So yeah, thanks for the help guys. As things stand, going to get the MSI GE60-2PCi745FD . Additionally I will buy Crucial M500 120GB, mSATA 6Gb/s and later on add 4 GB RAM.

Also going to use windows 8.1.

That would work right? For the price a solid laptop that is going to be able to play most games, even if only on medium most of the time.

 

That always depends on the game and how well it's optimized (take a look at AC:Unity for example which runs horrible on pretty much any system). But yes, it should do the job. Also, here are some benchmarks from some games with the 850M - just scroll down a bit. As you can see, you should be able to run Civ 5 for example with high settings and get around 30FPS, which is okay for that type of game. Also, if you want to play a new game that just came out, always remember to get the latest gpu-drivers, since they can improve performance.

Apart from that, it looks pretty good. Oh something else: remember to set the SATA-mode in BIOS to AHCI before you install windows.

 

If anyone is considering purchasing a gaming laptop in the near future, it might be wise to hold off until late December. The new Sager/Clevo P751ZM are coming out around that time and will offer desktop CPUs in the laptops, including the i7-4790K and above. It will also include either the Nvidia GTX 970M or the Nvidia GTX 980M. Considering desktop CPUs are actually much cheaper than their mobile counterparts, there's a decent chance prices will actually drop across the board.

 

Making use of a thread, this is for my brother.

Any current recommendations for the following.

Budget: $350 - $500
Size: Not too sure what you mean. If Screen Size is what you mean, >=15".
Resolution: >= 720p
Portable? Yes
Battery Life: ~6 hours I suppose.
Games: Diablo 2 + LoD (Windowed & Max Res 800x600), Fallout: New Vegas (Medium)
Task(s): Typing reports, browsing web, streaming Netflix.
Storage: >= 200GB

Keep Laptop: At least 2 years.
Optical Drive: Optional, but being able to read most disks would be nice.

Country: United States

Current Pick:

Acer Laptop Aspire E5-573G-56RG Intel Core i5 5200U (2.20 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce 940M 15.6" Windows 10 Home - Newegg.com