Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Recommend a good laptop for a Game Design student

Soon I will be entering Collins College in the Game Design field and I'm looking to purchase a lap top. The school offers them but at rediculous prices ($2900 for a P4 and $3300 for a Mac). I'd like to see if I could get something outside of them that is the equivalent or better for a less price. I'm sure it would not be hard however I know you can't piece together your own system with a laptop and the only ones I've seen around are for casual users.

I don't have the specs for their laptops in front of me but I believe the P4 had a 3Ghz processor, 1GIG RAM, 80GB HDD, and some Raedon graphics card. The Mac I can't remember, all I know is that b!tch was $3300.

Anyway, enough rambling...any recommendations?

3 letters....IBM
This topic has also been discussed several times.

Knowing what graphics card the use in their laptop might help find something that would fit your needs. I'd imagine that a game design student would need something that was rather robust and, unfortunately, laptops with good video cards are usually very heavy on other expensive features.

But I know a fair amount of tricks with ordering Dells and using the right sites and coupon codes that I might be able to configure something that meets your needs if I knew what kind of vid card you were looking for.

I just helped a coworker, who does some game design stuff for fun on his own time, buy a laptop for that purpose. Managed to cut about 50% off the regular Dell price and he got his for $1450.

I wish I could remember, I don't know what the hell I did with the paper that listed the specs on it. All I can remember off the top of my head was that it was a Raedon card.

I just found the specs

Heres what they're offering for the Windows laptop:

Gateway M675E Notebook
-17.1 WSXGA+ TFT Active Matrix Display
-Windows XP Professional
-Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.80GHz
-4X DVD+/-RRW/+/-RW/CD-RW Recorder
-ATI Radeon 9700 8X AGP with 128MB DDR Video Memory
-80GB 5400RPM ATA Hard Drive (doesn't list a brand)
-1GIG 400MHz DDR SDRAM
-Intel PRO 10/100/1000 GB VE Network Connection and 802.11g Wireless Networking
-3-Year Limited Warranty
-Collins College personalized backpack and engraved laptop (woohoo! )

Price: $2900

What aspect of "game design" are you looking to enter? Graphics engine? AI? Portability? etc?

I'd imagine that if you're after the graphics side, you'd need a laptop with a top-end graphics card (ARE their laptop models with Quaddro/FireGL cards out there?) On the other end, backend programming would require a beefier processor than normal.

Probably the best thing for you to do is look at the specs of the laptops the school offers and try to find a deal with the same spec or higher. I mean, the school is going to know what's the best setup for their program... Or, as one of your profs.

--JamesT

i got myself a top of the line ibuypower.com notebook for $1600

specs are
-athlon xp 3700+
-1gig corsair memor
-60 gig 7200rpm HD
-Radeon 9700 mobility 256mb graphics
-wifi ready b/g
-dvd/cd r/rw
-3-1 memory card reader

they also offer similar setups for intel if thats your choice

pm me if youd like some more info.


edit: i just read your post on the specs , looks like my notebook has almost equal specs for nearly half the price

-Snipey

if you look up one post I listed what they are offering me.

As for which aspects I will be covering in game design...all of the above.

This is a program in which I will be learning all aspects of game creation, not just one particular area.