Top 10 Gaming Laptops

Top 10 Gaming Laptops on February 2, 2011 updated by bestgaminglaptop.net

1. Alienware M17x R3

Alienware has been around for more than 10 years and is now firmly established as the #1 gaming PC brand, much thanks to its recognizable Area-51 alien head logo. It is now owned by Dell, which continues to serve gamers worldwide with configurable and funky-looking Area-51 laptops. The latest version of the M17x comes with a choice of quad-core Intel Core i7 (Sandy Bridge) processors and a Radeon 6870M or GeForce GTX 460M GPU, the latter with Nvidia 3D Vision support. While we lament the apparent loss of SLI graphics,

 

 

 

2. ASUS G73 Republic of Gamers

The Asus G73 is still one of our favorites; it’s a high quality gaming laptop, reasonably cool and quiet, and not as heavy as most 17-inch desktop replacements tend to be. Moreover, it is relatively inexpensive compared to the closest competitors, but still delivers excellent gaming performance. It is now available in a third generation; G73SW with Intel Sandy Bridge CPU, dual Seagate hybrid hard drives and a GeForce GTX 460M. But the older G73JH (Mobility Radeon HD 5870, check out our full review here) and G73JW (also GTX 460M) are still in the game.

3. MSI GX660

Today you don’t have to go with a 17-inch or larger desktop replacement to get good gaming performance. Case in point is the GX660 from MSI, which comes with the high-end Radeon 5870 graphics card previously only found in larger and heavier laptops. It’s available with both the more power efficient, dual-core Core i5 processor (with Hyperthreading), as well as a GX660R variant with a quad-core Core i7 CPU.

4. Clevo X7200 (AVADirect)

Clevo is the Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) behind brands such as Sager, AVADirect and others. The X7200 is probably the most powerful laptop in the world right now–mainly because it uses some desktop hardware. This 15-pound beast can be customized with a 6-core (12 threads) desktop Core i7 Extreme, 12 gigs of triple-channel DDR3 RAM, three hard drives/SSDs and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M–the fastest mobile GPU at the moment. If portability isn’t that important for you–and you have about $5,000 to spare–you can become a proud owner of this colossus.

5. Asus G53JW Republic of Gamers 

When Asus updated their excellent G51JX and G51JX 3D with the DX11 capable GeForce GTX 460M graphics card, it became an even more attractive option in the 15.6-inch segment. The GTX 460M easily produces a score above 10,000 points in 3DMark 06 and plays any recent game in high resolution. Otherwise, the G53JW is highly reminiscent of the G73 series and comes with a 1080p display and a quad-core Intel CPU. Only this one is smaller.

6. Alienware M15x

The M15x is a trimmed down version of the M17x and looks just as spaced out. Like all laptops from Dell it can be customized with a range of components, some of which can be considered weak for a gaming laptop. However, there is still the option to equip it with quad core Intel processors and a choice of Nvidia or AMD/ATI graphics cards (up to GTX 460M/Mobility Radeon 5850). On the downside, 9 pounds is somewhat heavy for a 15.6-inch laptop.

7. MSI GX740

For gamers on a budget, the GX740 from MSI offers an excellent FPS/$ ratio. The base model comes with an Intel Core i5 CPU and the same powerful graphics card as several other laptops on this list–AMD’s Mobility Radeon HD5870 with 1GB of DDR5. At 7 pounds, this 17-inch gaming notebook is actually lighter than the 15.6-inch Alienware M15x, if portability is an important factor. It is also available in a slightly more expensive version with a Core i7 CPU.

 

 

 

8. Toshiba Qosmio X505

Toshiba is not as well known for gaming laptops as some of the aforementioned manufacturers–rather for building good quality but boring business laptops. A notable exception is their high-end Qosmio desktop replacements, which are more than capable of playing a few games. This is especially true for the latest versions of the 18-inch X505 (model numbers Q892, Q893, Q894 and so on), which come with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M and 1.5GB of GDDR5.

9.Acer AS8943g

The 18-inch desktop replacement from Acer with the colorful name AS8943G is a very nice looking aluminum laptop with capable hardware. It has a 1080p Full HD display, Intel quad-core CPU and last but not least a Mobility Radeon HD 5850 with 2 gigs of GDDR3. Due to slower memory and clocks, it is not quite as fast as the HD 5870, but still fast enough to play all of your games.

10. HP Envy 17

HP’s Envy series was probably not built with gamers in mind first and foremost, but the Envy 17 should have no trouble running the latest games at fluid frame rates. The sleek, MacBook Pro-inspired 17-inch Envy is equipped with a Mobility Radeon HD 5850 and configurable with a Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz quad core) and other high-end Intel CPUs.