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I am considering getting a gaming laptop but i know basically nothing about them.
I intend to do fairly light gaming on it. (bit of tf2 now and then)
I also don't want to be messing around with graphics cards and upgrading the processors or whatever.
I would be grateful if someone could give me advice on what to buy and roughly what qualities to look for in a laptop because on websites
all the information looks like gibberish to me.

thanks

Go to newegg and get whatever Asus in your price range has a bunch of bells and whistles and you'll be fine for several years at least.

Go here and pick whichever one fits your budget:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=category_browse&selected_cat=11

This is what I use and mine is almost 2 years old. I can play Diablo 3, Starcraft and Crysis just fine.

Not an endorsement of their products, but I have a MSI GE70 notebook and it performs very well! I've had it for 7 months and it has no issues so far (Unless you count Windows 8, which I hate)!

 whembly wrote:
Go here and pick whichever one fits your budget:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=category_browse&selected_cat=11

This is what I use and mine is almost 2 years old. I can play Diablo 3, Starcraft and Crysis just fine.

Sager is pricey, but very good. I know of a couple law firms that use them because the build quality is so high and they look really professional.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Go here and pick whichever one fits your budget:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=category_browse&selected_cat=11

This is what I use and mine is almost 2 years old. I can play Diablo 3, Starcraft and Crysis just fine.

Sager is pricey, but very good. I know of a couple law firms that use them because the build quality is so high and they look really professional.

Yeah... if you're going to spend over a grand, might as well as get one of the best.

Sager is more "middle-upper" of the botique of laptop. The best thing about them, is that they're STURDY as feth, plus their customer support/relation is fantastic.

Yeah, I'm really impressed with how well their cases fit together. Miles better than any of the big OEMs.

and what kind of specs do i need to look for to know it will run most games well?
i just read somewhere to aim for one with 4gb of ram

 Monsieur_Maladroit wrote:
I am considering getting a gaming laptop but i know basically nothing about them.
I intend to do fairly light gaming on it. (bit of tf2 now and then)
I also don't want to be messing around with graphics cards and upgrading the processors or whatever.
I would be grateful if someone could give me advice on what to buy and roughly what qualities to look for in a laptop because on websites
all the information looks like gibberish to me.

thanks

You won't be messing with graphics cards or upgrading processors on a laptop.The latter is very difficult, and the former is usually impossible.

So far as what to buy, Whembley's advise is good. Sager makes great laptops, but they can be spendy. Rented Tritiums advice is almost OK as well. Asus is a great hardware vendor. The problem is that for at least some models (such as this one) they use an integrated Intel GPU, or the one built into the I3+ CPU's). Intels can game like old people bone - possible, but poorly. So while I won't tell you what to look for - because pretty much any laptop that's $400 or so can do light gaming, these days - I will tell you some things to avoid:

Anything with "Intel HD Graphics", the word "integrated", or any graphics card made by Intel. I won't use a non-Intel processor, they make the best network cards and chipsets in the world, but they simply do not make adequate gaming GPUs. It's not their arena, they're not trying to. You're looking for something by Nvidia or, I guess, ATI/AMD. Newegg has a filter here that will take out integrated GPU's so this is a good place to start - remember you can sort by price, and get it someplace else if they have a better price - but this is a great place to start.

A processor that is listed as an Atom or Celeron. Most games don't use much CPU these days; but this is pushing it. These are perfect for all day web browsing because they use low power, but won't be adequate for probably even TF2.

Anything Dell. Their support is poor beyond the norm

Anything with less than 4GB of RAM if it's got Windows 8, which any new laptop will

If it comes with an SSD, anything with a capacity of 60GB or less.

 Monsieur_Maladroit wrote:
and what kind of specs do i need to look for to know it will run most games well?

You will need to get this from the games themselves since it varies wildly. Google your game plus "system requirements" to find out.

The GPU is the most important component right now. You want at least 1GB video memory and a dedicated card from ATI or Nvidia. No integrated graphics, never intel graphics.

As long as it has enough slots, you can ignore the ram and upgrade later.

Also, as an aside - DakkaDakka is not really a good place to get computer advice; generally speaking - I've seen some pretty dubious advice here (in generally, not in this thread.... yet). Which is fair since this is a wargaming forum, not a computing one. If you have a technical issue a better place for this sort of thing is Tom's Hardware.

Listen to Ouze Monsieur_MaladroitMade... Tom's Hardware is a great place for you to start your research.

Alrighty then.
I'll take my search to tom's hardware. thanks for all your help guys. Especially ouze, that list is going to be very helpful.

Just make sure if you get a gaming laptop get a nice fan to help ventilate it, i've seen those things melt before.

Are you sure you don't













































actually want a mac?

I want to slap rubiksnoob for that comment. LOL.

In any case, Alienwares are a good one for pure gaming performance, though they literally are bricks to carry around. Easily upgradeable too.

 Enigwolf wrote:
I want to slap rubiksnoob for that comment. LOL.

In any case, Alienwares are a good one for pure gaming performance, though they literally are bricks to carry around. Easily upgradeable too.

Seriously... please... no Alienwares. They're nothing like they were before DELL bought them out.

 whembly wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
I want to slap rubiksnoob for that comment. LOL.

In any case, Alienwares are a good one for pure gaming performance, though they literally are bricks to carry around. Easily upgradeable too.

Seriously... please... no Alienwares. They're nothing like they were before DELL bought them out.

Touche. From experience, the older ones were better...