http://shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-offic ... otebook-PCThis was a bit cheaper when i bought it earlier, I think about $799? If you consider that cheap :P It still was pretty expensive. After customization, it came out to roughly $1100. But that's because I bought a couple extra things with it. The graphics card is a 650m, and I know it runs BOs and MW3 pretty well. I haven't tried BF3 yet, but i've seen videos on youtube like
this showing that it can handle it.
Keep in mind that if you find the right time to buy it, you can probably get it much cheaper (sales, coupons). I found a 30% off coupon that brought it down to about $900, but I waited to0 late afterwards to get it so I had to settle with $1000ish.
Really the only thing you'd want to upgrade is the graphics configuration for $50 more, i think? The processor it has at base configuration is superb. I also added the HDD Acceleration Cache, but I don't think that will affect game performance too much.
If that's too expensive, I'd look into getting a refurbished laptop. Those can be ridiculously low priced but with a good configuration. I advise caution with this, however, because when I tried it, I unfortunately got a dud ): There was something wrong with the hardware that made it randomly reset. But it's still a viable option; many people buy refurbished and never have problems with it.