Buying On A Budget

Hello all,

Im looking to potentially purchase a new laptop, which is capable of playing games at the level of Guild Wars and above as efficiently as possible. The only thing is I have a budget of 750$. So anywhere from 500-750$ is the price range Im looking in. Im not the most computer literate person when it comes to all the different parts of computer besides the basic RAM and Graphics card, but as far as what models are better and all that I have no clue. So, Im just looking for some recommendations. All input is appreciated!

Thanks!

This is the best I could find at the $750 range, as far as CPU vs GPU balance is concerned.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115796

The laptop Lord Sojar linked to will blow through GW1 and GW2 ( I suspect) with ease, and will handle a great deal of other games well too. I'm not crazy about the 5400rpm hard drive, but it's still a good buy at that price.

I agree, this is probably the best you can get in your budget. Most gaming laptops are rather expensive, >1000$ in some cases and >1500$ for most of them.

If you don't mind refurbished and last gen hardware, you could always look at this one. I'd be careful since some people experienced issues with it, it's the Best Buy version of the ASUS G72 and those are not exactly on par with the asus version. You can also ask at www.notebookreview.com, they have a forum dedicated to buying advice on notebooks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220733

I still prefer the one suggested by Sojar for the most recent hardware, probably better battery life. You can easily change your HDD when the time comes when you need a faster one. 5400 RPM is enough for GW but you'll certainly appreciate a 7200RPM if you intend to play recent games.

I doubt it will blow through GW2 considering the slow processor

The i3 is far from slow... it will eat GW2 like a fat man eating a doughnut.

Cool thankyou guys, any other computers closer to 500-600 price range that you would recommend? Remember Im not needing a computer thatll be amazing for gaming. I just need one thatll work at a decent graphic level. Thanks again for all the input so far.

Anything lower than what I posted, and you are setting yourself up for disappointment. It doesn't get much better for $750 bucks my friend.

That's quite an assumption to make for a game that we know nothing of the requirements of due to it being nowhere near even hitting beta yet.


Personally, i'm inclined to agree with Lourens. A 2.2GHz dualcore of any flavor is not very speedy. Especially with an ever increasing number of games favoring quads these days.

the i3 is worlds ahead of any other dual core my friend - it will handle GW2 just fine I'm sure - it's not like we are talking about a major FPS release like Crysis 2 etc. here.

Okay thankyou all for the input. I think my question has been answered then. Thanks for everything!

If you didn't buy your gaming laptop yet, check fatwallet.com or slickdeals.net. They are pretty keen on gaming laptop deals and can help you get the most bang for the buck. Also many computer deals happen around september if you can wait. That's cuz back to school.

The vast majority of video games will bottleneck with the GPU long before the CPU starts having an issues.

A lot of games aren't even designed with multiprocessing in mind, and you could count the high-requirement games that properly utilize Quad cores on a single hand.

At this current time, anything that will cause a 2.2 dual core any issues is a very poorly programmed game (like Crysis, which is pathetically inefficient).

Gta4 uses quad cores and is from april 2008... since gw2 is gonna be a mmo it will make good use of quad cores

GTA4 benefited greatly from a quad core, but it was alos a miserably poor excuse of a game as far as coding goes and was far better as a console game - also a game being an MMO does not mean that it will run better on a quad core, in fact if anything it's likely to make less difference since MMOs are made to be more readily available to the hardware illiterate masses and most of them don't have a quad core yet.

A better example would be Bad Company II - but I promise that GW2 won't take anywheres near the graphix muscle to max out on a 22" LCD that it does for this game. XD

I think the vast majority of you are failing to understand a key element in programming. Multi core support isn't defined... it's a load balancing feature. Games can support 2, 4, 8, 16 cores. How parallel they are depends heavily on the engine. Considering GW2 is using a modified version of the GW1 engine, it stands (heavily I might add) to reason that it will utilize a single or dual core CPU best, and will be GPU bound.

The other fact is, you don't throw current quad core CPUs into a laptop and expect good battery life. And, before any of you try it, HyperThreading a quad core does not make, so don't even go there.

Hyperthreading a quadcore does not make ...what?

Sense?
It faster?
Breakfast?

It was a reverse sentence.

Hyperthreading doesn't make a dual core CPU into a true quad core.

I think I may have found an option that I can buy at my local best buy. It seems to compare to the Acer Sojar mentioned above. Ive learned alot looking at PCs lately, and it seems to be very comparable actually. It has the i3 which everyone is saying I should get if not higher which the acer also has. Its a little more travel friendly, (3.5lbs lighter t han the acer) however with that 3.5 lbs or so comes 3 inches off the screen (not a big deal). With this Asus I see that I am also stepping up the size of the hard drive to 500gbs instead of 320. Plus it also comes with a dedicated graphics card which I think is probably good for handling GW and other similar mmo's at max settings or close. I dont need anything spectacular that can handle crysis at max settings or anything along those lines. Anyways heres the link tell me what you guys think

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+L...&skuId=9964891

It looks very comparable and its more convenient as far as not having to pay for shipping and being able to deal with my local store. not to mention its far more travel friendly, but seems to have nearly as much power and everything it needs to handle the games Im looking at.

Lets get some opinions on this though.

I'd never buy either of these laptops because they have 5400 rpm hard drives which are old and slow. Why spend a lot of money for a bunch of fast parts just to have your system waiting on a sluggish hard drive? Starting any program, transferring data, loading Windows, and loading Guild Wars maps will all be slower than they should be because of those hard drives.

7200 rpm laptop hard drives aren't much more expensive than 5400's. But manufacturers are looking to cut corners wherever they can.