Laptop for University

[Helfy]

I am starting college soon and I need a laptop for school.  I have been looking for an I7 Processor.  Does anyone have any advice?

[K-64]

Get a PC and interface it directly with your spine, and install retinal implants for constant access

[Helfy]

Too bad I am not in Ghost in the Shell.

[Nipplemelter]

What are you planning on studying in school? Do you want your laptop to double as a gaming laptop?

[Helfy]

What are you planning on studying in school? Do you want your laptop to double as a gaming laptop?

Engineering.  My great uncle is going to pay around 700$ and I will go in for the rest.  At the moment, all I play is M&B, ETW/NTW, and the occasional Skyrim. 

Any ideas?

[Splintert]

I strongly recommend against getting a gaming laptop. I'm currently using an ASUS G53JW-A1 and while it's a darn good laptop (when all the parts are functional), it doesn't compare to even low end desktops for games.

Just get a cheap laptop that runs the stuff you need and stick with desktops for gaming. Plus, Warband runs on a potato, so shouldn't have any trouble with that.

[Helfy]

I strongly recommend against getting a gaming laptop. I'm currently using an ASUS G53JW-A1 and while it's a darn good laptop (when all the parts are functional), it doesn't compare to even low end desktops for games.

Just get a cheap laptop that runs the stuff you need and stick with desktops for gaming. Plus, Warband runs on a potato, so shouldn't have any trouble with that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215410

This is what I had thought about getting.  It has a decent graphics card and upgradable RAM to 16g.

[Splintert]

Alright, well some quick pointers before you do anything if you are going to get a laptop:

Go for the highest per-core GH/z possible. You won't need more than 4 cores.
You also don't need more than 6GB of RAM. Instead, aim for the fastest RAM possible.
Don't let high resolution monitors trick you into spending more, higher resolutions = less frames per second, and with a laptop you'll need every frame you can get on some games.

Also, if you can find one with USB 3.0, it's freaking amazing.

To be quite honest that looks like a good system right there. It kicks my 1.73 GH/z processor with 460M in the butt.

[Kevlar]

I strongly recommend against getting a gaming laptop. I'm currently using an ASUS G53JW-A1 and while it's a darn good laptop (when all the parts are functional), it doesn't compare to even low end desktops for games.

Just get a cheap laptop that runs the stuff you need and stick with desktops for gaming. Plus, Warband runs on a potato, so shouldn't have any trouble with that.

This. Can always just buy a good used laptop for a few hundred dollars and spend the rest building a good desktop PC.

If you have no room though then that might not be an option but it is the better choice.

That being said, any of the third generation ivy bridge laptops would be the best option right now. Not sure how well it would run empire but it has a built in gpu into the cpu die (hd4000) which can handle games pretty well (you can just look up benchmarks to see which games score what at certain resolutions).

Not a big fan of laptops (have had a $2500 in the past, sold it for $500 a few years later ) because there isn't a whole lot you can even customize (internally) on one. At most all you can do is change the ram.

Alright, well some quick pointers before you do anything if you are going to get a laptop:

Go for the highest per-core GH/z possible. You won't need more than 4 cores.

Depends entirely on what applications he will be using. I assume he would need to produce models and whatnot for engineering (autocad perhaps) which may or may not use more then 4 cores. Typically for gaming though, anything more then 4 cores is a waste atm since no games are optimized to run past them really. Only certain programs currently are which are mostly video editing and rendering large amounts of data/video. You would have to find out which programs you will be using to see if having more cores would be of any benefit to you personally.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215410

This is what I had thought about getting.  It has a decent graphics card and upgradable RAM to 16g.

Only glaring issue with that is the hard drive which if possible I would suggest getting an ssd (if you plan on buying that). The gpu is probably the 2nd or 3rd best one in current laptops I believe as there is also 660m 670m and 680m above that one (I believe).

Best bang for you buck memory right now are samsung 30nm :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147090

There is the laptop version. Not sure how many ram slots the laptop has as the description is a little confusing (4GB x 1+2GB x 1). My system (once I get it running) has the ddr3 desktop samsung memory and people have been getting amazing overclock results with them.

[cardgame]

Alright, well some quick pointers before you do anything if you are going to get a laptop:

Go for the highest per-core GH/z possible. You won't need more than 4 cores.
You also don't need more than 6GB of RAM. Instead, aim for the fastest RAM possible.
Don't let high resolution monitors trick you into spending more, higher resolutions = less frames per second, and with a laptop you'll need every frame you can get on some games.

Also, if you can find one with USB 3.0, it's freaking amazing.

To be quite honest that looks like a good system right there. It kicks my 1.73 GH/z processor with 460M in the butt.

This is all solid but the resolution tip. You can adjust the resolution of games easily enough, and in fact most auto-adjust to get the best performance. Higher resolutions make viewing other media such as pictures and (particularly HD) movies VERY nice 

[Splintert]

From what I can tell, it's far better to run your system at your monitor's native resolution regardless of what that resolution is. If you don't, it gets blurry unnecessarily wheras with a lower native resolution it's not blurring, just pixelated. Anit-aliasing solves that (FXAA is my favorite).

[cardgame]

Well, that's probably true, but I haven't noticed it affecting any of my games.

[Splintert]

I guess it's just personal preference. Games are much sharper on my native 1920x1080 but sometimes I have to run 1600x900 to get sufficiently stable FPS. 1366x768 is the absolute lowest, although I've tried 1280x720 and even 960x540 on Crysis.

[Arnas]

Playing at lower resolutions than my monitor's 1680x1050 often makes my eyes hurt.

[Sir Hitson Winsler]

1366x768

That's such a retarded resolution to have, its the one my laptop has. I don't understand why they didn't just have a 720 screen it would mean youtube clips clearer and the FPS would be slightly higher.