Gaming Laptop - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

CaramonLS · 03-19-2011, 01:43 PM

Link

Memory Express has this little number on sale this week. Been looking for a gaming laptop for a while now.

Anyone else, got any comments?

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 02:09 PM

Link doesnt work. I have an Asus G73JW-X1M, its a hell of a laptop for $1400.

CaramonLS · 03-19-2011, 02:10 PM

That's exactly what I was looking at.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 02:13 PM

I have no regrets about mine. I put a ssd drive in it last weekend and it runs Starcraft 2 on extreme graphics, BFBC2 on high res with no problems. I have a pretty decent gaming desktop that is collecting dust since I bought this machine. Only flaw I can find is slight white bleed through on the outside of the LCD, only noticable when you boot the machine and the screen is black, but who cares. If you do buy it, just ditch all the bloatware it comes with and you'll be laughing.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 02:17 PM

Also if you want to patch anything, its best to do it through the Asus website. The graphics card is specific to these machines and the nvidia updates won't work. I believe its the 1.5gb of memory that it doesnt recognize. Asus has all the fixes out a couple days after nvidia releases theirs.

Hack&Lube · 03-19-2011, 04:22 PM

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...77(ME).aspx#NA

The reason it is discounted is because it's the old model going out in favor of new Asus Sandy Bridge ones which have a faster processor.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...31863(ME).aspx

I considered this but I checked it out in store and it was too big/gamer looking for me with crazy angles and industrial design I don't really like. I wanted something more plain but professional looking with more power under the hood.

Do yourself a favor and check it out in store first to see if it's what you really want. The G73 is pretty huge, it's a desktop replacement. Portability and battery life aren't the selling points. Pictures are deceptive. This thing is a beast if you see it in person.

That said, a 17" Asus ROG laptop with a first gen mobile i7 and GTX 460M (much slower than desktop GTX 460 btw, but still worth it) is a steal for $1400. I ran Unigen Heaven benchmark on it while in Memory Express and while it could handle it at medium settings without AA and with low tessellation @ 1920x1080, it wasn't as powerful as I thought it could be.

The biggest issues for me was the size (it is like 2 inches bigger than other 17" models I looked at), the design (didn't like the look), and the biggest issue was the glossy screen. The screen was too glossy to be useful in bright lighting and I intend my laptop to be usable for both home and work and school.

The backlit keyboard is a nice touch though, and I wish I had that option on the other notebooks I am choosing over this one.

I'll probably buy a Sager model with a GTX 460M or GTX 485M with a i7-2630QM or i7-2720QM processor in the next few weeks and put an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD in it when it comes out. Definetely one with a matte screen as well. I've had enough of glossy screen laptops and went back to matte screen netbook from 2007!

-edit I just checked some benchmarks and the desktop GTX 460 is almost twice as fast as the mobile GTX 460M in some benchmarks so that's a bit of creative marketing on Nvidia's part, but all manufacturers do that. Still, that's very fast for a mobile GPU at that price. One thing I've found with notebook computers with 1080p displays is that because of the pixel density on tiny 15" and 17" screens, that quite often you don't even need anti-aliasing on games so it performs about the same as if you had a large 1080p monitor where aliasing would be more apparent.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 04:52 PM

Not really a big difference between the two to justify the $350. Mine fits in a backpack, just barely, but its heavy. The glossy screen hasnt been an issue for me, even under the fluorescent lights in my room up north.

CaramonLS · 03-19-2011, 05:04 PM

Where would you buy a Sager anyways?

Hack&Lube · 03-19-2011, 05:09 PM

Sandy Bridge includes a built in GPU and I read somewhere that when not gaming, it should switch to the GPU built into the Sandy Bridge core which could greatly increase battery life. I am not sure if this is true however.

It's also about 10-16% faster clock for clock which works out to be 40-50% faster in some cases.

You're right, it does not justify the extra $350, I was just explaining why it's on sale. They are getting the new stock in. When this laptop first came out, it was around $1700 as well.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Where would you buy a Sager anyways?

I think its internet order only, they arent cheap thats for sure.
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php

CaramonLS · 03-19-2011, 05:21 PM

btc, what is your battery life like?

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 05:28 PM

If I'm gaming with everything cranked its only an hour or so. Normal use is 4-5 hours, although to be honest I typically have it plugged in. Really depends if you use the overclocking function on the processor which cranks it up to 3ghz.

Hack&Lube · 03-19-2011, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Where would you buy a Sager anyways?

I'm currently trying to buy one from www.fortnax.com which is based in Calgary but the website keeps going up and down so I'm basically just e-mailing the guy. Not sure if it's reliable or not. It seems to save me a few bucks over buying directly from Sager but not much.

The lowest price I can find though is from www.xoticpc.com if you ship via USPS and they are one of the most popular sites and forums for gaming laptops.

Note that the MemEx G73 beats the price for a similarily configured G73 on Xoticpc. It really is a great deal. I just don't want it because of the design of the system and the glossy screen. I wish it wasn't that way or I'd buy it asap.

Hack&Lube · 03-19-2011, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

If I'm gaming with everything cranked its only an hour or so. Normal use is 4-5 hours, although to be honest I typically have it plugged in. Really depends if you use the overclocking function on the processor which cranks it up to 3ghz.

I like that feature on the G73, there's a nice physical button you can press which is like: "turbo on!" and then it goes faster versus having to dig into some dumb menu in Windows.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I like that feature on the G73, there's a nice physical button you can press which is like: "turbo on!" and then it goes faster versus having to dig into some dumb menu in Windows.

Only time I turn it off is if I'm on the plane going north. You definitely notice the difference. Just like the old 486 I had.

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 05:52 PM

Hack what kind of battery life are you expecting out of the other laptops you're looking at?

Hack&Lube · 03-19-2011, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Hack what kind of battery life are you expecting out of the other laptops you're looking at?

Battery life is not the big issue but it is a nice thing to have. Portability is more important and the 17" Asus is just way too big. Even the 15" Asus (which isn't on sale for some reason) is a little big. I measured it in MemEx and it was 1.6" wider than the 15" Sager that I wanted. It was just too bulky and I didn't like the glossy glare.

I do expect a Sandy Bridge chipset laptop with a 15" screen to give me more battery life than a nehelem i7 17" model though.

I'm probably going for this one since it's the only Sager that comes with a matte screen. It limits my options to a GTX 460M though but like I said for the Asus G73, that's fine for the pixel density of a 1080p laptop display. It has Sandy Bridge which which is a plus. Choosing a 2720QM and it works out to be only ~$1500.
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8130-...ch-p-2973.html

I still have to factor in another $300 for a Vertex 3 SSD as a near future upgrade.

The 2720QM is the new processor in the new 15" Macbook Pros. That would cost $2469 versus $1500 though!

burn_this_city · 03-19-2011, 06:55 PM

Not surprising. I built a computer with comparable specs on Apple's website when I bought my G73 and it was almost $3K, good deal.

TorqueDog · 03-19-2011, 10:15 PM

My personal opinion with gaming laptops: never again.

I bought an ASUS G1S-A1. 15.4", Core 2 Duo T7500, 4 GB of RAM, GeForce 8600GT-M discrete graphics.

The heat got so bad that the keyboard was hot to the touch, the fans got so noisy that the crap speakers ASUS put in the notebook were almost not enough, the battery life was a joke, and best of all, they discontinued it and all the replacement parts so that when the motherboard died three years later, I couldn't fix it. The parts thing isn't so much a 'gaming laptop' issue so much as it is with ASUS, but since ASUS makes some of the best gaming laptops, it's certainly relevant. Battery life, heat, and fan noise as a result of the heat are all issues with the gaming notebooks I've seen in my time.

I keep my gaming to consoles and my desktop PC. I have a Dell Precision M2400 notebook that can play most games I throw at it with relative ease, and when I'm on the battery in the 'Balanced' power profile in Windows 7, I can use it for an eight hour work day on a single charge.

burn_this_city · 03-20-2011, 06:45 AM

How long ago was this?? 3-4 years ago I'm assuming. Mine has none of the heat and noise problems, its the coolest and quietest notebook I've ever used. We have a MBP at home as well and its keyboard feels quite a bit warmer than my G73.