Several recently updated gaming systems--from Alienware, Asus, Maingear, and others--are available for order today and can be in your eager hands in as little as eight days from now.
Top-of-the-Line Processors and Graphics Cards
The gaming laptops in this roundup all sport quad-core Intel Core i7 processors--the first Ivy Bridge chips Intel released for laptops. It’s no wonder that the first Ivy Bridge-equipped laptops available so far are overwhelmingly high-end gaming laptops, since laptops designed for gaming typically are outfitted with the most powerful hardware.
Although Ivy Bridge offers significant graphics improvement with its integrated HD 4000 graphics processing unit (GPU), the laptops here also sport discrete graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD (depending on your configuration choice)--cards capable of supporting the most graphics-intensive games.
With the Ivy Bridge update, most of these gaming laptops got a refresh to the latest Nvidia GPU, code-named “Kepler,” which is said to be twice as fast as its predecessor and also use up less battery life.
Available for Preordering or Ordering Now
Here's the current landscape:
Now that Ivy Bridge is here, all three Alienware models--the Alienware M14x, M17x, and M18x--offer the third-generation processors, while keeping the distinctive AlienFX lighting and styling.
(You can still get an Alienware M14x with a second-generation Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor, but for the larger M17x and M18x, the standard processor is the Ivy Bridge Core i7-3610QM.) The Alienware 14x starts at $1099, the M17x at $1499, and the M18x at $1999. See the Dell Alienware laptops page for more information.
Maingear Ex-L Series and Alt-15: Custom PC builder Maingear has also updated its Maingear Ex-L Series and Alt-15 laptops with Ivy Bridge processors and new Nvidia graphics chips.
Prices start at a pretty affordable $979 for the lower-end 15-inch Alt-15 to $1599 and above for the larger 17-inch Ex-L 17.
A standout feature of the MSI gaming laptops is the colorful, Steelseries-designed keyboard with different backlighting modes and gamer-suited configurations. You can outfit these gaming laptops to your heart’s content with up to 32GB of RAM and solid-state-drive RAID configurations--starting at $1499 for the GT60 and $1549.99 for the GT70 at MSI.
Origin EON11-S, EON15-S, and EON17-S: Custom PC builder Origin offers not just your standard 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch gaming laptops (the EON15-S and EON17-S, respectively), but also a very unusual 11.6-inch gaming laptop, the EON11-S.
Besides the Intel Core i7-3610QM processor, the Samsung Series 7 Gamer offers an Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M graphics card, 16GB of memory, and a very generous 1.5TB (7200 rpm) hard drive. It’ll cost you, but you can have the laptop shipped to you right away for $1899.99 from Amazon and other retailers.
What's Coming
If you have a favorite gaming laptop not on this list, don’t worry. In all likelihood there’s a newer model or an update coming out any day now with the new Ivy Bridge processor options and updated graphics cards. But if you’re itching to buy right now, these are the latest and greatest gaming laptops you can get.
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