Steephie, I don't know the answer to your question. But I do know that when I ask my son the same question, his first response was more questions about what I meant by gaming. You may want to give examples of the types of games you play. Obviously, games like diplomacy have different needs than games like World of Tanks.

Well that's why I gave examples of laptops I looked at but fair enough. Examples of games I'd be playing most likely:
GTA V
Newest Battlefield
Total War: Attila
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Basically demanding shooters, strategy games both turn-based and RTS, possibly some RPG stuff but don't know what yet.

Also APB: Reloaded, possibly a new Call of Duty.

I'll be playing much more but I don't have a list yet. I'll be buying games as I go.

Steephie - I recently bought a Lenovo y50-70 on Amazon in Germany for 1000€. The specs are almost to GL551JW, though I can't comment on build quality or battery life or anything similar.

One thing to note is that the gtx860m in y50-70 is actually the same chip as gtx960m in GL551JW, but with almost twice as much memory. Fuck NVIDIA naming schemes.

*almost identical to GL551JW

Also, link for the y50-70
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00KH6PAT8?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Yeah, but the 860m is not as good as the 970m, which I think would be a better choice if available.

Also, personally, I would not buy a lenovo after they infected all their computers with malware a few weeks ago.

abge is right. However the price difference between the two Asuses (Asi?) is $350, and the main difference is the GPU upgrade. Personally, I don't think it is worth it, especially since Steephie seems to be on a budget.

If we're disregarding budget, then definitely go for one GM204 cards (965, 970, 980)

With regards to malware: Morals cost you money. If you want to be on a high horse and boycott a company, be ready to pay more. If not, just wipe the drive clean and install your own OS. You should be doing that anyway.

IMHO the extra money for the 970 is worth the cost, especially since it can't be upgraded later. Of course, it depends on your budget. I've told steephie this several times, but since he refuses to set a hard budget, it was hard for me to suggest just one laptop.

I don't care about morals so much as competency. If they let things like that slip by, it makes me question their quality in general. I was a big fan of the old think pads, but lenovo has been riding that name for a long time and their products just don't hold up in their own. Again, just my opinion.

On that, I agree fully. I always liked the ThinkPads, and currently have a thinkpad and an ideapad, and there are many things I dislike about them. It is really going downhill.

However, IMHO they still offer a good !/$, especially compared to other brands. Hopefully that will change, I'm really disappointed in the laptop market.

Regarding the original question: Steephie, without giving us a hard cap on the budget, there's only so much we can do. My suggestion is to look at Amazon in Germany, they have a good selection. I could help you with the shipping if needed, I live just on the border with Netherlands.

Yes, it's a real shame. I actually switched to Mac because I was so disappointed with lenovo and the PC laptop market in general. Windows 8 didn't help either.

You sure you want a laptop steephie? I don't think there are many out there that could handle GTA V and run it well. I have a mid-range laptop that struggled tremendously with Bioshock Infinite running on low settings. IMHO you'd be much better off with a tower and monitor.

He has serious space limitations. Gaming laptops are fine these days. They are just much more expensive

But if you find the space, desktops are the way to go. Building them is a lot of fun.

Yup abge was my help, wasn't sure whether he wanted to remain anonymous.

Desktop isn't an option. As of now I can't play when dinner is ready, to give you an idea.

There isn't really a hard cap on the budget, if there's serious benefit in gameplay to a more expensive laptop, worth the extra bucks, I'll go for it basically. I can afford it all, that's not the problem. I just don't want to be overpaying for slightly better or unnoticeable improvements when actually playing.

From what I learned from abge, that would put my budget at roughly €1500, so let's say I'm looking for the best deal quality-/prise-wise within the €800-€2000 range.

Unless someone here disagrees, the first one I mentioned in OP sounds like one that would meet all criteria without paying extra for redundant things. One thing I'm still hesitating about is whether the cheaper one mentioned in OP will do, but as of right now I think I'm cool with buying the first one if its price is roughly $1500.

So I had that part sort of figured out already thanks to abge, but then I couldn't find a place to get it from without paying close to $350 import costs, in which case there's better options I imagine. That's why I made this thread: I'm looking for a good source to get the first laptop mentioned in OP from, or a similar quality laptop. Of course, if you have a suggestion for a laptop which may have a better quality:price ratio, I'm still eager to hear about it.

I have another lead to check which may not require such high import costs, but I'm on mobile right now and I'll check it later.

Like I said though, all suggestions are still welcome. I think abge did a really good job informing me though.

@steephie: I couldn't find that exact model, but I suggest you comb through these: http://goo.gl/yCfzA4

I'll reiterate what I told you in private in case others have an opinion. I think the difference between the 965m to the 970m is worth the price difference. I do not think the extra money for the 980m is worth it.

You will definitely notice a perf increase in GM204 chips (965,970,980) compared to GM107(960,950). If you can afford it, I agree with abge (assuming he meant 960).

970->980 upgrade is definitely not worth it. 965->970 could be, but I'm not sure about the price difference.. 965 is rare.

I meant both 960 and 965. Sheri is right that's being very sloppy though because they are different chipsets.

970 is definitely better than 960. I say its also better than 965 because, in the ones we looked at, the price difference was very small.

On TigerDirect, I found it (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9514703&sku=VSU-102776230).
With Shipping & Handling it's $1,670.23 total. Now I'm not sure whether this includes or excludes import taxes, does anyone happen to know? Hold in mind that we're talking Europe.
Other than that, I'm wondering whether this is still a good deal or I should look closer to home..

So right now I'm thinking it might be better if I instead go to shops and find something that seems suitable and check with abge and perhaps others whether it's a good choice. Unless $1,670.23 for this is as good a deal as I'm going to find?

Egoistically bumping this for myself.

I can just say that spec-wise you'll be hard pressed to find a better gaming laptop. Personally, I'd replace the HDD with an SSD, and then replace the CD with the old HDD, but with 16GB RAM there's little need for SSD. You'll get an decrease in boot time and when starting games, but actual performance will be the same.

As for the build quality, battery life and other quality of life things about that ASUS, I can't say anything. You should look at a few reviews (try /r/laptopAMA), maybe that particular model has a flaw or something. I'd blindly trust abge's judgement in those things.

Also... "Buy a GTX 970 Card and get the Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt for PC. Available while supplies last."

... while supplies last? It's a digital code FFS!

The issue is that laptop comes out to close to $2k after EU taxes. Making it much less appealing. I'm honestly not a good source of information for buying outside the US.

That's just legal speak so they don't have to offer it forever. They won't actually run out