On the hunt for new cheap gaming rig from within Canada (advice needed)

nix

Ok so im on the hunt for a new gaming rig, would normally go alienware but im gonna go cheaper this time as money isnt in large quantity atm as im abroad in canada for a year. So ill be purchasing from within Canada.

Anybody know any good cheapish gaming laptops? best spec i can find is a dell xps, specc below.

Can someone tell me if its a good rig? Its gonna cost me $919.00 before tax, would this be the best i could get my hands on? or are there alot better out there?

Ill be playing the new Star wars mmo and maybe BF3, so it needs to decent quality specc.

Keep in mind im in canada, so any euro stores wouldnt be the best as delivery would be costly i suspect.

Any help is greatly appreciated, Thank you.

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Fluffy88

That's not a gaming grade graphics card and will struggle to play Battlefield 3 on anything but the lowest settings, if at all.
If you want a proper gaming laptop the GT 540M would be the lowest model GPU to get but that would even struggle to play BF3 again only on low settings.

I would recommend getting the GT 555M or an actual gaming grade graphics card the GTX 560M if you want to play Battlefield 3 on decent settings.
Take a look at these two benchmarks of mobile GPU's they should help you out
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html

I went through the Dell Canada site and I can't add anything better than a GT 540M to the XPS 15, so if you want to get a good gaming laptop then you will need either the XPS 17 or go for an Alienware laptop.
I spec'ed up an XPS 17 for $1,149.99 before taxes and shipping.

Apart from the graphics card you selected the rest of the stuff is fine.
The Intel Core i7-2670QM is a great processor and probably the best value high end CPU on the market.
If your getting 8GB of RAM for nothing it's fine but really 4GB would do you fine so I wouldn't pay extra just to get more RAM.
Same for the HDD, unless you need the extra 250GB of storage then get don't bother paying extra for a 750GB HDD over a 500GB one, it's plenty.

Just looking through the site and this laptops looks a decent deal
http://www.dell.com/ca/p/xps-l702x/pd?oc=nxps172_f_4e&model_id=xps-l702x

nix

Thanks a mil fluffy, thought the price would be too good to be true

ill check out the 17", but looking at the price i could go alienware also, hummm decision decisions ;D

I think i better secure a job first before getting one.

Thanks again for your help.