Gaming laptop <£500 possible?

Asymetrical crossfire is the only way to go for cheap gaming, however amd chips are a huge set up from older laptop chips. Running crysis/skyrim on a £500 laptop wouldn't have been conceivable a couple years ago.

However in the UK we're really quite limited in choice for A6/8 choices. HP make the cheapest dual gpu laptop, lenovos z575 is probably the next cheapest fully speced with dual gpus. Singles are significantly lower in performance (bit over half) but not bad. I have a lower spec z575 with single gpu (A6-3400) and it runs me2 on mid settings, but bf3 even on low is iffy while dual chips are happy on mid/high.

Despite lacking l3 cache amds experience in the gpu market's not simply given them a more powerful solution than intel but a better constructed one. They don't suffer from the poor power use or choppy framrates intels one does on occasion. They get monthly driver updates unlike intel too.
 
But is not it a better option to get a laptop with Nvidia GT 540 or similar card? At leadt you can play at 1366x786 with decent fps.

Nowhere in the description (in the places where they sell it) is mentioned 7450M, are you sure you have it? Is not it only the integrated 6620G in the processor that you use? I am not saying that it is a bad deal for the money, but it is hardly a gaming laptop.
 
Sadly i think under £500 not possible. They skimp on the gfx card too much. With performance also comes size and weight too. I did have my eye on a lenovo z570 at one time although there are several models with this name with different specs but it had underwhelming reviews on its screen. I think medion do some with some good gfx cards.

Lenovo z580 and the y580 in the upcomming ivybridge also look interesting.
 
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I am very pleased with it. Your right in saying that its no gaming laptop. But the few games i have played ran fine. Although the screen is a low res (1366 x 768). As long as the fps is >30 i'm happy. Though it may mean lowering the quality or knocking back to 720p.
I bought it not to replace my desktop. But so i could play the odd game, while sat on the sofa with the wife while she watches soaps. it means i dont get moaned at for spending my time in the man gave...
If i get chance over the weekend i will try and run a few benchmarks, and post a few screen shots.
One thing buying this laptop has showed me, is that i really dont need silly amounts of powerfull hardware to game @1080p. And the gtx470 in my desktop still has plenty of life left.
Though not having room for a 2nd hdd is a pain. I never realised how bad not having a ssd is.
 
Recieved the laptop. I can confirm it is indeed 2 GPUs under hybrid crossfire with the 1331ea model. GPU-Z also reports it as crossfire. I'll get some benchmarks up once I reinstall Windows, so much bloatware on it... and I thought Acer was bad :o

On the other hand, this laptop compared to my Acer 5553G definitely feels different. The keyboard feels too rubbery to type on, and there's no numpad. The mouse pad feels uncomfortable too, I have no idea why they decided to have a gritty-like surface. The buttons are too hard to press on, overall I say both keyboard and mouse is not as good as my overabused Acer 5553G.

However I usually connect my desktop mouse + keyboard to it when I visit parents, I love my mechanical keyboard and mouse too much... Apart from those few little problems, everything else seems great so far.

EDIT: So many updates... I wish I had a Win7 HP SP1 ISO :(
 
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I took a bit of a gamble last night and got a MSI cx705.

How will it do for games!? Was going to get the HP one mind.

Intel duel core t4500
17 inch screen 1600x900
Blue ray
320 gb drive
Ati 5450 (512mb ram)
4gb DDR 2 ram.

Got it for 330 hope I made the right call.
 
Hostile17 said:
I took a bit of a gamble last night and got a MSI cx705.

How will it do for games!? Was going to get the HP one mind.

Intel duel core t4500
17 inch screen 1600x900
Blue ray
320 gb drive
Ati 5450 (512mb ram)
4gb DDR 2 ram.

Got it for 330 hope I made the right call.
Click to expand...


It has a better screen and blue ray. Other than that it has a slower cpu and gpu. A much smaller hdd and less ram. I dont think you will be able to run much more than ut3. And then at a much lower res.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I think you would be better sending it back and getting the Hp.
 
Thanks for that! Well the only recent games I plan to run is Starcraft 2 and Civ 5 so I will give it a go and if not send it back. The HP I was looking at in my price range only had integrated graphics and same amount of ram unless I was looking at a different version :).
 
Anyone ever had this problem before. It came with WinDVD 8 but it won't let me play Blu Rays.. It says It needs AACS update first. The problem is intervideo has gone under and coral who have taken over WinDVD no longer support it. So in fact they had sold me a laptop that can't play Blu rays out the box. Will be in the phone to customer support tomorrow.
 
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