Laptop

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Lenov...Id=5855651

Thats a good model to go with if you are buying from best buy.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Lenov...Id=5599357

This is the upgraded model with 1080p/blu-ray/8gb/1tb.

I personally would avoid HP. I've owned three HP laptops, and each one has failed (motherboard, hard drive, overheating, respectively).

There are two routes you can go, AMD or Intel. AMD with their new APUs (processor + graphics) can play most low-middle tier games on low-medium settings. AMD laptops are usually cheaper than Intel laptops, but AMD processors are generally less powerful than Intel processors.

With the Intel route, you will be getting a more powerful processor, but integrated graphics (HD3000/4000) are not up to par with AMD's APUs.

With both routes, you have the option of finding a laptop with dedicated graphics. I believe with AMD's new Trinity processors, that the laptop will be able to initiate a Crossfire setup (combining the graphics on the processor and a dedicated graphics processing unit). This will lead to vastly improved performance.

What you need to do is if you find a laptop with dedicated graphics, Google, Google, Google, and look for benchmarks on that card. Just because it has dedicated graphics, doesn't mean a laptop can play games.

Also, I personally would sacrifice CPU performance for better graphics performance. The graphics card will most likely bottleneck first before the processor. So if I were to go the Intel route, I would go with a Core i5 + better GPU than an i7 with an inferior GPU.

You want at least 4GB minimum of memory (RAM), but also take note of the memory clock speed as well. Something that runs at 1066MHz will not be ideal for gaming. 1333MHz or 1600MHz would be much better. However, memory is cheap these days and you can always upgrade.

Most laptops at your price range will be at 1366x768 resolution. That resolution is mediocre, and the screens will generally be sub-par in quality. However, note that if you find a 1080p laptop for gaming, you will need a very strong graphics card to support that resolution. You can always lower your native resolution from 1080p if you wish.

When you are looking at the hard drives, I would advise you to look for a hard drive that operates at 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm. A faster hard drive means faster boot ups, faster loading of applications, maps, etc. You can also install a solid-state drive (SSD), which is a super fast hard drive that is many times faster than a mechanical hard drive (7200rpm/5400rpm).

You also want to read reviews about the laptop's cooling configuration, as it will get hot while gaming.