Need some advice for a new gaming laptop

[Ooshima]

My opinion is that with limited budget it's always better to go for a desktop rig because a gaming laptop is always way more expensive.

I've taken a look at the tech specs of the Lenovo:

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops...10p/#techspecs

I have a few issues with it.
1) Unless you are able to get the GT 755M SLI version, the single GT 755M is CRAP. I'm serious. I had a free Alienware 14 given to me, it came with the GT 750M which is slightly, really slightly behind the GT 755M. You can never run high settings on full HD with that, it gives you really crappy frame rates and performance and stresses the GPU a lot. I was in Japan during 2.2 launch and that was the only gaming laptop I had and I had to make do with low settings to get some acceptable game play. But low settings doesn't bother you then yes, GT 755M can produce 30-45 FPS on low settings, at 1080p full screen.

2) It runs on a... wait what, 5400rpm HDD? What again. 5400rpm, you kidding me? Most people are actually using SSDs these days for faster load times. I haven't been using a HDD for years but I have friends telling me the load times for FF14 ARR differs quite significantly on a 7200rpm HDD vs a Samsung EVO SSD. And a 7200rpm HDD is really a bare minimum for a gaming laptop. IDK why the crap Lenovo puts a 5400rpm there.


For a smooth and enjoyable FF14 ARR experience on 1080p I would recommend you to look at at least:

4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ (like 90% of the gaming laptops are on this, so not an issue finding one)
GTX 765M and above (for high settings on full HD). The replacement model is GTX 860M but GTX 765M is still good to go
Samsung EVO SSD 120GB for OS and prog/game installation
16GB RAM

Look into the chassis design especially heat sinks and how it dissipates heat. Some designs are so terrible that heat causes the machine to get sluggish and wasted any good hardware installed.

[F3rd1nand]

In my college having a laptop was pretty much a requirement. And having a good laptop was almost always a must. Typically, I'd see brands like HP, Dell, Toshiba and Acer having the most problems as their use went up. Asus and Lenovo laptops however usually held up long after their listed life expectancy. In our gaming circle in particular we had a guy with a super old RoG and he was still playing on it. Our combined average was probably around 3-4 years per laptop without needing anything major. Usually Laptops got replaced more because of upgrades rather than them not working.

^This. I so regret buying a Dell XPS15, it was great untill warranty was gone. It's fun that 2 days after warranty ended, the first "bad" crash happened and since then, I have to play using a software that "underclocks" my video card and I've already taken off all the dust and re-applied thermal paste. I have to play hoping it won't randomly crash and make me force-restart the laptop (it takes nearly 5 minutes to be fully operational again with Win7 x64 and more than half of the HD free). ¬¬

I don't really know what to think of gaming laptops, as in my experience, the supplier believes that formating the machine (as a test, same like most internet providers ask us to turn off the modem for a minute) and almost replacing most of the hardware each 7-12 months is the solution. lol

Idk if anyone went through this kind of experience but it totally killed any intention I had of coming back to Dell. Are ASUS laptops really that great? I bought mine Dell at January 2012 and it mainly fell apart by November 2013.

[Ransu]

Hello!!

Im a bit troubled because i want to change my old laptop

Samsung i5 @ 2.4 GHz/6 Gb Ram/1Gb dedicated Video Card (Nvidia Gt540M DDR3)
Right now i play the game with the lowest settings (I don't want to force better quality and lower the performance of the laptop)

And im thinking to get a Lenovo Gaming Laptop IdeaPad Y510P. It has an i7 4th generation processor 2.4 GHZ up to 3.4 GHZ/8GB Ram/2 GB Dedicated video Card (Nvidia GT755M DDR5)

(BTW i know that there is another model of the IdeaPad Y510P with a NVidia GT755M DDR5 Sli with 16GB, but sadly that laptop is not in my country in any kind of retail store or specialized store)

That Laptop would be enough to run the game with high quality settings without sacrificing the performance of the laptop???

The advice is to get a desktop :P Gaming laptops are a waste of money.

[Kyros]

The advice is to get a desktop :P Gaming laptops are a waste of money.

Funny, I think Desktops are a waste of money. You'll want a laptop anyways if you do anything outside (Vacations, work, friends, travel, RPing, whatever). Why spend the money twice when you can just get one good laptop.

Idk if anyone went through this kind of experience but it totally killed any intention I had of coming back to Dell. Are ASUS laptops really that great? I bought mine Dell at January 2012 and it mainly fell apart by November 2013.

Dell was good like, 10 years ago. Now? Not so much. They basically prefer form over function, making pretty laptops that fall apart if you look at them meanly. As a friendly reminder, Alienware's from Dell, so stay away from those too.

Asus laptops are that good yes. Asus has the advantage that they are a Motherboard manufacturer, so they can design their layout however they want cheaply. It's the main reason their laptops are cheaper and more stable. They focus a lot on spreading the heat evenly too, which further extends their lifetime. If you go to a store, most Asus Laptops will have a blue sticker on them that reads "Ice cool" or something among those lines.

On my personal experience, I can't recommend it enough. It's got to the point where my house has 4 Asus laptops, and I got 3 friends with at least one. All of them still work. The only one on top of my head that had any issue was the fully loaded RoG one because my friend overclocked the shit out of it, and it killed the battery. Short of that the lap still works flawlessly.

[Ransu]

Funny, I think Desktops are a waste of money. You'll want a laptop anyways if you do anything outside (Vacations, work, friends, travel, RPing, whatever). Why spend the money twice when you can just get one good laptop.

Except you can't upgrade them and they always run at half strength of a good desktop. In terms of gaming, laptops are a waste of money.

[Kyros]

Except you can't upgrade them and they always run at half strength of a good desktop. In terms of gaming, laptops are a waste of money.

I don't know if you are vastly underestimating a good gaming laptops power or overestimating a desktops power, or both. The difference is marginal at best. The upgrading part is true, but we are at the point where if you get a good Laptop OR Desktop, you won't have to upgrade in about 3-4 years. Unless you are absolutely OCD, the current top of the line GPU will outpace the increase in gaming specs requirement for a very long time. My 4 year old lap can still play games like FFXIV and Tera with no problems. I only upgraded it because I'm OCD like that

And you still don't get my point. If you ever wander outside your room, you'll want a laptop anyways. At one point I was like you, having a monstruous Desktop and a shitty laptop. I couldn't play anything short of Starcraft on the lap, which saddened me whenever I couldn't access my desktop. When it came the time to upgrade, I decided I wanted to have an able laptop, and went with that. Now I have the best of both worlds. Upgrading my rack looks like a waste of money to me now, and it's currently collecting dust under my desk. It's primary use now is simply as a glorified hard drive backup for my laptop

[Limecat]

gaming
laptop

Pick one.

[Nicco]

i love my y510p would recommend

[Ransu]

I don't know if you are vastly underestimating a good gaming laptops power or overestimating a desktops power, or both. The difference is marginal at best. The upgrading part is true, but we are at the point where if you get a good Laptop OR Desktop, you won't have to upgrade in about 3-4 years. Unless you are absolutely OCD, the current top of the line GPU will outpace the increase in gaming specs requirement for a very long time. My 4 year old lap can still play games like FFXIV and Tera with no problems. I only upgraded it because I'm OCD like that

And you still don't get my point. If you ever wander outside your room, you'll want a laptop anyways. At one point I was like you, having a monstruous Desktop and a shitty laptop. I couldn't play anything short of Starcraft on the lap, which saddened me whenever I couldn't access my desktop. When it came the time to upgrade, I decided I wanted to have an able laptop, and went with that. Now I have the best of both worlds. Upgrading my rack looks like a waste of money to me now, and it's currently collecting dust under my desk. It's primary use now is simply as a glorified hard drive backup for my laptop

I don't think you understand...Most high-end notebook graphics cards are simply midrange desktop parts binned for low voltage, and often crippled. This holds true for the CPU and even the ram runs at a lower clock rate.A laptop will never compare to the power of even a midrange desktop....ever. Case in point, a 660m, which is a relatively high end card for laptops is comparable to that of a 9800 GTX....A card that is going on 7 years old. Laptops are not comparable to desktops. Not even close. They run at lower clock rates, lower voltage, etc...I'm not overestimating anything and the differences are far from marginal. You can take any top end laptop from places like cyberpower or alienware and my 4y/o PC will still run circles around it.

And if I'm wandering outside of my room, why would I need a laptop? I do this thing called interacting with other people when I go out, not drag my laptop along and play games and ignore my friends. It's like going to a restaurant and staring at your phone. Put the damn thing in your pocket.

If you travel a lot or need it for work then fine, laptops are great. But for gaming? Waste of money.

[DoctorPepper]

If you travel a lot or need it for work then fine, laptops are great. But for gaming? Waste of money.

I don't really get this statement at all, I use my work laptop for gaming all the time when I'm on the road working. I use my gaming desktop at home and yeah it's better and can be upgraded but my lenovo serves its purpose quite well on the road. What the heck do you do at night when you're traveling for work? I game in my hotel room rather than spend hours at the bar or trying to find things to watch on tv.

If I needed a laptop for work and didn't have the budget to buy a laptop and a gaming computer I would get a gaming laptop. Regardless of what you say they can play most games at decent enough settings that you'll still enjoy them. After 3-4 years when they're outdated you'll want to replace it anyways and it doesn't matter if it costs a little bit more since you're still saving money by not needing to purchase parts for your desktop as well.

My laptop only has a Quadro K2000M in it and I can still play ffxiv at high settings in 1080p and get good frames, most of the asus ROG systems have actual gaming GPUs in them that are much better than my 2 year old Quadro.