Reddit reviews Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-591G-792U Gaming Laptop 4th Generation Intel Core i7 4720HQ (2.60 GHz) 8 GB Memory 1 TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2 GB GDDR5 15.6'' Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

The average consumer buys around a 700 dollar laptop, so this is the area in the market where most price gouging is.

Laptops are incredibly low margin to sell, single digits in many cases, so manufactures try to save as much on BOM costs as possible.

However, I don't agree they haven't moved. Yes ram amounts and harddrives are the same but there are improvements on the whole. 1080 screens are increasingly becoming the norm at $500, these laptops are getting much thinner with lower wattage CPUs, which are typically faster than six years ago by a large margin.

Also, remember six years ago the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollar. However, now buying the equivalent $700 dollar laptop in Canada is around a $500 laptop in America.

Here is a $550 laptop with SSD, Dgpu and 1080p screen

Here is entry level gaming at regular consumer purchasing price

The Acer Aspire V Nitro I think would be a perfect choice for you. It's major advantage is the dedicated graphics card GTX 960M which will actually do very well in the gaming you intend to do. It also has a very good i7 processor, RAM of 8gb and storage of 1tb for the tasks you do.

In that budget, definitely I would go for this Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-591G-792U which should do a great gaming job - thanks to it's quad core i7 processor and nice dedicated GTX 960 graphics card.

I agree with shopineer, the Acer Aspire V Nitro is a great options the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2 GB GDDR5 will have more than enough power to support your digital art work and your animation in the future

I have been looking for a gaming laptop in the same budget range for about a few months now. I have narrowed it down to the Dell that people are mentioning and the Acer.

I have seen the Acer on sale at Newegg for $680 a couple times. The Acer supports an M.2 internal SSD in addition to the HDD, so theoretically you could buy an SSD and an additional 8gb of RAM and it would be about the same price as the Dell. If you don't want to go through all the trouble, the Dell seems like a good deal though.

As for overheating, I've personally had issues with Dell, but it was probably just a "laptop in general" problem. If you do experience overheating, just limit the CPU a bit in the power options and maybe get a fan and you are good to go.

OP, Dragon's Dogma is an incredibly well-optimized port whereas BnS is not. You could run all of Dark Arisen on a 960M, but don't expect to max out BnS on anything that's short of a 970M.

Can't speak for Acer's quality, but in your price range something like this will work: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-VN7-591G-792U-Generation-GeForce-Windows/dp/B01CL4X6KS/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1464394125&sr=1-1&keywords=gaming+laptop+960&refinements=p_36%3A-80000

^ heads up that the screen and hard drive speed suck. Your focus is that GPU anyway so you should be able to find better.

I assure you that quad core will be a godsend as opposed to dual thread dual-core in editing performance. That weight is somewhat standard for that screen size in general if it has a sturdy chassis.

Acer V Nitro w/ 960m 2GB GDDR5, i7 4720HQ (still used in gaming laptops made today), 1080p IPS, 8GB DDR3 also for around $800.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CL4X6KS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_gWpLxbKPTDSZM