Buying a Laptop/ Mobile GPU question

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Snipeye

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I'm looking at buying a laptop for both schoolwork and gaming. Budget is $800, and I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be able to find a great deal on a laptop. But what I've been trying to figure out is what kind of mobile GPU do I need to play World of Warcraft, maybe even CoD4, on it. With that said, here's the hard part for the laptop: I honestly would like to have a Blu-Ray drive included in the price as my BluRay library is growing as large as my DVD collection. If you can find a laptop with a so-so, playable GPU with a Blu Ray, and another laptop with a great GPU, but DVD-RW instead, I'd like to see both and make a decision.

Did I mention that I want this to have a minimum 4 hours of battery life?

I'm right now looking at Dells, HP, Lenovo, Cyberpower, and ASUS laptops, trying to mix and match a system that'll fit (and applying coupon codes that I'm able to find online).

Recap: $800 budget
Want Blu-Ray Drive
Want to be able to play World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 4
MUST have 4 hours of batter life, minimum
 
Snipeye said:
MUST have 4 hours of batter life, minimum
Click to expand...

I have yet to find a non-Apple notebook with a dedicated graphics card that does over 3 on power saver other than netbooks.

Currently, I would wait until Christmas/New Years when Newegg, MWave, TigerDirect, etc have major clearance sales.

Laptops with any Nvidia GT/X/S 250+ Graphics cards or ATi 47XX/54XX+ Graphics cards can easily play the games you want though usually its best to go with a Core i5 or Phenom II x4 CPU or better to support that card.

Again, its really hard to find a notebook with 4 hours of batter life that also has a dedicated graphics card. Well unless you get 9 or 12 cell battery but those are 100$+ which negates spending 800$ or less.

ASUS are more geared for out of the box gaming in comparison to the others you have listed and also the cheaper but still really reliable of those you listed.
 
Best bet might be to wait for CES Jan 5th. With the new Sandy Bridge processors it will bring down prices of existing line.

I hope something comes up during Cyber Monday for you.. I will keep my eyes out. Please post back if you buy something.
 
Well, I've been reading a lot about how Optimus is pretty good at giving both; decent gaming with longer battery life when not gaming. I don't need to have 4 hrs of gaming battery life. Just 4 hrs of battery life in general, such as from watching a movie, or surfing the net .
 
Well, I'm looking at getting:

Dell XPS 15
COLORS Silver Anodized Aluminum 15.6" HD (720p) WLED Display
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows? 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
PROCESSOR Intel? Core™ i5-460M (2.53GHz, 4 threads, turbo boost up to 2.8GHz, 3M cache)
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA? GeForce? GT 420M 1GB graphics with Optimus
MEMORY 6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
BATTERY OPTIONS 92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
WIRELESS CARDS Intel? Centrino? Wireless-N 1000
MOBILE BROADBAND No Mobile Broadband Selected
KEYBOARD Standard Keyboard - English

$939.99

Any opinions?
 
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I use a Lenovo Y560 that I'm pretty happy with . Has Core i5 and ATI 5730. Gets 4 hours + battery life, but only if I switch it over from the dedicated GPU to the Core i5 integrated GPU.

I really like my laptop overall. IT has GREAT wireless capabilities (not all laptops pick up WiFi as good as others), the screen is LED back-light, but there is one thing really annoying about it...

The only bad thing I can say about Lenovo Laptops is their placement of their 'special function' key - it's at the bottom left corner - it's in the place where the Ctrl key is on normal keyboards (they moved the Crtl key over to the right one). If you're like me, and you use keyboard commands a LOT, you'll forget pretty regularly about it, you'll think you're hitting the Ctrl key and you'll press the Lenovo special function key, and you'll think you've copied something, and when you go to paste it, nothing :( Yeah, and it's hardwired into the bios, so no character remapping, either.
 
Snipeye said:
Well, I'm looking at getting:

Dell XPS 15
COLORS Silver Anodized Aluminum 15.6" HD (720p) WLED Display
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows? 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
PROCESSOR Intel? Core? i5-460M (2.53GHz, 4 threads, turbo boost up to 2.8GHz, 3M cache)
VIDEO CARD NVIDIA? GeForce? GT 420M 1GB graphics with Optimus
MEMORY 6GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
BATTERY OPTIONS 92 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
WIRELESS CARDS Intel? Centrino? Wireless-N 1000
MOBILE BROADBAND No Mobile Broadband Selected
KEYBOARD Standard Keyboard - English

$939.99

Any opinions?
Click to expand...

seems kinda pricey given you can get similar specs (albeit without 9 cell battery) for $700

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834214043
 
Ooo. That is very tempting...

I'm actually delaying the purchase. I can't decide on what laptop I want to go with. Lenovo thinkpads look very enticing to me...
 
thinkpads are great if you are willing to pay extra for them.

very durable. survive drops and stuff
 
reflex99 said:
thinkpads are great if you are willing to pay extra for them.

very durable. survive drops and stuff
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be dropping your notebook.

You can get a Y560 with i5, 5650 for around 700-800 with coupon

I also saw a few XPS 15 coupons floating around. I had one configured with i5, 420M, backlit keyboard and 1080p screen for 719 with free shipping

OR you can wait as Sandy Bridge is coming in January and will push down prices even further or buy the new platform
 
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