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The Best Gaming Laptop Money Can Buy
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:00 AM
from the money-to-burn dept.
from the money-to-burn dept.
Parz writes "Gameplayer has gone live with their winners for the best gaming laptops money can buy as of Q3 2008. The analysis is broken into three sections to cater for three different budget requirements. There is a detailed explanation of why each laptop was selected, going into each hardware component individually. Regular Slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy. Prices may vary depending on where you live."
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Results will be valid for four days... (Score:5, Insightful)
...until the next one comes out.
Never use a laptop for gaming. (Score:5, Insightful)
I always think that using Laptops for gaming is a bit of a silly idea. Every couple of months a new game comes out that requires more powerful graphics, and you can't upgrade the graphics cards in a laptop. So your top of the range laptop bought today will be a pale shadow of its former self when playing the latest game in a year's time. With a desktop PC, you can simply replace the old graphics card with a new one.
Re:Never use a laptop for gaming. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are right. Using a laptop for a primary gaming device, unless you have a lot of money to burn is a rather silly idea since you cannot upgrade it. I found when I was in college and doing a lot of gaming that having a desktop I could upgrade every two years for about $500-800 was the way to go, and it would give me another two years of being able to play the latest titles.
I recently purchased a fully-loaded Dell XPS 1530 laptop for Photoshop on-the-go functionality, and it has been fun being able to to play some older titles like Half-Life 2 again, but I don't expect it to be able to keep up with what is coming out.
Parent
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There's still an issue in budgeting. I'll pay about twice as much to get myself a gaming PC and a capable laptop (one that can run apps and flash games well). While having the PC is nice for upgrading, having a gaming laptop will work well for about two years (by which time any "budget" laptop will be all but obsolete). Plus, there's the advantage of mobile gaming.
If you really use your laptop, it's worth it to get a nice one. If you play games only at home, however, there's obviously no sense in forking up
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Re:Never use a laptop for gaming. (Score:5, Interesting)
well, there isn't too much better than a 8600M GT as of yet, at least performance-wise, but that card is one generation behind. The best nVidia you can get is still a 9800M GTX, and those are just a die-shrink of the 8xxx line (the GTX 200s don't have a mobile platform yet).
If you always want the latest-and-greatest graphics in a laptop, you should maybe look for something upgradable - nVidia standardized their mobile graphics on the MXM platform and, although ATI has a competing standard (AXIOM), it has so far been losing badly and it is now fairly common to find ATI cards that use MXM.
The real problem comes with MXM systems that are upgradable - the ASUS C90 is, and I've read MXM Acer laptops are, but after that it's anyone's guess - some MXM computers like the 24" iMac are not. There are also 4 separate sized slots - MXM I, MXM II, MXM III, and MXM HE and larger slots can take the smaller GPUs, but not vice versa (most laptops I've seen that have them are MXM II). Sometimes you also need to buy the notebook manufacturer's branded card, as well. Also note that there is now at least one desktop card that uses MXM - the ASUS Trinity. Basically, it has 3 MXM modules on a regular PCI-E card, and when the graphics card needs updating, you replace the MXM modules, not the card, supposedly saving you some expense.
Parent
Does the original Gameboy Count? (Score:2, Funny)
Except it's not PC games (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see your point, but the question and the context was about laptops that run PC games.
Portables like the original gameboy or the newer DS, are a bit of a fixed target: a game either runs on that one configuration, or it doesn't. There are no games written for a DS with an upgraded graphics card, or with more RAM.
PC gaming doesn't really have such fixed targets. All games try to surpass last year's in terms of graphics, if nothing else because screenshots sell, and the hardware requirements are occasionally outright silly. I can think of some games (e.g., EQ2) which were launched to match hardware specs that didn't even yet exist. E.g., seriously, to run EQ2 with full graphics details you needed a 512 MB graphics card, and that just didn't exist yet. (Well, ok, maybe except as a high-end, professional OpenGL card for CAD.)
Parent
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Whats your point?
I don't think that your $6.50 Gameboyrun WarCraft or StarCraft either; it won't even run Star Control.
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I just got a laptop for gaming. It's a 1.13 GHZ P3 with 256MB of ram. I spent all weekend playing apple II and TG16 games on it. I had a blast.
It's not playing games on laptops that's silly. It's the obsession with playing the latest resource hogging games that's silly.
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I just got a laptop for gaming. It's a 1.13 GHZ P3 with 256MB of ram. I spent all weekend playing apple II and TG16 games on it. I had a blast.
It's not playing games on laptops that's silly. It's the obsession with playing the latest resource hogging games that's silly.
Yeah...ok. I mean great, I'm glad you enjoy your retro gaming. Heck I even like firing up some of the older stuff now and then. But your kidding right? You think that modern games should be forced into near decades old hardware requiremen
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Some of us are willing to pay more than that to get old games like warcraft 2 working smoothly.
Hehe. Speaking of which, I played Warcraft II yesterday for a few hours on my Dell Inspiron 8100 that I bought in like 2001... for gaming.
It's suited my every gaming need since that time and I still play World of Warcraft on it. I couldn't play Doom 3 on it back then, but when I bought a gaming desktop a few years back, I just bought Doom 3 then.
It's a great machine for running my other older games I never got a chance to play, like Baulders Gate, Fallout 1 & 2, Warcraft 2, and Starcraft. And for pla
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I always think that using Laptops for gaming is a bit of a silly idea.
And a lot of other people would think using a DS or a PSP for gaming is also a bit of a silly idea, for much the same reasons. If developers choose not to to make games whose graphics scale down to the capabilities of two-year-old laptops, then they choose to let someone else sell products to owners of two-year-old laptops.
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You're right of course. Instead of spending $5k on the newest top of the line laptop, you can spend a mere $1.2k on a pair of the newest top of the line graphics cards.
Re:Never use a laptop for gaming. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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Really, what is silly is that laptops don't have upgradable graphics.
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I agree that it is silly. But for some people it is necessary.
I am a programmer who does a lot of gaming, and writes games on the side. I got hired to do development at a job that requires me to travel, so I had to get a laptop. Since I use the same tools at work and at home, I either ditch the desktop and use the laptop for everything (including games), or I try to install everything on both computers and keep everything in sync. Th
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I had a Sager 5680 (3.2 GHz P4, Radeon 9600, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB 4200 RPM HDD) Sept 2003 to Jan 2006 and it played everything I threw at it at 1600x1200. Granted, I spent $3,150 on it at a time when I could have build the same in a desktop for approx $2,000.
True gaming laptops are a luxury.
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Let me know when a DX10-only game comes out...
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But DX9->DX10 [wikipedia.org] requires an OS "upgrade". DX8->DX9 doesn't, so it's not nearly as big of a deal.
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My point is that we're not in the 3rd generation of DX10-supporting cards, by the time DX10-only games come out pre-DX10 PCs will be so far out of date they couldn't play the game even if it was DX9.
"Windows NT" can already not play games a year old (crysis) on his 5 year old card, by his admission only games that are 3-4 years old work. By the time DX10-only games come out in a few years, only people with (then) 4-year-old PCs won't be able to play them.
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*now in the 3rd generation ...
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I game on a laptop for the simple reason that I have two homes (due to work). So I bought a decent spec laptop and stick it in the car when I switch houses.
I have a power supply, mouse, headset at each house. I also have a USB powered laptop cooler at each house. Something akin to http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=280872&sourceid=2459&CAWELAID=84125196 [misco.co.uk]
(I don't have that model. Google for 'laptop cooler' and see what comes up).
It's a little noisier, but it means I
From the article... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Your hardware wonâ(TM)t function without an OS, so what better choice than Microsoftâ(TM)s latest offering. Despite the constant criticism, Vista is a very stable, secure and enjoyable platform to work with. In collaboration with the latest gear, games will play at high speed and detail to whet your gaming appetite!"
Nice to see they are still paid by Microsoft marketing arm. That entire statement goes against everything every reputable gaming site and expert says..
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Re:From the article... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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I am normally the first person to put down these conspiracy theories. But being that all laptops that are good enough for gaming come with Vista as the default OS, and the increasing difficultly of getting a legit copy of XP. It seems like a pointless sentence, unless you will get $500 for it. As well it seems way to familiar to Microsoft current advertising of saying "NO WE DON'T SUCK THAT MUCH!".
Having used Vista on a fully capable system, it is not as bad as Slashdot says it it. But it is still not tha
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Sez you. The best place I know of to get a decent gaming rig, Vigor Computing, is still very willing to ship with XP. I just ordered a gaming laptop from them with XP; I'll be getting it in a few days.
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Good thing the Linux marketing arm showed up and posted a correction, eh?
Re:From the article... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista gaming is now on par with XP.
Good. Still no need to "upgrade" then...
Parent
How about... (Score:4, Funny)
A Beowulf cluster of Eee PCs glued to a go-cart. ...what? Can't a man dream?
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"The Best Gaming Laptop Money Can Buy" (Score:5, Funny)
I have no money, is there a list of laptops for people with large piles of string?
Should have done best servers for the money (Score:2)
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Don't waste your time.
There are no tests performed, no benchmarks, no comparisons.
The guy only went to 3 websites (Dell, Alienware and some other), read the specs, and said what he though of it.
Completely useless. Glad I use AdBlock. That site doesn't deserve a cent of advertisement money.
Reviews on spec (Score:5, Informative)
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While I cannot say I spent any quality time with Vista, Window XP-64 is a rock solid gaming OS. With 8G of physical RAM, I've found I can alt-tab in and out of a game with my resource intensive apps running. Using 3.2G of RAM on the 32-bit version of XP, I had to be more cautious.
Granted, 4G RAM chips (since most laptops only have room for two) is a bit outside most (sane) folk's budget. While my laptop has 4G and a 64-bit OS, the video and CPU are not quite there for gaming.
Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regular slashdot users will remember the site's article from a few weeks ago, which analysed the Best Gaming PCs that Money can Buy.
Whereas regular Slashdot editors might remember how the last article was panned by readers, and might have ceased spamming us with articles from this site.
They might also remember to capitalise the name of their own site, but I guess all this is too much to hope for.
I reject these totally (Score:5, Informative)
A gaming laptop review without reviewing one from Sager?
Ridiculous. I love my Sager, and the company is great.
http://www.sagernotebook.com/ [sagernotebook.com]
why? (Score:2)
Its dissapointing that even though laptops have largely taken over from desktops for general personal computing use, still no laptop even comes close to the price/performance and especially upgradability of an atx case system.
If your primary motivation is high-GPU games like crysis, you're still way better served by a conventional PC box rather than a laptop.
Whats the best bicycle for crossing the atlantic? (Score:2, Funny)
the best one money can buy (Score:5, Interesting)
the gaming laptop was contrived as a marketing competition tool to push the limits of the laptop form-factor with complete disregard for longevity and end user functionality.
This list is a joke. I don't get it... (Score:2)
Even the "budget" laptops on their list aren't as powerful as the Gateway P-7811FX [gateway.com], which leaves those laptops in the dust for a couple of hundred dollars less...
Seriously -- the Gateway has 9800M GTS graphics (compared to the puny 8400M models they listed in the "budget" section), comes with 4GB of RAM -- AND it costs a couple of hundred dollars less.
Re:Too much RAM? (Score:5, Funny)
GPU - ATI 4870 X2
Price: ~$655
If Golem had a computer, this would be his precious.
The guy can't even spell "Gollum".
Geek license revoked!
Parent
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You may want to look that word up some time.
In addition to the obvious mythological reference, which has nothing to do with Tolkien, the Hebrew word 'Golem' means 'fool', 'stupid' or 'clueless'. So, with that in mind, the review can be read as "If a stupid, clueless fool had a computer, this would be it."
The only way you could praise it more would be to say that it has "more schmaltz for your schlemiel".
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Considering the author had blatantly incorrect things like:
I would bet you all the money I have right now that he didn't know the Hebrew meaning for golem, and was in fact trying and failing to reference the Lord of the Rings character. It's very nice that you give him the benefit of the doubt, but the writer gives way too many places to doubt to make that even slightly noble.
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And the use of a different name implies that it is not.
And yes, you have.
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Not completely. Sure, they won't see all of the ram with 32-bit windows. But, in my experiences, windows will recognize between 3.25 to 3.5GB in a 4GB system.
Ideally, 3GB would be the config to use for modern gaming PC's running 32-bit windows (gaming benchmarks seem to indicate that 3GB is better than 2GB for current-gen games). However, if you don't run matched pairs, your ram isn't in dual channel mode.
So what do you do? Run 4GB across 2 or 4 sticks. It's your best, albeit slightly wasteful, memory conf
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I question the sanity of sticking SLI/RAID0 configurations with enormous screens in a notebook formfactor. You're essentially giving up on the idea of portability, particularly given that the battery in one of those things can't even keep the machine running for an hour.
You still get portability. You just don't get to be unplugged. A notebook like this means that you can sit on your couch and play games, or move into your bedroom, or take your computer with you on vacation and play some, etc. Lugging around your desktop is probably not an option in many cases.