[jackier]

My son (15y) currently has a Toshiba Satellite Pro but wants to upgrade as it is incredibly sluggish and won't play the games he wants. He has saved up some money but when we started searching for a "gaming laptop" both of us were surprised at the prices.

I would really welcome some advice as I am not a computer expert. What he is after is (in order):

Good graphics card - the system we are currently looking at is a Novatech machine with an Nvidia GT 650M card

Fast processor - he wants an i5 or i7 and would prefer an i5 with a faster speed over a slower i7 (is this sensible)? The above machine has an i5 with 2.5 GHz processor

RAM - preferably 8MB as the Novatech has

Hard disk drive - minimum 500GB (he is looking at above machine with 1TB)

The price for the system he is interested in is £725, I have no idea if this is good for the spec or if we could get better for the money, also whether he is looking for the right things. He has saved really hard for this (some will be his Christmas present) so I'd like to make sure he gets the best he can.

Comments, suggestions and advice are most gratefully received. Many thanks

[whoever,hey]

All decent gaming laptops break the bank. Laptops are the worst machine someone could ever get for recent games because of the cost and total lack of upgradability.

£500 would get a very very very good gaming desktop btw.

Do you know what games he wants to play?

[barky99]

i5 & plenty of fast-ish ram should be a decent route to higher performance laptop -- as would one whose HDD spins to 7200rpm

upgrading hdd & ram on laptops is extremely easy btw -- yes I hate the old crates