Thread: Best Gaming laptop??

Are current laptop grade i7's only quad core?

I know for desktops the current i7's are overkill for gaming beacuse they are 8 core (4 with hyperthreading) while i5's are quad (I think they just don't have hyperthreading enabled). Consensus (for desktops!) is that i7's are really only good for video and CPU intensive stuff (like what Ben does) and i5's are more than adequate for gaming.

My work laptop, Dell E6410 has an i5 and shows 4 cores, whether its two with hyper-threading or 4 dedicated cores I dont know. Another 4gb of ram an SSD and it might actually be nice to use...

Originally Posted by stuee

Are current laptop grade i7's only quad core?

I know for desktops the current i7's are overkill for gaming beacuse they are 8 core (4 with hyperthreading) while i5's are quad (I think they just don't have hyperthreading enabled). Consensus (for desktops!) is that i7's are really only good for video and CPU intensive stuff (like what Ben does) and i5's are more than adequate for gaming.

My work laptop, Dell E6410 has an i5 and shows 4 cores, whether its two with hyper-threading or 4 dedicated cores I dont know. Another 4gb of ram an SSD and it might actually be nice to use...

Last I looked (~1 year ago) the M4600 was only available quad core, as was XPS, however the alienware had 6-core options online and possibly 8-core now.

depends on what sort of games you want to play....

Just talking online web games, older stuff, or the latest greatest?

Originally Posted by jsp

depends on what sort of games you want to play....

Just talking online web games, older stuff, or the latest greatest?

She is a Sims junkie.. Sims 3 and Sim City 4 seem to crunch a lot of numbers and the Toshiba and Mac book both struggle with these games.

Cheers - Gav.

IMHO using an Alienware machine for running the sims is kind of like buying a tank to take the kids to school, it's total overkill.
Just find a good laptop that meets the specs required by the games and go from there
My mate at uni built his own gaming PC that out-performs most Alienwares, for considerably less than what they cost too.

I picked up a few 17 inch HP 1st gen i7's from grays online fairly cheap, and couldn't be happier. Desktop replacement for the odd lan party.

has the switchable ATI graphics card, fairly good for most games so far. A few I have had to turn down graphics settings at native screen res.

I guess it depends on budget and use, I wanted 17inch screen rather than something smaller, but then its not good as a couch laptop.

Also went for a 17 as I bought SSD's and put them in, and then used the exsisting drive as the secondry for mass storage, the 15's and 14's only take one drive.

At work I have a high failure rate on the dell M4600 series, I am no fan of them, but pretty expensive and heavy. I have had a few of them replaced outright by dell. We have some alienware's as well, and those things run 3d simulations well so number crunching's not an issue.

apologies to the OP,,


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Originally Posted by Disco Muppet

IMHO using an Alienware machine for running the sims is kind of like buying a tank to take the kids to school, it's total overkill.
Just find a good laptop that meets the specs required by the games and go from there

Yeah, but that is the problem. Both the Toshiba and Mac Book meet the minimum specs to run the game, and while they do, neither is comfortable doing so. They are maxed out - Sims uses a huge amount of RAM to run and keeps the processor running hard. It may look and sound like a simple game, but it is anything but that behind the scenes.

Some of my sons 'top end' games run better and taxes the computer less on these computers than Sims does...

Also, it needs to be a laptop, not a desktop.