processor runs at 2.83ghz, so it's exceptionally fast out of games, but the graphics card really limits it.

Rook

Figgy wrote: »

Looking around for a "gaming" laptop for my girlfriend's brother. He has about $1000 to spend and wants to be able to play Diablo 3, basically.

From Dell, this came to $999 before taxes:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T6500 (2.10GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 800MHz
320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

Thoughts?

The golden rule comes to mind. If you're buying something for a specific game, wait until that game actually comes out.

If this was seriously meant as more of a gaming rather than a working laptop that also plays a few games, I'd go looking for something else. Either a 17" lappy with a better graphics card or a seperate laptop/desktop combo. However, I do have a dell laptop with an 8600M which I use mainly for work, but it's a great little games machine as well and I bring it to LAN parties quite often. Usually depends on the game being well optimised though, SFIV/Demigod/Source engine games all look and run great, but stuff like ARMA II is just unplayable.

Slagmire

Rook hit it right on the nail - if he's looking for a laptop for Diablo 3, it might benefit him greatly to wait until it's a bit closer to the release date. And that one's going to be a while before it sees the light of release.

Elimination

the words "gaming" and "Laptop" don't go together. Don't waste your money on a gaming laptop. Just get a good one with good portability.

Portugal.TheMark

I bought a laptop I planned to use for games, and school when I graduated a couple of years ago. It is true that in a couple of years all you have is a heavy, hot, poor battery powered, and slow machine. Getting a netbook, and gaming desktop is the best choice. Besides then he gets to open/build and dick around with two things instead of one.