Best sager laptop for under $1200?

hey everyone I would like to know what sager laptop is best under $1200. I would like to get my bang for the buck?would like to play games on high/ultra setting. previously had a MacBook Pro for about 2 years. When I got all I did was play WoW(low settings that sucked) than grew from there but was restricted from enjoying due to lag and fps issues. but these are the sagers I've looked at and thinking about. Most likely will upgrade the ram to 16 gb.
XOTIC PC | Sager NP8235 (Clevo P151SM1)

XOTIC PC | Sager NP7330 (Clevo W230ST) - 13.3" Gaming Laptop

XOTIC PC | Sager NP7352 (Clevo W350ST)

 

To even consider playing games at high/ultra settings at 1080p go with the NP8235 with the GTX 770m. It's a 192-bit GPU and pretty much as fast as the GTX 680m.

Also if you plan on playing WoW get an SSD. WoW uses streaming textures and an SSD would do you more good than 16GB RAM.

 

For any type of gaming you want to get the best video card you can in your budget. As HTWingNut suggested that would be the NP8235 with the 770M.
And I also second the SSD suggestion, you'll see more of a performance increase with that then a RAM upgrade.

 

Dang, this was pretty much my question as well. Hope it's ok I chime in.

I've been tossing around getting the 8235, 7352, or even the 8265. I've read through the owner's lounge threads, HTW's reviews (extremely helpful!), and specs on notebookcheck. Right now I'm leaning towards the 8235, but am still wondering if the 7352 would do me well enough.

Would you guys recommend the 770m over the 765m? Is it worth the ~$200 more for the video card, in your opinion? Do the 82XX lines have better cooling or something else I'm perhaps missing?

I'm planning on sticking with 8GB of RAM, grabbing an mSATA for the boot drive (256GB), and keeping the 750 GB hdd for storage/Steam games I don't need on an SSD.

Along the same lines, do you see any point in going with the 8265 to potentially upgrade the video card to a 780m at a later date? I know it also has the backlit keyboard, which is nice.. Just not sure if I care enough to spend ~$100 more than the 8235 if it's not overall worth it to worry about upgrades 2-3 years down the road.

 

The NP82XX do have a sperate fan for the CPU and GPU vs the NP735 shares one.
If the determining factor for you to upgrade from the 8235 to the 8265 is the potential to put a 780M in there in the future I would not upgrade for just that reason. Mobile GPU's hold their value pretty well so it could still be $500-700 in a couple years when you're thinking about upgrading the video card. Might as well take that and apply it towards a whole new computer.

 

770m is worthy of a $200 upcharge from a 765m IMHO. Bottom line is to buy the fastest GPU you can afford if you intend on playing the latest games.

 

I bought the NP8230 (it's in RMA right now) and was quite pleased generally. But I bought it because I couldn't wait for Sager to come out with a release date for the P150SM (NP8265). I probably would've went with that one because it has the AMD 8970m for just $100 more.

 

Great, thanks for your replies!

And I have seen the 8970m upgrade option and considered it. The posted framerates and benchmarks look good. The driver issues on the 7970m scares me a tad, but it looks like the 8970m is fine? I'm sure I would've seen more posts about it if it weren't.

I also hate when I get to the point where I think to myself "For only X more dollars, I can get Y!", keep adding things on, and soon I end up thinking to myself that triple my original budget isn't THAT bad... Get a Razer for browsing, Clevo for gaming, and something else to have, JUST IN CASE..

 

Well the the thing is, there's certain things you just can't economically replace yourself. The graphics card is one of those things that you want to buy with the system because trying to find that part somewhere else for a decent price will be hard. I would get the basic configuration and just upgrade the graphics to the 8970m. SSD, WiFi card, RAM, thermal paste etc...you can get buy and install those yourself at much lower prices if you feel you need them later. But the odds of you ever replacing the graphics card your machine came with, IMO, is quite low. That's part of the reason I went with the NP8230 and didn't wait for the P150SM version to come out. I wasn't gonna go with the 780m upgrade but I was thinking it would be nice to have the option to get a better card later down the road. But thinking about it for a bit and knowing what these graphics card prices are like (I don't know how much the 780m costs but I'm guessing it's in the $800+ range), I thought let me just go with the NP8230 since it comes with a decent card in the 770m anyway and I could snatch the entire machine for less than $1200 (I spent about $350 more on two 256gb mSATA SSD's afterwards though).

I was initially excited about the 13.3" NP7330 and was debating on whether or not I should wait for it, but I'm kind of glad I didn't because if I was gonna settle for a 13" machine, it should have great battery life, which I don't think it does. It all depends on priorities I guess and how strict your budget really is. I think the 765m is a solid card. I've seen people on here that did benchmarks and tests and stuff and they played most of the games well. So if budget is important to you, I say go with the NP7352. What is it, $200 cheaper comparing base configs, and the sound quality is said to be better in the W-Series than the P-series (not sure if that matters to you) of Clevos. Slightly lighter, an extra 2.5" drive slot (which I'm assuming is Sata III).

 

Thanks for the replies everyone! On a budget, well mainly using the money I get for selling my MacBook and I don't see it being sold for over $1200 if I'm lucky $1000 with its 16 gb ram, 500 gb hd, inteli7 2.7ghz.
My first gaming rig I guess you could say would be what I purchase. I might have misread and misinformed but would I be able to later upgrade the graphics are on my own? I probably won't really upgrade at all when I purchase it and just leave it at it's default set up and price.

 

The NP8235 does not support upgrading the video card but the NP8255/8265 do. That doesnt guarantee future cards that have not been released yet will work though. If they are compatible then yes you can put a new one in if you're comfortable doing so.