Buying a gaming Laptop

GarIT

Torqay wrote: »

That's what I keep saying... OP already has a gaming rig. He should focus on CPU performance and get a Core i5 laptop with Intel HD 4000 graphics.

I know I had hoped of more people said it he might listen. If you have around €1200 there's a laptop in pc world that might do what you need and its only 500 more than it costs on amazon.

beno619

Torqay wrote: »

How did you establish that without knowing the GPU model in the ASUS?

Most of the Asus machines in that price range in PC world come with the HD 4000 integrated graphics. Im just working with the info the OP has given us.

Like you guys have said I wouldn't go for either machine.

GarIT

Go tell your parents you can get everything you listed including the bundle on amazon for €800 with two day delivery or you can spend 1200 + the bundle to get what you need in pc world.

Torqay

beno619 wrote: »

Most of the Asus machines in that price range in PC world come with the HD 4000 integrated graphics. Im just working with the info the OP has given us.

Like you guys have said I wouldn't go for either machine.

Well, the one in question has a dedicated GPU with 2 GB RAM, we just don't know which model.

TerrorFirmer

The 7660G is about passable for very casual gaming (i.e, you don't mind playing at 1024x768 low settings to achieve good framerates in most new action titles), dunno what's in the Asus but it's probably something like a GT610 which is rubbish and would burst into flames trying to run anything modern on any settings.

If you just buy online and wait 3 days for delivery, it is possible to get a laptop twice as fast as either of those for gaming for less money. I have a Timeline I got for £399 off saveonlaptops.co.uk for example, it has a GT640 which is twice as fast as the 7660d in the A10.

solidMGSsnake

Ok guys I decided to get the Asus laptop, I'm talking to you on it now. I went into the store expecting to buy the HP but when I checked the specs of the Asus again they were better than I thought. It has an i3 like I said and with 6GB RAM and 750GB HDD (I was wrong) but the Graphics Card was a GT 720M, which according to the guy is better than a 640M. So did I pick the correct laptop or did I screw up?

Also my parents weren't willing to spend €800 on a laptop xD

The price of MS Office by itself was €100 so I think that deal is actually very good but the Office that came with it needs internet at all times to run so I instead opted for a different bundle that came with MS Office Unlimited, Norton for 3 PCs One Year Subscription and 1TB of Cloud Storage.

To be honest, I didn't really care about the Xbox Gold. I'm more of a PS3 gamer and even then I'm just as happy with a SNES. The Gold would have been nice but between college and my new PC with Steam, I probably would of just wasted it.

Harps

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

Ok guys I decided to get the Asus laptop, I'm talking to you on it now. I went into the store expecting to buy the HP but when I checked the specs of the Asus again they were better than I thought. It has an i3 like I said and with 6GB RAM and 750GB HDD (I was wrong) but the Graphics Card was a GT 720M, which according to the guy is better than a 640M. So did I pick the correct laptop or did I screw up?

Also my parents weren't willing to spend €800 on a laptop xD

According to the benchmarks on notebookcheck the 640M is better, the 720M is comparable to a 630M which isn't much good for gaming. Other than that, the specs seem decent enough and it'll be perfectly fine for college work but doubtful you'd get any serious gaming done on it

Torqay

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

Ok guys I decided to get the Asus laptop, I'm talking to you on it now. I went into the store expecting to buy the HP but when I checked the specs of the Asus again they were better than I thought. It has an i3 like I said and with 6GB RAM and 750GB HDD (I was wrong) but the Graphics Card was a GT 720M, which according to the guy is better than a 640M. So did I pick the correct laptop or did I screw up?

You tell me...





Clearly "the guy" has no clue...

With the HP at least you would have gotten this:



Seriously, that GT 720M is no improvement to speak of over the Intel HD 4000 which is integrated in your Core i3 processor anyway, it will only drain the battery faster when it kicks in.



This happens when you don't have all the facts... you could have rung the store and asked for the specs.

solidMGSsnake

Didn't think of ringing to be honest, well damn it anyway -_-
Oh well so I got a slightly worse laptop, who cares? I'm more annoyed that the guy lied to me or at least had no clue more than the inferior laptop itself. I knew I wouldn't get a beast anyway and I'm still happy with my desktop. To be fair I'll be getting a new laptop in a few years anyway, this was just to keep me going. The only thing I'm actually annoyed about is now I have way less battery life than the other laptop. I mean it says 70% remaining (1H 40M) That is just ridiculous battery life. Also the White HP's look was actually starting to look to feminine so I'm happy I pick this one as once I saw it again, it's look actually appealed to me much more than initially.

Also I think those scores are a little biased since only 4 samples were taken for the 720M.

Oh well thanks very much for your help guys, maybe I should of listened to you, I wouldn't of had this problem if I just remembered the bloody Graphics Card model -_-
But it is only slightly worse right? And since I actually like the look now I think I did ok in my circumstances. It still has slightly better graphics than the HP, the only thing I wish was I had more battery but it will be plugged in nearly all the time anyway.

So ya thanks anyway guys

GarIT

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

The price of MS Office by itself was €100 so I think that deal is actually very good but the Office that came with it needs internet at all times to run so I instead opted for a different bundle that came with MS Office Unlimited, Norton for 3 PCs One Year Subscription and 1TB of Cloud Storage.

You can use Microsoft office free online, and you can use openoffice offline for free too. You can get cloud storage from SkyDrive, Dropbox and/or Google for free.

I wouldn't touch the graphics card either.

GarIT

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

Also I think those scores are a little biased since only 4 samples were taken for the 720M.

Oh well thanks very much for your help guys, maybe I should of listened to you, I wouldn't of had this problem if I just remembered the bloody Graphics Card model -_-
But it is only slightly worse right? And since I actually like the look now I think I did ok in my circumstances. It still has slightly better graphics than the HP, the only thing I wish was I had more battery but it will be plugged in nearly all the time anyway.

So ya thanks anyway guys

It's not biased just very few people have that card, if more people had it the score wouldn't be higher.

Only slightly worse, yeah, its only 50% as powerful. It's much worse graphics than the HP is it not?

solidMGSsnake

How do you mean you wouldn't touch the graphics card? I hardly bought it to never use it. Even if it does drain the battery, I'll only be using it at my house or in a computer lab where I can plug it in. Besides how could you not use it? It's in my machine, I can hardly remove it. Also I may not have the luxury of internet all the time to use Office online, what if the power goes out and I have a paper due? Also I doubt the free Offiice has all the same functions or Powerpoint and Excel.

GarIT

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

How do you mean you wouldn't touch the graphics card? I hardly bought it to never use it. Even if it does drain the battery, I'll only be using it at my house or in a computer lab where I can plug it in. Besides how could you not use it? It's in my machine, I can hardly remove it. Also I may not have the luxury of internet all the time to use Office online, what if the power goes out and I have a paper due? Also I doubt the free Offiice has all the same functions or Powerpoint and Excel.

I mean the laptop is as powerful as laptops you could get for €400. I wouldn't pay any amount of money for that card.

Open office does pretty much everything you could need. That's the point of it.

solidMGSsnake

Hey guys what about this?: Link

Remember I was never looking for better value, just better performance and according to this the 720 trumps it.

GarIT

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

Hey guys what about this?: Link

Remember I was never looking for better value, just better performance and according to this the 720 trumps it.

That site does not compare performance, they compare many other pointless things.

I've never seen or heard of that site before, this site is the best and most well known for comparing performance. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php Here, the HP is 40% better.

beno619

Notebookcheck.net would be the go to site for me. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-720M.90247.0.html .

I still think you should have bought online and saved 100 quid.

I though it was common knowledge that the staff in PC world are there to make a sale and nothing else.

Also it only would have taken a sec to Google benchmarks of the 720m before you bought it.

solidMGSsnake

Well they were getting a sale either way and the Asus was only slightly more expensive, you'd think they would of just been honest. I think he didn't know himself but was afraid that if he didn't seem confident he might drive me away so he just said what he thought I wanted to hear. I didn't have time to google it because the only time I could get a lift in was cutting it close to the closing time and also the guy I asked was busy I just called him over quickly. Mind you though, he was fully aware of what I asked and what graphics card the Asus had, it's not like he was in a hurry so just said anything.

I've a good mind to bring it back and tell them that the guy lied to me and make myself out to be a victim, if I kicked up enough fuss they would probably let me swap it or let me get some kind of deal just to shut me up. But I'm not going to go through all that. I mean it's a nice looking laptop and anything under an i5 wouldn't last me that long anyway.

I'll just buy a nicer one in 3-4 years. I'll only really be playing TF2 or LOL on it anyway, I'm sure it can at least run them on low settings. I wanted it to be able to run gaming alphas but I suppose that wouldn't of ever been possible to begin with without buying a high end laptop for €1000, I'm sure I can just use the kits they have at the college that are designed for it and I might eventually bring down my desktop as well.

GarIT

All you have to say is you were mis sold the laptop and they legally have to replace it.

Torqay

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

I mean it's a nice looking laptop and anything under an i5 wouldn't last me that long anyway.

Why did you buy an i3 then?

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

It has an i3 like I said

Lets assume it's the lowest Core i3 model, then the AMD A-10 will easily beat it in CPU benchmarks.

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

I'll only really be playing TF2 or LOL on it anyway, I'm sure it can at least run them on low settings.

Most certainly... and so can Intel HD 4000 graphics, probably even on medium details. Not particularly demanding stuff by todays standards.

With your budget and requirements, you should have bought yourself a Core i5 laptop (~30% faster than the i3). Forget about those worthless bundles too (Norton AV and LiveDrive cloud? Oh dear), this money would have been better invested in extra memory, which you can never have enough of.

But you were hell-bent on buying a "dedicated graphics card with 2 GB RAM" despite being told repeatedly that the amount of graphics RAM doesn't matter if the graphics chip is cr@p.

solidMGSsnake

I understood that, I'm not stupid. I wasn't hell bent on the graphics card, if I knew the 720m wasn't as good as the 640m than I wouldn't of gotten it. I was planning on buying the HP but when I saw the Asus had a 720M and I asked the guy then I thought it had a good graphics card. It's not my fault that I'm not familiar with graphics card models. I only got into PC building 2 months ago and in fairness, why would they call a worse graphics card the 720? I mean the 630 is worse than the 640 as well so you think the number would go up along with the performance.

I don't want to go through all that, besides I don't really like the look of the HP anymore, it looked too feminine. Also I've already installed all the anti-virus and office so either I would have to rebuy office for the replacement laptop or just do without it, unless they are generous enough to give me a new one for free.

I couldn't afford a laptop with an i5, there was actually a HP there, it looked nearly identical to the white AMD one but it was black and fitted with an i5 and some graphics card probably better than the 720M, but it was in the €700 range and my parents wouldn't get it. I needed a good gaming laptop relative to my budget, I wasn't expecting to run Crysis 3 on high or anything.

I needed MS Office either way and it was €100 so I might as well of gotten the bundle. I'm not going to rely on a free online version. To start out with I'm not going to even have internet in my house until my roommates agree on splitting the cost and what happens if the power goes out some night and I have a paper due? I would be in a right mess than. The anti-virus was just a plus and I don't really care about the cloud since as you said there are plenty of free cloud.

TerrorFirmer

The 7660G is generally faster. But it's not a big deal. If you prefer the look of the Asus, I really wouldn't loose any sleep over it, it's not like you're talking night and day.

As others said though that bundle you spent the 120 on was pretty terrible value. And if you'd just bought online, you could have gotten a much stronger laptop. As I said, I got a GT640M Timeline for 399 pounds, which murders the 7660G or GT720M in games.

Usually with naming schemes, the model of the new gen is as fast as the prior gen's next model up, eg. the GT720M would be on par with the GT630M, and so on. But to be honest, usually the lower ends of those series are worthless in terms of games - there's a GT710 for example, whose purpose in existing I actually can't fathom, you'd be better off with Intel's surprisingly capable HD4000.

If I was you I would actually consider taking it back to the shop and explaining that it was missold on the basis that the card you were told it was equal to is actually over 100% faster than what you got. I don't think PC World are that bad for returns on basis's like that.

beno619

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

there's a GT710 for example, whose purpose in existing I actually can't fathom, you'd be better off with Intel's surprisingly capable HD4000.

Its purpose is pretty obvious, to rip off people that dont know any better.

Torqay

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If I was you I would actually consider taking it back to the shop and explaining that it was missold on the basis that the card you were told it was equal to is actually over 100% faster than what you got. I don't think PC World are that bad for returns on basis's like that.

+1

PC World have no problems reneging on a deal when they have it wrongly priced on their website. Neither should they have any objections if you return the product after being misinformed by an incompetent sales rep.

solidMGSsnake

What about my wasted MS office and Anti-virus, also then I would be stuck the feminine laptop.

The_Honeybadger

@terrorfirmer how long have you had the timeline? I need a laptop and saw that the acers are available for reasonable money with decent gpu's but the timelines have really mixed reviews. Any overheating problems? Sorry op to hijack the thread

solidMGSsnake

No problem mickeyk carry on

TerrorFirmer

mickeyk wrote: »

@terrorfirmer how long have you had the timeline? I need a laptop and saw that the acers are available for reasonable money with decent gpu's but the timelines have really mixed reviews. Any overheating problems? Sorry op to hijack the thread

It's for college so to be honest the worst usage it'd see would be the very odd lan session, and even then, we usually stick to older games like Dawn of War, which wouldn't tax a stapler these days. Grand in everyday use, screen's only average, resolution could be higher, not a fan of the trackpad and the fact that all the ports are at the rear of the laptop is a royal pain, but given what I've used of it so, and in particular modern games (regardless of whether or not I'll play them) run surprisingly well considering the price point. The CPU is a bottleneck though. Good Battery too.

solidMGSsnake

Hey guys I actually contacted PC World and they said they would change it if it is in perfect condition.

So are you 100% sure that the HP is superior to the Asus? I mean does the Asus have ANY advantages over the HP?

Here are the specs one more time:

Asus - i3 2365m(1.4GHz), 6GB RAM, 750GB HDD, GT 720M Graphics Card, 3.5H Battery, Webcam (HD?), 1x USB 3, 1x USB 2, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet, Headphone/Mic single slot and an SD Card.

HP - AMD A10-4600M quad core, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, HD 7660G Radeon Graphics, 5.5H Battery, HD Web Cam, 2x USB 3, 1x USB 2, VGA, HDMI and the rest is unknown but probably similar.

Ok so seriously, is there any advantage the Asus has over the HP?

Yes it is for college but gaming is a priority with it. Ok here is a question to answer for it: Which laptop would run BF3, Crysis 3 or Far Cry 3 better? I mean I can't believe that a on-chip APU could be stronger than an actual graphics card.

I need to know if I swapping it before tomorrow as I can only get a lift in with my dad who is usually busy so I'm sorry to put pressure on you guys

Thanks.

Torqay

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

So are you 100% sure that the HP is superior to the Asus?

In every department!









And the HP comes with 8 GB RAM as opposed to 6 GB RAM.

(G3DMark is only one of many popular graphics benchmarks, for detailed gaming benchmarks look up the GPUs at notebookcheck.net but I doubt if the results will be much different.)

solidMGSsnake wrote: »

I mean does the Asus have ANY advantages over the HP?

The ASUS might have a better battery life since it has an ULV processor. Can't say for sure though, since I don't know the capacity of the respective battery.

solidMGSsnake

Well the Asus says on the specs that it has a battery life of 3 and a half hours whereas the HP said 5 and a half hours.