Gaming Laptops - Hardware & Software

So as of late I have found myself being away from home often and away from my PC, though I'd still like to play games on a laptop. What I've found is a lot of overpriced things filled with a lot of RAM. What I am looking for is a laptop that will last me a few years, and can let me play latest games well. I was thinking of these in particular: [url]http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_VN7-591G_Core_i5_8GB_1TB_15.6_inch_Full_HD_IPS_Laptop_NX.MUVEK.001/version.asp[/url] [url]http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_VN7-591G_Core_i7_12B_2TB_60GB_SSD_15.6_inch_Full_HD_IPS_NVIDIA__NX.MUVEK.046/version.asp[/url] [url]http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_VN7-791G_Core_i7_8GB_1TB_128GB_SSD_17.3_inch_Full_HD_NVIDIA_9_S_NX.MUTEK.002/version.asp[/url] That leaves me of a budget up to £1200 I suppose. These laptops seem to be good besides a few reported problems with wifi, no optic drive etc. Is there anyone here who has a gaming laptop and can share me their experiences?

I'd seriously recommend looking at the benchmarks of the mobile graphics in any gaming laptop you're looking at, I can't see the 960m performing too well. There's lots of benchmarks so you can go with whichever one you trust, but here's one list of them: [url]http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html[/url] Some numbers for typical mobile cards vs the highest ranking non-mobile card for comparison: GTX 980 TI: 11,168 980m: 6,286 970m: 4,622 880m: 3,823 670mx: 2,089 960m: 1,588 I have the 670mx in my laptop and games as recent as shadow of mordor are still running alright on medium ish specs but it's getting pretty dated. I'd recommend at least getting a 970m if you want to be gaming, but maybe someone who's tried the 9 series mobile cards can pitch in, I haven't.

Passmark scores are about as completely useless for GPU's as they are as a CPU gaming benchmark. Only thing that matters is real life benchmarks playing the games you want.

I've considered looking at Alienware, but from what I have seen there are a lot of gimmicks in this business. [QUOTE=Elspin;48486700]I can't see the 960m performing too well[/QUOTE] I had a look around, the 960m seems to preform effectively for what I want (GTA V as a standing point, for example), most other games I play are really things like WoW, Mount and Blade and maybe future releases such as Fallout 4.

I have an Acer V15 with 16GB of ram ill be hard pressed to fully use, a 960M & an i74720 and it can apparently run CS:GO, local server with bots at 4k with >30FPS ( when at 1080p 60fps). [t]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/1468524577322699646/47C0543253F06C9C7FF7CF25D800672E36EAD30E/[/t] I haven't bothered putting any other games on it because I haven't needed to. But ill install GTA:V and see whats up because its whats shown in the screenshots on the 3 links you posted. As for the laptop itself, I like it because it doesn't really look like you can play games on it. The only thing that may point to it being a gaming laptop is the fact that the keyboard has a red back light. I personally hadn't had any issues with wireless connectivity, seems to work just as well as any other devices that are in my house.

[quote]at 4k(1080p60)[/quote] What does this exactly mean?

[QUOTE=Levelog;48487091]What does this exactly mean?[/QUOTE] I meant when I had the resolution at 1080 it ran at 60fps for me.

[QUOTE=Call Me Kiwi;48487105]I meant when I had the resolution at 1080 it ran at 60fps for me.[/QUOTE] Okay, you edited the post to make more sense.

[QUOTE=Call Me Kiwi;48487085] I haven't bothered putting any other games on it because I haven't needed to. But ill install GTA:V and see whats up because its whats shown in the screenshots on the 3 links you posted.[/QUOTE] That would be great if you can test it out, do you have the 4GB or the 2GB 960m?

[QUOTE=Elspin;48486700]I'd seriously recommend looking at the benchmarks of the mobile graphics in any gaming laptop you're looking at, I can't see the 960m performing too well. There's lots of benchmarks so you can go with whichever one you trust, but here's one list of them: [url]http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html[/url] Some numbers for typical mobile cards vs the highest ranking non-mobile card for comparison: GTX 980 TI: 11,168 980m: 6,286 970m: 4,622 880m: 3,823 670mx: 2,089 960m: 1,588 I have the 670mx in my laptop and games as recent as shadow of mordor are still running alright on medium ish specs but it's getting pretty dated. I'd recommend at least getting a 970m if you want to be gaming, but maybe someone who's tried the 9 series mobile cards can pitch in, I haven't.[/QUOTE] I agree with levelog this scores are useless. use this instead: [url]http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html[/url] [editline]18th August 2015[/editline] I would reccomend MSI gaming laptops. They make actual gaming laptops and not the hybrids acer makes. Not to mention Acer's track record is pretty bad to begin with.

[QUOTE=taipan;48488091]I would reccomend MSI gaming laptops. They make actual gaming laptops and not the hybrids acer makes. Not to mention Acer's track record is pretty bad to begin with.[/QUOTE] What MSI laptops would you recommend under my budget?

[QUOTE=Levelog;48486709]Passmark scores are about as completely useless for GPU's as they are as a CPU gaming benchmark. Only thing that matters is real life benchmarks playing the games you want.[/QUOTE] If all you're doing is playing games, then yeah that's the end goal. Sometimes it can be hard to find accurate FPS measurements by card though, typically they just throw out a number and you wonder what the fuck that's about. Like in some games you can look at the floor and skyrocket your FPS to 200+ from 30, how are we supposed to figure out what the game will be like without knowing their methodology? Open world games are particularly notorious for this, FPS variance based on how much is on the screen can be monumentally high So yeah benchmarks can sometimes be dodgy but it's not like FPS measurements can't be just as much so depending on where you get them. If you're really lucky someone will have done a video on some games you want to play with your exact hardware (easier on a laptop of course) but in my experience that's uncommon.

I hope you don't mind me asking a question here too, but this seems the most relevant of threads to put it. I'm looking for a gaming laptop around $500 bucks that can play things like Gzdoom/other stuff that uses OpenGL (with resource intensive mods like Brutal Doom) and other old-oldish games (like dos era and half life 2 era games). I want to be able to max it out or at least get close. I'm not expecting to run games like Crysis on it, I just want something to play classic games and mods until I can get back to using my actual pc. Also, if possible I'd prefer it to use AMD graphics just because that is what I'm used to, but I'll use an Nvidia one if I gotta.

[QUOTE=Elspin;48488798]If all you're doing is playing games, then yeah that's the end goal. Sometimes it can be hard to find accurate FPS measurements by card though, typically they just throw out a number and you wonder what the fuck that's about. Like in some games you can look at the floor and skyrocket your FPS to 200+ from 30, how are we supposed to figure out what the game will be like without knowing their methodology? Open world games are particularly notorious for this, FPS variance based on how much is on the screen can be monumentally high So yeah benchmarks can sometimes be dodgy but it's not like FPS measurements can't be just as much so depending on where you get them. If you're really lucky someone will have done a video on some games you want to play with your exact hardware (easier on a laptop of course) but in my experience that's uncommon.[/QUOTE] The problem is that its a completely synthetic benchmark. That's why it's useless. There are game engine bench marks like Valley or Heaven that are very good at comparing game performance. [editline]18th August 2015[/editline] Also if a review site doesn't state their testing methodology or keep specs the same across other variables they're a shit site.

you could always get a basic i5 laptop and get an enclosure you can put a gpu in. at that point, even a 960 would beat the 980m. just make sure the laptop has the ports for it. (i.e. Thunderbolt/pcie/other) [url]http://www.amazon.com/Laptop-External-PCI-E-Graphics-Card/dp/B00Q4VMLF6[/url] [url]http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/running-an-nvidia-gtx-780-ti-over-thunderbolt-2[/url] this would also mean the laptop is lighter, but the interface and gpu is heavier.

So on my laptop i7 4720HQ & a 960m 4gb, with GTAV set to "NVIDIA's optimized game settings via NVIDIA's GeForce Experence" So with the odd resolution of 2048*1152 here's the result using gta's ingame benchmark: [QUOTE]Frames Per Second (Higher is better) Min, Max, Avg Pass 0, 15.544509, 57.709377, 44.650486 Pass 1, 14.484761, 31.477842, 24.701544 Pass 2, 17.405001, 57.974846, 30.044598 Pass 3, 17.875517, 36.912743, 29.023909 Pass 4, 14.085132, 72.990578, 38.525970 [/QUOTE] Dropping down to 1080p [QUOTE]Frames Per Second (Higher is better) Min, Max, Avg Pass 0, 14.522461, 64.593071, 51.659695 Pass 1, 16.720976, 32.794498, 25.096853 Pass 2, 16.552065, 36.065590, 26.106012 Pass 3, 21.494301, 36.721718, 28.495981 Pass 4, 2.071409, 66.191399, 45.212536 [/QUOTE] Afterwards I dicked around for a little bit with it still at 1080p perfectly playable /enjoyable. Didn't get a chance to use gta online yet though.

The Aspire V Nitro makes for a pretty good workstation laptop and it's worth buying if you have a desktop (the screen is excellent and it's pretty light), but I wouldn't expect it to play games 3-4 years down the line on anything but lower settings.

[QUOTE=Vasili;48488612]What MSI laptops would you recommend under my budget?[/QUOTE] [url]https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-202-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828[/url] [url]https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-193-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828[/url] [editline]19th August 2015[/editline] [url]https://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=959&catid=1828&sortby=manual_sort&catid=1828&mfrid=93[/url]

[QUOTE=taipan;48493019] [url]https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-193-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828[/url] [/QUOTE] This one looks good, but I can't see a lot of difference it has to this that is significantly cheaper: [url]http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_VN7-591G_Core_i5_8GB_1TB_15.6_inch_Full_HD_IPS_Laptop_NX.MUVEK.001/version.asp[/url] Would you say its really worth splashing out the money for a MSI? I also found the same MSI, I think, which seems to have a better card and is also cheaper [url]http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/msi-ge62-2qe-15.6-inch-nvidia-geforce-gtx-965m-sharkbay-i7-8gb-128gb-ssd-9s7-16j112-020/version.asp[/url]

Well the Acer doesn't have an SSD in there and is a little bit cheaper built, but my friend has one and swapping in an M.2 SSD is pretty easy (just unscrew the keyboard panel and lift up). Unless you can find something with a 970 or 980M, or battery life longer than ~4 hours casual use, I'd just stick with the Acer for the price. I do remember the Clevos from [URL="http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/"]PCSpecialist[/URL] being a fairly alright deal in the UK, though. You can find the 15.6" "Defiance" laptop with a 980M and an i7-4720hq for only 1109GBP including VAT without a hard drive, which you can find cheaper elsewhere and install easily. [img]https://i.imgur.com/S0FfZC2.png[/img]

I thought Acer was crap, have they improved things lately or is it only the under $1000 one's the shitty ones?

I bought the Acer selling for £720 for now, seems to suit my range currently as I'm not doing that much high ranged gaming. I'll test it out when it arrives and do a little feedback on how it plays. In the future I may buy a higher end one, but I think this works for a beginner like me. Thanks for the information and help.

[QUOTE=garychencool;48494526]I thought Acer was crap, have they improved things lately or is it only the under $1000 one's the shitty ones?[/QUOTE] I own a V7 and my friend the V15 and we both like our laptops. They're a little plastic and creak a tiny bit and the keyboards aren't the best, but the displays are wonderful and they both run pretty quiet because they're dual-fan designs.

I would say ASUS ROG GL551JW-DS71 is good after doing a load of research. [editline]27th August 2015[/editline] ASUS RoG are the best option that i ever see, look at [URL="http://gaminglaptopunder1000.org/gaming-laptops-under-1000/"]http://gaminglaptopunder1000.org/gaming-laptops-under-1000/[/URL]