What would you do if you had roughly $1500 for a gaming 15.6" Notebook

Sager is supposed to be very good. Pm "imglidinhere" he's the go to laptop guy.

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How about the Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM?
Configured it with the HD 7970m, Steelseries Chiclet Backlit Keyboard, and Windows 7, and that will bring it to $1638.33.

Typing this reply from a Sager NP9130. Have nothing but great things to say about it. With upgrades my laptop was about $1300, so you could probably go with np1950 as the previous response suggested. Its hands down the best laptop that I have ever used, and I have been able to run almost any game on at least high settings. Especially if you upgrade the GPU to HD 7970m or 680M.

I think the 680m is a little bit more powerful, but nvidia mobil gpu's tend to be crazey expensive especially when you have to replace them.

A s2011 Desktop with 3930K+Rampage

OP didnt ask for a gaming desktop recommendation...

I would think a Sager, or one of the asus G Series Notebooks are your best bet.

Sager is more customizable with higher end GPUs (especially in the NP9150 model) They use a dual Heatpipe design with 2 fans, so each GPU has its own cooling system. the 7970m is a great value, but AMD's drivers for the card are an absolute trainwreck right now. The Sager notebooks have no way of truley disabling AMD Enduro (essentially the same as nvidia's Optimus), and it has caused people some serious headaches. I would say the 680m, for the driver issue alone is worth the premium, but that wont fit in your $1500 budget.

When I had a custom gaming desktop. I ended up with an NP8130. Which is essentially a lower end NP9150. It comes with a 120w power brick versus the 180w one with the NP9150. It also has a plastic textured finish as opposed to the ruber finish, and supposedly only supports up to 75w gpus. meaning in the future any upgrade would be a 75w GPU or lower, so you would never be able to get to the top tier GPU. This is true on my NP8130. I would imagine it is the same on the NP9130.

I am VERY happy with the performance of my GTX 560m in Sager Np8130, it overclocks well, stays cool (i also keep it on a notepal U2) and is relatively quiet. Its lower base price would allow for upgrades in ram, SSD, CPU and the screen even, and get you a nicely performing laptop.


Most of the Asus notebooks now are only equipped with a GTX 660m it seems, for a while they had 670m GPUs but that it is really just a rebranded 570m. The 660m is the newer kepler technology, with lower power and heat so I bet it OCs well too. Asus has a newer cooling design as well, which I believe has independant cooling for the CPU and GPU. Just know that the Asus, is less likely to be upgradeable since they really only use the 660 and 670m GPUs right now, everythign else, like the sager can be upgraded though. I had a very positive experience with an Asus G60VX in the past, I really enjoyed the laptop, and was incredibly reliable for well over 2 years, at that time I sold it, and i believe it is still functioning now.

So, if you need something powerful to suplement a gaming rig, I think going with a 660m based notebook is wise, and you can get some nice upgrades to make your user experience faster.

If you do order a Sager, go through XoticPC and join NBR, they will give you a $50 discount. You could also check out vendors such as Malibal, Performance PCs, and Mythlogic, who is more expensive but does a ton of customizing to their notebooks. All of them sell Clevo branded notebooks, which is what sager is based on as well.


Hope this helped!


ID
Edited by identitycrisis - 7/24/12 at 6:51am

Won't the driver issue eventually be fixed though? I ordered a Sager 9170 with 7970m because some have had success, and driver issues can be worked out. The GTX 680 is only a tiny bit more powerful, and it costs 2-300 more. Not worth it for a temp problem imo, and you may get lucky.

9150 overall seems like a great value, and I'll add PowerNotebooks to the list of vendors that give discounts through NBR.

I would just go with the G55 and throw and SSD into it if it didn't have one already.

With a 15.6" screen at 1080p, a 660m is entirely sufficient to run at max resolution of the screen with most games at playable FPS.