New laptop for gaming

[Scraggles]

At my job I work 10 hour shifts, overnight. I work in a home with handicapped people and overnight they are sleeping. I usually have about an hours worth of cleaning, and so I typically sit on my laptop and play games. Well my current laptop is not going to be able to handle the two games I'm really looking forward to playing, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. I haven't been able to see specs required for D3, but maybe someone else has.

What would you guys recommend for a laptop? Without going over the top, what would be in the 2500$ range that would handle these games?

[LingeringSoul]

$2500? For that price you can get a really good gaming laptop. A system at that price point would make short work of SC2 and D3. Speaking of those two games, Blizzard hasn't released the system requirements yet (I think some Alpha requirements are out there for SC2, but those should be taken with a grain of salt), but they're being developed in order to work with a wide range of specs.

To answer your question, though, Widow PC has a pretty decent selection of gaming laptops. You may want to check there first. As far as SC2 and D3 are concerned, I imagine that the Recluse would work quite well for both (you may want to bump the RAM up to 4GB though).

http://www.widowpc.com/2005/06/gaming_laptops.php

[BoJo]

Using a widow pc of that price to play those games would be like using a minigun to shoot targets. You shouldn't need something super special to play them :)

[AnthoWin]

Using a widow pc of that price to play those games would be like using a minigun to shoot targets. You shouldn't need something super special to play them :)

no, but since laptops are much less flexible for upgrading you might as well go for the best tech you can afford so you'll be able to play games in years to come!

[perochan]

no, but since laptops are much less flexible for upgrading you might as well go for the best tech you can afford so you'll be able to play games in years to come!

+1

[BoJo]

Ermm. No. Well, maybe. But not to the "widow pc" extreme is what i was trying to say :p

In "years to come" (according to Moore's Law anyway) there will be technology twice as powerful and half the price. It would be like doing a tri-SLId 280GTX to play WoW because you want it to run smoothly for a while.

In short your better off getting what you need (maybe with capacity for more games - but not to the widow pc extreme) now and then upgrading to another laptop later. Cheaper. Faster.

[LingeringSoul]

Using a Widow to run SC2 and D3 is definitely overkill, so I'm certainly not going to disagree with you. He mentioned $2500 as an upper limit, so I figured I'd suggest something that approach his price point.

If he only intends on playing SC2 and D3 (and maybe a few other games here and there), then an HP or a Dell would certainly suffice. Personally, if I were buying a new gaming laptop, I would lean towards something with considerable potential for the future. Although his most anticipated games are fairly modest in terms of requirements, you never know what might come along and attract your interest.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Yeah but he could buy a laptop which is adequate enough for those games now, leaving money over for an upgrade in the future when newer games need higher specs.

[Scraggles]

Well, lately nothing has really held my interest. My desktop pc struggles to run battlefield 2142 on medium, so I haven't played anything much newer than that. I play guild wars occasionally, I have tried WoW, but don't really know any real people that play it, so it gets boring fast. Diablo 2 and Starcraft were two games that had me hooked for over a year each.

[Budious]

I really like the Sager brand laptops for best bang for the buck value in the mobile gaming market. You can find various retailers, but I order all of mine through www.powernotebooks.com and have always been happy with the quality and service. The Sager NP7680 has configurations starting at $910 with C2D P8400, 2GB Ram, 160GB HDD, and 9300M 256MB graphics. 9600M and 9800M models are available if you need more horsepower.

[Jigoku]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?sk...d=1211587727985

Gateway P-7811FX

Processor Type: Core 2 Duo processor P8400

Processor Speed: 2.26GHz

Display Type: WUXGA TFT widescreen (1920 x 1200)

Screen Size: 17"

System Bus: 1066MHz

Cache Memory: 3MB on die level 2

System Memory (RAM): 4GB

Type of Memory (RAM): PC-6400 DDR3

Hard Drive Type: Serial ATA (7200 rpm)

Hard Drive Size: 200GB

Optical Drive: Double-layer DVD?RW/CD-RW

Optical Drive Speeds: 2.4x DVD+R DL; 2x DVD-R DL; 8x8x8 DVD+RW; 8x6x8 DVD-RW; 5x DVD

Graphics:NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS>

Video Memory: 512MB GDDR3

$1,249.99

[Argote]

Mobile comparison:

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3396

Also, the Gateway posted above is a really really really good deal

[+virtorio MVC]

I think one of the most important factors about buying a laptop to play games in not only the specs, but also how well it manages heat.

I've got a pretty powerful HP business laptop but I'd never run a game on it for more than half an hour as it gets way too hot and I don't want to kill it, while my previous Toshiba laptop ran games just fine for hours while only getting slightly warm.

[former1]

DELL XPS M1530 I'd say :)

[LingeringSoul]

Jigoku: That is one hell of a deal. Good find.

[ViperAFK]

that gateway is a great deal indeed. I would definitely get that.

[Scraggles]

Will this all run games as demanding as BF2142?

I don't know if I trust gateway after they disappeared from the computer world for all those years. DIdn't they go bankrupt or something? I had a gateway pc as my first and it has got to be the worst I've ever owned.

[ViperAFK]

Gateway was bought by acer, I have a gateway laptop and it's worked flawlessly so far. Yes that would definitley play bf2142 with no problems maxed out.