Hill

Its midnight here so I will try help again tomorrow. Happy hunting

Do we get a follow up as to your new laptop then ?

Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS all have 17" Gaming laptops with 6700hq and 950m minimum going for around $1k here in Aus (not sure if helpful with your currency). Only downside with going with 'gaming' laptops is mostly the panels, majority are not IPS panels, and can be quite dark in daylight.

I agree with bughtoo, I'd try find a laptop with a Skylake HQ series CPU if possible. Try the Inspiron 7559, there's an asus model that is not agreeing with my brain right now so you can get your amazon / google search on for that too but definitely look at the Inspiron. There's also always ThinkPad series from Lenovo. God, i sound like a Lenovo rep lately..

Dependant on his choice of fps games. If he is a competitive player, then the graphics will be lessened anyway to increase maximum frames. Even in old dual 980ti rigs they'd try squeeze 400 fps out. The 480 will handle games such as CS:GO(Easily), Battlefield and CoD series. Other games such as Arma3 is very subjective to the server and even on a new 1080 my friend will get 30fps all day.

SteelSeries Rival QuickFire Rapid-i - Cherry MX Browns Sennheiser 598 Razer Goliathus Control extended 36"

Go have a look at the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge series, they come equipped with upto 16gb i7 6500u and i think an amd 370 gpu My friend had only just gotten his one for the new university year. I believe it was only around $900, and that's Australian, so you should be good!

As above, the upgraded screen benefits are quite significant for my coding also. What programming are you doing? as this effects largely what I'd suggest, such as; If you are doing anything with VMs the better the cpu the more you will benefit. Same again with your GPU with a more graphic focused work environment. Are these your only 2 options you have available?

I'm still using a Sapphire 7970. I had gotten a good 5 or 6 years out of this card now. Still chugs up a storm on most titles but I'm starting to finally see some struggle on newer titles, especially seeing as I'm running 1440p monitors.

Firstly, what is this laptops purpose coding / VMs / games ? This decides quite a lot for what your options are. I will preface this with "unlike most people, I don't have much hate for Macbooks or Mac-related items", other than budget price to performance. As you said their CPU is usually a downer. I'd either go in the range of Dell's xps line up, as its a similar slimline and attractive product, but also packs a pretty good punch with its specs. Although as mentioned by someone else earlier you could have a look at the Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup, or even Yoga if that's your thing (2 in 1 tablet deal). The new ThinkPads are actually quite thin and have a brushed metal coating. Which is in fact quite appealing to look at, and gives that nice cold feeling when you lift the panel. Heck, you could even deck out the Dell inspiron 7559 with everything, for a lot cheaper than both suggested and still have killer specs. H series i5 or i7 along with a 960m and tbh, a pretty sexy looking rig. Now that it's almost slate black, and comes with red accents. Both the Dell line and ThinkPad come equipped with 1080p to 4k IPS panels, similar to that of the Apples. Which to me is something you just cannot pass up on a laptop. As other panels become almost unusable in any form of light.

The Dell 7559 is a much better choice than the ASUS. The U CPUs are not even in the same league as the quad core HQ's, plus you get a 960m. that's all you need for gaming currently. I'd even go for an i5HQ model if you're stretched for cash. I wish I could recommend a ThinkPad for that price range, simply cos of the durability. I've dropped mine out of cars, off of a ladder, and even dropped packs on it. Still the same beast its always been, lol. I was an Aussie ET (electronics technician) in the same situation a few years ago. Enjoy

Still using a 7970 in my rig that i've just updated to Skylake. I have been waiting for a decently priced (Aus) GPU this year. It's looking like an RX480 currently. Although I had high hopes for the 1070, it's price is $800 and as my BFF Barack Obama says "I ain't bout that life".

That video was enough to whack on the list of items to take to Uni next term ! Will stop my dad from bragging about his 65" tv at least