Advice on gaming laptop for uni

[shindigero]

I'm off to uni at the end of this year and I'm going to need a laptop, but I'm looking to get one that i can play my games on in my spare time, particularly Battlefield 3. I've spent a bit of time looking through the specs on a few different machines but i was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on what i need. I can't really afford to just max everything out, as i'm tempted to do, so i need to know what i'm reasonably going to require. In particular, how much of an improvement do you get for upgrading to i5 or i7 processors? Should i go 16 GB of RAM, or will 8GB be enough? At the moment I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed by choice and deciding between lots of things i'm not entirely sure of the actual difference between. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[dangro474]

Hi Shindigero,

Your choice of system really depends on your total budget.

RAM/CPU: If you do not intend to do any heavy video editing / 3d design, I would recommend sticking with 8GB DDR3 1600 and an Intel i7 3610QM processor. The only feasable downgrade to keep a decent levle of gaming performance would be an i5 2520, but the price difference is only £30 making it completely pointless.

HDD: When considering your choice of hard drive, avoid 8MB cache 5.4k RPM drives. They can in many cases bottleneck your gaming performance in games which involve a lot of streaming (like console ports.. .. ...................). I would recommend a 750GB 7.2k RPM 16MB cache HDD as 250GB is simply too little and the price difference between 500 and 750 is only around £15. SSD's cost an arm and a leg and should be avoided at all costs when speccing out a gaming laptop under a strict budget.

GPU: The most powerful you can afford. Simple as. Given the outragous performance of the 7970M when compared to its similarly priced competitors buying anything less would be (with lack of a more polite way to get the point across) retarded. The price to performance ratio sh*ts all over the 670 / 675M GTX cards.

Operating System: 7 Home x64.

OPTICAL: DVD standard unless you specifically want to watch blu-rays.

Additions: I would recommend purchasing a 3 year gold warranty (£59), no dead pixel 1 year guarantee (£19) and improved thermal paste (£9).

Overall I would recommend the following system specification:

Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 16000MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM (PRE-ORDER, ETA END OF MAY)
Memory - Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,270.00 including VAT and delivery + something extra for the RAM edit my calculator doesnt work

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/VortexIII-15/

A quick note regarding budgets:
Budgets are a good thing. They prevent people from overspending etc etc etc etc

Unfortunately with gaming laptops you can end up downgrading resulting in a loss of up to 50% performance for the sake of £50. Please bare this in mind before deciding on a specification,

If you have a budget of up to £1000 and you intend to play GPU demanding games on your purchase (such as Battlefield 3) I would recommend holding off a purchase in order to accumulate the necessary funds to buy a system that caters to your needs and will last a decent amount of time, ideally several years.

Ultimately most people who have ignored this advice have usually ended up loathing their decision, put up with lackluster performance and purchased another system a lot earlier than they intended to.

If the Vortex III range turns out to be too expensive all together I would recommend looking at the Optimus range once the Geforce 650M is released.

Best of luck with your decision.

 

[Wozza63]

oh that above specification, its all good, just maybe upgrade the RAM to 8GB

Oh and if you want extra boot speed, then get the hybrid drive, its great value for money

 

[dangro474]

Thanks Jesus cat post updated.

P.S. if you intend to play BF3 and cannot afford a £1200 laptop I would honestly recommend a desktop.

 

[shindigero]

£1200 is well within my budget, i knew it wasn't going to be cheap and i'm prepared to pay a bit more to make it last, but thank you for clarifying things for me, its been very very helpful.

 

[shindigero]

Quick question, you suggest an Intel i7 3610QM processor, this was something i wondered about initially, how do 3rd Gen Intel processors improve on the 2nd Gen? Also i was initially looking at 17" screens, would you say 15.6" is enough? I can't visualize it. (and was the chassis on the spec you quotes a Vortex II or III)

 

[shindigero]

sorry to bombard you with queries, but some other people i've spoken to on another forum (the battlefield 3 one) are concerned about the clock speed of the CPU, do you think i might need a faster one?

 

[Wozza63]

The screen is up to you, its whichever you think is more appropriate, a good idea would be too feel the size of the ones on show in PC World/Currys

also the quad core should be fine, you wont be able to go max (maybe ultra at a push) but that will be because of the GPU

Of course I may be wrong and you may require more CPU power, if you are unsure get the next one up

of course the requirements specify just a quad core, no min speed requirements so I imagine you should be fine

 

[shindigero]

"The processor is quite slow and will probably bottleneck the graphics card. That's if it doesn't overheat first."

thats what the guy on the BF3 forum said, but then he was incredibly negative about gaming laptops on the whole

 

[dangro474]

"The processor is quite slow and will probably bottleneck the graphics card. That's if it doesn't overheat first."

thats what the guy on the BF3 forum said, but then he was incredibly negative about gaming laptops on the whole

The guy on the BF3 forums had no idea what he was talking about.

BF3 is a GPU intensive game and the relative performance increase of CPU upgrades is virtually completely negligable.

Here's an even better comparisson chart. The 3610QM will certainly outperform the i7 920, resulting in an average performance difference of 2 FPS over a 2600K. The difference is so meaningless its almost hillarious

My old W860CU with i5 520M and Geforce 460M can deliver ~50 FPS in medium presets on multiplayer maps such as Metro, the bottleneck there being the GPU by far. My Vortex II delivers 60 FPS in high presets on the same map, again bottlenecked by the GPU.

 

[shindigero]

i thought as much, cheers once again

 

[Wozza63]

The guy on the BF3 forums had no idea what he was talking about.

BF3 is a GPU intensive game and the relative performance increase of CPU upgrades is virtually completely negligable.

Here's an even better comparisson chart. The 3610QM will certainly outperform the i7 920, resulting in an average performance difference of 2 FPS over a 2600K. The difference is so meaningless its almost hillarious

My old W860CU with i5 520M and Geforce 460M can deliver ~50 FPS in medium presets on multiplayer maps such as Metro, the bottleneck there being the GPU by far. My Vortex II delivers 60 FPS in high presets on the same map, again bottlenecked by the GPU.

that second link cant be right, there is not such thing as a dual core bulldozer

but yeh they prove you dont need the upgrade, but its up to you, you wont be wasting your money if you do get the next one up

 

[shindigero]

put it this way, if i upgraded to the next one up, will there be a tangible change in the way i play any given game or one i might own in the future?

 

[Wozza63]

Not at the moment, but maybe in the future you may require the extra power, or if you decide to get into any games that definitely take advantage of extra CPU power, eg flight sims, total war amongst a few others

 

[shindigero]

I could definitely be described as being into Total War, so with the rig described earlier how well do you think i could handle Shogun 2 or something like that? And how much of a difference to performance would an upgrade make in that situation?

 

[jonny123]

On the topic off screen sizes (If your still debaiting beetween the two) i went for a 17" but im used to a 15.6" and the size difference is much more than i expected,If you plan on carrying it around i would deffiantly reccomend the 15.6" although the 17" is a nice (Just a little too big if your moving it around alot )

 

[Wozza63]

well seeing as at maximum, my FX-8150 is at about 60-70% usage, I imagine that it will definitely use up the full power whichever you go for

it recommends an i5 on the website which is 3.1/3.3GHz although you have the advantage of hyperthreading, which this game should take advantage of, therefore you should be fine with the 2.3GHz although the next up may give you a slight advantage and will iron out any choppy moments

 

[shindigero]

ok then, i'll definitely consider it

 

[shindigero]

probably going to go for the next one up, the 3720QM 2.6GHz 6MB, how much better do you think that one would fare? Also I've been asking people's opinions everywhere i can, someone said to check the powersupply provides enough power for the system, i hadn't thought about it, i'm assuming it will?

 

[Wozza63]

All power supplies with laptops will be more than enough, if it wasn't then they wouldnt supply it with certain parts, thats all fine

In the long run the extra speed will make a difference although there wont be much difference at first