Gaming Notebook recommendation 600€ / 716,13$

Hey people,

my girlfriend wants to buy a new notebook. She does play Video games Skyrim etc. and asked me what I would recommend her but I have no clue about this area. I don't play Video games. I just told her don't waste your money with this stuff.

She wants to spend (Budget 600€ / 716,13$) which is not much for gaming I know but anyway. What would you recommend?

Geek mode on

It is true that 600 Euros isn't a lot for a gaming notebook (the top end models often cost well in excess of 1000 euros) but it's possible as long so you know what to look out for.

First and foremost the most important part to look at in a gaming laptop is the graphics card. This will largely determine the gaming performance. Forget integrated graphics like Intel HD 4000 series, they won't do the job except for older games. At that price range there should be some laptops with the Geforce 840m graphics chip. This should be sufficient for medium (and perhaps) high details on Skyrim at the common 1366 x 768 laptop resolution: www.notebookcheck.ne...ks.66057.0.html

At this price range you're probably looking at a dual core CPU of the Intel Core i5 or i7 variety. Either will do the job from a gaming perspective.

With memory (RAM) you'll be looking at 4GB as a minimum starting point but many laptops now come with 8GB as standard and I would recommend that if at all possible.

For storage, you're probably looking at 750GB to 1TB (1000GB) hard drives at this price point. Whilst an SSD (solid state drive) would be great to have and will make games LOAD (note I said load, not run, that depends on the graphics card) much faster, generally only more expensive laptops come with one as standard, or in a combo with a standard hard drive.

I don't want to confuse you with too much information but those would be the key things to consider when buying a laptop for gaming.

Hope that helped somewhat Good luck!

Hey thanks for answering. What do you think about this one.

www.ebay.de/itm/MSI-...=item3a9ee1f2f3

15,6 Zoll Full HD-Display (matt, 1920 x 1080 Pixel)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M GPU 2 GB Memory
Intel® Core™ i5-4210H Prozessor (bis zu 3,5 GHz Turbo)
4 GB DDR3-RAM (1 Slot belegt, 1 Slot frei), 500 GB SATA (5.400 U/Min.)
Gaming-Tastatur von SteelSeries, DVD Brenner, USB 3.0

I think 4 GB Ram ram sould be ok I can upgrade it later to 16GB as well as upgrading SSD into it (Later)
But do you think the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M and I5 is worth the money? Looks pretty good for me.

Thats a pretty good find. I have a MSI myself around $700 USD. The one you posted has a higher clockspeed at 3.5ghz but less ram, which you can add yourself. But ram can run another $70 or so.

So I would suggest finding one with at least 8gb at the $700 range. Even at the expense of a lower clock speed.

Edited: The GTX850M is a good card. That and cpu is where all the money went.

I also don't suggest an SSD for a laptop. You don't have any need for it. People normally use it for desktops so they can alternate between the two. It'll save you a lot of money.

It looks decent, and 4GB is actually enough to run most games smoothly, I just said 8GB because often laptops come with that amount these days. My old laptop had 4GB and the only time it really slowed down was when I had a crazy amount of browser tabs open, games weren't a problem at all.

Just be aware that it comes with a Full HD 1920 x 1080 display which is great and is sharper than your standard 1366 x 768 display, but also takes a lot more graphical grunt to get decent frame rates in games. A 850M might just do the job if she is happy with medium details, otherwise I would recommend a more powerful 860M for 1080P gaming. Then again, not sure if you can find one in that price range, but overall that looks like a decent gaming laptop as long as you are realistic with the graphics settings.

The i5 is perfectly capable for gaming purposes. The 850M will be the determining factor for how well games run, especially at Full HD resolution.

Thank you very much guys!