Modest gaming laptop

[Baldrake]

Ok, so CES has passed, and I'm interested in your thoughts. I'm looking for a living-room friendly gaming laptop, which means, not too big (let's say 15" screen, 6 lbs max) and not the usual screaming fan noise and sub-Saharan heat torrents that these things usually generate. I'm willing to live with not having bleeding edge graphics, and am perfectly happy with 768p display.

Anyone have any favourites from what was announced?

[Trippy]

OblWhatsYourBudgetQuestion

[Baldrake]

It'd be nice to be around $1k, but if it's a bit over for the right box, no worries...

Edit: to be clear, I understand that my requirements might push me more to a standard discrete graphics laptop rather than a gaming laptop - e.g., the HP Envy... again, opinions solicited.

[Trippy]

There are decent gaming laptops near that price range but for those you'll need to be willing to accept a heavier weight, like this one that I actually purchased for myself recently:

ASUS Republic of Gamers G53SX-AH71 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop

That one has an NVIDIA 560M and can drive the most demanding games (i.e. SWTOR with its PoS graphics engine) at 1080p with most settings turned down somewhat.

My older gaming laptop has an NVIDIA 330M and it can run SWTOR no higher than 1366 x 768 or 720p (1080p is unplayable even with everything at the minimum). It can run something like Rift, though, at 1080P with most settings at or near their lowest (never tried Rift at 720p). Though the 330M was considered a "mid-range enthusiast" notebook GPU just a few years ago I would recommend getting something more powerful than that though laptops with something like the 560M or better may be more than you want to spend.

Notebook Check has a decent ranking of notebook GPUs though you won't necessarily know how specific games will perform on those GPUs.

Find a few notebook GPUs that sound like they may be good enough for you and plug those into the Newegg Notebook power search screen and see what pops out.

[Baldrake]

Thanks Trippy!

I had the predecessor to that ASUS, but wound up getting rid of it due to crazy fan noise. It just wasn't compatible with sitting in the living room with my wife while she's reading.

[schild]

My laptop is an Alienware M11x. It ran $1100 I think pretty specced out. Yea, I found coupons. Yea, it was worth the money. Yea, it'll run anything.

Yea, the monitor is small.

Edit: Just looked it up, they're on sale right now. If you plug into a monitor at home, or don't care about having a GIANT screen, this thing is exceptional.

Edit 2: It's worth nothing that I have never once turned anti-aliasing on in any game. I don't care for it.

[murdoc]

If you go with an Alienware, do it over the phone. They are willing to haggle a bit on price. I got one of the big beastly ones for around $1k off the "listed" price.

There was nothing that came close to it's spec in a laptop for the price. I'm not going to say they're a budget machine, but they're not as absurdly priced as you might think.

[Sheepherder]

Do not buy a 720p laptop.  It will look like jaggy shit, you'll turn AA on, efficiency lost and then some.  Chances are it would be driven by an old piece of shit GPU that consumes the same amount of power and puts out the same amount of heat as a new one anyways.

[wildfire]

There are decent gaming laptops near that price range but for those you'll need to be willing to accept a heavier weight, like this one that I actually purchased for myself recently:

ASUS Republic of Gamers G53SX-AH71 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop

That one has an NVIDIA 560M and can drive the most demanding games (i.e. SWTOR with its PoS graphics engine) at 1080p with most settings turned down somewhat.

My older gaming laptop has an NVIDIA 330M and it can run SWTOR no higher than 1366 x 768 or 720p (1080p is unplayable even with everything at the minimum). It can run something like Rift, though, at 1080P with most settings at or near their lowest (never tried Rift at 720p). Though the 330M was considered a "mid-range enthusiast" notebook GPU just a few years ago I would recommend getting something more powerful than that though laptops with something like the 560M or better may be more than you want to spend.

Notebook Check has a decent ranking of notebook GPUs though you won't necessarily know how specific games will perform on those GPUs.

Find a few notebook GPUs that sound like they may be good enough for you and plug those into the Newegg Notebook power search screen and see what pops out.

I have the G53J 15.6" (gen behind the one mentioned above) and its pretty amazing.  Runs TOR without a hiccup and doesn't sound like I have a helicopter in my lap.

[Baldrake]

Hmm, actually the Alienware 14x looks pretty nice, although it is more expensive than I had been thinking...

11" display is way too small. I'd say it's because I'm old, but I never saw that well even when I was a kid...

[Fordel]

My laptop is an Alienware M11x. It ran $1100 I think pretty specced out. Yea, I found coupons. Yea, it was worth the money. Yea, it'll run anything.

Yea, the monitor is small.

Edit: Just looked it up, they're on sale right now. If you plug into a monitor at home, or don't care about having a GIANT screen, this thing is exceptional.

Edit 2: It's worth nothing that I have never once turned anti-aliasing on in any game. I don't care for it.

Will it run Minecraft? (I'm only half joking)