My brother's finally joining the good fight and is getting a nice laptop for his high school graduation present. My parents and brother are hell-bent on getting him an Alienware m11x.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-m11x-r3/pd.aspx
I was wondering if any of you could suggest specs for it that will run games well, and not break the bank at the same time.

For gaming, I would go with the i7 CPU and at least 6GB memory. The rest of the options are preference.

Thanks!

Your parents are buying an Alienware?

Not trolling, but........seriously?

From what i've heard and seen they're even more pricey than other company's "custom" builds.

They don't specify what the graphics chip specifically is, but they do mention that it's an nVidia chip, most of those are perfectly good to great. The main thing I was looking out for was Intel, Intel graphics chips are crap and almost certainly always will be.

Just make sure that the graphics card has at least a full gig of RAM, these days that seems to be necessary for some games. I'm not sure how much to recommend beyond there though. That was my thought, sure they look nice, but I'm never personally convinced that they're really good enough to justify the price. If it were me, I would spend the money on getting a faster machine and ditching the name brand, or spend the difference on games.

He's heading to Americorps, and he needed something portable, yet powerful.

Forgot to mention my mom gets a $200-400 discount because of her department's partnership with Dell.

You could build similar yourself and make it that way and still save money over Alienware.

Forgot to mention we get a $200-400 discount.
And building is out of the question. He needs a laptop.

it list the graphics as DDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M - which will game great for a laptop.

For the OP:
I would also consider a nice desktop for gaming and a good 300 to 400 dollar refurb laptop for school. Since the majority of gaming will most likely be at the dorm, that would serve even better and the price of both should come in at a lower price than the alienware alone.

That's better then. Without discounts, never buy Alienware. Forget the looks, the parts are overpriced.

This is probably a good idea, something which I should have probably done (though I am not unhappy with my Alienware Mx17 at all). I think you can probably get a desktop case that is small enough to fit in a dorm room, either under or next to or on a desk without taking up too much space. I was mostly worried about that aspect, and it would have been a hassle for sure, but not necessarily impossible to deal with. But my dad recently got a new computer (not a gaming one for sure, but still) and the case is tiny!

I am happy to have my laptop which I can game on because I am planning on going abroad in the Spring (to London) and I will want to game when I'm there, and so lugging a desktop with me for a semester would be pretty silly. The only other downside I can think of for having a desktop at college is that if you want to game over break you have to take the whole thing home, which can be obnoxious.

6GB of Ram is a lot. Too much if price is a concern. I'd rather go with 4 (5 max). Games usually do not require more and next gen consoles (likely to raise standards) are not due before 2013.


Beside, it is true. Alienware is expensive. I got my laptop from regular Dell and it has been only after 2,5 years that I have started to have difficulties with games (video card mem).

A good I7 (cpu), 4-5gb (mem) would be good, imo

An i7 is happier with tripple channel so 3x2GB sticks is ideal. 6GB would be the smart choice.

This right here... and 2GB sticks are fairly cheap so it shouldn't be a big jump from 4 to 6 GB. (assuming they weren't on crack and made an i7 board with only 2 RAM slots.)