Laptop Help

I'm looking to get a new laptop in the next week or so since my current one is on it's last legs, but it's lasted me 6 years so I can't complain too much. I'm mainly looking to check out some F2P MMOs like Terra, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, and PSO 2 with maybe some TF2 or LoL on occasion.

With that in mind I was hoping to get some opinions on this laptop - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314004

Is that going to meet my gaming needs or do I need to look else ware? Any recommendations of other laptops are appreciated, I'd ideally like to keep it under $800. Thanks for the help duders!

@blannir:

I think it'll probably serve you pretty well. My main concern is that the CPU is only dual-core, but it is at least a very recent release, having come out in January. I did dig up this video showing off what the video card can do, although he's recording with a better CPU and a bit more RAM.

If F2P stuff is what you really want to play, then I'm sure the laptop should last you a couple of years. If you plan on having it last another six years, though, I might put a couple hundred more dollars into it and see what that opens up to you (maybe an i7 chip?).

I'm not super knowledgeable about laptops, though, so I'll leave this for the pros to really answer.

It has to be a laptop eh? Other laptops made just for gaming seem to be way overpriced so probably don't look at those. That one should play those games at least on one setting or another.

Not sure on prices but Haswell (new Intel CPUs, will have numbers like i5-4xxx) are aiming to top out with GPU performance around the nVidia 650M area when you get the top mobile GPU models (they have some eDRAM to provide this performance, like the Nintendo and MS consoles use to get their GPUs up to competitive performance on the cheap) which is better than a 730M. Obviously you have to deal with Intel drivers and they aren't as mature (or embedded with game engine teams / devs) as AMD or nVidia options.

On the other side of the fence then AMD have their APUs (CPU/GPU combo) and they can give some level of workable light gaming performance for a 720p screen (which is your likely screen resolution because only tablets get decent high DPI IPS screens at lower prices). If you're not looking to wait some weeks for Haswell and see how that makes things fall out in sales of older Ivy Bridge laptops being released from warehouses then this is a recent guide with some general advice and specific picks for the US market.

Edit: specific to your question, I'd say the $750 model they pick out isn't a bad offer. They link to the HP site for the dv6t-7300 and the way I would spend $800 is upgrading to the 650M GPU; 7200rpm HDD (only $20 more, but ignore if you plan to strip it out end put in an SSD - which is where I think you see a lot of difference in how responsive your laptop is but not a massive difference in games unless you really hate load times); i5-3230M (again, $20 makes this an easy suggestion as the i5-2xxx is outdated and this is very cheap for a big of a performance boost); and maybe you want a backlit keyboard (that stuff is up to user preference, I also make no claims to know if the keyboard is any good for typing - that's the primary concern I have when buying a laptop and so I go and scout out all the models at a store before making any decisions but for gaming that probably matters less). Those upgrades, on the current prices on HP.com, is just under that $800 and will do much more than the laptop you linked to for gaming.

@shivoa: @rorie: Thanks for the heads up Matt, I had some concerns about the i5 as well and found an i7 with the same price so I ended up going that route. I don't plan on this new one lasting 6 years and to say my current one's lasted that long is even a bit of a stretch as well, I can't really remember the last time I played a game released in the last 3-4 years. Even when it was newish I can remember doing 25-40 man raids in WoW with all settings on low at about 10FPS so even being able to run something on medium will blow my mind at this point lol I'm excited to mess around with an MMO again and see what's changed over the years, I certainly have enough free time for it after recently being laid off, really enjoyed your blog post about unemployment sums up a lot of what I have going through my head right now.

Thanks Shivoa for the research, took your advice and used some left over cash to grab another 2GB RAM, and an SSD primarily to use as a boot drive since it has two slots and I'll keep the other one for file storage. Also went down to Staples to play around on the laptops to see what keyboard/touch pad felt right and I'm glad I did cause some were just awful I can't stand that texturing some manufacturers put on the touchpad and some of the keyboards were just sorta mushy.

Ending up going with this one - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215660

I'm excited to get it in a few days and see what all the hub-bub about this "Steam" thing is.

Cool! PM me when you get it and I can hook you up with some Steam games. Either BioShock or DOTA2 I guess would work, if you haven't played either of those.

@blannir: Cool! PM me when you get it and I can hook you up with some Steam games. Either BioShock or DOTA2 I guess would work, if you haven't played either of those.

@rorie: Wow, thank you very much that's really generous. I'd definitely be interested in checking out DOTA2 so I'll be sure to PM you later this week, thanks again =)