Help me find an affordable gaming laptop

September 22, 2008 11:24 AM

Cheap gaming laptop recommendations

Catering more to the cheap side than the gaming. I'd like to be able to run hl2/orange box, spore, and eventually starcraft 2, and maybe some wow. I've been looking at the dell xps m1530s, and the configuration would be around $1,300. Is there something of equal power that i can get for cheaper? I've had little luck. Thanks.

posted by Kudos to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

If you're not in a hurry, wait for a good Dell deal to show up on some deal website and take a look at the configurations. I was able to land a cheap gaming laptop for about $800 about 11 months ago (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, GeForce 8600M GT 256MB RAM, 15.4" 1440x900 screen). With this laptop I'm pretty much able every game out (though at differing settings). HL2 was running w/ 2x antialiasing at 60fps, Spore at medium settings was probably 50+ fps, Oblivion at medium-high was 60+fps, etc., Call of Duty 4 medium settings at 60+ fps. Crysis Warhead was probably 40+ fps at medium-low settings. (And all of these are at 1280x800 resolution)

Some deal websites:
www.slickdeals.net
www.fatwallet.com
www.gotapex.com
www.techbargains.com

For a good place to look up benchmarks of notebook GPUs:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
posted by NeoLeo at 11:43 AM on September 22, 2008

A Dell 1500 vostro with a the mobile nvidia card and 2 gigs of ram should cost you less than 800.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:53 AM on September 22, 2008

NCIX has a gaming notebooks section on their Canadian site. My brother picked up an ASUS a few months back that does a great job running hl2/tf2/wow etc. It was in the $1300 CAD range.
The US site should have the same stock, but they don't have the gaming notebooks isolated from the pack.
posted by jjb at 12:21 PM on September 22, 2008

Gateways have been coming out with some very well reviewed gaming notebooks.

The M-6862 has a Radeon Mobility 2600 and costs around $750 MSRP. It was recently on sale for $524. (Fatwallet thread). It looks like it's $700 from Best Buy currently.
posted by wongcorgi at 12:36 PM on September 22, 2008

damn dirty ape: The laptop I got was about a year ago, so naturally you should be able to get the same for cheaper nowadays
posted by NeoLeo at 11:38 PM on September 22, 2008

Gateway P-7811 FX
posted by lukemeister at 9:41 AM on September 23, 2008