Budget Gaming Laptop

[MrCanadianAviator]

I am in the market for a laptop. I have never bought a laptop so I am not sure what i should get. What i am looking for is a Something that I can do school work on and I want to play something such as Minecraft. I dont want to go above $800. Since I will have school work on it I want quite a bit of space. Something around 500GB. A laptop I had in mind was the

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V3-771G-6851-17-3-Inch-Laptop/dp/B009JXK17G

All help is appreciated.

[Guest]

Does it have to be a laptop system? If so, is it because it needs to be moved between two locations such as divorced parents? I ask because you can get a lot better value for money from a PC and if you need mobile then a mini ITX build may suit you.

Looking at that, you do know just how big a 17" laptop is yes?

I'd suggest looking into some of the Dell XPS or HP DV6/DV7's

[MrCanadianAviator]

No I already have a Gaming computer. This I want to last a few years for between School and home. And Yes i do know how big 17" is but the screen size doesn't really to me.

The HP DV6 is in my price range. Would the i7 be that much of a help over the i5 in the Acer Laptop. That also means the HP has a worst GPU.

[Nee]

Personally I would go for the Acer, but that's because I currently bought one similar to it. 100 dollars cheaper and with a less powerful gpu, cpu and HDD capacity. At the time I purchased it, I couldn't find anything with a good enough gpu for that price so if I hadn't bought that one, I would definitely buy this. After having the Acer for a couple of months, it's still in tip top shape. I'm not the primary user but still, if I ever need to game on the go, that's what I use lol. I will say that the battery life isn't that great, but with a laptop of that size, I'm guessing it'd be more of lightweight mobile gaming machine which you'll plug into dc power? I'm sure you can build a mini ITX machine yourself with the same amount of money but the portability of a laptop wins in my opinion. A 17" laptop isn't THAT big in my opinion at all. I can carry it in one hand or in a small middle school backpack that I still have.

Edit: Also, I'm sure you're aware it comes with Windows 8, but I thought I'd bring it up just in case since I know some people don't like the experience without a touch interface.

[jmfg187]

Good idea letting him know about Win8 but I would think Acer would have Win7 Drivers for it, I know Asus has all the 7 drivers for their new laptops.

I wish I could tell ya what to get but I don't know. My 9600m GT DV5 did fine for me til bout a month ago, it started artifacting and can't even tell what you are doing in the OS anymore. Since people want outrageous money for a motherboard for it on ebay I am probably going to try the oven trick and if that doesn't work scrap it for parts and try to find a used Asus or something on craigslist. I am at the point I won't buy anything from HP anymore. 1 mouse, 1 1080p 24" screen both were worthless in just over a year and of course the laptop is old now but still irritates me. A 9600m GT is def very weak for today's games though. I usually just stuck to games a couple years old to avoid the headaches.

[Makaseo]

I strongly recommend you check out xoticpc.com. Even if just to look, they have a damn huge selection of gaming laptops with tons of customization options. I'm sure you can find something you might like there.

[ihavebenjamin]

I actually picked this exact laptop out for my parents to get. The original reason we bought it was because our computer they currently had was this

http://icecat.biz/p/asus/bb-p4-533-ht-id4/barebones-terminator-p4-533-270922.html?prefere=229 I have played Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 with medium settings and had a very playable experience.