$1000 to buy laptop for gaming, wait for ultrabooks?

lemansfanatic · Mar 13, 2012

Hey i need a laptop for my family and have $1000 to spend and i really want to get a new ivey bridge ultrabook. i dont know anything about integrated graphics cards but i have heard sandy bridge intel chipset doesnt have great graphical performance. do you think this sill be improved with Ivey bridge? i would like to play Project CARS or Rfactor2 on it so i am not sure how to spend the money. i really like the battery performance rumors of the upcoming ultrabooks but i dont really know anything about them. Bestbuy wouldnt even really speculate on them because they want to sell their sandy bridge laptops first. i dont know what type of chip i would need to run Project CARS but i know its DirectX11 supported. please help me choose: wait for ultrabooks with or without dedicated graphics card or buy an aging laptop one now with a great dedicated graphics card?
Edit: option 3, take the thousand dollars and spend $500 to buy a family laptop not for gaming and try to build a desktop gaming rig for $500? choices...

Icarus25 · Mar 13, 2012

I think your best bet is finding a current laptop with dedicated graphics. Ultrabooks aren't exactly designed to have a graphics card. Their function is primarily light weight, thin, easily portable with decent battery life. There are like 2 coming out that I know of with graphics, but who knows what the cost will be. You could also wait to see the performance of IB graphics. There's no way you could build a decent desktop for gaming for $500, not if you're starting completely from scratch anyway.

CMvan46 · Mar 13, 2012

See my thread about needing help buying a laptop just down this section. Dell is having a deal on their xps laptops and you could get one of those with an okay graphics card for $1000. Laptops are a lot more expensive to find one to game on an integrated graphics won't run most games even the Ivy bridge ones.

Icarus25 · Mar 13, 2012

CMvan46
integrated graphics won't run most games even the Ivy bridge ones.

That's not entirely true. Ivy Bridge's HD4000 graphics architecture is easily 33% faster than the current HD3000. Now, I'm not saying you're going to get smooth gameplay at max settings but it's not out of the realm of possibility to get a playable 30fps+ experience with the right settings, especially at laptop resolution. That being said, dedicated graphics are always going to be tops but sometimes it comes down to sacrifices and what you care more about and what fits your budget.

nick09 · Mar 13, 2012

I would not expect any discrete graphics from ultrabooks. They are made too thin and thus they don't have the venting options unless some more efficient graphics cards was made. You can easily get a good gaming setup with a laptop at the $1K mark.

As far as integrated graphics goes the AMD APU's currently have the best. Still not the best option but it's a good direction for integrated graphics.

Grayfox · Mar 13, 2012

Do not get an acer Ultrabook, they have wifi card issues.

thechosenwonton · Mar 13, 2012

The Dell XPS 17" can be had for around $1000, w/ an i5 and an nVIDIA GeForce GT 550M 1GB graphics card. Good reviews, well made, and fast.

While you can get a laptop for $500 that is decent for everyday use (Lenovo G570 can be had w/ an i5 for $549), you won't be able to build a "gaming rig" for $500, mainly because the graphics card and power supply required for one would put you quite a bit over; I'd say a minimum of $700 for a bargain gaming desktop; $800-$1000 you could build something nice.

lemansfanatic · Mar 13, 2012

Okay sounds like i should look at current gen laptop with either nvidia gforce (?) or amd (?). i have heard project cars runs better with Nvidia cards. can someone direct me to the thread about mobile graphics cards, i'm sure there has to be one here. oh and thanks for the replies everyone.

thechosenwonton · Mar 14, 2012

lemansfanatic
Okay sounds like i should look at current gen laptop with either nvidia gforce (?) or amd (?). i have heard project cars runs better with Nvidia cards. can someone direct me to the thread about mobile graphics cards, i'm sure there has to be one here. oh and thanks for the replies everyone.

There's this thing called Google...

CMvan46 · Mar 14, 2012

lemansfanatic
Okay sounds like i should look at current gen laptop with either nvidia gforce (?) or amd (?). i have heard project cars runs better with Nvidia cards. can someone direct me to the thread about mobile graphics cards, i'm sure there has to be one here. oh and thanks for the replies everyone.

I just had looked up this stuff the other day for my girlfriend's computer and Tom's Hardware website has benchmarks for all the mobile graphic cards and lists them in order of best to worst. Google toms hardware mobile graphics card benchmarks and you should find it.

lemansfanatic · Mar 14, 2012

CMvan46
I just had looked up this stuff the other day for my girlfriend's computer and Tom's Hardware website has benchmarks for all the mobile graphic cards and lists them in order of best to worst. Google toms hardware mobile graphics card benchmarks and you should find it.

Thank you!