$400 Budget for a laptop fit for gaming

[TheMuffinMan]

Hey all, I am getting a new laptop in a few days, and my budget is $400. I want one fit for gaming, but not going above $400 dollars. I would like something with atleast a 2.0 GHz and atleast 4 or more GB of RAM. I saw some on best buy, but they were all out of stock (I wonder why? A laptop like that for $400 would obviously be a GREAT choice!). If you guys could recommend me something I can buy online, that would be GREAT! Thanks!

-TheMuffinMan

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Fit for what games?

At what settings?

What are your hopes? What are your expectations? I'm wondering about the difference between the two.

 

[TheMuffinMan]

Well, skyrim on low to medium, fnaf, l4d 2 low to medium, counter strike source, arma 2 on lowest settings, etc.

 

[RolandJS]

You might want to invest some more monies. The video of the low-end laptops may not be to your liking when gaming.

 

[MagusMagnus]

Unfortunately, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to find one for $400 that has a dedicated GPU. And really, that price point is the entry point for a standard, general-use laptop. I don’t believe any of the integrated graphics options in laptops today would even be able to handle Skyrim on low settings and where it’s a playable FPS all through. Not to mention, heat is a real problem with laptops in the first place. Gaming makes that far more of a problem. I tried gaming on my notebook, I paid $800 for it and specifically for that use, and I wasn’t thrilled. Yes it worked, but I had to scale back my settings to low or medium where it otherwise would have been able to play on high settings... because it kept hitting TJunction (maximum temperature) and shutting down. But my notebook had a mid-range dedicated GPU, the only reason I could play games on it at all. That’s why it cost so damn much (in hindsight I really should have listened to everybody’s advice and went for the desktop that time around. Well, I did the second time around and am now perfectly happy).

Anyway. You’re really going to be looking at around $800 price point to begin with, for a low-end gaming laptop. The ones that are actually designed for gaming use (as in have some capable cooling design, not just a decent dedicated GPU) are in the $1,000-2,000 range. In example, the ASUS ROG line.


On the other hand, it is possible to build a decent mid-range desktop for gaming around that budget... if you're careful. And it will perform quite a lot better than a laptop equivalent of the same prince range (always has been true).