Hello everyone,
So I'm looking for a gaming laptop under $1,000 and I have no clue what to buy. The graphics cards are so confusing that I have no clue what's what. I'm thinking of getting a Mac and using Bootcamp to install Windows 7 but is the basic Macbook good?

I'm looking for a laptop that's 13- 15 inches and that can play games, it doesn't have to be top of the line though because I rarely buy new games.

Please help me!!

This is the computer I got a Costco www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodi...+4000000&eCat=BC|84|56670&N=4017745%204294899853%205000107&Mo=14&No=0&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&topnav=

I have a macbook pro and they are pricey and not good for gaming!

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't think I'm going to go for the HP though because consumer reports rated them low in reliability.
Is your Macbook pro though not good for gaming because its a Mac or because it doesn't have a good graphics card or stuff? I'm thinking of loading Windows 7 onto it.

I have a MBP with a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, and NVIDIA 9400/9600 GeForce video card. I've found it excellent for gaming, although most of my games I play on my Windows 7 partition. This is mainly because of Steam, which wasn't available for the Mac at the time. I have WoW and Sims 3, among others, cranked Macside, and everything else (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Aion, TF2, etc.) cranked Windows-side.

I'm not necessarily a Mac cheerleader -- I cannot stand platform wars -- but I do have to refute that they are "not good for gaming." All that said, I'm not sure you can get a decent gaming Mac laptop for less than $1000.

Question 1: Why a laptop? Are you getting this to be portable or is it another aspect of this type of machine that makes you think about a laptop.
This is important because a full pc, even a small size one. Will usually have better specs.

Without knowing your exact wishes and usage it will be hard to give good advice. What is great for one is useless to the other person. What kind of game? Are we talking fps shooters, rts, rpg's, casual?

In general for games macbooks are no good. they simply do not come with a new enough graphics chip to be interesting. If you're going to spend money now you should get something mildly future proof. A direct x 9 generation gpu just will not cut it, dx10 slightly less so but also getting outdated. Even more so since you want windows 7.

Screen size is also a factor. Content looks best at a screen's native resolution. If you go small you will hit a problem where games want a higher resolution than the max on your screen. Also readability might becoem an issue.

maybe something liek this? www.anandtech.com/show/3766/msi-gx640-speedy-dx11-laptop

More importantly, the number of games released for Windows is substantially larger than the number of games released for Macs. If you're talking about casual or social gaming, perhaps the numbers are closer.

Frankly, if I were looking for a laptop, I'd start with Alienware and then look at Dell. I would avoid Lenovo entirely, and the same goes for HP / Compaq.

<strong>puckett101 wrote:</strong>
More importantly, the number of games released for Windows is substantially larger than the number of games released for Macs.

This is no longer remotely important. As I mentioned in my post, almost all my games are on my Windows 7 partition (which I have bolstered with a 1TB external drive).

Now, this is just my two cents of course, but I would HIGHLY recommend steering clear of Alienware. And I'm in Alienware owner...

They're incredibly cool looking (hands-down the coolest lighting systems of any notebook), and the powerful specs are definitely attractive. But, that said, there are major issues.

First and foremost, my experience with support (which has been the same for all my friends that have Alienwares) has been downright terrible. Enough that it single-handedly made me regret my purchase. My unit shipped with a hardware issue that caused the video to completely glitch out when the screen was moved. I called their support, and asked what I should do (assuming they would give me an RMA to send it back for repairs). They instructed me to get a screwdriver, open the laptop up, and fiddle with various connections to see if it fixed the problem. Fortunately, I was physically unable to do this myself, as I later found out following their advice would have voided the warranty and meant I couldn't get a replacement unit. Very, very shifty.

Second, their computers ship with a ton of bloatware that you probably won't want (such as facial recognition software etc. etc.), but you can't actually uninstall it without flattening the computer and reloading the OS from scratch; the hitch with doing this is that you then lose proprietary software you DO want, such as the lighting control software and the internal/external video switch.

Finally, and this was the biggest in my opinion, you can't install driver updates for individual components directly from the manufacturers on your own. You have to wait until Alienware rolls out official driver updates. That means, when there are new drivers available for...say...the video card that you need to play a new game, you won't actually be able to install them until Alienware releases their own version, which could be months later.

In my experience, HP, Dell, and Toshiba are the three best manufacturers out there. HP and Dell have a slight edge in terms of price and support, but I think Toshiba produces higher-quality products. I had a Toshiba gaming rig that served me well as my primary computer for five years. Eventually, it wasn't powerful enough to run new titles, but it still worked just fine, so I gave it to my aunt (a non-gamer). That was three years ago, and it still runs like a dream. In the eight years it's been used on a daily basis, it's never had a single hardware issue other than needing to finally replace the battery last year.

Uhm, alienware=dell www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1941376,00.asp
Dell is far from grand: www.digitaltrends.com/computing/dell-cha...ly-shipping-bad-pcs/

Fujitsu Siemens is a better brand. So are MSI, and with some lines Acer, and Asus (Although asus is going downhill fast.) In general the diff is the choice parts wise, service and overall choices. Most of this stuff, including Apple come out of the foxcom factories anyway. It's all based on templates with a label slapped on at the end.

I'd avoid Sony like the plague, after 2 vaio's I can safely say I'm not impressed. Neither with the quality or their driver support. (Not to mention you pay a brand premium.)

I cannot stress enough that we lack enough info. For that budget you could buy a damn nice desktop pc with solid specs. laptops have their uses, but you are limited by what can fit in the portable format. Not to mention the limits in terms of cooling and airflow in a compact shell.

@ZenMonkey: For gamers Apple are a bad bang for buck platform. Lower end parts, higher price. You also are forgetting the mentioned budget. On top of the higher price point on apple hardware, there would be the extra cost for a windows 7 license.
Not to mention it's rather counter productive isn't it? You spend more for a mac when what you want is a windows platform for games?
That's not even talking about their service record........

I'm mildly out of date on mac hardware. Last time I checked they still used fb dimm modules with rather poor latency?

Macbook pro's are not good for gaming because not a lot of games run well on the platform because of bugs and overheating of the fan. and I had the highest graphics cards and ram possible.

Thanks everyone! I'm sorry I wasn't clear about exactly what I'm looking for. So, I want a laptop with a screen size of about 13-15 inches and something that is light because I might have to schlep it around. I'm looking for something that's under $1,000 and is good for RTS, RPG, MMOs and really whatever. Also it must be good enough to run Photoshop and InDesign at the same time. Most of the games I'm playing are from 2007 and older. It just has to be able to play games that are out now. Thanks so much everyone!

The one I linked to earlier really would be a good system for you in that case.
You certainly want 4gb of ram, especialy if you play with a lot of filters. I5 would make sense in your case. Switching between igp and dedicated grpahics will save battery power while not playing games. I'm not entirely certain, but if the lines are the same on mobile the I5 dual cores have hyperthreading. This is a pretty pointless feature for games, but it will help in photoshop etc.

It should be possible to get this at 1000 or just over. A little haggling in the store might be required. You could do a step down to a core 2 system. In that case be sure it is 4gb ram at least, and windows 7 X64. As I mentioned before some systems were sold with more tahn 3gb ram on windows x86. Since only x64 windows versions can really use 4gb+ amounts that is a cosmic waste. (Oh there are ways, PEA etc. They are not worth it for home users. The performance hit outweighs any benefits.) Older laptops can still come with vista. Avoid! IF it comes with vista BUT offers an upgrade to windows 7 you could consider it., Be sure they give you the windows 7 install disc and serial right away. In the months prior to the windows 7 release people got "free" upgrade vouchers. A lot turned out to require extra fees for shipping etc in order to recieve the install disc.

Imho avoid going for a cheaper system that is barely good enough for now. Upgrading laptop parts can be a costly or impossible business.
To give you an idea about laptop graphics: www.tech-forums.net/pc/f84/updated-lapto...ranking-list-165525/ (The games mentioned are a bit out of date, the lists themselves are not.) You want one from class 1. You could settle for class 2. Lower than that is wasted money from a gamer point of view.

For your use the core I5 has benefits over the I3, Turion and celeron/pentium grade are not for you. A higher end core 2 duo could work. In that case make sure it has at least 3mb level 2 cache and is 2.7ghz or more.

This subject's been fairly exhausted now, I guess, but I thought I'd add a couple of reinforcements to the case.

While Dell are usually one of the better quality (not always the case) ones, I would seriously hope you never ever have to suffer the misery of their so-called "support". Even should you get one of the better staff, I'd still recommend having your fingernails pulled out than that! Their dodgy tricks such as getting you to open up the computer yourself I've personally had them try with me, and there is a lovely story about Dell being fined $4m for such dodgy practices in the US (I don't have the link to hand, but I'm sure you'll find it if interested). Naturally, Alienware are owned by Dell, and naturally are the same, maybe worse because of that bundle-ware they shove at you. All in all, not worth the hassle.

I would steer clear of Asus - they are indeed going downhill fast. Similarly Acer, although not quite to the same extent. I know personally of several friends who used to swear by Acer laptops, however I cannot think of one that has lasted longer more than 3 years. If memory serves correct, they're mostly motherboard failures, or at least let's call it drastic failures.

I quite agree about the comments regarding Fujitsu-Siemens - quality kit and often overlooked. Likewise with Sony and drivers/updates - support's pretty nonexistent there.

I can't comment too much about gaming with MacBooks - as you can easily partition them with Windows, compatibility is a moot point. The only thing that would cause concern is that there are concerns about overheating and reliability, and judging by your comments, you'll be playing enough to make this a factor.

The only thing I disagree with is regarding Toshiba. I've not found them to be too reliable, but having said that I've had little experience with them in the last 5 years or so, so you may wish to disregard my comment.

Also, please remember that I'm in the UK, so some of these issues might not apply.

But generally speaking, I have to bow to RenderB's assessment. That is SERIOUSLY good advice.

<strong>RenderB wrote:</strong>
Uhm, alienware=dell www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1941376,00.aspWell, if they have a shared support center, that would certainly explain some of my shenanigans. Even so, my statement still stands. Dell may own Alienware ostensibly, but they still operate semi-independently. And, from my experience, the quality of Dell systems (and your ability to do stuff like drivers on your own) is markedly higher than Alienware beyond the cosmetic side of the coin. But this is all beside the point...

Overall, RB's points and advice are quite solid. I would go a step further, though, and say that you should consider a 64-bit system an absolute must, and >4GB of RAM highly advised. For my academic work, I frequently run multiple CS applications at the same time, and that really burdens my system's memory. I've got four gigs of RAM, and with several decent-sized PS & ID files open at the same time, my usage jumps up to around 80%. If I was running 32-bit and restricted to 3.2 gigs (or whatever it is), I wouldn't be able to do that without paging like mad. All this is with relatively small (in the grand scheme of things) files of the sort used for web design and poster work.

So, if you do any really high-powered desktop publishing work with large files, I'd say that should be the largest determiner of your necessary minimum system specs rather than gaming. You'd certainly be able to manage it on a lower powered system, technically, but it would be incredibly inefficient (and burn through battery like crazy, so you wouldn't be able to do it on the go).

"Tilts head" That's what I said. Go for at least 4gb win7 x64.

<strong>RenderB wrote:</strong>
"Tilts head" That's what I said. Go for at least 4gb win7 x64.Right as I hit submit, I realized that I wasn't saying what I actually meant, so I just edited it (running on only an hour and a half of sleep right now and highly under caffeinated). My point was that 4GB is a bare, bare minimum. Six would be a much safer bet.

Oh I fully agree hence the 'at least". Especially with what you do. Or if you do image capture editing with large raw files for example.(I have one quad core "work" ,achine that is for testing, virtual server/network testing and so on. There you also want lots of reliable ram)

Otoh, most setups come with one slot used. And of al the things the ram tends to be the easiest to replace/expand. You can pick up an so dimm at any pc store.(If 6gb+ is in the default specs you bet they charge a hefty premium.)

OT: Would you agree that for this use ddr2 6gb would be more useful than 4gb ddr3, since it's not the bandwith but available room that is key here?

I build computers for others from time to time and I shop at www.newegg.com. I suggest at least stopping by there and giving a look to see what's available. Their prices are a steal and the deals are great to boot if you can catch one at the right time. It's the only place I shop now for computer parts. BTW Dell is Alienware. Both not the best you can do, but fairly good support.

<strong>rrreeefff wrote:</strong>
Macbook pro's are not good for gaming because not a lot of games run well on the platform because of bugs and overheating of the fan. and I had the highest graphics cards and ram possible.

I'm sorry you have had so many problems with bugs and overheating. I have experienced none of this in my gaming on Mac OS or on my Windows 7 partition; same goes for my husband with the one he got from work. Works like a dream for both of us.

<strong>RenderB wrote:</strong>
OT: Would you agree that for this use ddr2 6gb would be more useful than 4gb ddr3, since it's not the bandwith but available room that is key here?For large desktop publishing files, definitely. Data won't need to be going in and out of RAM at too high a rate in most cases, so the bandwidth isn't as critical as just the total available size.

<strong>slayer91 wrote:</strong>
I build computers for others from time to time and I shop at www.newegg.com. I suggest stopping by there and giving a look to see what's available. Their prices are a steal and the deals are great to boot if you can catch one at the right time. It's the only place I shop now for computer parts.I can't support this endorsement enough. Newegg is fantastic. Whenever I'm putting together a new build, I stick with either them or ZipZoomFly.

Going for individual parts and then building your own machine is a bit more of a headache for laptops, though.

So I'm going for Windows 7. Now the question is which one? :/