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Thread ID: 135736 2013-12-06 00:30:00 Decent laptop for gaming/design Slankydudl (16687) Press F1
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1361866 2013-12-06 00:30:00 My friend is looking for a decent laptop that will suit him well for light gaming (mostly tf2) and design work on adobe type programs.
He is currently looking at this www.computerlounge.co.nz

Any ideas as to the quality of MSI products or any better alternatives?
Slankydudl (16687)
1361867 2013-12-06 01:07:00 Gaming and design represent to different sets of requirements in a laptop - Gaming requires a very fast screen refresh rate (low latency) with the downside being lower screen quality and colour accuracy

Design requires a better quality screen with accurate colour representation and usually has higher latency.

So you generally get a laptop that is more suited to one or the other not both.

Does he have a preference towards gaming or design?

On a side note, job oportunities are tending to decline on the design print market, but if your friend is looking towards design with an emphasis on web design then he will have better job prospects when he has finished study.
Webdevguy (17166)
1361868 2013-12-06 01:46:00 Gaming on a laptop is always a compromise, you sacrifice perfomance and screen size for portability. True gaming laptops are in the $3-5K and up range.
The one you linked will game ok though, just won't be able to use the higher graphics settings on demanding games. Also if you connect it to a higher res screen for any reason it will struggle in games.

I can't comment as to quality or design applications though.
dugimodo (138)
1361869 2013-12-06 01:53:00 At least go 1600x900 screen res, 1366x768 is rubbish. Alex B (15479)
1361870 2013-12-06 02:15:00 Just so you know he is not looking for anything exactly amazing in either respect but I will look for one with better screen res. Slankydudl (16687)
1361871 2013-12-06 04:35:00 Just so you know he is not looking for anything exactly amazing in either respect but I will look for one with better screen res.


What sort of design work is he looking at doing?

If its for print jobs then screen colour accuracy is crucial as opposed to the screen refresh rate, in which case I'd be looking at a Sony Viao or MacBook since both those have the best colour accurate screens in of any laptop with the Sony Viao probably being the more affordable of the two. All the stuff in the Adobe range like Photoshop, InDesign etc basically just requires a good graphics card, a minimum of 4GB of RAM although 8GB would be ideal, mainly so that he can have Photoshop and InDesign open together as well as any big images that he may be working on.

If he's preferring to head more towards gaming then a Sony Viao or any other PC laptop with gaming specs.
Webdevguy (17166)
1361872 2013-12-06 05:02:00 Gaming on a laptop is stupid, unless you pay ridiculously high prices for one designed with proper cooling. Agent_24 (57)
1361873 2013-12-06 05:40:00 My Dad has an MSI GT70 gaming laptop. It cost $2700 from Just Laptops NZ. The Quality is pretty decent. www.msi.com
It has a 1080p screen with a GTX 770 so that will be useful for design.
Here's a link to Just Laptops Trade Met store: www.trademe.co.nz
ChazTheGeek (16619)
1361874 2013-12-06 07:44:00 yeah well the reason he wants it to be decent at gaming is because it will be the only computer he owns and he does need a laptop, as long as it can run tf2 then it should be fine.

How would this do, I don't believe he has the budget for a laptop with a great screen. www.dicksmith.co.nz
Slankydudl (16687)
1361875 2013-12-06 09:29:00 That laptop has a 1366x768 screen... Would avoid, that is quite possibly the worst resolution in the world.

As a side note if you look into MSI stuff make sure to check out each specific model of laptop, some of them apparently only have one fan for the cpu and gpu and therefore end up running hot and being noisy.
icow (15313)
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