Gaming laptop advice

fred_easey

fred_easey

fred_easey

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Joined
11 Nov 2003
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860
Location
South London
Hi,

I'm in the market to buy a new laptop to replace my ancient Dell D600.

Budget is up to £1000. I'm after something that will run the latest games, but as I'll occasionally lugging it around on business trips and the like I'd like to keep it down to a 15.4" screen (so I'm guessing a GeForce 8600M should be ample to play crysis etc).

I've narrowed it down to these three options:

1) Rock P670-T7250 £1,000

C2D 2.0GHz CPU / 2GB Ram / 160GB HDD / 8600M GFX / 3yr GTD

2) MacBook Pro £1,350

C2D 2.2GHz CPU / 2GB Ram / 160GB HDD / 8600M GFX / 1yr GTD

3) Dell M1530 £900

C2D 2.0GHz CPU / 2GB Ram / 250GB HDD / 8600M GFX / 3yr GTD

On paper the Dell looks like the best option, but then I have heard more bad things about Dell and more good things about Rock on these very forums.

The macbook intrigues me as I've heard they can run windows games and apps at native speed with bootcamp (is this correct, would the gaming performance be comparable to the Rock or Dell?). Unfortunately it is a bit above my £1k budget, so would need to be appreciably better than the Dell and Rock options to make me consider it.

So what do you guys reckon? Which one should I go for?

Any advice would be much appreciated :)

Cheers,

Fred
 
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Games and laptops just dont match. Could you not get a cheap laptop (I just got a brand new Dell Vostro (sp?) for £315) and then a normal machine which, you obviously, wont be lugging around?
 
Space is at a bit of a premium, so I'd rather just have the one unit :)

I know most people here would much prefer to spend £1k on a buff desktop and play games at max detail on 21" TFTs etc, but I'm not really much of a graphics whore. I just want to have a machine that will at least let me play the likes of Stalker, Crysis, Orange box etc at a decent frame rate and med settings (and I'm guessing that an 8600M at 1200x800 will allow high detail on most of those games)
 
fred_easey said:
Space is at a bit of a premium, so I'd rather just have the one unit :)

I know most people here would much prefer to spend £1k on a buff desktop and play games at max detail on 21" TFTs etc, but I'm not really much of a graphics whore. I just want to have a machine that will at least let me play the likes of Stalker, Crysis, Orange box etc at a decent frame rate and med settings (and I'm guessing that an 8600M at 1200x800 will allow high detail on most of those games)
Click to expand...

The XP1530 is a good machine for the price you pay. You can spec it to what you want, as with the Vostro. You always hear bad things about Dell, though it hasn't quite put me off it yet. I currently have an XPS M1330 and have already ordered a Dell Precision M4300 as a replacement because I wanted a bigger screen 15.4" with 1920x1200 - will post some photos of it when I receive it if you want?

The XP1530 has had some negatives regarding its LCD display being grainy but you're bound to get complaints, what's grainy to some may not be grainy to everyone. The Vostro's are cheap but the XPS are more superior in build quality. You get what you pay for.

Rock are a solid brand, they use Clevo's I believe for their 17". And Compals for their 15". Though a tad expensive, have you looked at these branded as Rizeon? Even cheaper. :) You're certainly going to need a 8600 at the very least if you want to play the games aforementioned. The XPS has the GDDR3 variant of the 8600s I believe.
 
Look at the dell vostro 1500 deals.. with the 8600M GT there are some great deals there. IMO it is kinda crazy to spend as much as a grand on a laptop with the specs you have in mind, there is no need to spend so much. For gaming don't go down the mac road aswell..
 
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Yeah, if what you're after is 8600M GT and C2D 2.0 GHz, you can get a Vostro 1500 with those specs for around £620.
 
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