I'll be graduating high school this Saturday, and while it seems like I need to get a billion things still before the fall, one thing I want to start shopping for right away is a laptop. Yes, it will have an educational use for taking notes and research on the internet, but honestly it will probably be used the most for games. This is especially important because my brother owns the Xbox 360, so I will be going from a mostly PC gamer to an entirely PC gamer. So in other words, I would like recommendations on what I should look for (especially with graphics cards, as that's what I know the least about) in a laptop that can hopefully run these for the least amount of money.
Anything that can run those should be able to run anything else in my arsenal, so I'll just leave it at that.
For those that don't want to read: suggest laptops or what to look for in a laptop that will run the bulleted games decently well for a decent price.
Thanks for any advice in advanced.
That is an excellent bit of kit you have picked out there. It easily meets your criteria, as far as gaming goes.
The GTS 360M is just a rebrand of the 260M.
^Indeed, if anyone wonders I did pick the one I mentioned earlier. The link is no longer functional, but the specs were.
Intel i5 processor, Nvidia GTS 360M graphics card (GDDR5 1GB), 4GB DDR3 RAM (but you can easily open the RAM compartment to expand it to 8GB, which I was surprised at), Windows 7 x64, 4USB ports, and for a pretax price tag of $849.99. Granted it was only available in certain stores, but I was lucky enough to get the last one in my county.
I've had it for a couple of weeks now, runs Sins at max settings with mods like a breeze (starts to lag a little when over 4000 fleet supply of ships start shooting at each other while you are watching, forcing it to render all the particle effects, but I think that is understandable). Just started playing Oblivion, also with mods, and I have had a very smooth and constant frame rate at high detail, might jump up to highest. The only other game I have that might test it more is Empire:Total War but I'm in no hurry to play that right now.
It is a bit heavy and the battery life isn't great, but Asus actually has a pretty decent power management utility that if I decide to customize it out will substantially increase it. If you are playing games you will want an outlet nearby, but it seems it will easily last any one college class of using the internet or office tools. It also gets a bit hot when gaming (you can tell within a minute when the GPU got turned on), but the heat fan on the side seems to be sufficient as long as it is not obstructed. Might get a heating pad just in case, not quite sure yet. Also some people seem to find the keyboard weird, but I've gotten used to it and love that it has a numberpad (something my last laptop didn't have).
Overall, so far I'm quite happy with my decision.
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