A budget gaming laptop basically means a laptop with a "-50M" card, 650, 750, etc, they aren't powerhouses but will get you through most games if you don't expect lots of anti aliasing and turning stuff on ultra.
@raven10 said:
I would never recommend a laptop for gaming for any number of reasons
Bit narrow minded as there's plenty of awesome gaming laptops out there, yes they'll always be more expensive than a desktop PC but you pay for portability.
My laptop can play BF4 on ultra and doesn't get excessively hot (70-80c max load), I do prefer using my PC though, of course, my PC has my Xonar Essence STX and a bigger screen. (27" vs 17")
@pcorb said:
@ttocs: Even high end gaming laptops are hard to recommend due to the disadvantages inherent to the form factor
Huh? Just do research before hand and buy a laptop that doesn't operate as a small heater. The build quality on mine is lovely, unfortunately the smaller versions of it suffer from thermal throttling.
The biggest problem in many gaming laptops is Intel Turbo Boost is turned on by default which raises temperatures by around 20-25 degrees, this is silly as for 99% of games CPU speed makes little difference to performance, for me I turned this off and ran benchmarks - I cut a lot of my temperatures down, reduced noise a fair amount and didn't lose any performance at all. I also noticed an improved overall computing experience as my CPU wasn't constantly bouncing up to 3.4Ghz for no reason.
Turbo Boost is just a bad feature and doesn't work correctly, it shouldn't put my cores up to 150% just because I opened up Skype. As for battery life, my one lasts for around 4-5 hours, I don't really care about that though as it mostly sits at home, it's decent enough as I never take any laptops I have without a plug anyway. I have a MacBook Air at the moment which is my go-to for taking a laptop to the library or something, I'm thinking of selling both and buying a brand new laptop next year when the 970M comes out. (probably with a 15" screen to make it more portable too)
My desktop will always be my preferred option but as someone that will soon have an 18 month placement abroad, a gaming laptop is far more convenient than a desktop. I don't see the point in buying a gaming laptop unless you are travelling a lot or have an upcoming placement somewhere far away, I'll admit that, they just don't offer the same value for money, but hey, still cheaper than Apple! (groan)
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