Just got confirmed I got into my university of choice (yay), and my parents have offered to buy me a laptop to take with me (how kind of them). I'm doing a computer science degree, and I'm an avid gamer, so it needs to powerful. My parents are paying the first £600, but I can pay up to £600 on top of that. (£600 = about $935) It's an awful lot of money but hopefully it will last me my 4-5 years at uni and then some. Just wondered if you guys have any ideas or own a gaming laptop in a similar price range, since I don't really know where to start looking and have always owned a desktop. I'm not very good at hardware, I'm a software kind of guy.
I recommend you to get something light and portable that won't wake up the roommate when you're going to be writing that report at 5am in the morning. If you're really into games you can get a second hand console or something similar, gaming laptops are very unwieldy and they attract too much attention in a university dorm. For such a setting consoles are much better investment. I've also seen people using them as a magnet to find possible friends, a laptop is a private machine, but a console can be enjoyed by more than one person. Anyway, for gaming laptops check Alienware, MSI, or Republic of Gamers. But before buying one check the forums for problems that current owners are experiencing. If you see something that repeats over and over again, like a graphics card failing, overheating problems, or the wifi not working, etc., don't buy it.
Here's one that's close to your price range that I would buy myself to start with. This one's good for its price as a gaming laptop. Lenovo Y50 Alienware is too expensive. It's like the apple of gaming laptops. If you like something flashy, then get an alienware. MSI makes really good gaming laptops, though the price is also expensive but you're paying for what you're getting. Also, look into razerblade laptop but those are also above your price range.
I love my MacBook Pro... From a gaming aspect, I'm able to run World of Warcraft on max quality settings, as well as a Windows 7 VM in Parallels Desktop, running EverQuest and EverQuest 2 in max quality. Second Life runs in max quality, depending on what area I'm in. 15" retina macbook pro, 16G RAM, quad core i7, Iris Pro Graphics.
Asus makes good quality laptops with great graphic cards. Look into their lineup, much better than Mac overall! I've always had Asus laptops and desktops components, they never fail. For your needs I'd stay away from brands such as acer and hp.
I've run a great deal more either with dual booting or running a Windows 7 Virtual Machine... Those are the ones I've recently played. A great deal runs, and I've had next to no issues with it.
Yes, you could do all that, but why would you want to? Why pay several hundred more to get a mac so that you can run W7 virtual machine on it and hopefully run some games when you can just buy a cheaper machine that runs games better with no hassle. I don't like Macs, that's no secret, but if somebody wants to buy a Mac to surf the internet, do some video editing or artwork, then that's their business. But who in their right state of mind says "I want a dedicated gaming machine, I should buy a Mac?"
Lazuri, I totally agree with you! and for much cheaper the other laptops will outperform the Macs by a long shot!
