Casual gaming laptop required

[dlatimer]

Hi chaps,

Would appreciate your recommendations based on the following requirements:

Budget:
I'd be happy to spend £800-900 but I also would like to buy peripherals with it, so any spare cash would be favourable

Gaming:
I would like to be able to play Football Manager with a number of leagues and players loaded, so a good CPU and plenty of RAM required. I would also like to play Team Fortress 2, CS:GO, Left 4 Dead, Skyrim, BF3 and potentially the new Call of Duty game to a high standard. By high standard, I don't expect Ultra settings necessarily - I would just like some nice eye-candy alongside good FPS for multi-player purposes.

Software:
Aside from the usual music / movie requirement that most people have, I have a keen interest in photography and so I dabble a fair bit with Photoshop. With that in mind, I suspect an SSD hard-drive will be beneficial to me to improve responsiveness?

Other things to note:
I have a separate SATA 2.5" Seagate 320GB hard-drive that I would like to install as a secondary disk, which will predominately be used for storage. Therefore, I need to ensure the laptop has the ability to power a secondary hard-disk if I opt to purchase an SSD with the new laptop.

I do not need a Windows OS install or license with the new laptop either.

My current spec to replace:
I currently have a 15.6" HP-Pavillion-2106ea, Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz with 4GB RAM, GTX 230m GPU. Suffice to say, the FPS on this machine is poor even on low settings. Football Manager runs reasonably fine on it as it's not graphically intensive, but it's still slow between screens due to the processing power (or lack of!). Saving and loading to disk is horrendously slow due to the file size of my save, as this grows the longer you progress.


I'm thinking that a 17" Optimus IV would be suitable based on the research I've done thus far. The 2GB GTX 660m seems quite a popular card for most current laptops, but can it meet my demands comfortably? I'm not a 24/7 gamer, so it wouldn't be constantly under strain. With the latter, I'm thinking that purchasing anything higher / better may be a waste?

I would appreciate any comments to help me decide what to go for

Thank you!

 

[Inex]

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH

USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD

Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)

Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor

Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD

Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE

Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

£771.00 inc VAT

This seems like a really good laptop. The processor is a beast and the GPU is pretty good. You'll be able to run most games on 1080p medium/high details just fine.

EDIT; No OS.

 

[dlatimer]

Thanks! Any further suggestions or are we in agreement that the Optimus should fit my needs quite nicely?

I'd love the best machine out there with a GTX 675m / 680m but I'm trying to stay quite realistic, otherwise my budget will jump to around £1000 which is probably needless?

 

[Inex]

Well if you know how to optimise your graphics settings in-game, you'll run every modern game on 1080p, ultra. Next year, the most demanding games, maybe on high. This laptop should play the new CoD on Ultra no problem, same with Battlefield 3. You might have to lower a few settings, like shadow quality and post processing and maybe turn off Anti-aliasing, for Battlefield 3 that is, to get in the stable 40-50 fps range, but that's a small sacrifice, considering the price of the laptop. I don't think you'll notice a significant change in image quality on a 17'' 1080p display. Check this web site http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-660M.71859.0.html

No reason to spend more money on a laptop, since you'll get the same performance as a £1000 plus laptop, only if you lower a few settings. It's up to you though.

EDIT; Here is a similar spec, but with the gtx 670m, if you think the gtx 660m won't be sufficient for casual gaming

Chassis & Display
SkyFire:17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG 1333MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (2 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670M - 1.5GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
128GB KINGSTON V200 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (300MB/R, 190MB/W) (Special Offer)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader
Integrated 4 in 1 Card Reader (SDXC/MMC/MS/XD)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & INTEL WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0

USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 3 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD

Battery
SkyFire Series 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD

Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE

Webcam
INTEGRATED 720P 30 FPS HD WEBCAM

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

£891 inc VAT and Delivery.

 

[dlatimer]

I wouldn't mind turning down some of the settings to gain better FPS. In fast-paced multi-player action, I can do without some of those things you've mentioned. Offline is different matter, as I think you're more prone to looking around and admiring shiny objects, but then in that respect you're less reliant on FPS so it evens out somewhat.

As for the SkyFire quote, Am I right in thinking that the difference between the 660 and 670 is quite marginal? That said, there would be a difference between the 660m and 675m, but then the cost is immediately bumped up £150-200 for something I wouldn't necessarily use every day. I totally understand what you're saying though, and of course I appreciate your comments. The difficulty is stopping the greed kicking in and getting something much more powerful!

 

[Inex]

I might be wrong, but as far as I know the GTX670M and GTX675M both use old chip architecture, which is not as power efficient as the the GT650m/GTX660M/GTX680M, but they sure cost quite a bit. The difference in performance is around 10pc, according to notebookcheck and Nvidia, so for less money you get a 10pc slower GPU, which runs cooler and is more power efficient. I think that's a good trade off.

Even if you decide to get the 670/675 don't expect to be blown away by the performance. I still don't think these mobile GPUs are powerful enough to eat modern games for breakfast. They run hot and cost more and deliver half of what a similar priced desktop GPU can. Again that is my opinion, please double check with other benchmarks and ask other people, but I think they are not worth it.

 

[dlatimer]

One thing I just noticed, the 8GB and the 12GB 1600MHz RAM is the same price? Do you think that's an error?

 

[dlatimer]

Also noticed the SkyFire II price has come down a little - only by £20 but they are tempting me too much!