Recommendations for high midrange gaming – GT 650M / GTX 660M / GTX 670M and Radeon 7730M/7750M/7770M/7850M gaming laptops – 27/07/2012

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I suggest that you try the High End gaming laptops recommendations that include GTX 675M and Radeon 6990M and up recommended or alternatively go for the sub 1000$ gaming laptops recommendations

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There isn’t much change from last week. I’ve added the Acer Aspire V3 to the list and will add some more later.

The table below contains a list of top gaming laptops for this class. Below the table you’ll find my final recommendations. You’ll probably think that the recommendations are not decisive enough, but that’s because you have more than one good option and that’s good and all the laptops I recommend compose the top of the line in this class and price for a gaming. If you’ve searched already, you know that the top you’ll find around 1000$ is the GTX 660M and Radeon 7850M. For 1100$ you can already grab the GTX 670M.

That’s true that if you don’t know what you’re looking for, then this article won’t help you. True, and we’ll try to address this issue in another post, but if you know that you need a high-end midrange gaming performance then this post can help you. high-end midrange means that you’ll be able to run most of the games, even the more demanding ones, on high to highest settings on FullHD resolution. Some will run on medium settings on FullHD (BF3 is an example for a very graphic intensive game). In this post we’ll look into laptop offerings that sport GPUs like the nice GT 650M / GTX 660M from Nvidia or the still to be widespread AMD’s Radeon 7730M / 7750M and 7770M and especially Radeon HD 7850M (currently on the Envy 17t-3200). We’ll mainly see laptops with the former GPUs (650M/660M) as they are currently found in more laptops and have been reviewed thoroughly.

As for the performance of the 7730M and 7750M The 7750M and 7770M: The 7730M performance should be around the 7690M performance, maybe a bit more. Without the memory bandwidth limitation of the 7730M DDR3 memory, the 7750M/7770M should be considerably faster – around the GT 650M performance according to estimations over the net (1) plus the fact that it has a good >15% higher core clock than the 7730M + a much higher memory bandwidth (twice or more) => estimation for much higher performance than the 7730M. Anyhow, as I said in the other post – we’ll need to wait for more reviews and concrete gpu specs to know better.

Before I start, an important point – there is a real flaw to all these laptops and this is the missing SSD/mSSD. Great gaming laptops without an SSD. So do youtselves a favor and when you weigh the price and features against your budget, keep in mind that you might want a 50-60$ SSD just for the OS and such. It makes the laptop much more enjoyable.

I’ve added performance/price ratio indictor, but didn’t explain it. So here is some intuitive explaination:

If you want absolutly the best gaming performance for the money, look for the “Best” laptops. But, remember that the fastest laptops aren’t the overall best sometimes. For example, the GTX 675M equipped laptops are hot or noisy or both + battery lasts a short time only + weight.

Note that some laptops were not mentioned here as they are no very cost effective compared to the others in this price range, like the Asus N56VZ which have 720p screen and the DDR3 version of the GT 650M and more. I’ll add some more models later, but don’t be afraid – you don’t miss anything. Anyway, models to be added to the list: Asus N56VZ, ibuypower and cyberpower models.

Recommendations:

1. If you want the highest gaming performance for your money (up to 1500$-1600$) go with:

• One of the “best” price/performance ratio gaming laptops. Currently, the dv6t-7000 select edition offers a lot for its price, dv4t-5100 too. In the other end of the performance curve, you have the heavy duty Sager and 7970M for 1500-1600$. The Sager NP6165 and NP6175 offer
• One of the other “excellent” gaming laptops, preferably the Lenvo Y580 with its good build quality, the Sager NP6165 or the HP Envy 17t-3200 (FHD, Radeon 7850M, I5). According to the in-depth reviews, but the Y580 has a good build quality, very good FHD TN panel, high temps during load (as many other 15.6″ laptops with such HW for this price), very high gaming performance. Without FHD you can get the GTX 660M for 850$-900$ (wait for coupons, changes every week) or 1100$ with + 1TB HDD.

2. If you want an all rounder with very high gaming performance (GTX 660M, GTX 670M, Radeon HD 7850M) but also overall good gaming laptop (build quality, screen quality, heat and noise) then:

• For around 1000$, the Lenovo Y580 and the HP Envy 17t-3200 or the Clevo based Sagers are a sure bet. If you’re taking the Sage rNP6165, remember to choose the screen upgrade. The Y580 with coupons is the most features reach having I7+660M+FullHD+1TB HDD for 1000$. The HP Envy offers the looks and great build quality and the performance of the Radeon HD 7850M. The Sager offers a good screen and a good overall gaming laptop for great price.
• The HP dv6t-7000 select edition or dv6t-7000 quad edition - Depending on coupons, both offer top features to price ratio.
• Asus G75VW-TS2 offer high quality FullHD display, Excellent build quality, Very high I7 + GTX 670M performance and very good heat and noise levels for 1400$. If you’re looking for a good performer coupled with overall high quality then that’s your machine. That’s true that you can get the GTX 670M for less money, but the mix is excellent and rare for such price. Note: while the Sager NP9150/9170 offer same of better performance, their heat and noise level are much worse and the screen upgrade makes them more expensive the the G75VW-TS2.
• Asus G55VW which offers quite a lot including excellent build quality and great heat and noise handling, but not long battery runtime. That’s a reliable machine.

3.  Gaming laptop in a netbook form-factor is definitely the Eurocom Monster 1.0. No real competition here.