Hello

[Im-In]

Hi,

I'm new to gaming on a laptop, and was told to visit pcspecialist as well as a few other sites, so here I am .

I've never gamed on a laptop before but consider this one of my only options now a days as I'm traveling frequently, away for the week home at weekends.

Could someone please help me spec an Optimus / Vortex II laptop.

Budget: £1200 - £1600
What I'm used to gaming on: cpu: core 2 duo e8400 gpu: ATI 4870

Uses of laptop:
1.) Dual boot linux and windows and a third data partition.
2.) General work (what is battery life on these laptops? can't always guarantee near a plug socket) - Documents, email, web browsing
3.) Programming - not compiling huge projects on my own though
4.) Gaming - Steam games, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 when it comes out.

I think one of the reasons why I'm apprehensive about buying a gaming laptop is what happens if a game comes out fairly soon that the gpu can't handle, is there some way of part exchanging the laptop or paying for an upgrade? so its not potentially £1600 wasted?

Also

How do the matte screen and glossy compare? I prefer matte in general but this is just going based on the mac matte vs the mac glossy.

I can't even look directly into a mac store without seeing 100 images of myself reflected all over the place. (Like a hall of mirrors in there!).

I was thinking of an ssd, just heard so many good things about them at least on a desktop front though if pcspecialistst do upgrades etc for existing / loyal customers this can be done later. My estimated size requirements are 20GB linux partition 50gb Windows partition 50GB Data partition. (Other data and virtual machines will either be on server or on usb)

8gb memory: for various virtual machines (needed for software / browser testing)

Thanks

 

[Im-In]

Is it possible to get a laptop with 580m sli configuration?

Another site I've been looking at has the same chassis as pcs but you can custom choose 580m sli.

Thanks

 

[onlynik]

Hi there.

I have a Vortex II 15.6 with a GTX460m. I can play most the current games at High with a good frame rate. I play a lot of steam games and also travel.

I purchacsed the machine with a 250GB HDD but have just repalced that with a 250 GB SSD and a 750GB HDD instead of hte optical drive (I need to carry a USB DVD drive for work anyway.)

I run Windows 7, but have a Windows 7 VM and Linux Mint VM. I keep these on the SSD as booting from HDD (and therefore USB) was painfully slow.

There are other threads saying the PCS can replace teh GFX card on for a price should you want too.

However you may be struggling with the battery life. I can get about 2 hours of use out of it before the battery has reduced to 10%, and that's just surfing or watching a film.

Hope this helps.

 

[Im-In]

Hey only, thanks for your response.

Yea my linux and windows dual boot will be on the main drive in the laptop the virtual machines will be stored on a usb for moving across as they are needed.

I'm kind of in the boat of do I spend lots and get an amazing laptop that will be able to play games at max for a few years.

Or get a great laptop and upgrade every year, really hard to know as you don't know what future motherboards / game requirements will be ><

 

[onlynik]

I reckon I'll be able to use my machine for hte next few years. I can play Crysis 2, BFBC2 and Civ 5 on it so I'm happy with that.