Buying a Gaming Laptop

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Tricky

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I'm looking into buying a gaming laptop - for certain reasons it needs to be a laptop, not a desktop. I've looked at Alienware, Dell and iBuyPower, and my price range is $1300-1400.

I want a laptop that will:
* play games like HL2, Gmod, FEAR, and CS:S at decent (if not great) settings, hopefully at max res
* be at least at the performance level of an X1600Pro
* have a Core 2 Duo processor for video editing
* have a large enough screen for decent gaming (does NOT need to be UXGA, but would be nice if I could get it in the price range)
* have a CD/DVD burner (MUST HAVE)
* have Vista Home Premium if at all possible; if not, I'll go with the cheapest OS available (not a big deal to me, but if the price works out I want to buy Windows)

The two biggest options I've found for a video card are:
* 256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7600
* 128MB ATI Mobility™ Radeon® X1400

What are the performance differences between these cards?

Also, what are your personal favorite sites for buying laptops?

Thanks in advance.


EDIT: Wow. I found the Dell 1720 has this:
* 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8600M GT
for $200 more. It also has this:
* 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8400M GS
for $100 more. How do those look for the price? They seem like pretty good laptop cards...
 
Go for the 7600 if you want game. My current laptop has an x1400, and while it plays games semi-decently and runs vista fine the 7600 will definitly outperform it.

newegg.com has a very good selection of laptops.
 
I haven't found any laptops I'm looking for on Newegg - can you point some out to me?

Thanks for the tip on the 7600 - but I just found a great setup on iBuyPower that I'm seriously thinking about.

IBuyPower Computer :: Battalion 101 CZ-7 Notebook
Battalion 101 CZ-7 Notebook
Core 2 Duo 1.8x2
1gb dual-channel RAM
256MB GeForce Go 8400M-G PCI-E
120gb 5400rpm HDD
*plus the essentials*

$1,132

But with this price, I might get 2gb/RAM for +$120.

What do you guys think?
 
that +xtra 2gb of ram would be an awesome gaming laptop
make sure of the battery life tho cuz some of those powerful laptops only have 1-2 hours of battery
 
that +xtra 2gb of ram would be an awesome gaming laptop
make sure of the battery life tho cuz some of those powerful laptops only have 1-2 hours of battery

ya.,... but the 8400 Go sucks.... look for a better video based card (*like x1400 or 7600)
 
Cyberpower/ibuypower aren't too special. Not that highly rated and it's better to just buy an MSI/Asus laptop directly anyways. Go with either a geforce 7600, ATI x1600/1700, or geforce 8600 (if you must get dx10). Anything less is really going to bottleneck you. aaronkupen linked to two really good ones that I'd also recommend. YOu can buy another gig of ram for either of them for $40 right now and have a great gaming laptop for not much cash.
Or if you're feeling adventurous you could try and build your own. Likewise, I run a side business in which I build gaming laptops like the ones mentioned here for folks. If you want you could PM me and I can work out a quote for a few hundred bucks less than what you're looking at on Newegg.
 
I don't believe any performance benchmarks are out yet for the 8400, but generally low end mobile cards tend to perform very poor. I would say the difference would be pretty substantial.
 
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