Need purchase advice

[Wbishop96]

I am getting a laptop to go to college with, My price range is 700-1000$, I would like one that can run current gen games smoothly such as bf4, and I have no idea where I start looking, advice please!!

I prefer windows over anything but all suggestions are welcome

 

[ssddx]

take a look at the asus rog gaming laptops either a new g750 or a last gen g75. they run about $1000 for some models.

for the money they are pretty nice and serve to function as desktop replacement since they are so big (17" screen).

if thats too big perhaps look at the g55 last gen or whatever model asus replaced them with.

 

[wolfbm09]

I wouldn't suggest the Asus laptops since my wife got one and within a couple days we were taking it back due to glitches and it not being very nice to use (note: all products have bad ones and we may have gotten it). I saw AMD is making gaming laptops for around your price range or look at MSI.

 

[ssddx]

@wolf
you might have just got a bad one. what model? also, specifically what was the problem?

i have a k53sv which is several years old now and it owes me nothing. its been perfect. the g75 is at least a year old now and is still running great. the reason i mentioned checking out asus is because the prices are reasonable for what you get, the screen quality is excellent and they have a good design. in fact the g75 cooling system is so good that you cannot even hear it run 98% of the time and when it does its just for a few minutes before it quiets down again.

of course that doesnt mean its the only laptop out there. there are other brands which are good. asus was just meant as a suggestion from past good experiences.

 

[mr91]

In my opinion Asus is the best however ACER has the best value.

I recommended the laptop below to one of my friends and they are very happy.

http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=83177&vpn=NX%2EM8SAA%2E002&manufacture=Acer

 

[wolfbm09]

@wolf
you might have just got a bad one. what model? also, specifically what was the problem?

i have a k53sv which is several years old now and it owes me nothing. its been perfect. the g75 is at least a year old now and is still running great. the reason i mentioned checking out asus is because the prices are reasonable for what you get, the screen quality is excellent and they have a good design. in fact the g75 cooling system is so good that you cannot even hear it run 98% of the time and when it does its just for a few minutes before it quiets down again.

of course that doesnt mean its the only laptop out there. there are other brands which are good. asus was just meant as a suggestion from past good experiences.

X75ADH32 Is the model number I think...I had to look it up but I may be wrong. I think it is this one because it was the only one without a backlit keyboard. As I stated in my original post I know some products may have bad units so that might have been the case but I live by "fool me once". I just recently had my HD7850 graphics card in my gaming rig literally catch fire and now I won't buy anything from the same company, which was HIS. Granted I don't use the laptop for gaming but still just normal stuff didn't work great on the Asus.

Everything processed slow...if at all and it crashed about every time I messed with it (again I didn't game on it at all). Not only that it was conflicted with what was actually installed on it. At one point it was having graphics issues (trying to watch a video on Xfinity) and when I looked at the drivers it said none were installed. So I clicked to check for new drivers and it said the best driver was installed. It did the same thing with IE 10-11. It would tell me I didn't have 11 (or that I needed to install it) and when I went to the install page it said you currently already have it installed. If I tried to downgrade back to 10 it would tell me you already have it installed. So...yeah the laptop worked more like a Pandoras box for me.

 

[mr91]

The model above isn't a ROG! Republic of Games is designed for gaming and is higher quality than the regular models.

I also recommend this to my friend when it was on sale for just under 900 however my friend wanted the more powerful machine and got the ACER.

http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=80958&vpn=G46VW%2DDS51%2DCA&manufacture=ASUS

 

[ssddx]

@wolf

the model you listed is an intel i3 processor model with a 5200rpm hard drive and integrated graphics. it most certainly is not going to be as fast as computers with better hardware. we have an asus k52f in the other room with similar specs and its a bit sluggish but useable.

i will agree that graphics drivers were a bit touchy on the intel-integrated graphics laptops but i cannot say if it affects more than just the asus laptops or not since it is an intel driver not an asus one. generally i've had excellent stability with laptops which have dedicated video cards.

for drivers you always want to go to the source (asus website) and not trust any 3rd party sites as they may not work at all. likewise for browser updates you want to go to the product website and download direct not by clicking on something that pops up. i'm not sure what caused your issues but perhaps something installed was making your laptop borked. one of the first things i do on any new laptop is do a reinstall to get rid of any "junk" that is installed which doesnt need to be there. speeds the computer up alot since most features you wont use.

@mr91

true, its not a rog however we have two non rog units here besides the rog and all three are working fine.

the only one which we had an issue with is the k52f i3 processor model which had some minor graphical issues but that was fixed by a reinstall. ms silverlight (for netflix) wouldnt load right and a few sites had crosshair pointers on IE10 but that all is gone now.

 

[mr91]

I agree, Asus make great machines even if they don't have the ROG branding.

In my opinion Asus make the best Motherboards, Graphic cards and their gaming laptops would be my first choice for pc gaming.

Asus makes adequate mediocre software However their hardware is top notch.

For example After Burner is much better than GPU tweak, I think Asus should step up their game when it comes to drivers and software.