Looking at getting a gaming laptop

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Good Monday, hope you all had a good weekend. I did and enjoyed the weather. Whilst enjoying the weather, I had my trusty i5 doing some drive cloning work for a customer. I came inside to check on it and noticed the PC was off, and I smelled that dreaded popcorn/ammonia smell.

After looking over the whole machine, and testing with known good spares, the casualties are terrible. PSU must've went belly up and took the relatively new Z77 Extreme and the i5-2400 Sandy. My PSU was about three years old, an OCZ 700w watt.

Needless to say, after this happening, I've been looking at machines such as the Lenovo Y50. It would be nice to have something that I can take around. It would also be nice to have something pre-built where I can install my software and go. Yes I do enjoy building PCs, but lately, after working on computers all day at work, I just want to be able to come home and use a good machine... not have to troubleshoot or setup something.

The Y50 looks like a solid performer. i7-4710HQ, 4GB GTX 860M, 8GB RAM, 1TB 5400 with 8GB SSD Cache, and an external Blue-Ray/DVD Burner. No SSD, but for around $1150, the package looks good.

Any recommendations on gaming laptops? Maybe someone on here has a Y50?

Thanks.
 
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My son has a Y50, spec'd out like you describe, but with 16GB of RAM. He loves it.
 
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Looks like a nice machine but... 8gb SSD is not much for today's standards, I assume that it does caching combined with that 5400 drive ...

I would replace that with full ssd right away.

As well it needs more ram ...

Otherwise looks great.
 
For a couple hundred more, the Y50 can be configured with a 512SSD, 16GB of RAM, 4GB GTX 860M, 4710HQ i7, and a 4K display.

That one should work.
 
the 860m is ok for gaming its about 75% as fast as a 760.

you probably wont like gaming on a laptop keyboard

I'd pass on a 4k screen on a laptop.

just too small.

FHD is good upto 21" or so IMO.
 
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9/10 out of 10 this laptop will be connected to a 27" ASUS IPS with a regular mouse and keyboard. The other times I'm sure I can live with a laptop keyboarp.

Also, I'm coming from a GTX 560 and a Sandy Bridge i5. This will be a lot quicker for me.
 
Originally Posted By: redhat
For a couple hundred more, the Y50 can be configured with a 512SSD, 16GB of RAM, 4GB GTX 860M, 4710HQ i7, and a 4K display.

That one should work.


That looks solid you now can run some virtualization nesting if you ever get in to it.
 
Looks like the 860m is about 10% faster than the 560ti

and the processor is around 33% faster.
 
I also was reading that scaling to 1080 on a 4k screen would sometimes not fill the whole screen.
 
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I bought a Lenovo G780 a few years ago to use as an all-purpose/gaming machine and upgraded the RAM and it's a nice rig. I can run most games at higher settings without issue. The video card isn't top of the line, but it'll get the job done. It's a NVIDIA 630m, IIRC. I've mostly just used it to play Battlefield 3, Diablo 3, CSGO and World of Warcraft but it handled all of those FWIW. Most of the time I have it hooked up to a 27" BenQ gaming monitor, but it does have a large battery and 17" screen for when I unhook it. Considering it's a few years old now, I'd think most gaming laptops today would be more than adequate for today's games and more versatile than a desktop.
 
newegg has a rebate deal

MSI GT70 Dominator 17.3" Gaming Laptop: i7 4810MQ, 8GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, GTX 870M $1099 after $100 Rebate + Free Shipping

seems decent if you arent hungup on buying chinese Lenovo
(disclaimer my current laptop is a lenovo thinkpad t520)
 
For not much more, you could buy a capable gaming PC that's upgradable, as well as an ultra-portable that will handle some new games on low settings, using integrated graphics.

So, the gaming rig would provide a much better game experience and for the 10% you'll be mobile maybe you can stick to simpler games, such as Civ 5. My AMD E-350 APU is a dog, but will still play Civ 5 on low settings, using small maps. A new Haswell with integrates graphics would probably do a lot better, maybe on par with my old Sandy i7, with graphics only moderately to substantially worse than my HD5850,but not to the point where you couldn't play some games for infrequent times you're on travel and want to game.
 
Thanks for the suggestion, but when I will be mobile would be business trips and gaming parties where I'd want the horsepower. Also I prefer to stay on one machine.
 
I'd be looking into a good 17" laptop then. I lugged one around when I first graduated college (upgrading from my P3 Acer One) and found it to be pretty nice. It was definitely heavier than some of today's 13.3" ultra-books and 15.6" gaming laptops, but it also stayed pretty cool, it had a keyboard with full num-pad, and the larger screen was also nice.

I honestly don't recall all of the spec's, since this was 8 years ago, but it was good enough to play every new game at near-max spec's, all without having the fan sound like a jet engine. The extra case space allowed for pretty good cooling.

Today's low-power processors and GPU's would probably work even better in a large semi-portable. I haven't looked into larger laptops recently (I've been eye-balling ultra-portables, myself,) but they might give you the best bang for your buck, and also allow for cramming in some better parts.

//

I'm also not much of a techno-guru, but all of the nerds on the interwebs seem to think something super fantastical is coming soon for GPU's, something that will put the current generation to shame. Who knows if this is something that will even come to fruition anytime soon, but if you can wait, it would seem that doing so might prove beneficial.
 
Rand, where did you get the spec that said the 860M is 10% faster than the 560ti?
 
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