Cheap Gaming Laptop - Help needed

sepulchre

sepulchre

sepulchre

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I need to buy a new laptop for my wife and figured if I could get one for the occasional COD black ops game then all the better :) budget is £600 max

Ideally I'm looking for -

CPU - i3
HDD - doesn't matter to much so 200Gb +
RAM - 4GB
OS - Windows 7 64bit
Screen - 13 inch
GFX - anything decent ATI 5650 or equivalent

Open to suggestions and recommendations as I've been looking for the last couple of days and managed to bewilder myself :)
 
I would say an i3 with a ati 5650 is exactly what your looking for as two of my friends have this setup (and game at a local LAN party every week where we play COD and the like) in Dell laptops they bought 6 months ago. They both paid circa £550 for theirs from the Dell outlet website so keep an eye out there! :)
 
Great advice, cheers guys!

I've got a vaio in my basket with i3, 3Gb ram, 320gb HD, ATI 5650, and a free blueray writer for just shy of £640, looks like a good option but I will keep looking for a few days more before taking the plunge, so I'm still open to any other suggestions :)

Edit - added the HD (1920x1080) screen so its now 699, more than I wanted to pay but is it worth it, or can I do better?
 
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Hmmm the 1080 screen will come in handy for enjoying the blu-rays at their full native resolution but dont be expecting to play too many games at that resolution! I have a i7 820 and 5870 and can't play COD at 1920x1080 without knocking down the graphics a lot or reducing it to 1600x900.

You can play other older games at 1080 like counterstike and the like but what im saying is dont spend too much extra for that screen. Will you actually ever use the blu ray on the laptop either? I did not bother as it was another £150 on top of my laptop at the time and couldn't see myself using it?

Hope you get what your looking for and keep us updated :)
 
Order placed :) Spec as follows -

Intel® CoreTM i3-370M, 2.40GHz
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
English (QWERTY)
Glossy black
320 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
4 GB 1066MHz DDR3-SDRAM
*Free* Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer
39.4 cm LCD Display plus, 1920x1080, webcam
ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
*Free* 2 year warranty

£729 all in less 5% back from Quidco

Your right Ollie I wont be gaming at 1920x1080 I do that on my main rig, this is more for an odd game now and then when the wife has gone to bed and I cant get at my gaming PC. The screen was a 60 quid upgrade which for me was worth the money as I can also use this for my photo editing :) Regarding the blu ray, I might never use it as I have my media PC in the living room with all my high def stuff on it but its a free option so its a no brainer :)

Delivery was quoted at 2-3 weeks when I placed the order, but I've since received an email telling me it will be here between 30/11/10 and 07/12/10 - happy days!


Cheers all for the advice, just hope I've got a good un!
 
I just ordered a sony viao few days ago too.
I checked last week and Intel® CoreTM i3-370M, 2.40GHz, 320 GB Serial ATA (5400 rpm)
4 GB RAM, Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer, 1920x1080, and ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
it was £729 until a few days ago. It dropped to £679, i added the 7200rpm HDD instead for another £20.

£699 for Sony EB3X Intel® CoreTM i3-370M, 2.40GHz, 320 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
4 GB RAM, Blu-ray Disc(TM) writer, 1920x1080, and ATI MobilityRadeon HD5650 1GB
Not bad in my opinion. I never used quidco before and it hasnt tracked yet.
 
I couldn't find anything with a matching spec for less tbh but I see that its now 50 quid cheaper than when i ordered it on the 25th :( Gunners, what date did you order yours? I might give them a call tomorrow and see what they say, but I think the answer will be tough luck :(


quidco hasn't tracked for me yet either
 
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i ordered friday.
I was looking for a laptop with 1920x1080 screen, this one was cheapest I came across. Dell ones price were too high and only cames with 1 year warranty. So i went with sony. I could have found cheaper price for similiar spec but screen is important to me and free blu ray writer made me buy.
 
thanks gunners, that means between Thursday night and Friday the price dropped, good to know before i call them in the morning :)
 
See sig as I have a similar E series.

Will give you my cons after 2 months of ownership:

Sony Bloatware - difficult to get a clean install but can be done.
Short battery life - Expect to play games plugged in. Even when surfing don't expect more than 2 hours.

Other than that it has been brilliant. Plays most games at native res with options set to medium or lower.

Oh don't believe the delivery dates. :p
 
thanks BlastRadius. Should be expecting mine end of next week if the delivery time is anything to go by. When you say dont believe delivery dates, do you mean it takes longer because my expected delivery was approx 2 weeks. :D

Is bloatware really that hard to remove? I'm planning on doing a fresh install of windows 7.

quidco tracked finally, although it had to be done manually (via cashback queries)
 
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Sony bloatware is really that awful. If you research on this forum somewhere there is a link to a way of performing a semi clean install. It isn't that complicated and can be followed step by step.

I would recommend this forum too http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/ There is all manner of Sony knowledge on there.

The Bluray drive is actually really very good, I prefer watching blurays on my laptop due to the excellent screen, it almost looks 3d.

I had a 3 week lead time ( I think) and it took over 5 weeks to come through, others have had better experiences.
 
I wouldnt say the bloatware was a big deal, I simply did a clean Windows 7 install grabbed the few drivers I needed from the sony support page, latest Ati mobility drivers and all was good, all the Fn keys work fine without installing any of sonys crap.

Delivery time wise, I bought 2 of the exact same spec (one for me, one for gf) they quoted 3 weeks and they arrived in about 18 days, this was back in April.
 
My vaio arrived today! I'm really impressed by the screen. Was expecting the text to be tiny on 1920x1080 screen but everything perfect, clarity is great. got it made and delivered in 11 days!
Now, just need to learn how to clean install windows!
 
that great gunners, really pleased for you, glad your happy with the laptop.

Mine has been delayed but should be here by the 18th lol
 
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