£1000 Laptop suggestions

Xplosiv166

Xplosiv166

Xplosiv166

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17 Nov 2010
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13
Hi all,

I am looking for a 17/18" laptop that has a good CPU and GPU for work and gaming, not really bothered about battery life.

it will be used for software development mostly but i would like to be able to play the latest games on it a reasonable quality.

I have a Aspire 5920G (2Ghz core 2 duo and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 with 256 deticated RAM + Blueray + 4GB of RAM)which has been OK (apart from the battery life of 3mins) but the screen is far to small and the system in general irritably slow when running my development environments.

suggestions please

Thanks,
Andy
 
Hi

Will the i5430M be much faster than the Core 2 Duo i already have (2Ghz T5750 2mb cache)? (as this also has 4GB DDR3 + 7200rpm HDD and IMO is slow at loading and or doing anything)

also does the i5 support Virtualization so i can run XP mode in Windows 7 as the core 2 duo does not.

Should i go for the MSI 660? the problem i see here is that i find my acer which has a 15.4' TFT 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) far 2 small for using Visual Studio which has loads of screens?

there are some HP's and Dells but they only come with the ATi 5650 although they all have an i7 which would probably give me greater performance in windows, is the 5650 any good for games?

Thanks
ANdy
 
You can check on notebookcheck.com for comparative reviews on CPUs. Although the T5750 cinebench results looks broken.

You can also check there for technical details related to CPUs, or directly at Intel's website.

As for visual studio and laptops, you'll have to compromise. laptop screens have 768p, 900p, 1050p or 1080p, but not more. Generally, for 900p and above, you have to go with 17'' screens.

The 5650 is capable of playing in medium-high settings, while the HD5870 will play in high-very-high settings. The 5650 is a class below, and will suffer more at higher resolution (if you decide to go for high res screen).

Again, notebookcheck has benchmarks for games, and comparative results between various videocards.

Sony and Dell make configurable laptops, from i3 to i7, and also with high-res screen options. They would only offer a HD 5650 though, they are not gaming laptops. But for a grand, it's worth a look as you could get something quite well rounded.

With i7 and non-switchable graphics (the dedicated GPU is 'always-on', like in the Sony's and Dells), you'll get very poor battery life, and a very toasty laptop when under load.

There are some laptops with switchable graphics, and combined with a i5 or i3, offer quite good battery life. But you loose quad-core power. a i5 is actually a very decent processor for a laptop.

If you are concerned that the laptop is not responsive enough, it's worth investigating if you can replace the hard drive with something faster (they are often 5400rpm snails), or add a 60GB SSD as a boot / work disk, in a secondary drive bay. Some laptop have spare 2.5'' hard drive bays, or 1.8'' slots where you can add a second sata drive.

My UL30A, despite only having a SU2300 CULV processor @1.3GHz, feels quite nippy and responsive, with a SSD (Samsung PB22-J 128GB, which has actually pretty poor benchmarked performance compared to the new generation).
 
Hi,

Thanks for the very good guide, I think a 17" is the screen size i need. Basically looking at the MSI GX740 or an HP

The only difference between them is the HP has an i7 and a 5650 compared to the MSI which has a 5870 and i5

I am not sure if the MSI will be good for everyday computing (cheaper screen etc) i guess i will be using the laptop 80% of the time for work and development in windows an 20% of the time for gaming.

Can anybody suggest other 17" laptops as i cannot find many with a good spec.


Thanks for the help,
Andy
 
It's hard to say, unless you can get a good look at the MSI in the flesh. Finding a quality i7 with a good HD screen, and decent graphics is gonna be hard. As a gaming laptop, the MSI looks really good, but as a work platform, I'm not so sure. Heat, noise, screen quality, durability... It would be nice to have a comparison between the MSI and say, a Vaio in term of usability and quality, not just gaming.

A Vaio E 17'' with i7, HD 5650, 500GB 7,200 rpm drive, and 1080p screen is £1,130.

There is also the Dell Studio XPS 17 worth a look, although iirc, the graphics card is not as good, and I wouldn't go below a HD 5650 / GT330M.

Samsung introduced a new line of laptops, like the RF710. It's a 17'', 900p, with a i5-460m, a GT330M, and slick aluminium chassis. The i7 version is also £1,100. There is generally a big jump in price between a i7 quad core and a i5.

I suppose the best way to get a general idea about the models is to pop down to your local purple store and check them out. Build quality, screen quality, ...

Nowadays, it's really hard to get a true idea of true quality hands on. Everything is pretty much online, but checking out local stores is always an option to get an idea of a product, if it is available.

Acer, HP and Toshiba have loads of models as well, but they wont match the RF710 or the Vaio's in quality, although they are more easily available locally.

Personally, I'd stick with a i5, sacrifice some performance (iirc, Visual Studio does make use of multiple cores), but gain in quality. Similarly, I'd drop to a 2nd tier graphics card (HD 5650, HD5730), as they are quite capable at gaming already. However, with a Hi Res Screen, you'll have to play at a lower resolution, and sacrifice a bit of graphics quality. Note that the MackBook Pro's 15'' and 17'' share a lot of similarity with laptops like that, to give you an idea of some of the performance (Starcraft 2, World Of Worldcraft benchmarks for example).
 
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Hi,

What do you think of the HP Pavilion dv7-4180ea Entertainment I cannot link to it as the only place i can find it is on another e-retailers website, basically it is an i7, Ati 5650, 4GB Ram, Blue-ray player, 17" screen, BT etc for £867 so very close in price 2 the MSI GX740.

Do you think this is better than the MSI GX740? or do you think the i7 will make this laptop overheat all the time?

NOTE: I had a look at the Sony and Samsung but they only come with the Nvidia 330M which is nearly at the bottom of the Class 2 GPU list at http://www.notebookcheck.net

Thanks,
Andy
 
i saw the HP Envy 17 at £999 second hand price before. supports virtualisation, enable at the bios and has a 5850 gpu all in a nice alu shell. i'm biased to HP as i own a few of their laptops, so i highly recommend any of their laptops.

the hp pavillion are good but..
the msi gx740 is really powerful just because of its gpu, its just its price and colour that makes it look cheap and nasty lol.
 
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Hi

from reading reviews the only problem with the new HP dv7 (especially the Envy) range is that they seem to have copied apple in design as such there are some reports of heat issues as it has only one small vent (I wish companies would stop copying crapple as I hate all of there products).

I don't really care about the look of the MSI GX740 the problem i have is i am just not sure if the computer is all that good as it seems they have spent all the budget on a top of the range GPU so they must have made savings in things that i do need. like a good keyboard, good screen etc.

I think it is between the MSI GX740 and the HP dv7 none of which are in shops so i cannot have a look at them.

The hp is looking good as i will have a better screen and properly better build quality plus the i7 should be good.

But i am still not sure
Andy
 
Hi

The main problem with the XPS 17 is that it is a Dell, So reliability and build quality will be an issue, as Dell computers are the main laptops that people bring to me to fix, AlienWare being the worst especially the Nvidia SLI versions which always overheated just out of warranty.

Andy
 
In terms of wanting plenty of space for IDE's - get a 1080p second monitor, I take it that it will be used as a desktop replacement as you are going for a large laptop with no battery life so a second monitor would not be an issue. :cool:

Personally i tried the gaming laptop for both work and portability and in the end went with a cheaper gaming pc and a nice ultra portable laptop. Just got a new Acer 8371 (see other thread), awesome laptop and its ok for some light coding tasks as well. Then a gaming pc for everything else :cool:

It could easily be done on the same budget too.
 
Get the gx740, sell the 4gb ram for £40, buy 8gb for £100. If you want blueray drive is £111 ( sony drive from ocuk ) or if you want another hdd get a odd bay and put a second hdd in place of the dvd drive. The gx740 I got had the i5 450 rather than the 430 and a 500gb hd rather than the 320 however I got it from another site for short of £850 as I opted for no OS ( Microsoft Volume Licence due to my MSCE )

The screen on them is OK, its not great but its not horrible eaither. You can actuly upgrade the screen with a bit of bodgery but that will void your warrenty on the screen ( but not the laptop ) MSI warrenty is really good when it comes to you switching out parts in that they will still cover parts that were oringinaly fitted by them if they fail.
 
Hi all,

I decided to buy an SSD drive and see if i can make do with my oldish laptop, dam what a difference, the laptop feels faster than my quad core gaming rig. OK it will never play games very well as it has a lowish ATi 3470HD GPU but will do for all my work.

All i need now is a new battery

Thanks
Andy
 
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