So,
since I haven’t been following the specs of computers lately, I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to just take a quick look at this, and let me know if its a good gaming laptop?
Its decently priced actually - or rather, its rather high priced, but I cant tell if that one is good, or if this one that is slightly cheaper, is just as good.
Thanks in advance!
They have identical specs. Likely the build is different to account for the price differential.
The GTX950m is slightly slower than the GTX860m, which is essentially a GTX750Ti. That’s marginal for 1080p gaming; you can generally game at 1080p on medium settings but wouldn’t expect a great experience.
I would probably go with the wirecutter recommendation, if I had to buy a budget gaming notebook right now. The 960m in that asus has enough additional horsepower to make 1080p gaming a more pleasant experience.
But if you can wait, wait. Thunderbird 3 is coming out with intel skylake CPUs, which are being revealed at Gamescom in the first week of august. Thunderbird 3 will finally officially support eGPUs. So you’ll have the option of buying a thin/light/cheap sexy ultrabook like the asus ux305 and then add on a $300 eGPU enclosure and $300 GTX970 and game like an enthusiast, then pack up the laptop and carry it around when you need to. Of course if you need to game while mobile, that won’t work for you.
If you do need to game while mobile, laptops with freesync and g-sync are coming out very soon too. They will also offer a far better experience, particularly if your GPU tops out between 40 and 60 FPS or so.
Also in 3 weeks, everybody is going to refresh their lines with windows 10 (and often new hardware to match). The old hardware will probably be discounted for a brief time before it’s all sold off.
Thanks a lot stusser. I’ll try to be patient and wait, since that seems the prudent choice here :-)
Well, it’s always a good idea to wait if you can swing it, but if you’re going on a, I dunno, videogaming cruise or something and need some way to game in the ocean, you have no choice but to buy right now. Gaming notebooks have always required substantial compromises-- they aren’t very good notebooks, with terrible battery life and giant form factors. Thunderbolt 3 can change all that.
If/when it finally happens I plan on picking up a macbook retina with TB3 and an eGPU enclosure and going on my merry way.
A 950m is not enough, you need 3gb of ram on the card these days or you are limiting yourself for now even let alone the future.
I have a ROG G751 with a 970m and 17.3" screen and it is a massive step up from my last desktop.
So far everything runs amazingly well and losing the desktop from the lounge has been a relief.
One great thing it hooks straight in to my TV as well so if I need to go big screen I can as well.
It cost me £1000 which I thought was ok, I knew I could get cheaper with a new desktop but it suited my gaming and home needs perfectly.
Thanks again stusser and Reemul. The plan isn’t to game on a cruise or anything like that, but to be able to game in the living room with my GF instead of secluding myself in some room with a PC. I’ve bought Acers previously, but ALWAYS have heat issues about a year into the lifecycle of the laptop, which is why I was looking at the MSI things.
The Thunderbird 3, even if I don’t know what it is, sounds interesting, and Reemul - you are probably right about the 3GB so holding off is a great idea it seems.
I may get an xbox in the interim ;-)
Thunderbolt 3, sorry, not thunderbird. It’s intel’s new connector, mostly found on macs. Version 3 uses the USB type-C connector, will pass USB3.1 signals as well as thunderbolt, and can extend the PCI-e bus over a cable allowing for external GPU enclosures.
The cheaper one doesn’t have the 128GB SSD, which is a pretty important difference. I just wanted to point that out before Razgon gets in a buy-it-now-because-waiting-is-for-suckers mood and decides to buy his own suggestion. Not saying that waiting is a bad thing. Waiting’s good.
Ahh, didn’t see that.
I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but have you tried blowing all the dust out of your Acers? I’ve had some company-issues Dell laptops & they require occasional dust blowout otherwise the heat builds up and performance drops.
Well, what about streaming the games from a desk top to a cheap labtop? Steam allows it, and it’s pretty good.
Yeah, I frequently use a vacuum cleaner to suck out dust, and the heat issues becomes better, but the laptop is not as good as when I bought it, heatwise.
Legowarrior - Yeah, havent tried it, but won’t there always be a little bit of lag?
I do think I’ll wait this time around, and see what happens with new laptops. I also hear that sales of pc/laptops are down, so prices may fall a bit (Doom!)
It really does depend on the game. Most of my gaming is turn based, so the lag isn’t an issue, but I can understand not wanting to try it with TF 2 or something.
It is an interesting option though, and worth considering. Has anyone else tried the Streaming service on Steam?
Just did a 10 second try of the Witcher 3. Suprisingly playable, but I doubt it would work for action games.
If you want a gaming laptop that avoids heat issues. ASUS G Series.
Can play games like Sorcerer King/GalCiv 3 for hours and it never gets above 58C. They just do some magic with their fans- really well-designed machines.
They’re the only laptops I’d buy- and the most reliable computers period by far.
I’ve had fewer problems with them than I have with desktops.
Yeah I have an Asus and the cooling is unreal, even on my lap it never feels hot.
what games do you play?
Look at Asus laptops. Choose one of the Rog series that fits your budget for gaming. I’m on the market, and keep my eyes on the ASUS ROG GL551JW-DS71
So, the last time I did this, I didn’t really take your advices, and got the laptop with the 950m graphics card, which was a mistake.
Currently, Im looking at doing an upgrade and purchasing yet another laptop, and am looking at this
Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ processor
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3 GB GDDR5
• 128GB M.2-SSD + 1 TB HDD / 7200 rpm
• 16GB DDR4 RAM i op til 2133MHz.
• Full HD-skærm med matt IPS-panel og G-SYNC™5
I find this market to be extremely difficult to comprehend. This one does seem to have the currently top of the line gpu, the 980m, and skylake, so that should help quite a bit, as I understand it, correct?
Edit: some places I see this has thunderbolt, but it isn’t mentioned here. ?
That’s a 970M, which is essentially a GTX960, which means it will play all 1080p games extremely well. Very adept gaming laptop.
If the screen is higher res than 1080p, you can simply run games at 1080p, no biggie.