Gaming Laptops

Ok here's my latest gaming laptop advice..

Graphics:
The latest graphics platform (the most recent iteration of Radeon HD) from ATI (now AMD) really competes with NVidia's latest entry - Fermi, which came out after. Fermi is more powerful (by a little), but is more expensive, requires more power, and runs hotter (by quite a bit). So the graphics are up in the air for the first time in a long time. You really have to know what features you want or need, and also what version of what card is in the machine you are looking at, as there are still some older cards being installed, that don't support current needed features like DX11. The top AMD mobile chip is the  ATI Mobility HD 5870, and the top Nvidia mobile graphics is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M. Interestingly there are also high-end shipping laptops that have two of these cards (in crossfire or SLI).

CPU:
The latest Intel chips are "Core iX” where X can be 2,5, or 7, 7 being the most powerful currently. In addition you have mobile and desktop, with some gaming laptops being able to run desktop processors. As well at the very high end you have "Extreme" chips, which have a couple of key performance enhancers, but cost a fortune more.

Memory:
You are looking for triple channel, somewhere between 6 and 24G at the moment. The faster the better of course.

Drives:
You want a machine that offers two or more drives, and here's why. There have been some real performance gains found using an SSD. However you only want it for your system (Windows) drive, because they are so expensive. Put the rest of your files (games, pictures, music) on a big (500GB?) 7200 rpm Seagate (my preference). Furthermore you can't get just any SSD. There are certain controllers that offer good performance, and you have to make sure you get TRIM support. See Maximum PC's site or magazine to find out which controllers are good and what drives they are in.

Laptops:
First off,  I suggest you ignore all the usual laptop sellers (HP, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, Apple, etc.), because their high-end machines don't have good enough gaming features compared to how much they cost. I also suggest you ignore the next level up in gaming laptops, which would be Asus and MSI, etc. They do better in terms of price per gaming features, but there's another level. Finally we come to, as far as I can tell, the top of the heap. Perhaps I have mentioned before how most laptops are built by one or two companies, even though they are sold by everybody. The maker of a lot of the ones we just covered is Compal. But the company that makes most of the real gaming laptops, is Clevo. You can't by a laptop from Clevo, so you've probably never heard of them. But you have now. So that's where we start in picking out the model we want. We narrow down the Clevo model. Then we can go to all the performance dealers, and see who has the best build and price of that particular model, with the features we want.

Clevo is at:
http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/index.asp

However that's not the easiest site to compare gaming models. My suggestion is to go to:
http://notebooks.avadirect.com/Gaming_Notebooks
- This is one of the Clevo resellers, and they clearly list the Clevo model in their description, and it's all on one page.

Once you decide which Clevo model you like, here are some performance web sites to search for it:

Avadirect:
http://notebooks.avadirect.com/Gaming_Notebooks
   
Xotic
http://www.xoticpc.com

Origin:
http://www.originpc.com

Sager:
http://www.sagernotebook.com

Falcon Northwest:
http://www.falcon-nw.com

iBuyPower:
http://www.ibuypower.com
   
Power Notebooks:
http://www.powernotebooks.com
   
Puget:
http://www.pugetsystems.com

Alienware:
I don't recommend Alienware since Dell bought them.

I also ran across Kobalt http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/notebooks.html for England and Eurocom http://www.eurocom.com for Canada. I'm sure there are more in the US as well. I recommend Sager - you will note that a lot of these other resellers actually buy their Clevo from Sager, or at least use Sager's model number. I don't know enough about the rest of them to say which is better or worse. I'd suggest checking them all out in gaming notebook forums. One that helped me was http://forum.notebookreview.com.

Finally I'm going to detail one particular Clevo model next as an example, because it's the top of the line in my opinion. However you can decide for yourself which model to go with. This one has some drawbacks - I think the price is high, and I wish I could get it in a 15" or 16" instead of a 17". But it is crazy heaped full of fast parts.

The Clevo model is x7200:

• http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=279 
• http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_configurator.asp?PRID=18340

It is also know as the Origin EON17, and the Sager NP7280:

• http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP7280
• http://www.originpc.com/eon17-gaming-laptop-features.asp

It takes Core i7 desktop processors, and can have two Nvidia 480M in SLI. It has room for 3 drives. It has all the newest ports like sata 6 and usb 3. It can take up to 24G of memory. It has HDMI with HDCP, and 7.1 audio.

On the down side it's very heavy, requires significant power, and starts at roughly $2700 and quickly climbs to $6000 when you start throwing in the goodies.

Happy shopping!