Gaming Laptop Suggestions from Best Buy

gokhanuzmez

Here is the link, its best buy because I will finance payment options. I got few in my mind already, but would like to see your opinion people.

My Budget is between 800 - 1100 Dollars

Goal is being able to play smooth Massive PvP battles with semi High settings and have above 40 fps at all times.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pc-gaming-hardware/gaming-laptops/pcmcat287600050003.c?id=pcmcat287600050003

Looking forward to see your opinions, I appreciate it already.

FriendlyTarget

building your own will produce much better results. I suggest newegg.com. Take a look at what they have because best buy laptops are usually custom designed for best buy and generally much worse in quality and reliability than actual models. I'm telling you this from experience of having owned a few, and building my own afterwards.

Zameri

My suggestion is building your own computer for the same price. If you need it to be mobile like a laptop get the first result on the page. Never use a gaming laptop from alienware or any brands that are not asus or msi. That is my suggestion.

FriendlyTarget

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834313741

This Laptop has a similar price, BUT it has 16 GB of ram, 2 SLI Nvidia graphics cards, an SSD for your operating system so it starts faster, 1 T Hard drive, and it will poop all over anything best buy will have to offer for another 3-4 years.

Hawke

Dont buy from Best Buy...

Laptops are tough to build on your own and if possible, you get far more bang for your buck by building your own desktop pc.

However... I did find this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231115

And there are a ton of laptops that could be used for TESO.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006740 600029658&IsNodeId=1&name=Dedicated Card#!PriceMin=800&PriceMax=1125

Hawke

FriendlyTarget wrote: »

newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834313741

This Laptop has a similar price, BUT it has 16 GB of ram, 2 SLI Nvidia graphics cards, an SSD for your operating system so it starts faster, 1 T Hard drive, and it will poop all over anything best buy will have to offer for another 3-4 years.

I saw that one. I just wasn't sure on leveno

It's a nice one.

gokhanuzmez

Yes they are all great but if you read my comment, I need to put payment options, I cant pay it all in once

SuperScrubby

Almost all these other vendors offer some sort of payment plan. You can also do the same with a desktop. Either way in this day and age there are a lot of options even with smaller companies that allow you to get billed month by month.

But like a lot of people have suggested stay away from gaming laptops. They are harder to maintain and if something internal goes out its almost always impossible to fix/replace by yourself. Desktops are basically like grown up electronic Lego.

Relyk04

I have the Lenovo Y510p and it runs very smoothly on ESO... Even though Nvidia has not yet released an SLI profile. Basically, it runs around 40 FPS on Ultra with just one GPU functioning at the moment so the results are only going to improve once SLI drivers are released. Which btw does anyone have an update on the SLI profile for this game?

Khazaad

Zameri wrote: »

Never use a gaming laptop from alienware or... [/color]

Says the guy who's never had the luxury of owning an Alienware rig..

therain93

I run TESO just fine on an Asus G74-SX that I bought...Black Friday 2011 from newegg. Please note, this was not the same sku sold by best buy 3 years ago (that maxed out resolution at something like 1600x900, it's full 1080).

Video settings are:
Graphics Quality - Custom
Texture Quality - High
Subsampling quality - High
Shadow Quality - Medium
water reflection quality - off
Particle Density - high
View Distance - 37
Ambient Occlusion - on
Bloom - off
Depth of field - on
Distortion - on
Sunlight rays - on
Grass on

Windows performance scores are:
Processor 7.4
Memory 7.6
Graphics (desktop performance for windows aero) 7.2
Gaming Graphics 7.2
Primary Disk 7.9

---

When I got the rig, I did upgrade to 8gb of RAM, install a better wireless card, and put a crucial SSD in (although teso is not installed on it) before installing windows 7 from scratch.

Why get the gaming laptop? Well, I spent 2 decades building machines, occasionally upgrading, so that's not the problem (for me). Upgrading can be cheaper, but 20 years later, I have quite a bit more disposable income too, so that's not a problem.

For me, it's more lifestyle -- it's a space issue and a spouse issue. A gaming laptop is far more conducive to a happy household (and it can come with me when I travel to other destinations). Furthermore, I can plug it into my 46 inch HDTvV when I want to play games on a really big screen, otherwise the 19.3" hd screen works just fine for being a foot away from my face ( ' :

Also, as amazing as the tech upgrades have been these past few years, they simply aren't occurring in leaps and bounds any more. 70 FPS? Great, but, the eye doesn't really distinguish anything above 30FPS.... The laptop is 2.5 years old and running everything I throw at it very well so far. Sure, not max quality for TESO, but the absence of a high quality shadow is not impacting my enjoyment in the slightest.... ( ' :

Anyway, nothing against boxes, but gaming laptops have their place too.

---

Edit: As for recommendations --
--CPU, Graphics, and display usually can't be upgraded in gaming laptops (with some exceptions) so those should be the specs to focus on.
--Fast memory - 8-16gb, although you can upgrade to get this
--SSD for the operating system as well as installing your primary gaming is beneficial, just make sure you can get inside to install it.
--Keep a secondary disk based drive in there for storage -- if an ssd dies, you lose it, there's no guaranteed recovery, unlike disk-based systems.

Also note, any laptop you buy, you are likely going to be stripping out bloatware or completing a clean install of the OS, which will require grabbing appropriate drivers and an image of the OS install disks from Microsoft/digital river/whoever. Activating the OS won't be a problem, be it on line or even a phone call.

For reference, here's my guide to an ssd install to measure your technical intrepidness:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/627085-xc1-thanksgiving-day-ssd-installation-guide.html

Notebookreview.com Forums is a great spot for information, but be mindful as people go there for help, i.e. people don't frequently go to the internet to post all of their awesome experiences (except maybe on facebook ; ' ), so take some of the information with a grain of salt. At the very least, it prepares you for upcoming challenges.

As a very technically savvy person, I would never buy a laptop for my own personal use from bestbuy. I bought one there for my dad, but the quality and price points don't line up for me as an educated buyer and upgrader.

Best of luck!

Ri_Dariit

Khazaad wrote: »

Zameri wrote: »

Never use a gaming laptop from alienware or...

Says the guy who's never had the luxury of owning an Alienware rig..

This one must agree with both of your sentiments. The important part of the statement is the time frame. Ri'Dariit remembers when Alienware was a private high quality computer machine building boutique. Nice computers they made and had pretty logo on top of it. Then evil Dell people came, and paid many Septims for company and name. Then the Alienware became Dell machines with fancy name, but Dell philosophy build (Cheap parts, cheap PC's "dood, you're getting a dell!) This one felt sorry for anyone who received that comment and makes Khajiit run like seeing horrible dog-creature.

Khajiit has suggestion for @gokhanuzmez getting new laptop.
ASUS G750 (Ri'Dariit has one, last year's model, still runs everything on max)
This one has been having 10+ (human) years good experience, sometimes things broke or made bad, but ASUS always replace even out of warranty!
Lenovo Y510 (Khajiit's friend has and plays on max settings too) Lenovo subsidiary of IBM, make good think pads for years. Friends swears by it, little cheaper than ASUS.

Still, portability should be only considered if needed, you have not much inventory, or constantly involved in caravan travels, get it. If you stay home always, build yourself big box rig for less Septims. Newegg, this one suggests, they have payment plans and good service, unless you live in area of California, mostly cheapest price too!

gokhanuzmez

therain93 wrote: »

I run TESO just fine on an Asus G74-SX that I bought...Black Friday 2011 from newegg. Please note, this was not the same sku sold by best buy 3 years ago (that maxed out resolution at something like 1600x900, it's full 1080).

Video settings are:
Graphics Quality - Custom
Texture Quality - High
Subsampling quality - High
Shadow Quality - Medium
water reflection quality - off
Particle Density - high
View Distance - 37
Ambient Occlusion - on
Bloom - off
Depth of field - on
Distortion - on
Sunlight rays - on
Grass on

Windows performance scores are:
Processor 7.4
Memory 7.6
Graphics (desktop performance for windows aero) 7.2
Gaming Graphics 7.2
Primary Disk 7.9

---

When I got the rig, I did upgrade to 8gb of RAM, install a better wireless card, and put a crucial SSD in (although teso is not installed on it) before installing windows 7 from scratch.

Why get the gaming laptop? Well, I spent 2 decades building machines, occasionally upgrading, so that's not the problem (for me). Upgrading can be cheaper, but 20 years later, I have quite a bit more disposable income too, so that's not a problem.

For me, it's more lifestyle -- it's a space issue and a spouse issue. A gaming laptop is far more conducive to a happy household (and it can come with me when I travel to other destinations). Furthermore, I can plug it into my 46 inch HDTvV when I want to play games on a really big screen, otherwise the 19.3" hd screen works just fine for being a foot away from my face ( ' :

Also, as amazing as the tech upgrades have been these past few years, they simply aren't occurring in leaps and bounds any more. 70 FPS? Great, but, the eye doesn't really distinguish anything above 30FPS.... The laptop is 2.5 years old and running everything I throw at it very well so far. Sure, not max quality for TESO, but the absence of a high quality shadow is not impacting my enjoyment in the slightest.... ( ' :

Anyway, nothing against boxes, but gaming laptops have their place too.

---

Edit: As for recommendations --
--CPU, Graphics, and display usually can't be upgraded in gaming laptops (with some exceptions) so those should be the specs to focus on.
--Fast memory - 8-16gb, although you can upgrade to get this
--SSD for the operating system as well as installing your primary gaming is beneficial, just make sure you can get inside to install it.
--Keep a secondary disk based drive in there for storage -- if an ssd dies, you lose it, there's no guaranteed recovery, unlike disk-based systems.

Also note, any laptop you buy, you are likely going to be stripping out bloatware or completing a clean install of the OS, which will require grabbing appropriate drivers and an image of the OS install disks from Microsoft/digital river/whoever. Activating the OS won't be a problem, be it on line or even a phone call.

For reference, here's my guide to an ssd install to measure your technical intrepidness:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/627085-xc1-thanksgiving-day-ssd-installation-guide.html

Notebookreview.com Forums is a great spot for information, but be mindful as people go there for help, i.e. people don't frequently go to the internet to post all of their awesome experiences (except maybe on facebook ; ' ), so take some of the information with a grain of salt. At the very least, it prepares you for upcoming challenges.

As a very technically savvy person, I would never buy a laptop for my own personal use from bestbuy. I bought one there for my dad, but the quality and price points don't line up for me as an educated buyer and upgrader.

Best of luck!

Thank you so much for your time you put in this comment, its been helpful.

eruexe

Follow the Asus G series.

I own a G53. But haven't logged in past char select since I am busy with my desktop

Danarchist

Bought an Asus laptop (the 'stealth bomber') from best buy years ago. Within a month there were half a dozen dead cells on the monitor and a few other issues. I took it back in to get it repaired and they told me they would have to send it to Asus. I waited over a month and walked back in to see where my laptop was. They explained that Asus had sent it back to them stating there were no issues with it and someone forgot to call me... After opening it up and showing the geeksquad guy the spots on the screen he asked me about 3 times if I had dropped it or left it open in the sun. I am a NSE with 21 years of experience. To this day I still have the laptop sitting in my den, still has the same dead cells on the screen.
I second the "do not buy from best buy"

gokhanuzmez

I am really glad to hear all complaining about best buy, I really dont care for these reasons

- I purchased 3 laptops in 4 years from best buy, had zero problems, and when I had one, they have the most friendliest stuff that helped me immediately.
- They gave me various discounts ( besides my mac)
- They offer financial payment
- They are there when I need to see them if there is a problem, I have never deal with geek squad but I guess its a FL thing that they are extremely helpful


Besides that, I would love to hear more opinions on the LAPTOP not best buy.

Thanks

therain93

Danarchist wrote: »

Bought an Asus laptop (the 'stealth bomber') from best buy years ago. Within a month there were half a dozen dead cells on the monitor and a few other issues. I took it back in to get it repaired and they told me they would have to send it to Asus. I waited over a month and walked back in to see where my laptop was. They explained that Asus had sent it back to them stating there were no issues with it and someone forgot to call me... After opening it up and showing the geeksquad guy the spots on the screen he asked me about 3 times if I had dropped it or left it open in the sun. I am a NSE with 21 years of experience. To this day I still have the laptop sitting in my den, still has the same dead cells on the screen.
I second the "do not buy from best buy"

And this was a bit of what I was referencing earlier -- in the past Best Buy has carried different skus of what should otherwise be the same model and it's typically been lower quality. With that written, I would like to echo previous comments on how reliable both Asus and IBM/Lenovo have been -- I've used products of theirs for probably going on 15 years now, be it laptop or mobos.

I realize Best Buy can be attractive for its financing options, but for any of those models, I would advise doing a google search to see what other sub-models may exist out there and then what the price points are. Based on your link and reviewing just the 1000-1250 models, my knee-jerk response is:

No to Sony, Samsung, HP and Acer based on reputation.
No to Alienware for the reason stated above -- it's re-badged Dell.
Unsure of Lenovo as I wasn't aware they entered the gaming market.
For Asus, on a quick google search, I see several variants of the g750 (JM, JX, JH, JB, JZ) -- some more standard than others. I'm not going to dig through the research.

Also, before buying, make sure you go look at a display model. 15.6 vs 17.3 for screensize makes a difference as does whether it is a glossy or matte. Keyboard layout and feel will be important too.

gokhanuzmez

therain93 wrote: »

Danarchist wrote: »

Bought an Asus laptop (the 'stealth bomber') from best buy years ago. Within a month there were half a dozen dead cells on the monitor and a few other issues. I took it back in to get it repaired and they told me they would have to send it to Asus. I waited over a month and walked back in to see where my laptop was. They explained that Asus had sent it back to them stating there were no issues with it and someone forgot to call me... After opening it up and showing the geeksquad guy the spots on the screen he asked me about 3 times if I had dropped it or left it open in the sun. I am a NSE with 21 years of experience. To this day I still have the laptop sitting in my den, still has the same dead cells on the screen.
I second the "do not buy from best buy"

And this was a bit of what I was referencing earlier -- in the past Best Buy has carried different skus of what should otherwise be the same model and it's typically been lower quality. With that written, I would like to echo previous comments on how reliable both Asus and IBM/Lenovo have been -- I've used products of theirs for probably going on 15 years now, be it laptop or mobos.

I realize Best Buy can be attractive for its financing options, but for any of those models, I would advise doing a google search to see what other sub-models may exist out there and then what the price points are. Based on your link and reviewing just the 1000-1250 models, my knee-jerk response is:

No to Sony, Samsung, HP and Acer based on reputation.
No to Alienware for the reason stated above -- it's re-badged Dell.
Unsure of Lenovo as I wasn't aware they entered the gaming market.
For Asus, on a quick google search, I see several variants of the g750 (JM, JX, JH, JB, JZ) -- some more standard than others. I'm not going to dig through the research.

Also, before buying, make sure you go look at a display model. 15.6 vs 17.3 for screensize makes a difference as does whether it is a glossy or matte. Keyboard layout and feel will be important too.

Thank you, I have been researching ASUS models aswell and it feels like its the best option, best buy just sent me a 100 gift card too, they are trying lol
I will probably go with i7 , 8 gb ram and 2 gb GPU gtx series

gokhanuzmez

Any more suggestions would be appreciated

lupusrex

I echo the sentiment that Asus is a good idea. I have one in this series:

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/X750JB/

I got it from Newegg about 6 months ago. It runs this, FF14, and other contemporary games on high settings, though ultra tends to slow down a bit. It does have a problem with heat with those high settings, so I got a cooling pad.

mrdodi

I use the Lenovo Y510p with i7-4702 16gb ram GT755M SLI and 1TB HDD (+8GB SDD...lol?). Game runs smooth at Ultra but one thing I'd like to note is the fact that the hdd is very very slow (no experience with other laptops as this is my first one). I'd definitely recommend this laptop but only if you can afford an SSD to switch over the HDD immediately.

therain93

mrdodi wrote: »

I use the Lenovo Y510p with i7-4702 16gb ram GT755M SLI and 1TB HDD (+8GB SDD...lol?). Game runs smooth at Ultra but one thing I'd like to note is the fact that the hdd is very very slow (no experience with other laptops as this is my first one). I'd definitely recommend this laptop but only if you can afford an SSD to switch over the HDD immediately.

I agree with the switching over to a quality SSD 100% -- it is one of the single best bang for the buck improvements that can be made to a machine. Also, doing it yourself with aftermarket parts will save you money. But, again, it's about access to the device and I do recommend that it be a machine that can support 2 drives.