£500 Laptop Recommendations

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Looking for a laptop that can play L4D2 at 50+fps @ fairly high settings, preferably at least 720p, 3-4GB ram.

Looking for this item for my girlfriend, as she doesn't play many games but is addicted to L4D2, top price is £500.

Anyone have any recommendations? Model numbers alone are fine, I can probably find it myself, so no need for linking.

EDIT: What do people think of: Acer Aspire AS7741G
 
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In my opinion, Acer's are rubbish. I'd have a look at the samsung "R" range. There around the £500 mark and are really neat laptops.

But not good on graphics cards, she is now considering putting some money toward it, like £100, it would get something like a cheap alienware or similar, but all suggestions still welcome.
 
Then the Toshiba L650-pro, with HD5650. I thinnk Samsung has a 'R' series with a GT330M, which is equally capable. There are several variants, but as long as they have a i3 and a HD5650, the rest is up to you.
 
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In my experience, Acers are very good (owned 2). For around the £500-£600 mark ensure that you get a laptop with a min 5650 1gb or Nvidia equivalent gpu, i5 (or can have i3 if only 1366x768 res) & 4gb ram. If you get those 3 things you'll be able to set mid-high settings depending on the game.
 
As a side note, I have been looking in the £500-£600 price range and I can't find a single laptop with a reasonable graphics chip (ie, not intel junk) :/

They always stick i5/i7 cpus in the ones with graphics chips for some reason; even though the gpu would bottleneck the i3 anyway.
 
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Search for a Toshiba Satellite Pro L650-165. Its an i3, 5650 1gb and 2gb ram for £550ish. Sites give options to increase the ram, so will be £600 if you want 4gb in total.

Alternatively some variants of the acer 5740g have an i3, 5650 1gb, 4gb ram for under £600, however they may have now been discontinued as stock is hard to find (thats my laptop).
 
Search for a Toshiba Satellite Pro L650-165. Its an i3, 5650 1gb and 2gb ram for £550ish. Sites give options to increase the ram, so will be £600 if you want 4gb in total.

Alternatively some variants of the acer 5740g have an i3, 5650 1gb, 4gb ram for under £600, however they may have now been discontinued as stock is hard to find (thats my laptop).

Ah thanks, I have been looking all day. I also found a good sony vaio if you customise it, but it costs £640 with the OS that I don't want . (don't mind paying for another OS if the total cost is not too high anyway).
 
Alienware MX11, Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz, nVidea 335m 1gb graphics, 4gb ram, 11 inch screen for £550ish, isn't that bad.

Toshiba Satellite Pro L650-165, Intel® Core™ i3-330M 2.13GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD shared ram I think, 2gb ram, 15.6 inch screen, £560ish + postage, isn't that bad with a ram upgrade.

ddr3 2gb £10-20, 4gb £35-60

A laptop with a good cpu is easy to find, a good gpu is easy to find if you want to spend your life savings, thanks olivier for the recommendation, I think we'll go for it.
 
Also check out the Samsung R580 with a GT330M (R580-JS07UK?). It's slightly less powerful than the HD5650, but there isn't much in it.

Also, I forgot about the Dell Studio 17 with HD5650. You may find a refurb unit for around ££600.

Anything lower (310M, HD 5470...) and it will struggle with L4D2.

But the Satellite Pro L650-165 as a good price / performance. I don't know if it's switchable graphics though (meaning, the HD 5650 is always on, meaning poor battery life).
 
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R580-JS07UK for £570 (580 delivered) with 4gb ram, i3, 15.6 inch screen, GeForce GT 330 M

It does seem cheaper

Dell Studio 17, found a refurb for the same kind of price (580ish in total), wouldn't say it's bad, but prefer new to refurb.

My question now is.. GT330 vs HD5650, if both would run at 50+ fps on the full resolution 1366 x 768 on high settings (at least mostly), then I'm not bothered.. but for example if there is something like a 10fps difference then I think we'll go for 5650. What do you know about it? (think laptop needs to be at least good to play this game, so she doesn't keep using my computer).
 
Looking for a laptop that can play L4D2 at 50+fps @ fairly high settings, preferably at least 720p, 3-4GB ram.

Looking for this item for my girlfriend, as she doesn't play many games but is addicted to L4D2, top price is £500.

Anyone have any recommendations? Model numbers alone are fine, I can probably find it myself, so no need for linking.

EDIT: What do people think of: Acer Aspire AS7741G

Sent you and email mate :)
 
R580-JS07UK for £570 (580 delivered) with 4gb ram, i3, 15.6 inch screen, GeForce GT 330 M

It does seem cheaper

Dell Studio 17, found a refurb for the same kind of price (580ish in total), wouldn't say it's bad, but prefer new to refurb.

My question now is.. GT330 vs HD5650, if both would run at 50+ fps on the full resolution 1366 x 768 on high settings (at least mostly), then I'm not bothered.. but for example if there is something like a 10fps difference then I think we'll go for 5650. What do you know about it? (think laptop needs to be at least good to play this game, so she doesn't keep using my computer).

The HD 5650 is DX11 for starters, the GT330M is older generation. It's being replaced by the GT 4xxM series. The HD 5650 about 10% quicker.

if you want more details, have a look at this. They have some L4D benchmark and comparisons with the HD 5650.

Note that benchies on high favor the GT 330M (by around 10%). I wouldn't take those results at face value and look for some more comparisons on the net (could be old drivers, and L4D is actually quite old). You can probably look up at some Envy 14 info and games, since it's a popular laptop with a HD 5650. I don't think the CPU would have much impact.
 
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It seems pretty damn close, I'll have to look up a few other comparisons tomorrow when I'm sober.

But thanks.
 
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