Spec me a laptop...

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Boss has just said I can replace my 4 year old Mac Book Pro. He has given a budget of £2500. I need beastly processing power, decent graphics and lost of different high speed connections without having to use PCMCIA cards if possible.

Thoughts?
 
Let me inform you

CPU: You want an i7, 3610/3630 or any QM 3rd series model will do. They arent that far behind desktop CPU
MEM: Same as desktop
GPU: 650M/660M - Medium range. 670/675M are just 570M/580M rebrands. They will do but they are old tech - Medium/high range. ATI 7970M/Nvidia 680M are the best of the best. They are based off 7870/670 desktop cards and preform very very well.

You now have a choice of brands. Samsung only go to 675M which will be fine but if you want the best performance you need to go elsewhere. I have not done much research into them but they seem to be a on par with my 'macbook of gaming'. They look like they are built very well, feature all the bells and stuff and all together a very well all round system.

MSI (IMO look ugly) but are similar to Samsung. Feature all the little nice stuff as well as featuring the 680M.

Alienware (I like the look) are from what I have researched are the 'macbook of gaming' they are built amazingly, also have all the features and also let you go to 7970M/680m

Clevo: They are pretty much the true gamers laptop, people who dont care about looks or little features (here in the UK you dont even get a full UK keyboard, its a US one with a £ sign). They arent built to the quality of any of the above mentioned and have little things that annoy me on the 15 and 17" models. (mic is by space bar, sound card is extremely bad, has problems with the 7970m still, screen colour stock isnt great and other little things that do add up).
This being said, they are by far the cheapest out of the bunch, but you are getting what you are paying for.

Now what do I recommend? I only say Alienware because you can get the best spec around along with brilliant build Q. But if you do not like the look I would next go for an MSI for performance, then the SLI/CrossFire Clevo machine (a lot of the problems I mentioned arent present on the SLI/CF version) and finally the samsung as it will have the least performance for the cost.
 
I'm not sure I like the look of them TBH.

I was looking at this - is it OK? I'm not really sure what's what when it comes to laptops...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-136-SA&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

I had a Samsung with a AMD 6990M for a short while, it was good but the whole Samsung gamer profile thingy got on my nerves, it always felt a bit half way and it was never really able to compete with the desktop rigs with 7850 or 670 cards. But it was solid, and you can get the 6990 version for sub 1K if you shop around..

Alienware are so so, the build quality is meant to be fantastic but my first M17x died within 2 hours of use, literally, blew its motherboard and that laptop sadly was dead..

got a replacement in the end, its fantastic but Dell customer service, shocking...

However the M17x with a 7970M with the option to turn off the HD4000 iGPU is a superb performer, if you want to play games then this is what you want.. Skyrim modded out, maxed out 55 + fps on av..Amazingly powerful GPU

Shop around have a look at all the models but certainly for that sort of cash you would be looking at AMD 7970M or 680M, me personally provided you find a laptop that can turn off the iGPU as AMD have had serious issues with the switchable graphics on their mobile GPU then you should be onto a winner..
 
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