Looking for advice - laptop

[Rendigore]

Hello everyone! I'm a university student and I've just received a grant of £1000 which is intended for (and I quote) "Academic resources". I myself can put approximately £250
towards the purchase so lets just call it a budget of approximately £1250. (including the cost of VAT).

So essentially I need a bit of help buying a laptop because I've only every bought desktops for gaming before; however I have a Norwegian girlfriend so I'm constantly going
back and forth between Britain and Norway and my 6 year old Dell XPS 8300 with an Nvidia Geforce 560Ti has been wearing down over the years and is now just unable to
keep up with today's games. It also weighs an absolute ton and it just isn't an option to take in on a flight. I write this plea for help from my HP Envy running AMD R6 512MB
graphics which is completely dreadful.

I'm looking for something that will be able to play the following games and those about on at least high, preferably ultra graphics.
World of Warcraft
League of Legends
Sims 4
Sims 3
Skyrim
Arma 3
GTA V*
Ark: Survival Evolved*
Fallout 4*
Witcher 3*
Overwatch
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
*Games I'm willing to compromise Medium-High graphics

I've had a look at the PCSpecialist options but I'm just not as sure about the performance of CPUs and GPUs like I was 6 years ago.

What are my options and what would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Oussebon]

Here are some GPU and CPU benches

CPU benchmarks: http://tinyurl.com/jedfsr9
GPU benchmarks: http://tinyurl.com/jt5y2fm

CPU benches are synthetic but at least give an idea of relative performance. Also WoW is said to rely heavily on single threaded performance in situations involving lots of players (raids, big pvp fights, etc) so if that game's particularly important to you it's worth looking at those benches. GPU benchmarks are of actual games.

I get the impression you're intending to make the purchase fairly soon, but if it can wait you may want to see what the new generation of GPUs being released at the moment has in store for mobile graphics. Some rumours are that mobile graphics cards will be all but phased out with laptops packing desktop cards due to the more efficient architectures. Other rumours show leaked benchmarks of unspecified GPUs in laptops with performance akin to high end desktop GPUs.
http://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2016/05/ASUS-GTX-1080M-4-900x286.jpg

To put this in context, a GTX 970 for a desktop is 50%+ more powerful than a GTX 970M in a laptop.
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu
My point being that the new gen of GPUs in laptops may be ludicrously more powerful and sufficient for games for some years, while existing mobile GPUs struggle with demanding current games even below ultra settings. For example, the notebookcheck benches show a GTX 970M at around 45fps on Witcher 3 on High.

A 970M is probably the best you'll manage at that price point.

If you can't hold off on a purchase, is 14" or 15.6" preferable?

If 14" is fine, the Defiance II off the review section is ~£1000 http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews/ They're ordered by date and it's 04-03-2016

 

[Rendigore]

Thank you for the quick reply.

15.6" is actually my preferred screen size.

I won't be making my purchase until September most likely because I'm going to Norway for 9 weeks - I was just trying to get an idea of how much I will need to spend and
therefore how much I need to keep in reserve.

I have had a look and I could perhaps stretch to this:

Chassis & Display
Octane Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-6700k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Free Item
FREE Magix Media Bundle with select Desktop INTEL® CPUs!
Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 980M - 8.0GB DDR5 Video RAM, DirectX® 12, G-SYNC
Memory - Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 490MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 PORTS (1 x POWERED) + 1 e-SATA/USB 3.0 PORT COMBINED
Battery
Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 330W AC Adaptor (GTX 980M only)
Keyboard Language
OCTANE SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Would this be more than enough for what I am looking for? Or would this be sufficient:

Chassis & Display
Proteus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
Free Item
FREE Magix Media Bundle with select Laptop INTEL® CPUs!
Memory (RAM)
32GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970M - 6.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Memory - Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 490MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 4 in 1 Card Reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
Proteus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200mAh)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor
Keyboard Language
PROTEUS SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Thanks again.

 

[Oussebon]

In some ways it doesn't matter if you can wait until September and hopefully the new GPUs will be available. On a GTX 970M you already need to compromise on settings on some of the games you list, with the GTX 980M coping somewhat better but being such a huge price premium that it's a tough choice to say if it's worth it. I would probably go with the cheaper of the two.

You probably won't need 32GB RAM though, 16gb should be much more than sufficient for most purposes for a long time to come.