My trusty Dell XPS is starting to struggle as the new classics become more and more taxing on its 5-year old resources. It's been a solid rig, so no complaints in that regard, but the old boy is working up a serious sweat even at the rock-bottom settings on Van Helsing.

So I started looking around. I've heard MSI mentioned around here several times over the years so I thought I'd take a peek at their website. While the site isn't the best at helping one pick a laptop, I did stumble upon this beauty, the GT72 Dominator Pro G: https://us.msi.com/Notebook/GT72-Dominator-Pro-G-6th-Gen-GTX-980M.html#hero-specification

Whoof! 17.3" IPS, Core i7, 24 GB RAM, GTX980M at 4GB, SSD + HDD, lotsa USB 3.0 ports, back-lit Steel Series keyboard. $2,000 US with some rebate going on. Should have Blu-Ray at that price, though. But dang, those specs would last me another 5 years easily. Maybe 6 or 7 years, given that I didn't buy top-of-the-line last time around.

That's a more than I want to spend but at least it's a starting point.

I don't really follow laptops. I spend the money on the desktop PC for games. for laptops I go cheaper. my current one is a decent dell.

but I find MSI to be untrustworthy on their low end in their desktop offerings. they not infrequently have squirrelly things going on with their stuff there. seems to be only connected to their low end. just wanted to mention that.

I dunno it seems pretty good for $2000? maybe you want to hit up a Microcenter or something before you buy in if you're not pressed for time on that price?

actually you know what after having a quick look around that seems really good at $2000.

Yeah, $2,000 appears to be competitive with other major players.

I'll spec a similar unit with a 970M instead and see how that compares. I don't think that's a big performance drop, according to benchmark sites, anyway. Might be able to cut out a few hundred bucks.

Don't have that particular laptop, though I've thus far got no complaints on my GS 60 Ghost Pro (Skylake i7 6700 / 16 gig RAM / 3GB GTX 970M)

Say, since you have one, the 'S' in 'GS' is for Stealth, which is a slim model? The MSI site is pretty sparse on details covering the model families.

I actually stopped buying laptops when I determined that all I ended up doing with it anyhow was sitting in the same place to use it. Putting together a killing desktop gaming rig was ultimately a lot more satisfying.

However, that being said, I did look for a high-end laptop at one time, most of them were outside the amount of money I actually felt comfortable parting with.

You really have to do careful research too, a gaming rig where you have a processor clocked at 4GHz might be just as good as a newer processor clocked at 2.3 GHz. Amount/speed of RAM as well as the capacity and RPM of the drive (unless you go SSD) are also a concern.

GS is the slim range
GT is the high end line - heavier and thicker but can accommodate better specs - up to sli 980 / optical drives / more hard drives

Been a laptop gamer for a decade or more and that's just how it's going to be. ; ) I'm used to it by now so the compromises don't really faze me these days. Including cost. I always 'amortize' it in my head over 5 years, since that's how long I keep a machine as the primary. Thus $300 - $400 per year isn't horrible.

Before, I could scoot on over to Dell's site and customize the crap out of an XPS. Well, they squelched that shit - even the Alienware machines aren't customizable like before. Used to be that you could get a lower-tier CPU with a rockin' GPU, but the mix-and-max options are much more limited these days unless you wanna pay Origin PC prices. Which I don't. Anyway, my chokepoint over time is always the GPU so that's where I start looking, along with screen size. And then the laundry list of other details.

if you want customisation... look at clevo / sager from places like http://www.xoticpc.com

Yup - spent the last couple hours at XoticPC. Also been thinking about Sager units for, oh, many years now. This may be the time. Though it seems like they're tending toward the thinner chassis these days, and I get worried about cooling capability over the long haul in a thinner machine.

Dang... are gaming rigs over 16 GB RAM getting common already?

I thought I was still pretty high end with 16 GB RAM (yeah, most shops offer 32 GB, but very few people spend that much on RAM).

For the blu-ray, unless you want to use them for backups, I'd say it's not that important at this point. You can get a lot of storage from external drives and you can get a decent standalone blu-ray player that will play your movies for under 100$. I tnink the main thing keeping discs relevant are movie industry DRM.

Nowadays, you can put an ISO on a USB stick and it will boot. Also, software tends to be available via direct download. Heck, some computers come bereft of even a DVD drive.

Mobile GPUs are quite weak though. But you can't beat the portability.

Depends what your needs are. If you really want the latest AAA games, laptops are probably not the most cost-effective choice.

If you mostly play Indie games and less recent AAA games, the GPU difference will make less of an impact there.

Bad time to buy powerful GPU laptops now. Just push that dell some months more and be on the lookout after pascal and polaris are available.
You could also look for those gaming laptops with external thunderbolt gpus.
gl!

You might not like to hear this but the best advice someone could give you is to buy a desktop.

While your 5 year old rig struggles to run Van Helsing at rock bottom settings my 5 year old rig plays Witcher 3 with most settings to max. And even back then it cost half of what you are willing to spend.

It's exactly as JDelekto said: Once you realize you aren't moving the computer around much anyway the only advantage of a laptop becomes a moot point. Switching to a desktop will give you a much better system at far better prices.