£1500 ultrabook ?

Randall8686

Randall8686

Randall8686

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Spending so much time away from home at the moment that im looking for a gaming ultrabook. Its going to be used for a little work but mainly rendering video and playing some games when bored.

14-15" maximum and ideally around £1500 maximum but its not set in stone.

Really not sure what route to go down half of me wants a macbook pro as i just love the hardware quality but its £2200 for a nvidia option, I could go that route but im sure im going to get better value for money elsewere.

I dont have to buy today but i need to buy it buy it by Mid june however i can get it now but im a little out of touch on the latest Nvidia chipsets to be honest.

Any advice welcome
 
for that money and screen size you can buy top of the range Nvidia.
Here's one...
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GS60 2PE-060UK Ghost Pro 15.6" True HD LED GTX 870M 3GB 4700HQ, 8GB DDR3, Super-Raid, 1TB HDD - Windows 8.1 £1399.99
Total : £1,399.99 (includes shipping : ).



And another with a 3k resolution screen. (for gaming you may have to turn down the native resolution to increase performance but for films and other things the 3k screen would be awesome).
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI GT60 2PE Dominator Pro 15.6" 3K LED GTX 880M 8GB 4810MQ, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, 1TB, Super-Multi - Windows 8 £1499.99
Total : £1,499.99 (includes shipping : ).



At 15" I would go for the one with the 3k screen.
 
3K is pointless on 15" gaming notebook for now. desktop GPUs would have problems running games in that resolution on high settings on high fps, let alone weak mobile GPUs.

you might go completely custom.

also the problem is, that almost, if not all screens on gaming laptops are TN panels. another issue is cooling in such thin body, but I'm sure you know that.

and lastly, check out the power bricks on these. the laptops themselves might be thin, but the brick is literally brick sometimes. if you plan on gaming, you'll be carrying it around no doubt.
 
kefan77 said:
3K is pointless on 15" gaming notebook for now. desktop GPUs would have problems running games in that resolution on high settings on high fps, let alone weak mobile GPUs.

you might go completely custom.

also the problem is, that almost, if not all screens on gaming laptops are TN panels. another issue is cooling in such thin body, but I'm sure you know that.

and lastly, check out the power bricks on these. the laptops themselves might be thin, but the brick is literally brick sometimes. if you plan on gaming, you'll be carrying it around no doubt.
Click to expand...

Which is why I said to lower the res when gaming. Also the MSI and ASUS laptops are making improvements where it comes to cooling laptops. Also you could get a laptop cooler which would reduce the temp another few degrees.

And lastly, most people realise they are going to be plugged in if gaming...The power bricks are therefore no different to the thin PSU's of weaker systems as its just laying on the floor after all.
 
Cheers guys for input, yea it will be plugged in when gaming, dont fancy destroying the battery gaming. Will be doing light work when on battery just running office emails etc. just want maximum performance for my ££,
Whats the MSI quality like ? Im a bit of a build quality fan. Dont like creeky plastic chassis
 
For a little bit more maybe you could stretch to the ASUS ROG laptops, the G750-JH will probably come down to around £1650-£1700 when the JZ model is in full flow. I believe it's slightly better design in terms of cooling and build quality. It's a completely unique design as well which makes it stand out. (These are 17" laptops though so may not be what you want at all and hence the slightly higher price).

Dont get me wrong, MSI are very good laptops. You wont be disappointed if you bought one. Out of the 2 that kefan mentioned i'd go for the MSI GT60-2PE16H11B as it has the better GPU.
 
Fair one. Kinda just wanted his opinion on the G750 really. If size is the only thing then its not a deal breaker...
 
It needs to come on planes and trains with me, a 17" is not friendly enough for regular travel. 15" is pushing it to be honest. The dell xps looks like a decent option ? Or is it typical dell tat ?
 
Dizz said:
And another with a 3k resolution screen. (for gaming you may have to turn down the native resolution to increase performance but for films and other things the 3k screen would be awesome).

At 15" I would go for the one with the 3k screen.
Click to expand...

It would certainly look nice but would Windows itself be usable at that native resolution on a 15" laptop? I presume you 'd have to jack font scaling up to 150-200% and we all know that's a but of a mixed bag with desktop apps on windows 8?
 
Is it the done thing to hijack another thread rather than start a new one for a similar question?

Basically I want a laptop for gaming, decent graphics and one that won't need replacing for a while. I've got my eye on these two:
MSI GT60 Dom Pro :http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-124-MS
Aorus X7-CF1 : http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-014-GI

Ideally I'd prefer the 15" for portability, but it's not a dealbreaker to have a 17".

Are there any better options out there? I understand the 3k screen would be overkill for a 15" laptop. I've been told MSI have bad cooling, is this really an issue?

In an ideal world I'd go for the 14" Razor Blade, but it's unlikely to get to the UK shores.

So, please suggest me up a laptop. And the best laptop cooler you can think of. I know this beast will run hot, I want to do all I can to keep it cool after my last laptop cooked itself.

Thanks
 
I have found my Gigabyte P35k (CF4) has been simply brilliant at everything I have needed it for. Slim, pretty light, powerful and with sufficient specification to truly replace my desktop - worth a look, comfortably in budget.
 
NanimalMother said:
KevpUK

Are you refering to something like this?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-008-GI&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=0

Any idea if it will run another 765 SLI? Otherwise, it looks good.
Click to expand...

That's the fella, but no it won't run a 2nd 765/anything in SLI....

That said, the 765m is a pretty decent and capable mobile gfx card.....and, as seen with the Aorus, if machines go down the SLI route you lose Optimus and hence battery life.

Cooling will always be an issue in as slim a chassis, too. My P35k fans can ramp up under load, and having a second 765m in roughly similar chassis would be suicide.

As ever, horses for courses, though.....for me, I wanted a powerful enough machine to replace my desktop, with nothing missing. Hence the CF4 as it had the BluRay burner, loads of RAM, decent enough gfx for my gaming needs.
 
Randall8686 said:
It needs to come on planes and trains with me, a 17" is not friendly enough for regular travel. 15" is pushing it to be honest. The dell xps looks like a decent option ? Or is it typical dell tat ?
Click to expand...

I just got a Dell XPS 15 9530. It outclasses my old phenom II desktop machine that i just replaced in January. Battery life with ordinary usage is excellent as it lasted 9 hours in work today with 12% left. Not a fan of losing the ethernet port, but a usb 3 adaptor solved that issue and certainly works equally as well with transfer rates on par with my desktop intel adaptor. The native 3200x1800 resolution is bonkers, and i run it at 1920x1080 instead as i don't like dpi scaling as i use too many old applications that don't support it. Can't really see the difference running it scaled either, looks sharp enough at normal viewing distances.
14060822216_a8b5ca8a74_o.jpg


Nice sturdy aluminium chassis.
13897365267_76b69b56d3_o.jpg


I like the clean sticker-less base.
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Not much fussed on the soft touch surface as it likes dirt/dust too much, but it's comfortable and it won't go all tacky like rubberised plastic does. Had to spend some serious amounts of time customising windows 8 to suit me as it starts off very different to 7, although i don't mind the start screen concept as i don't tend to use the start menu much anyway, just the shortcuts/quick launch.
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The GT750M is a long way from the ultimate gaming card, but it is certainly sufficient for my requirements. (coming from a laptop with a Geforce Go 7600 128mb, that's no surprise) It happily runs borderlands 2 at 1600x900 with almost all the eye candy enabled at 60fps. Battery life falls like a stone when gaming and the fans are quite loud, but no worse than my old laptops under similar loads. Mine suffered no throttling after 3 hours of borderlands.
14083918775_25c30c825c_o.jpg


Ran intel XTU on it and set the turbo clocks up to 3GHz for 4 cores and dropped the voltage by 70mV which should help both battery life and temperatures.
14066770633_729b388757_o.jpg


I was worried about coil whine based on a lot of the threads i'd read on various forums, but tbh, mine is actually quieter than both my toshiba and hp as they have older cathode illuminated lcds that made a fair amount of noise when dimmed. At 100% battery whilst plugged in, there is some coil noise, but it is too quiet to bother me. I reckon based on what i've read i might be lucky though.
 
kevpuk said:
I have found my Gigabyte P35k (CF4) has been simply brilliant at everything I have needed it for. Slim, pretty light, powerful and with sufficient specification to truly replace my desktop - worth a look, comfortably in budget.
Click to expand...

I agree with statement. I have mine in CF2 in last November and it works well for me. CF4 used to be pretty expensive as it have RAID and slim BD writer. I see price dropped quite a bit so you might want to consider to own one :)
 
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