Budget gaming laptop

vibrantxxninjas

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2011
50
0
18,580
1. What is your budget?
maximum $600 (preferably after taxes)

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

14" -16"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1366x768 or higher

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
portable

5. How much battery life do you need?
over 2.5 hours would be nice (for normal use)

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?

I have too big of a list but i would like to play on medium settings (even if it means 1280x720 resolution) for most games, i am aware that some games just aren't meant to be run on a low end budget

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Photoshop, some video editing, school work

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
320gb or greater

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
tigerdirect.ca
newegg.ca
futureshop.ca
bestbuy.ca
amazon.ca

any other good sites that ship to canada that doesnt cost an arm and a leg for shipping? please if you know any then let me know

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
atleast a year for gaming and then if it becomes obsolete for any sort of gaming after a year then i will continue to use it for regular use.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD writer/reader OR blu-ray reader... really doesnt matter but it needs to have an optical drive

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
im not biased but i like ASUS and HP but anything works for me

13. What country do you live in?
Canada

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I will consider REFURBISHED laptops as they usually have better price tags for the specs, actually i prefer a refurbished as my chances of getting something decent for gaming at this price tag is higher.

thanks in advance :)
 

willard

Distinguished
Nov 12, 2010
247
0
18,860
atleast a year for gaming and then if it becomes obsolete for any sort of gaming after a year then i will continue to use it for regular use.
A $600 laptop is going to be bad for gaming out of the gate, even at low resolutions. Best you could do at that price point is probably something with an AMD A8 in it (or an A10 once they become available). An A8 would manage around 20 FPS average on medium settings in demanding games, and 30-40 in lower end ones. The A10 will add around 10 FPS to that.

With performance like that, I'd consider the more demanding games like BF3 to be pretty much unplayable. You'll be getting dips into the ~10 FPS range with an A8, and probably under 20 occasionally on an A10.

So basically, if you want gaming on medium settings with modern games at that price point, you really need to wait for Trinity (A10) based laptops to become available. Should be any day now.