Gaming laptop

From what I’ve read, the resolutions of current VR setups should be more than taken care of by 4GB of VRAM. Unless you’re planning to drive 4K+ resolutions to a dedicated monitor–and want to be able to play next year’s AAA at Ultra-Max supersettings–4GB should be more than sufficient.

The 980M isn’t fast enough to game at 4k anyway. It’s basically a GTX 970. 4GB of VRAM is fine.

I guess you could transfer files with a USB crossover cable, but why not just use a flash drive? Not sure you realize how cheap flash drives are these days; here’s a speedy 64GB USB3 drive for $17.

And here’s the wirecutter’s recommendation, it is literally a full-speed SSD in flash drive format, for $33. Not that speed really matters for this application, but I have one and it is just silly fast.

Thanks again Stusser and everyone. I’m going for the

I didn’t even notice the rebate until you pointed it out. I’ll also grab that flash drive. If anyone is interested I can post my impressions of the computer sometime next week encase anyone else is in the market for something similar.

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Yep, please do. This is a very high-end gaming notebook-- not ridiculously high-end, but certainly the biggest and baddest I would consider getting for myself. If I was going to buy right now I would personally go for the razer blade for the money, as it’s dramatically more portable, but that comes with a 14" screen and a 970M. Still very capable at 1080p, but not VR-capable.

Don’t forget to claim your free copy of The Division too!

I own The Division aleady, but look out for the code in the Giveaway thread soon!

Hook me up, man! I don’t have it yet!

Ohh it has built in G-Sync. That’s probably VERY helpful when stuck with a mobile GPU.

8.5 pounds though, that’s going to a beast to carry anywhere.

Let us know how it works out!

It’s essentially a GTX 970 and the laptop has a 1080p screen-- I think he’ll be fine on framerates.

If it all works out, it’s yours. I’ll PM you sometime next week.

I actually just got a copy from another kind forum member (don’t know if he wants me to say his name), so giveaway thread it is-- thanks anyway!

I just ordered one of these. We shall see.

1050 Ti.

So I ditched that one because of the screen issues before it shipped - unlike the previous gen 7559 it has a TN panel that is becoming famous for how bad it is. Picked up an Alienware 15 r3 (7th gen) with 60hz gsync panel, and the Alienware 13 r3 (6th gen) refurb with OLED. Going to ship one or both of them back pretty quick.

The gysnc panel has a problem with flickering in static game images. Also the laptop doesn’t run as fast as the 13, though they both have 1060s, probably due to some some wonky setting. The 15 has randomly lost lights or sound drivers. It is a surprisingly rich IPS panel in color saturation, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the OLED. Also the speakers on this thing suck for some reason.The 13 is better in almost ever way except for that the fans spin up to hair dryer in certain games; the only way to kill the noise is unplug it from the wall, which cuts power use down and cools the machine. Supposedly the 7th gen laptops got a redesigned internal cooling configuration. Probably a deal breaker. But the OLED is pretty nice, hard to use anything else once you’ve tried it on a PC. Got a pretty decent deal on the refurb, probably saved $600+ for a similarly new specs. Also the price has increased in the Outlet store about 200-300 for the machine I just picked up. Might have to stick with it regardless…

The 1050ti is revolutionary in that it’s the first affordable mobile GPU that is truly capable of 1080p gaming. Getting a real gaming laptop for $800 is just crazy.

Dell at least had made it hard to get one though. The Inspiron model has such a bad screen that it ruins the experience. You can get it in their smaller Alienware but inexplicably the Inspiron has 4gb of vram while the Alienware version only has 2gb. They both have the same CPU and memory so y’all you’re paying for is the screen.

MSI, Gigabyte and Lenovo all have gaming laptops but I’m really unsure to their quality and resale value - I think the Dells will probably hold up better in value a couple years from now.

I wouldn’t expect anything not made by Apple to retain any meaningful resale value after a couple of years.

Asus and MSI laptops are fine. Read reviews first of course.

That Alienware OLED panel is pretty pimp now that i’ve used it more. Wish it came in a 15" size…

Also it’s strange but every Dell/Alienware i’ve ever had has to “settle down” for like a month. Out of the box performance is always worse than, say, time X later, for unknown reasons.

Interesting you should say so - My latest gaming laptop, and MSI 7RE Apache Pro has a 1050 TI, and I absolutely LOVE it.
Its so nice to fire up Total War: Warhammer, and see the default setting is “Ultra”, and it just runs beautifully. LOVE IT!

Ugh, I’m so trying to put off getting a new gaming laptop. But it’s really tough when you can get a 1060 card and a 17 inch screen for like 1200.

Quick question, do any makers have docking stations? I’d like to setup with a full sized keyboard and monitor for daily use to keep from wearing out the laptop. Or do you even need a docking station for this these days? HDMI out and a usb keyboard would prob work.

What do people think about this laptop? Aside from maybe sticking a hard drive in there I can’t see what else you would need to do to it. And the price seems very good.

I think the laptop is fine - I mean from a technical perspective, I can’t vouch for build quality, and as for aesthetic, there’s not accounting for taste - but isn’t actually a good deal per se, imo. i7/256ssd/1050 TI for $1,000 is kind of the going rate now for this budget line of laptops recently released. I do like the reviews that say it has an IPS panel and good battery life, but the feature sets are all kind of the same here with similar competitors. Not a big fan of the center hinge though.