Gaming laptops?

[Monte_Carlo]

4 hours ago, Bion1985 said:

Yea i talked with the rep at micro center and it was a return accepted without the charger. I also tried to contact asus about a charger and they didn't have the charger for this model for sale. Only chargers I could find online for sale were 3rd party chargers and I'm not a fan of using those. Micro center has the the 970m G752 in stock new so I might just go with that. One other options is the G751 with the 970m, it's maybe 150-200 less but it's got the older cpu ddr3 ram and I've also read that the keyboard on the G752 is much better than the G751.

 

At that price difference, I'd go for the newer notebook.  If I remember correctly, the G752 also includes G-sync where the old one did not have that feature.  Keyboard is pretty brilliant on the G752, that much I can vouch for.  

[colesdav]

OK. Pity, you can't get a new 'open box Ex Demo'  G752 for that price. At least it would only be sitting on a shelf in the store, on display. Buying used/refurbished electronics is a bit of a lottery like I said though.

 

ExampIe: I  bought a replacement motherboard on Ebay for my HP Envy 15 Gen1 last year. Only just got around to fitting it 2 months ago. Everything works ... apart from the SD Card Reader. It was supposedly fully QA'ed ... I already spent quiet some time trying to work out what was wrong.  I now have to go to the hassle of fixing it/ finding a replacement reader or sending the  MB back. I would have been better spending more money and finding a brand new one ... if I could. It would have probably been been much cheaper in the end. In fact I should have probably sold the HP Envy Gen 1 for parts and put it towards buying a G752. But I cannot afford one ... And I have the G751JL anyhow of course which I do not want to sell. 

 

Anyhow. I guess you will have to wait for your check from work ... Get the G752 if you can. Like you say DDR4 versus DDR3 (I forgot to mention that). The keyboard on the G752 is definitely better because they shifted the Gaming Macro Keys over to the right following customer feedback on the G751 series, so you don't hit a gaming key instead of Esc.  Also Thunderbolt 3 might come in handy. 

 

One thing I think you might want to double check is the Battery Life on the G752 versus G751.  I think the G752 might be lighter because ASUS reduced the weight of the G752 by reducing the weight (and capacity) of the battery versus the G751. This might be an issue if you are having hospital treatment and you cannot access an AC power point. 

 

Also you might want to double check how the G752/G751 perform on battery versus ac power. My G751 reduces the GPU speed on battery. It is a 965M GPU though. I will check if I can override that setting. I usually game plugged in to AC power so I have not got around to messing with that.

 

Got to go.  

Good luck. 

[Bion1985]

Well I made my choice and I ended up getting the open box one sense I was able to find a charger. I also double checked and the unit is in fact under manufacturer warranty.  All in all for a little over  $1500 I got a G752 with a 128gb m.2ssd 16gb of ram and a 980m 4gb.

 

Edit: ended up finally finding the charger on the Asus store, it will be here tomorrow!

[colesdav]

8 hours ago, Bion1985 said:

Well I made my choice and I ended up getting the open box one sense I was able to find a charger. I also double checked and the unit is in fact under manufacturer warranty.  All in all for a little over  $1500 I got a G752 with a 128gb m.2ssd 16gb of ram and a 980m 4gb.

 

Edit: ended up finally finding the charger on the Asus store, it will be here tomorrow!

 

Nice choice of laptop and nice price. Hope it all goes well for you.

Take care of yourself, and I hope you get well soon. 

Bye.  

[Bion1985]

7 hours ago, colesdav said:

 

Nice choice of laptop and nice price. Hope it all goes well for you.

Take care of yourself, and I hope you get well soon. 

Bye.  

Thank you friend, you were a great help!

[colesdav]

On 06/07/2016 at 9:26 PM, Bion1985 said:

Yea i talked with the rep at micro center and it was a return accepted without the charger. I also tried to contact asus about a charger and they didn't have the charger for this model for sale. Only chargers I could find online for sale were 3rd party chargers and I'm not a fan of using those. Micro center has the the 970m G752 in stock new so I might just go with that. One other options is the G751 with the 970m, it's maybe 150-200 less but it's got the older cpu ddr3 ram and I've also read that the keyboard on the G752 is much better than the G751.

Hi,

 

I have got to the point where I need a new laptop myself. I was wondering what your experience was with the G752 you mentioned above? Would you recommend I buy a G752 or do you think there is a better solution out there?

 

Thanks.

 

[Pendragon]

1 hour ago, colesdav said:

I have got to the point where I need a new laptop myself. I was wondering what your experience was with the G752 you mentioned above? Would you recommend I buy a G752 or do you think there is a better solution out there?

What are you looking for in that laptop. You want to tweak? Repaste? Change Voltage? OC? NOPE. Look else where.

If you want a very quiet, very large aluminum slab that works out of the box its fine for that, just very expensive, you can get similar specs for much cheaper and cooled properly. 1 advantage it has is being quiet, but that comes with it being huge. 

[rf9661]

On July 5, 2016 at 1:57 AM, colesdav said:

Hi, 

 

In terms of future proofing, you should get a notebook with the best GPU and CPU and cooling solution possible within your budget.

 

For GPU, I would try to get a mobile GPU with at least 3GB of DDR5 VRAM and high memory bandwidth, because at higher resolutions and settings, especially if you like using the higher texture settings on your games, you will need it. I think needing more VRAM in general will be a future trend.   

 

This is one problem with my G751JL purchase. The 965M only has 2GB VRAM. It is ok for most games I play, but as an extreme example of this. "Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor" texture pack is something that I tested on my ASUS G751JL. It requires 6GB VRAM and absolutely crippled the frame rate on the 965M with only 2GB of VRAM.  

 

Here are some relative gaming performance numbers for the GTX 960 and above series I had noted down last year as a rough guide.  

 

GTX 960M basline.

GTX 965M  is 15% better FPS. 

GTX 970M is 60% better FPS.

the GTX 980M is more than 100% better FPS.

General Game settings 

"Ultra-preset (1920x1080, maximum detail, anti-aliasing)". 

 

Personally I would try to go for something at 970M or above today, but my focus is always raw performance at lowest cost, ease of upgrading versus thin and light laptop option. 

 

I don't think this forum lets me directly link to other websites, so my advice is that you search for the following in Google and you will see some good reviews of the latest Nvidia Mobile GPU options. "GTX960M 4gb review" for typical Game FPS numbers. 

 

Good cooling solution is really important for future proofing because if your primary purpose is gaming  and your laptop gets hot during gaming, the motherboard will likely fail earlier than you hope for. Hot electronics = less reliable = not future proof. 

I had this happen with my HP Envy 15 gen 1. It got very hot when gaming. The motherboard failed - it was the CPU socket that went, and not the GPU, but I know the cooling on both the CPU and GPU were not up to scratch.  I had to order a replacement motherboard  and I have just rebuilt it. I don't plan to game on it any more after that experience. 

 

Another thing to avoid. Some of the newer 'thin and light' gaming laptops are supplied with soldered RAM. That means you can't upgrade to more RAM later on, or if your RAM is faulty / fails ... which does happen, it cannot be easily swapped out.  I think the original HP Omen 15 is one case of this ... that really, really  put me off. 

 

In addition if the cooling is poor then the CPU and GPU will throttle as the notebook heats up. This means your FPS will drop and the notebook fans will spin up. This is not a problem on my ASUS G751JL at all. 

 

Anyhow I need to get off to work now. 
Let me know what you decide on. 

Good luck. 

 

Hey! 

 

I'm looking at purchasing a gaming laptop too. I was pretty set on the Razer Blade (GTX 1060) since it was portable and looks nice. What would you recommend? I have around a $2000 USD budget. I need it to be portable and at least 5 hours of battery on normal use. I will be playing games like CS:GO at 1080p. I would prefer an i7 6700HQ, and GTX 1060, and an SSD. I NEED it to be light, also I'd prefer a 15" screen. Please let me know. Also, if you recommend an Asus gaming laptop, how would you rate their customer support? Let me know. 

[colesdav]

Hi,

 

I was hoping to justy go for an Asus G752 model, but I wanted to hear from Bion1985 on their experience owning a G752 first. 
Asus Gaming Laptops are pretty good value here in the U.K. if you know who to buy from.
Asus Customer support in terms of RMA / Q&A has been outstanding for me in UK.
I am really after a desktop replacement that I can use as a video capture (through Avermedia LGX) / processing station and OpenCL compute platform as well as some game 'testing' ;-).  I am really happy with the Asus G751JL, but I could do with a stronger GPU, especially for OpenCL. 
I am not interested in overclocking a laptop.

 

Bye.

[Bion1985]

4 hours ago, colesdav said:

Hi,

 

I was hoping to justy go for an Asus G752 model, but I wanted to hear from Bion1985 on their experience owning a G752 first. 
Asus Gaming Laptops are pretty good value here in the U.K. if you know who to buy from.
Asus Customer support in terms of RMA / Q&A has been outstanding for me in UK.
I am really after a desktop replacement that I can use as a video capture (through Avermedia LGX) / processing station and OpenCL compute platform as well as some game 'testing' ;-).  I am really happy with the Asus G751JL, but I could do with a stronger GPU, especially for OpenCL. 
I am not interested in overclocking a laptop.

 

Bye.

If you can get good customer support where you live might be good. I ended up returning my G752VY and getting an MSI after rma ing my asus 3 times

[Pendragon]

1 hour ago, Bion1985 said:

I ended up returning my G752VY and getting an MSI after rma ing my asus 3 times

What did you end up with? And ASUS LOL. 

[Bion1985]

1 hour ago, Pendragon said:

What did you end up with? And ASUS LOL. 

MSINCE GT72vr with a gtx 1070. It's a pretty good laptop, love it.

 

MSI VR Ready GT72VR Dominator Pro-015 17.3" G-SYNC Hardcore Gaming Laptop GTX 1070 i7-6700HQ 16GB 128GB M.2 SATA + 1TB Windows 10 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IO9Y35G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vLN.xbRKCAFXH

[colesdav]

On 12/10/2016 at 4:06 PM, Bion1985 said:

If you can get good customer support where you live might be good. I ended up returning my G752VY and getting an MSI after rma ing my asus 3 times

Wow sorry to hear about that. You did buy an open box Asus though I seem to remember. Do you think that was anything to do with the problems you had?

My G751JL has been fine so far.

I will llook at the MSI. Thanks.

[Bion1985]

6 hours ago, colesdav said:

Wow sorry to hear about that. You did buy an open box Asus though I seem to remember. Do you think that was anything to do with the problems you had?

My G751JL has been fine so far.

I will llook at the MSI. Thanks.

Yea it had some to do with it I'd say. But I did a rma got it back and was still having issues. Was about to have to do a 4thaunted rma when I decided to just return it and get a different laptop. 

[colesdav]

On 14/10/2016 at 1:25 AM, Bion1985 said:

Yea it had some to do with it I'd say. But I did a rma got it back and was still having issues. Was about to have to do a 4thaunted rma when I decided to just return it and get a different laptop. 

 

OK Thanks. Bye.