Cheap Laptop with moderate Gaming ability

[Vegeta]

As the title suggests i'm looking for a cheapish laptop with moderate gaming ability. Any suggestions??, would like something with a Ati gpu chip but not a deal breaker

 

[Monkey101]

I have seen a few at Incredible Corruption that come with 5650's. That would be more than enough for gaming. They were under R10k i think.
All depends on what you call cheap and what games you want to play.

 

[Vegeta]

R10k isn't cheap i would guess for most. Okay lets say R6k

 

[Ono'rach]

I've had a look around, and in that price range there's not a whole lot going unfortunately...

Not a great gpu but there's this: http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/laptop_specifications.php?laptop=33756

or this: http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/laptop_specifications.php?laptop=32319

I know its stretching the budget slightly

I have no idea if these guys are the cheapest but I've set it to show laptops from R7000 down, so start from page 24 and work your way back.

http://www.laptopdirect.co.za/laptops__show-by-price.php?minprice=0&maxprice=7000&page=24

Happy hunting

 

[Dean]

You're asking way too much of us here
One already pays a premium for a computer in laptop form rather than desktop form. Therefore, a cheap laptop must mean mostly entry-level components... which will be the case for your proposed R6K laptop.

Now we look at what you want: moderate gaming ability.
Gaming requires moderate-to-high end graphics accelerators - the premiumestest part of a computer.

Can you see how this won't work? I don't mean to put it in a swak way, but basically what I'm saying is that you get what you pay for.

 

[Monkey101]

R10k isn't cheap i would guess for most. Okay lets say R6k

Ah sorry. I just wouldn't expect to pay much less than R9k for something that can play games decently.

 

[TJ99]

Yeah, sorry to disappoint you, but gaming laptops aren't exactly the most value-for-money items around. Cheap (and usually nasty) laptops start at around R6k, the ones with decent discrete graphics (with which you can play some older games, or new ones on low settings) are about 10-15k and gaming laptops are anything from R20 000 to the price of a new car. You could probably buy a desktop with the same performance (and bigger screen) for half the price.

 

[Mephisto_Helix]

Unless you buy 2nd hand, what others have said about a moderate gaming lappy for that price = no go

 

[Vegeta]

Sheat yeah you guys seem quite right for some of these prices one can buy a netbook, xbox 360, ps3 and a psp... or maybe a cheap car!!! /shock horror

 

[SaiyanZ]

https://rebeltech.co.za/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=52

This is the one I bought. Cheapest I could find with a good discrete GPU. 9600GT level.
The CPU is weak but for gaming it wont matter much.

 

[Pada]

The HP Lenovo Y560's with the Mobility HD 5730 1GB graphics card is probably the best that you can do for under R10k. The Y560 range from i3 (~R8k) to i7 Mobile CPU's (~R10.5k).
The laptops with the Nvidia GT 325M in Optimus configuration (both dedicated & onboard in 1 laptop) is also quite popular, but it's performing slightly worse than the Mobility HD 5730.

Here's the ranking for mobile graphics cards: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html and http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5730.23825.0.html
You can pretty much forget about getting a laptop with the graphics card ranked #40 or better for less than R15k in SA.

Also, looking at 2nd-hand laptops might be worth it too. I bought my Dell Inspiron 9400 (17" @ 1920x1200 with Mobility x1400 512MB, T7200 @ 2GHz (with VT), 2GB DDR2 667 & 100GB HDD) for R4500 a few years ago 2nd-hand.
Unfortunately it's 3.25GB RAM and graphics card just doesn't cut it any more, so I got a desktop for gaming and running VM's.

Goodluck with the laptop hunting