Good Laptop for Games

bstilson

Honorable
Nov 30, 2013
2
0
10,510
Hello,

I am looking for a new all purpose laptop that can handle some games (Rome 2 Total War, Assassin's Creed, Europa Universalis 4). I realize the ideal set up is a gaming desktop and a cheap laptop, but I would rather have all my schoolwork, music, and games on a single system. I also move around a lot, so a laptop is a must. My concern is that laptops that can handle games will be too bulky and heat up too much. I'm very tempted to get this build from ibuypower that I customized a bit:

Battalion 101 W355STQ 15.6" Full HD 1920x1080 LED-Backlit Display Laptop w/ Fingerprint Reader
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ Mobile Processor (4x 2.7GHz/6MB L3 Cache)
Memory: 8GB [8GB x 1] 1600MHz DDR3 SO-DIMM Laptop Memory - Kingston
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5 Video w/ NVIDIA Optimus [W355STQ]
mSATA SSD Drive: None
Primary Hard Drive: 120 GB ADATA SSD - Single Drive
Data Hard Drive: 500 GB 5400rpm Super Slim Laptop Hard Drive Single Drive

This setup costs $1201

I am also looking at the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500.
It seems like less impressive hardware for $100 cheaper, but it might be lighter and cooler. Plus, it might be better to buy this from a store because I can take it in if there are problems. Any advice would be appreciated.
 
The bad thing about SLI is that not all games will take advantage of it. I would rather have a single powerful card than a SLI or Crossfire configuration.

Additionally, you can save some money by dropping down to the i7-4700mq which is only 300MHz slower and you will probably save about $125 - $150. Assuming you have the option. Game performance will not drop by much, probably 3 or 4 FPS at most.

If possible I would split the 8GB of RAM into 2x 4GB sticks of RAM so the RAM will work in dual channel mode rather than single channel mode (half the bandwidth). For games you do not need more than 8GB of RAM any way. If that is not an option then install a 4GB stick of RAM, 8GB if you truly need 16GB of RAM.