I was looking at laptops on Amazon and saw the Asus gaming series and they look great. Stealth fighter design looks really sleek and the heat exhaust out the back looks awesome. The lowest priced model is $999 and it looks like it could easily play any game out there now and 2-3 years into the future. Anyone here own one of these? If so, how do you like it? I think i would buy one of these over an Alienware laptop for sure. I like laptop gaming because I dont have alot of space and i like to be able to take it to my friends/family easily. I like the freedom.

I don't, but here are some things to think about when picking your new high-grunt lappy:

- does it have USB 3 ports? Not a ton of hardware yet for the new spec, but it's coming. Would be nice to be ready for it. USB 2 works fine in a USB 3 port.

- The RoG machines are big. Is it going to fit in your bag of choice? Mine has a battery that raises the rear end of the laptop for better cooling, and it also tilts the keyboard a hair. Kinda nice, but it also makes for a funky shape in my old bag and just barely fits.

- does it have a spare internal drive bay? I didn't think this was going to be a big deal but it turned into a huge convenience on my XPS. YMMV

- matte or glossy?

- chiclet or whatever-the-other-main-type-of-laptop-keyboard-is-called?

- kinda wish I had gotten the keyboard back-lighting on mine. Might consider it for yours,

Forgive me if you've already considered this stuff. I find it easy to spec out the power that I want but sometimes it's not so easy to remember, and find, the little details.

To me, they look pretty dated and real expensive. Their "Arrandale" CPUs are completely surpassed by the current "Sandy Bridge" models. ASUS has been tardy in getting the new CPUs into RoG models.

For a lappy that won't be spending much of its life running its battery down, I wouldn't get less than the Core i7 2630QM CPU. And any higher QM or XM model is even better.

ASUS is a good laptop maker and has a lot of well-priced laptops with the newer CPUs. Just not under the RoG label.

With a Core i7 2630QM and an nVidia GTX 460m or 560m GPU, figure on paying a little more than $1000, but not a lot more: $1200 to $1500. A comparable model with the RoG logo will set you back several hundred more.

Thanks for the advice. Whats the advantage of USB3 vs USB2? I'm glad you told me that USB2 will work fine in USB3, very good to know that. What brand of gaming laptop do you have? The new Intel and AMD advertise Turbo Boost (ie 2.0GHz but with Turbo Boost to 2.9GHz), does this mean that if a game requires 2.9GHz, the CPU will auto boost performance to the requirements? So i can safely buy a 2.9Ghz game?

Can you tell me if a i7 Quadcore 1.6Ghz is better than a 2.4Ghz Dualcore? How can you tell which is better? Does Quadcore automatically mean that its better than Dualcore?

I'm fairly happy with my $1,200 G74SX. Smooth performance across the board on games.

USB 3.0 (Super-Speed USB) is supposed to top out at roughly 10x faster than USB 2.0, (Hi-Speed USB) so it's going to be intruding into eSATA and FireWire territory for mass storage data transfer. I think. The new spec calls for something like 640 MB/second. www.usb.org has the full scoop on the differences.

Mine is a Dell XPS, 17 incher. It was a toss-up between the XPS and a Sager config'd nearly identically, but the XPS had that second drive bay so it got the nod. The Sager I looked at was the old version (NP5170) of this one: http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP5175, which floats somewhere in the $1,000 - 1,300 range, depending on options and warranty.

I liked those two brands because they offered power similar to the true gaming laptops, but their chassis' make them a bit more suited for business purposes (the main use for mine) and are a bit nicer for traveling with that slightly smaller size. In trade I passed up some of the gee-whiz options of the hardcore game machines that you might find in those other brands. For certain, the Sager lineup will get you a machine competitive with just about any other brand's offerings. The XPS line-up will stop a bit short, to keep from intruding too far into Dell's own Alienware line.

Happy shopping!

You have to look carefully at what you're getting. Intel has two different CPU architectures both called Core i3, i5, and i7, and Turbo Boost mode performance can be illusory.

The older Nehalem architecture (mobile Nehalem processors are called "Arrandale") has 3-digit model numbers, like "Core i7 720QM". It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that most of the Nehalem quad CPUs (except the expensive 9xx XM Extreme CPUs) are really slow, and the 1.6 GHz 720QM is ridiculously slow. Avoid them. Just avoid them.

The newer Sandy Bridge architecture has 4-digit model numbers, like "Core i7 2630QM". The slowest Sandy Bridge quad core (the 2630QM) is faster than all the mobile Nehalems. Not just a little faster, a lot faster.

I would favor even the dual-core Sandy Bridge CPUs over the slow quad core Nehalems.

The other question, though, is why is Turbo Boost an illusion that is good for salesmen and lousy for consumers. Of course, the salesmen can hype Turbo Boost and say this CPU will run at 2.9 GHz. But it actually does no such thing. If you hit that CPU with a heavily threaded load (The Witcher 2 is a good example), it will busy all its cores and hyperthreads and never go into Turbo Boost.

To summarize:

If you can avoid Nehalem (3-digit model number) CPUs altogether, do so. At this point, there is no reason to buy anything less than Sandy Bridge CPUs when you want high performance.

Definitely avoid Nehalem quads. Get a faster dual Sandy Bridge (4-digit model numbers) instead. But get a quad Sandy Bridge if you can.

Don't buy into the Turbo Boost hype. The base frequency of the CPU is what you should expect it to run at, most of the time.

Thanks, great info. You kept it simple, look for 4 digit model, got it. Cant they keep things simple, jeez. I loved the 90s, the CPU comparisons were so simple (MHz to MHz) thats it, simple.

To be more thorough and accurate, look for "Core i(3, 5, 7) 4-digit" model numbers. The older "Core 2" CPUs also used 4-digit model numbers. Some of these are still on the market. You need to see that "Core iN" model number.

I'd suggest you post over at this forum.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/

Very happy with my G71G... 2-3 years old, but so far, haven't had problems running the games I've tried (some new I can't play with high details, of course).

I bought a G72(I think, it's been a couple years) and I've been very pleased with it's performance on games. The newer 74s actually have 2670QMs, and a 560 in them. Which sounds nice. That model at least at bestbuy is about 1200.