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[StreetPizza]

Yeah, I know. What in Armok's glorious, booze-moist beard am I doing buying a gaming laptop over a gaming desktop, which gets me more bang for the same buck, right?

Well, as a Philadelphia guy who has to travel back and forth to Houston for college, I just don't have the suitcase room for a whole-hog gaming rig. Moreover, I don't know that much about laptop specs other than "more RAM good" and "Intel Core i7 good." I especially don't know crap about graphics cards, which, I've been told, are kind of a big thing when it comes to playing games. Hence, this thread.

I've been looking around on Amazon.com, specifically at this,  this, and this, but only at refurbished prices. Are refurbished products any good?

Edit: Someone picked up the refurbished one from the third link. It's normally $1500 and the refurbished price was $700.

Are these good choices? If not, what would you recommend? Is getting one custom-built an option? I've only heard of that being done on desktops.

$850 is a little more than I'm willing to shell out for a laptop, but I'd be willing to spend that much if it comes with you guys' recommendation. Moreover, I'm not really looking to run ultra-frickin' new games here--I just want to be able to run games released in the last year or two (and of course, Dwarf Fortress) on good quality and at a good speed.

[HavingPhun]

Ok so I can't help you much but I will try to give you a little help. What is your absolute budget for it. I don't know but if I where you I would still try to get a desktop. If you have a big suitcase you can fit it in there. Or maybe try to fit the pc into a mid-tower. Or keep it at the place you stay at for a longer time. Your house or college, or the same.

[StreetPizza]

Well, the most I'd be willing to pay is maybe $800, and that's stretching it; any more, and I'll start worrying about how much of it I'll lose to obsolescence and whatnot. That said, as much as I'd like to get a desktop (and I read your thread, by the way. $650 for a decent gaming desktop sounds really nice), a full-sized desktop would be way too much to carry since I limit myself to only two bags when I leave for school. I'm suspicious about leaving it behind in storage since I don't want anyone stealing it.

As for a mid-tower or compact tower, I tried that with my last desktop computer. It was an HP Pavilion, and to be honest, it sucked. It had lots of RAM and it could surf the web and handle Warcraft 3 just fine, sure, but the stock graphics card was garbage, and since the tower was smaller, I couldn't find a replacement that worked--not even one card that was specifically advertised as "for compact towers" would fit. So that's out. Also, there's the matter of the screen, which is another bag I don't want bumping around on the plane over. Maybe I'll find a decent desktop once I'm out of college, but for now, at least for the next two years, I think I need a laptop.

[Tellemurius]

try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215408

[MaximumZero]

I, of course, have to butt in.

Recommended: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834158580

It'll run FIFA 12 and Diablo 3 (D3 has to be on moderate or lower graphics settings, but it runs, nonetheless,) right out of the box.

[StreetPizza]

Price-wise, those two are pretty nice (I cross-checked the HP Pavilion laptop on Amazon and I found that Amazon has it for $599) but according to About.com's laptop processor guide, the Asus laptop I linked to in the original post has a more powerful processor (Intel Core i7 compared to i5; not sure how it stacks up to the AMD A8). In terms of graphics cards, laptops in general aren't very beefy, but according to notebookcheck.net, the Asus has a better graphics card than the HP Pavilion and a worse one than the Acer, though the margin isn't large. RAM-wise, the Asus has 6 gigs, the Acer has 4 gigs, and the HP Pavilion has 6 gigs.

If I buy used ("like new" quality) from Amazon, I can get the Asus for $696 compared to $650 for the Acer and $690/600 for the HP Pavilion. Would the Asus be worth it at that price?

[MaximumZero]

The ASUS in the first post is certainly not a bad machine. I personally prefer AMD over intel, but that's little more than a personal brand preference. As far as value goes, you can go to just about any manufacturer's website and customize a lappy to have exactly what you want.

[StreetPizza]

Well, my problem with the Asus A53 that I linked is that it doesn't seem to be a purpose-built gaming laptop. The weight, especially, is what's making me raise an eyebrow. It's almost half as heavy as some other gaming laptops, and to be honest, I want a heavy, bulky laptop. That way, I'll know I'm not paying extra for the convenience of portability.

Edit: For its price range, though, I think it has the best processor and RAM that I've seen.

[MaximumZero]

5.7 lbs is about standard for a laptop, if not a touch high. Ultrabooks are weighing in at under three pounds.

[StreetPizza]

Ah, alright. I'm set on the Asus, then. Thanks for the help!

[Tuplis]

I know I might be late with my input, but I'll throw it out there anyway. I've owned two gaming laptops so far and my experience is that you'll want to invest more than the ~800 you mentioned.

Save for the asus g53, out of the proposed ones none will run any recent games at good settings. The graphic card is a critical component, and these laptops had bad ones. Currently, I'd recommend the following laptop:
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Computer-GT683DX-840US-15-6-Inch-Laptop/dp/B0072BA3AW/ref=sr_1_14

That's a price point (~1100-1200) where you can find the laptops that run 1-2 year old games at great settings, recent games at good settings and future games at ok settings. If you go for the 800 range, you're going to end up with a computer that'll run 1-2 years old games at ok setting, current games barely and future games as a slideshow. You could maybe find a better fit than this laptop but you should, in my opinion, definitely be looking for an nvidia gtx570 or 660 for a graphics card. The processor isn't exactly what you should be looking for - optimal would be something like 2,5GHz dual core.

[MaximumZero]

Win7 will automatically spread work over any number of cores. Hell, if I shut everything non-essential down, and start up DF, it'll still work over all 6 cores, despite DF not being multithreaded. A dual core on a gaming laptop would be woefully underpowered, and I would not suggest anything under a quad. Hell, the one you referenced is a quad!

[Tuplis]

Win7 will automatically spread work over any number of cores. Hell, if I shut everything non-essential down, and start up DF, it'll still work over all 6 cores, despite DF not being multithreaded. A dual core on a gaming laptop would be woefully underpowered, and I would not suggest anything under a quad. Hell, the one you referenced is a quad!

Upon further review of current games, I do agree what I stated was wrong. You should indeed go for 4 cores. Looks like more things happened over the last couple years on this frontier than I thought. Luckily it seems like all the laptops in the price point I suggested have four cores so you have one less thing to worry about.

[StreetPizza]

Well, the good news is that the Asus laptop's puny 2.2 GHz processor apparently (or so I hear from an Amazon review) comes with "smart" (meaning it'll work on its own so my lazy ass doesn't have to learn) overclocking software that can get it to run up to 3.0 GHz. And it's quad-core.

As for graphics cards, though, I haven't seen anything in the 600-800 range that's significantly better than the 610M except for the one on that Asus G53SX that I linked to in the first post. It went for $700 and has now been bought. Do you guys think I should have jumped on that one, even though it was refurbished and the seller only had an 85% rating?

And even though I'm limiting myself graphics card-wise with the price, I really don't want to feel like I'm losing money when that thousand dollar gaming laptop becomes worth a whole lot less the year after. Plus, all of my gaming desktop friends would probably laugh at me. Hell, I'm already expecting a few snickers for shelling out $700 for a gaming laptop.

[Tellemurius]

610M, thats a renamed 520MX, thats really weak for gaming.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php
im gonna recommend these guys as they build gaming laptops down to the cheap gamers, you should be able to grab something below $1500, you can't complain much as these are parts that aren't in high demand and much power consuming, mid-level laptop gaming is still a niche so prices are still up.

these guys, you can get all of the latest nvidia and intel chips and completely customize to what you need.