Gaming Laptop under $1500 Recommendation

Discussion in 'Tech Discussion' started by Fluffy Jellyfish, Jul 15, 2019.

  1. Necromanico

    Necromanico Well-Known Member

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    Yeah desktop! I have a gaming laptop but that's only because I like gaming at friend's house's and I'm a computer scientist who could use the gpu and ram for reasons.
     
  2. lygarx

    lygarx Lazy Translator

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    everything you will ever need
    [​IMG]
    as long as you don't get a mac, anything you buy with that price would be sufficient for the years you want. the materials that it is made out of will degrade over time, so anything you buy new really only has a shelf life of so long. with a laptop, you have to replace the whole thing to keep up with the times. but with a desktop, you really only need to replace the gpu and rom when things get out of date or just individual pieces at a time. generally the desktop over the course of many years will save you thousands over your entire life of gaming as long as all parts are compatible when you upgrade. everything is always changing so you never really know.
    I am assuming that you are probably starting to live in college dorms if you are asking for laptop recommendations for gaming. I recommend comparing the parts that the laptops are made out of. specifically gpu and cpu. most likely you can add more ram on your own and change the harddrive to an ssd or hybrid later on.
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2019
  3. WinByDying

    WinByDying I can count to four

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    In my experience they last longer. Gaming and laptop do go into the same phrase. People that need the mobility and still want the punch. Are you going to tell me that e.g. a 1060 is not fit for gaming? I ran with an 860m for years and did plenty of gaming on it. Far Cry 5 was too much for the thing to handle, but by then it was five years old and it still ran a lot of other games.

    This elitist attitude really ticks me off. Some people do need laptops and want to game as well. No need to come to this thread and be like "muh desktop ez to build way better always cheaper", because it's irrelevant to what OP needs.

    When looking at laptops, looking at only e.g. CPU RAM GPU specs is not a good idea. Looking at reviews covering everything from heat dissipation to the performance of the screen is.

    Especially when you want to change parts, you want to check whether replacing them is actually easy, whether it's not soldered and if it's accessible.
     
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  4. Cygsiulle

    Cygsiulle error 404: title not found

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    since many laptops don't allow for customization/upgrading after the fact, the biggest things you'll want are sufficient ram and a decent graphics card. the 2 you're looking at, although they will game, they're both on the old end of graphics cards, and you could probably do much better. both have 16gb ram, which at this point feels like the minimum you'll want (because many games will easily push 8gb beyond its abilities. hell just idling can use up the greater portion of that), so that's good.

    i'd look for something with a more recent graphics card. if you can find a laptop with the gtx 1660 TI (and at least 16gb ram), i'd seriously recommend taking a look there, as it's got a one of the better cost efficiencies for "bargain" gaming vs "future proofing"

    after (admittedly little) searching, the lenovo legion y545 (as seen here at https://www.newegg.com/black-lenovo-legion-y545-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-000J-008J1 (the ones on lenovo's site are either 8gb ram or drop down to a 1650 graphics card for some reason, but their SSDs are larger)), or something comparable is probably a better over all investment, but the ones you've chosen will still be able to game, albeit at a lower frame rate/quality.


    the predator option mentioned a few times looks like it's a good alternative. however, it doesn't include a hard drive (though it does have an open port to install one alongside the SSD). the SSD is larger than the one i mentioned above, so as long as you keep in mind you'd still likely want to pick up a hard drive, the predator route probably won't do you wrong. based on current price, even adding a 1Tb would probably make prices about equal, so i'd give overall edge to predator, for the extra port option and bigger SSD.

    also, pay attention to the graphics cards, as there's been times i've overlooked a rather misleading jump from the 1660 ti to a 1060 ti. the places some of these builds try to cut corners is really tricky sometimes.
     
  5. lygarx

    lygarx Lazy Translator

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    read closer
     
  6. Kaminomikan

    Kaminomikan 神のみ感

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    Elitist? yeah sure, want me to pass the phone numbers of some costumers that buy a "gaming laptop" last year to hear how disappointed they are? or maybe costumers from 2017? not talking here without base, OP want the thing to last 3 to 5 years, and that's unreal.

    and then you go and say this?

    seems like someone need to learn what it means to give irrelevant information frigging noob.
     
  7. WinByDying

    WinByDying I can count to four

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    Want phone numbers of people content with their gaming laptops? I can give you a lot of phone numbers too. And yeah, let's completely forget the mobility argument. Or living at multiple places. In my use case, time evenly split between two places plus being out in the day, I would've needed a normal laptop plus two gaming desktops. Or I can just buy one gaming laptop and use it for everything. Cheaper and more convenient. But yeah, let's recommend everyone to build a desktop because it's obviously superior for ... reasons!

    So about performance of gaming laptops years later. Everything low to moderately graphically taxing will be fine on older graphics cards of the price category OP talked about. Old games and even most new games will run fine years later, because most games aren't that graphically intensive. Graphically intensive AAA games 4 years later are a coin flip though. CoD:BO4 (October 2018) runs fine on e.g. a 970m or 980m at 1080p, both were released in October 2014. The 980m reaches 60FPS at High, 1080p. Not bad. A 960m would be stretching it. A counterexample would be Far Cry. Primal from 2016 was still fine on those cards, but 5 from 2018 runs like shit. Benchmarks taken from notebookcheck.

    The guy said to only look at specs when comparing laptops, which is obviously a bad idea because you want to check for e.g. screen and build quality. And if you're going to replace components in laptops it's better to check whether it's possible and how it's done beforehand. Basically, I was pointing out why he was giving bad advice. What's irrelevant about that?
     
  8. Jeebus

    Jeebus Well-Known Member

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    You haven't provided enough information for anyone to give you a good recommendation.
    What games are you looking to play? If you play e-sports games, it makes more sense to get a high-refresh panel rather than worry about color accuracy. More cinematic titles would look better on a display with better contrast and color-accuracy.
    What else do you intend to do with it? If you're doing graphic design, getting a highly color-accurate panel is important.
    How often do you intend to move it? If you're not moving it much, you can get a great desktop gaming rig for $1400.
    How much battery life does it need? Gaming laptops get nearly nothing in terms of battery life, but some laptops can outlast the others by an hour or more.
    Do you care if it's too loud? If you share a room with someone, they will probably want to strangle you if your laptop's fans are too loud.
    Aesthetics seem important to you. What elements are you not looking for in a laptop? Is an RGB keyboard too gamery?

    Do you want a touchscreen? Do you want a more portable laptop with a smaller screen? Do you want an NVMe drive, or is a SATA drive good enough? How much storage do you need? What about ports like USB type C or Thunderbolt 3?
     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2019
  9. DXHaseoXD

    DXHaseoXD [Forever Alone] [Person who tries to translate]

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    If you want something that will last you for 3-5 years, get a desktop. If you want something that can last you around 2 years, get a decent laptop with i7 core and 1050 TI graphics card, they cost you around 1500 and it can drop to 1000 during certain sales like a back to school sale.