Laptop fried , good replacment for SL ?

[amarock Amat]

So my laptop finally fried, and the fan went kaboom, wondering what folks would suggest for a laptop, if am hoping to stay under 800$ and still be useable in SL for business needs?

[Orca Flotta]

Okay, if you are absolutely positive about the need of a laptop, and only then, I'd recommend a MSI GE60. Availabe in lots of different configurations in 15.6" and 17" size. Prices start at like 600 € and upwards.

If your budget allows go for something beefier like the MSI GT or the ASUS G series.

Needless to say laptops, even half-decent gamers like the MSI GE series, belong on cooling stands and should be cleaned every 3 mths.

[Nalates Urriah]

The most important thing you need in a laptop is a dedicated video chip. Many laptops come optimized for video not games. Those intended to handle video have an Intel HD Graphics Chip. While higher level HD chips will handle SL, it is never ideal.

NIVIDIA provides the best OpenGL support, which is what SL uses. You can look through the SL forum to see which models people are most happy with. You can also search SLUniverse for video card models to see what people think.

I suggest getting at least a 400 series card. The 500 and 600 series are newer with 600 being the newest. A 560 is better than a 540. Get as much video ram as you can afford. AVOID any systm that uses system memory in place of video ram. Shared memory really degrades performance.

The next most important part is the CPU. SL now uses multiple threads. So, it can take advantage of multiple CPU cores. More is better. The new Intel iCore chips are good. I am not an AMD fan. The i7 is better than and i5, which is better than an i3. But even an i3 works pretty well with SL.

And next is memory. New operating system are 64-bit. So, you can use more than the 4gb that 32-bit systems are limited to. 4gb and up helps performance. SL does not use that much. But, more memory means the computer is doing fewer memory swaps to disk for everything running in the computer and that helps SL performance. Most important in regard to memory is memory speed. It is a hard spec to check. But, it is one that greatly affects SL performance.

Good luck.

[Orca Flotta]

That being said, Nalates, the MSI GE series are all on nVidia gtx 660, which is fairly high up in nVidia's mobile range. I guess they are reallly worth a shot if you're looking for a gaming lappy within a reasonable price range.