some friend of mine ask me what is the cheapest gaming laptop ? simple question but it’s not too easy to answer. Because people who ask that kind of question is not just one person. I make a little personal research about the cheapest gaming laptop. My research, start from game forums, hardware forums, game hardware minimum requirement, technician forum, and customer reviews (gamer review).
And my conclusion is there are no cheap “pure” gaming laptop. But Acer AS7741G-6426 17.3-Inch Laptop and Acer AS7750G bothering me to be crowned as a cheapest gaming laptop. I open my personal reference about gaming laptop and here some requirement that needed by gaming laptop :
1. Powerful multi core processor
2. Fast and big enough memory
3. good graphic controller (mostly Ati and Nvidia) with dedicated memory
4. wide Storage media
5. clear and minimal 14’ display ( this things is negotiable)
6. Good cooling system design
Many people sometimes ignore the important of the cooling system, and the fact it’s very important, gaming make processor and GPU work hard and surely produce more heat. And most game player take more than an hours to spent his time to play game. So don’t ignore cooling system it’s truly important.
one of the best gaming laptop under $700 is Acer AS7750G-6669 17.3-Inch Laptop with technical details :
• 17.3″ HD+ Widescreen CineCrystal™ LED-backlit Display: (1600 x 900) resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio
• 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-2430M Processor 2.40GHzwith Turbo Boost Technology up to 3.0GHz
• Windows® 7 Home Premium
• Microsoft® Office Starter 2010
• 640GB Hard Drive
• 4GB DDR3 Memory
• AMD Radeon™ HD 6650M with 1024MB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM
• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™
• Gigabit Ethernet LAN
• Built-in 1.3 Megapixel HD Webcam
• 8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive
• Optimized Dolby® Advanced Audio® v2 audio enhancement
• 3- USB 2.0 Ports
• 1- HDMI™ Port with HDCP support
• Multi-Gesture Touchpad
• Dedicated Numeric Keypad
• 6-cell Li-ion Battery
• 7.27 lbs.| 3.3 kg(system unit only)
And now lets see some famous game minimum requirement
1. BattleField 3
OS: Win Vista SP2 32-BIT (rec. OS: Win 7 64-BIT)
CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ or Athlon X2 2.7 GHZ
RAM: 2GB (rec. 4 gb)
HDD: 20GB
DX: DX 10.1
GPU: ATI Radeon 3870 512 MB or better NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512MB RAM (Rec. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 / ATI Radeon 6950)
2. Mine craft
CPU: Intel celeron 1.5Ghz, AMD sempron 2200+
GPU: NVidia 8400GT 256Mb, ATI 240
RAM: 1GB
DX: 9
Shader: 3.0
OS: Windows XP
3. Crysis 2
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 x2 2Ghz (recommended DC 2.6 ghz and 64 x2 2.66Ghz)
GPU: NVidia 8800GT 512Mb, ATI 3850 512Mb (ecommended GTX280 1GB, ATI 4870 1GB)
RAM: 2GB (Recommended 3 gb)
DX: 9
Shader: 3.0
OS: Windows XP
Frame Rate Target: 20fps @1024×768 (recommended target 30fps@1650×1080)
If we compare hadware specification and game minimum-recommende requirement, this laptop almost over in all recommended requirement (except BF GPU recommended) so I am agree this laptop is acceptable as a cheapest Gaming laptop, but for “value” gaming laptop category.
This laptop be able to play almost all recent game in medium setting. Most hardcore game run at 25-40 Fps which still acceptable and comfort to play.
Here is Battlefield 3 on acer AS5570G (medium setting)
other option for gaming laptop under $700 is Acer AS7741G-6426 hardware specification :
• 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5-480M dual-core processor
• 4 GB of installed DDR3 RAM
• 640 GB SATA hard drive (5400 RPM), 8x SuperMulti DVD±R/RW drive
• 17.3-inch CineCrystal LED-backlit widescreen display, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6550M graphics
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM system memory
• 640GB SATA hard drive
• Includes Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Complete your PC. Buy full-featured Microsoft Office 2010.
• Intel i5-480M Processor 2.66GHz, 3MB Intel Smart Cache
• The Acer Aspire AS7741G Notebook delivers outstanding performance.
the different from the first laptop is on graphic adapter, this laptop GPU ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6550M give a bit lower performance than the first laptop. but however this laptop is still be able to play games on medium setting. Using ATI Stream technology, it helps accelerate even the most demanding applications, enabling you to do more than ever with your notebook. And it supports DirectX 11 for immersive 3D games.
crysis 2.0 on Acer Aspire AS7741G