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(Help) I want to buy a good CHEAP gaming Laptop

lickalime said:
I believe is point is he could care less who thinks how much you need to spend to get a "gaming laptop" he just wants a laptop that will support wow. if you ask around stores they will say o you need the best video card blah blah blah. its bs. i play with all settings on low to make sure theres no lag and because my warrior doesnt look real it isnt any less fun. this is how you should rank what your looking for

1)processor
2)ram
3)video card
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No, he said he wants to play "Not just wow, all the current High spec game's like Call of duty franchise etc.. "
He states he wants a gaming laptop, which is something you cannot achieve with 300?.
 
Acer Aspire 7750G (exact model 7750G-2414G50Mnkk):

Intel Core i5 2410M (2.3GHz Dual-core, 3Mb L3 Cache);
4Gb DDR3 RAM
AMD Radeon HD6650M 1Gb video memory
500Gb hard drive
17.3" widescreen (1600x900)
Price is nearly 880 USD in Moscow.
_________________________________________________

Acer Aspire 8951G (exact model 8951G-2638G75Bnkk):

Intel Core i7 2630QM (2.0GHz Quad-core, 6Mb L3 Cache);
8Gb DDR3 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 555 1.5Gb
750Gb hard drive
18.4" widescreen (1920x1080)
Price is nearly 1990 USD in Moscow.
_________________________________________________

The first one got a bit weak video card, while the rest parts are quite good for gaming with middle-high quality. If U can find a same model but with a bit more powerful videocard (say, Radeon HD6850M for example) then take it. The second one is almost an ultimate gaming machine, the only thing is that NVIDIA mobile graphic cards are considered much less reliable than AMD (former ATi) ones. So, look for one of these which fits your budget and don't forget about AMD video card. Sorry if both are too expensive for you, I haven't got enough time to read all messages within this thread, but I consider prices for a gaming laptop starting at $800, cheaper ones are too weak to run something more than WoW, at least at good quality.
 
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GBP 300 is simply too much for a decent gaming laptop.

If you're going for decent gaming, you're going to want a laptop with the new AMD A-series APUs in them. They're pretty cheap (although you won't get one for GBP300, you will definately get one for under GBP500 and may get on for about 400). and they combine a decent "CPU" with a very good "GPU" in one processing unit.

Acer is still the brand to aim for in the price/performance bracket. Check out, for example, the Acer Aspire 7560G-6346G75MN (mid range) or the Acer Aspire 7560G-8358G1.5TM (high end). Both very good systems for a decent price.

At this moment I would advise strongly against Intel architecture on the budget-gaming side. Their embedded graphics aren't good for anything and the price for their systems with discreet video are way too high. The AMD A-series APU has a top-notch embedded graphics subsystem that's as good as any midrange discreet graphics card.
 
Croga, let me disagree with you, mate. AMD APUs got fancy graphics built-in, while their CPUs suck big time. AMD "Llano" A-Series APUs are "good" old Athlon II X4 with Radeon HD6550 (best case, even worse in cheap models) on-die graphics and the topic starter said he wants his laptop to be able to run something harder than WoW. So, I think Intel's "Sandy Bridge" (Huron River Platform) CPU with an AMD Radeon HD 6650M (or better) GPU is a way to go. Don't forget that CPU-integrated graphics requires a really fast RAM, while most laptops still have DDR3-1333MHz (and even 1066MHz in some cases) which is totally not enough. APUs are cool starting at 1866MHz, which isn't common even on desktops these days. Sorry if I somehow offended you, Croga, but I've been assembling computers since 2003 and I keep in touch with all details of this market.
 
Once more: Intel's "Sandy bridge" dual-core CPUs are as fast as AMD's quad-core ones in terms of gaming (even faster if a game doesn't support more than 2 cores). So, even i3 is a decent concurent for any of AMD's new APUs. Just don't forget to disable that anal HT if you know for sure that a game supports two threads only, to prevent those two threads from being set on the same physical core (yeah, that's the only sucky thing about Intel's platform).
 
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nforcer said:
Croga, let me disagree with you, mate. AMD APUs got fancy graphics built-in, while their CPUs suck big time. AMD "Llano" A-Series APUs are "good" old Athlon II X4 with Radeon HD6550 (best case, even worse in cheap models) on-die graphics and the topic starter said he wants his laptop to be able to run something harder than WoW. So, I think Intel's "Sandy Bridge" (Huron River Platform) CPU with an AMD Radeon HD 6650M (or better) GPU is a way to go. Don't forget that CPU-integrated graphics requires a really fast RAM, while most laptops still have DDR3-1333MHz (and even 1066MHz in some cases) which is totally not enough. APUs are cool starting at 1866MHz, which isn't common even on desktops these days. Sorry if I somehow offended you, Croga, but I've been assembling computers since 2003 and I keep in touch with all details of this market.
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heh :) Only since 2003? My first self-build was in 1992 mate ;) A 368DX-40Mhz (AMD for the win ;)) with 4MB of RAM and a 1MB Tseng Labs graphics card. If you're going on experience I'm afraid I've got you beat ;)

The CPU part of the A-series is not an Athlon, it's based on the PhenomII series. Not the best, for sure, but definately more then enough to get by.
Remember that TS set a budget of GBP 300. You're not going to get a decent Sandy Bridge system with discreet graphics for under GBP800 whereas the A-series systems are available for as low as GBP300 (although I wouldn't recommend those) and a very decent A8 system is about GBP500. The graphics in the A8 systems are awesome (HB68##M level, desktop equivalent would be 66## series) and the processing power is good enough to run games at high detail.

Yes, the i3 will blow an A-series out of the water. But CPU power isn't everything. As long as you're not raiding, WoW doesn't need much CPU power. Most other games rely way more on the graphics processor then on anything else. Hence; looking at TS' budget combined with what he wants to do, he's better off with an A-series then with Intel.

Also; no offense taken mate. In the end this ?s all about opinions.

[edit]
Oh and before I start sounding too much like a fanboy: I am running on an i5-2500 myself, albeit desktop not laptop.
 
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add me on msn mate, I am from Liverpool to, I know a good pc shop in bootle, they may be able to help you a lot more :)
Just sendsa PM :)
 
Croga said:
The CPU part of the A-series is not an Athlon, it's based on the PhenomII series.
Click to expand...

I've said:

"good" old Athlon II X4
Click to expand...

The difference between Athlon II and Phenom II is L3 cache, Phenom got it (exception is 840), while Athlon goes without it. "Llano" APUs do not have any L3 cache there, they got built-in GPU instead. As we finally got some "Llano"-based machines here in our country, I revised it and now I'm about to agree with you, Croga - those APUs can be a way to go for entry- and mid-level gaming. Most 2- or even 1-threaded games will be satisfied with Athlon's II X4 performance, while 3- and 4-threaded will find 4 real cores there, so performance will be almost equal with i3s (and even some i5s). The only hard "contra" thing is that built-in GPU's performance can sometimes go low on resolutions higher than 1440x900 because of insufficient memory bandwidth of mobile RAM (especially on high-populated scenes). Topicstarter shall keep that in mind. On the other hand, APUs have given us an opportunity to combine their built-in GPU with a discrette GPU of the same class and get a really nice graphic performance boost while the price can still be attractive (ex: Aspire 7560G-6344G50Mnkk, where Radeon HD6650M with 1Gb video memory is paired with APU's built-in HD6520G, should be a rather powerfull solution even in higher resolutions). Also, we don't have to worry about that anal HT spoiling performance in 2-threaded environment (a thing that can sound really tricky for an ordinal user w/o pc tweaking exp). One notice: Do NOT got for AMD E-350/E-450 APU series, their CPU part is really weak (concurent to Intel Atom, 4-5 times slower than a regular CPU) and their GPU got less than a half shader units comparing to upper models A-3xxx/E-3xxx (160 vs 400|320).

P.S: Croga, I'm verry sorry for starting that "cock-measurement" with IT exp between me and you. I still can't explain myself why I've done it. Maybe, it's because I've been feeling really drained of all strength that day because of health problems (got a hemorrhage in my stomach), so, forgive me please. Anyway, I had not even a chance to build myself a PC in 1992, because I'm only 24 y.o. (and was only 5 in 1992, lol). Anyway, it was a pleasure for me to discuss this request with you, mate, thank you for attention. I can seem even more of an AMD fanboy than you, 6 of my previous DT's were based on AMD CPUs, but as I've sold my last one, now I'm going for i5 2500K since I've got some bots here and I don't like an idea of building a separate machine for botting (haven't got a lot of free room here, unfortunately). AMD CPUs seemed to be offering best performance per buck until Intel has released Sandy Bridge.

P.P.S: Sorry for possible mistakes, English is not my native, and as I play WoW on Russian realms nowadays, I have close to no speech practice (Lord, I miss you, granny Europe, russian players appears to be much, much more coarse and impolite, while average skill seems to be slightly higher, their tolerance, patience and (especially) attendace really suck big time).
 
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nforcer said:
The difference between Athlon II and Phenom II is L3 cache, Phenom got it (exception is 840), while Athlon goes without it. "Llano" APUs do not have any L3 cache there, they got built-in GPU instead.
Click to expand...
hmmm.. quite right.... The claim that it's phenom-based is really just marketing speak then.
One notice: Do NOT got for AMD E-350/E-450 APU series, their CPU part is really weak (concurent to Intel Atom, 4-5 times slower than a regular CPU) and their GPU got less than a half shader units comparing to upper models A-3xxx/E-3xxx (160 vs 400|320).
Click to expand...
I concur. Although the E350/450/650 series are way faster then Atoms both in CPU and GPU (I actually do run WoW on an E450 system sometimes), they are still meant for netbooks. And those netbooks are about the same price as a laptop with an A-series APU. They are lovely tiny little 12-hour battery netbooks though with a huge punch in performance compared to other netbooks :)
P.S: Croga, I'm verry sorry for starting that "cock-measurement" with IT exp between me and you. I still can't explain myself why I've done it. Maybe, it's because I've been feeling really drained of all strength that day because of health problems (got a hemorrhage in my stomach), so, forgive me please. Anyway, I had not even a chance to build myself a PC in 1992, because I'm only 24 y.o. (and was only 5 in 1992, lol). Anyway, it was a pleasure for me to discuss this request with you, mate, thank you for attention. I can seem even more of an AMD fanboy than you, 6 of my previous DT's were based on AMD CPUs, but as I've sold my last one, now I'm going for i5 2500K since I've got some bots here and I don't like an idea of building a separate machine for botting (haven't got a lot of free room here, unfortunately). AMD CPUs seemed to be offering best performance per buck until Intel has released Sandy Bridge.
Click to expand...
No apologies necessary. I know I'm an old man and I have been a computer geek for a long time. During the 90s it was even my main job: advising large companies as to what hardware to use. It is always a pleasure to meet someone that can discuss this kinda stuff in a civil manner :)
P.P.S: Sorry for possible mistakes, English is not my native, and as I play WoW on Russian realms nowadays, I have close to no speech practice (Lord, I miss you, granny Europe, russian players appears to be much, much more coarse and impolite, while average skill seems to be slightly higher, their tolerance, patience and (especially) attendace really suck big time).
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errrr..... I don't think anyone would've guessed. I certainly couldn't find mistakes in your English.

To TS:
So there you have it. nforcer and me both agree that you should get a system based on an AMD A-series APU. That means there's really no other choice left ;)
Also; there's a good chance that I'll be buying a new laptop soon and it will most surely be one of those. Quite likely the one nforcer mentioned: Acer 7560G.
 
Croga said:
the E350/450/650 series are way faster then Atoms both in CPU and GPU
Click to expand...

Totally agree here, just a little misunderstanding: when I said that E-350/450 is concurent to Atom, I was talking about it's market positioning/usage niche, not performance. These APUs really blow Atom out of water, their GPU is relatively strong, suitable for some entry-level gaming (I know, even Crysis 2 can be run on with lowest quality settings), but CPU part is a bit weak, I'm afraid it can be not enough even for 25-man WoW raiding with some text-processing addons engaged (string-processing is very greedy for CPU time, indeed). Anyway, even if it seems enough at the moment, it leaves too small reserve for the future. Honestly, I've mentioned E-350/450 only to prevent topic starter from putting netbook APU series down into the row of notebook/DTR solutions. Finally, to clear this up: E-350/450's perfomance can be compared to Athlon 64 3000+ (K8) in 1-threaded and to Athlon 64 X2 3600+ in 2+ -threaded environment, while A/E-3xxx (have to pay attention to 4-digit index numbers here as opposite to 3 digits for netbook series) series is almost the same thing as Athlon II X4 6xx series (the real difference correlates with the clock rate difference, but don't forget about the new Turbo Core tech which can significantly increase clock rate on demand (usually, TC max value should be noticed in laptop/CPU spec)).
 
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nforcer said:
Totally agree here, just a little misunderstanding: when I said that E-350/450 is concurent to Atom, I was talking about it's market positioning/usage niche, not performance. These APUs really blow Atom out of water, their GPU is relatively strong, suitable for some entry-level gaming (I know, even Crysis 2 can be run on with lowest quality settings), but CPU part is a bit weak, I'm afraid it can be not enough even for 25-man WoW raiding with some text-processing addons engaged (string-processing is very greedy for CPU time, indeed). Anyway, even if it seems enough at the moment, it leaves too small reserve for the future. Honestly, I've mentioned E-350/450 only to prevent topic starter from putting netbook APU series down into the row of notebook/DTR solutions. Finally, to clear this up: E-350/450's perfomance can be compared to Athlon 64 3000+ (K8) in 1-threaded and to Athlon 64 X2 3600+ in 2+ -threaded environment, while A/E-3xxx (have to pay attention to 4-digit index numbers here as opposite to 3 digits for netbook series) series is almost the same thing as Athlon II X4 6xx series (the real difference correlates with the clock rate difference, but don't forget about the new Turbo Core tech which can significantly increase clock rate on demand (usually, TC max value should be noticed in laptop/CPU spec)).
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*nods in agreement*
AMDs netbooks are way better then Intels netbooks but, in the end, they're all netbooks and not meant for gaming.
I run WoW on my AMD netbook from time to time just to check AH, mail and GB. Raiding is a huge nono though.
 
The guys that you said was troll'in your thread really was not. His advice was pretty spot on. In life you generally get what you pay for. There is the odd time were you find a really good bargain, but it's not to often.

As for a laptop I really have nothing more then what has been said in this thread, it's very hard to find a good laptop on the cheep. Your best to wait for a huge computer sales, if you can wait maybe after christmas sales. If not, just watch ebay and things like that, find a good gaming laptop and pounce on it.
 
Hey guys, I've got an idea: if some of you link here some kind of UK pricelists and/or online stores/aucs/PC shop sites, I could make a list of suitable models and post it back here. Because I feel a bit shame at the moment - we've discussed both actual platforms in details, thrown tons of technical info, but only three concrette models from my side (and at least one of those is definitely too expensive even in UK).
 
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The company sales begin at the end of augest so ill wait out then, i think i jumped way over board when i said i wanted a laptop to play all the top end games before actually relising there is in no way of achieving that on my low budget, ( ill play the top end games on my pc) to be honest most of the games i will be playing on the laptop would be most mmo game's such as wow, AOEO and maybe future mmo's but on low setting's (should bring the price down), and mostly for browsing, laptop's are completly different to desktop's which i figured out kindly from all our contributing responses so ill drag my arse out of dreamland and face the fact's that with that budget it will be hard :)

I am still looking for a laptop at the current moment in time so help will still be appreciated, i have found this laptop on ebay which look's good in my eye's and should do what i want it to do ( i think) Acer Aspire 5336 Laptop Dual Core 4GB RAM 500GB HDD | eBay

or maybe pay a tab more and go for this: ACER 5552 15.6 AMD ATHLON DUAL CORE HUGE 8GB RAM LAPTOP | eBay

what do you guy's think? is there a big difference in performance or just a minor difference?

thank's everyone for all your in-depth deatil responses :)
 
Based on your budget, don't buy a laptop like those.

Simply wait 6 month or so, try to have more and then buy something good.
You will be disappointed when you will lag playing CoD in Medium when you know you spent 400$ in it. Simply wait until you have 600 or 700 and buy something better.
 
wilsonj17 said:
Acer Aspire 5336 Laptop Dual Core 4GB RAM 500GB HDD | eBay
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Utter crap. Won't play anything at all. WoW at 800*600 with no detail may run but not smoothly. Don't go near this one.
or maybe pay a tab more and go for this: ACER 5552 15.6 AMD ATHLON DUAL CORE HUGE 8GB RAM LAPTOP | eBay
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The add says "AMD Athlon Dual Core" and "Intel HD graphics". This is not possible. Hence; The seller doesn't even know what he's selling. Hence; big chance that he's a fraud and even if he isn't, don't ever buy anything from him.

If you're really looking for the cheapest option, try to find a place that sells the Lenovo Thinkpad E525 (NZ62HMH). It's on sale in NL for about ? 450 so shouldn't be much over GBP300 over in the UK. Lenovo still sells the old IBM quality; very sturdy and decent stuff. This one has a low-end AMD A-series APU in it which will do what you just described at it's full 1366*768 resolution.

Vilarix;
"Simply wait <x amount of time>" is always good advice, unless waiting is not an option. In computers, just like in all electronics, waiting is always the best. But at some point you just can't wait anymore. If TS wants a GBP300 laptop right now, he can get a very decent laptop. Right now.
 
I know basics of computers but not as indepth as this. I have my computer which runs wow fine but i also need a laptop that will run wow. I just need it for running wow and surfing internet. If someone could point tme towards a laptop(us) id thank you. I'm guessing after selling my computer ill be able to spend $550 on a laptop.
 
Croga said:
Vilarix;
"Simply wait <x amount of time>" is always good advice, unless waiting is not an option. In computers, just like in all electronics, waiting is always the best. But at some point you just can't wait anymore. If TS wants a GBP300 laptop right now, he can get a very decent laptop. Right now.
Click to expand...

Of course, but with his budget he will regret to have spend too much on something that does not run anything.
 
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