thinking about buying a lap top

[Pieceofsand]

So Black Friday is just around the corner. I most likely won't be getting up at 2 am and camp in front of a electronic store to look for a new computer.
-I'm looking for a decent personal use computer, not top notch but good enough for me to run some games decently(Starcraft 2).
-My budget is kind of low, no more than $400

I've been looking on Ebay for some refurbished ones, some of them are okay. Do you guys think I should wait until after Black Friday to buy them? Will the prices be cheaper? I heard people sell what they buy on Ebay.

Thanks for reading and have a nice Thanksgiving everyone.

[Ekinchheng]

slickdeals.net has good deals on electronics thats on sale on black friday. Or you can try newegg or tigerdirect

[MinisterofDOOM]

-I'm looking for a decent personal use computer, not top notch but good enough for me to run some games decently(Starcraft 2).
-My budget is kind of low, no more than $400

Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. Starcraft II is pretty resource hungry. You're going to be looking at the $1000 range for SC2. Even low-end specs for it put you in "media" or gaming laptop territory.

[downedzephyr]

newegg.com

it's where i bought my laptop a couple years back for like $800, and it's still strong enough to run games like SC2 and MW2 on decent graphic settings.

[Pieceofsand]

Unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. Starcraft II is pretty resource hungry. You're going to be looking at the $1000 range for SC2. Even low-end specs for it put you in "media" or gaming laptop territory.

damn really..? lol they're so expensive errrr...

I've never done Black Friday shopping before, everybody said you can get good deals, but what is consider a good deal, a $1000 will go how low? down to 600?

[MinisterofDOOM]

damn really..?

Yeah...I've got plenty of friends with minimum-spec machines (like a 2.6GHz Phenom X2 and a GeForce 9800) and they encounter a lot of serious slowdown when much in the way of battles starts happening on screen. That's why I say you'll need a media or gaming laptop: those will come with much better graphics hardware, which will probably do the job.

Just for an idea of where the game stands to run "properly", my i7 920, GTX 260, and 9GB of RAM run the game at full settings without a hint of slowdown even in monstrous battles.

[Pieceofsand]

what exactly qualify was a "gaming laptop?"

[hannibal]

^ Usually a better than avg processor with a powerful graphics card. I'm so outta touch with processors and vid cards. I NEED a new PC. Hoping to find a laptop tomorrow.

[MinisterofDOOM]

what exactly qualify was a "gaming laptop?"

Usually, they'll trade battery life for more desktop-like performance. They'll have near-desktop graphics hardware, regular (not low-voltage) processors, lots of RAM, and generally they're larger to fit a full keyboard and bigger screen, etc. Alternatively, media laptops generally try to maintain portability and battery life while still offering pretty powerful graphics hardware...but they'll still be bigger than most traditional notebooks to maximize screen real estate.

[bunda4th]

Something like that will run SCII. I had an Asus G1 when it first came out and it was $1600. You can find an Asus G51 for about 1200 but if you want the full experience it goes for about 1700. My G1 died about 8 month ago since the graphics card died on me. I had it a little over 4 years. It ran Supreme Commando at full spec same with the F.E.A.R games.

You can probably get the Asus G51 under 1200 since a few places allow you to custom build it. Just choose the minimum specs that is needed for SCII.

But with $400 bucks you wont be playing any games like SCII.

[Pieceofsand]

Something like that will run SCII. I had an Asus G1 when it first came out and it was $1600. You can find an Asus G51 for about 1200 but if you want the full experience it goes for about 1700. My G1 died about 8 month ago since the graphics card died on me. I had it a little over 4 years. It ran Supreme Commando at full spec same with the F.E.A.R games.

You can probably get the Asus G51 under 1200 since a few places allow you to custom build it. Just choose the minimum specs that is needed for SCII.

But with $400 bucks you wont be playing any games like SCII.

jesus christ, i don't think i'll have 1000+ to spare for a laptop lol. that is a hell of a lot of cash. i built my desktop for 600 and i thought i already spent too much on it. the minimum system requirement to run SC isn't even that much....
Minimum requirement: 2.6 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor. 128 MB PCle NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card or better.
Recommended requirement: Dual Core 2.4 GHz processor 2GB RAM 512 MB NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon HD 3870 or better.
I'm pretty sure I could get that around 400-600, or is that not a good idea.

By the way, that laptop^^, it looks so damn sexy.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Minimum requirement: 2.6 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor. 128 MB PCle NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card or better.
Recommended requirement: Dual Core 2.4 GHz processor 2GB RAM 512 MB NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon HD 3870 or better.
I'm pretty sure I could get that around 400-600, or is that not a good idea.

Right, but the point I was making in my above posts is that SCII doesn't run WELL on minimum spec machines. Yeah, it's playable, but there are major slowdown issues. I can't imagine a 9800 Pro actually running it at 20+fps.

Not trying to be negative...just a heads-up...SCII wants more machine than that to run smoothly. And the game's micromanagement-focused style doesn't exactly lend itself to choppy running.

[Jesda]

Minimum requirements are such a lie