• Buying a Laptop
    10 replies, posted
I need your help Facepunch! I'm going to be going off to college next year and my parents decided to buy me a laptop. It's obviously going to have to do school-type stuff (word process, programming (computer science major)) and I'm going to end up gaming on it as well (Skyrim, BF3, Minecraft, Garry's Mod). I was originally looking at this: [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230111[/url] But realized that's probably pretty impractical in terms of battery life; I do need this to last through classes, after all. And you'll probably bash on me for considering it in the first place. So my next choice would have been: [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230077[/url] My parents don't really have a strict budget as far as I know; they seemed willing to buy the first one, though it would wait until graduation. So anything $800 or less seems best. So what are your suggestions, Facepunch?
If you're like me you'll hardly use your laptop for notes, it's highly impractical and I always end up here or on Reddit. So you'll probably just want something you can plug in in your dorm or whatever and can take it somewhere if you need to, and so long as you use power management, the first one will have decent battery life anyway, it's an 8-cell battery. Besides, the first one also has amazing cooling. My friend has a more expensive model and it's never more than warm to the touch. Keep in mind the first will be a pain in the ass to carry around though.
Yeah, the size of the first one definitely put me off; whatever I needs to be rather portable, and I'm not too keen on carrying around something as big as that. If it's a good enough deal, I wouldn't mind, I'd just rather have something a tad smaller. The second one sold out already, so are there any other suggestions you or anyone else hopefully reading could make?
Great laptop for $800 and will pull off everything you asked for, BF3 wont be that great cause its a laptop but it will be good none the less. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230131[/url] Its not retardedly big either and you can get an external battery if you want in case you think you will run out of battery life.
Well, just because it's a laptop doesn't mean it wouldn't be great though, right? I mean if anything wouldn't that laptop still be able to run BF3 preeeetty well? We might just have different standards for "great" and "good", but I digress.
[QUOTE=Kamikazemelon;33482774]Well, just because it's a laptop doesn't mean it wouldn't be great though, right? I mean if anything wouldn't that laptop still be able to run BF3 preeeetty well? We might just have different standards for "great" and "good", but I digress.[/QUOTE] It will probably run BF3 on medium at about 35 frames without AA. Then again not too sure since its a lower res then a regular monitor but the gtx 540m is a very powerful laptop gpu and the i5 2340m is also quite powerful.
[QUOTE=Zerokateo;33482952]It will probably run BF3 on medium at about 35 frames without AA. Then again not too sure since its a lower res then a regular monitor but the gtx 540m is a very powerful laptop gpu and the i5 2340m is also quite powerful.[/QUOTE] It'll run BF3 on [I]low[/I] at 35fps.
[QUOTE=Zerokateo;33482952]It will probably run BF3 on medium at about 35 frames without AA. Then again not too sure since its a lower res then a regular monitor but the gtx 540m is a very powerful laptop gpu and the i5 2340m is also quite powerful.[/QUOTE] No it seriously isn't. The GT 540M is the equivalent of the old GT 240. [editline]29th November 2011[/editline] By the way. The GT 240/540M is slower than the 8800GT which is the MINIMUM requirement for BF3. [editline]29th November 2011[/editline] The BST6 you initially selected is actually a very good laptop. An alternative is the [url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230021]BST7[/url] which despite the Suffix is not a better laptop overall. The mobility HD 5870 is faster but it contains a slower HDD, less ram, and the old core i7. But the GPU may lead to slightly better game performance.
Just how tangible of a difference is there between the two? Is the difference in HDD speed etc. really going to hurt much in the end?
[QUOTE=Kamikazemelon;33483930]Just how tangible of a difference is there between the two? Is the difference in HDD speed etc. really going to hurt much in the end?[/QUOTE] Unless you plan to do mostly gaming I'd get the BST6. The faster processor and more RAM will definitely help in general performance, the faster HDD will also reduce loading times as well as startup times.
[QUOTE=garrynohome;33484107]Unless you plan to do mostly gaming I'd get the BST6. The faster processor and more RAM will definitely help in general performance, the faster HDD will also reduce loading times as well as startup times.[/QUOTE] In terms of gaming, is the BST6 really that much worse than the BST7? I do game a lot, I just don't mind if it's not at super-high settings; my desktop, before it (finally) gave out just recently, had a single 150 GB HDD, single processor, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 8600... so yeah.
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