How much would I need to spend to get a decent gaming laptop?

Cromulent · 17 Sep 2016 at 16:21

I'm thinking about getting a gaming laptop in the next few months but I know very little about laptops at all. How much do you think it would cost to get a reasonable gaming laptop? My budget is pretty fluid and I'm prepared to spend what is necessary to get something good.

The only requirements I have are the following:

512GB SSD
8GB minimum of RAM
Preferably a Blu-ray drive
Nvidia GPU (preferably one of the new 10 series GPUs if that is possible on modern laptops)

So what kind of budget would I need to get something that can handle all of that? There is a game coming out in Q1 2017 that I really want to play and unfortunately I'll need a laptop to do it for various reasons.

PhoenixSP · 17 Sep 2016 at 16:47

minimum of a 10 series gpu means your looking at ~£1300 for the cheapest laptop with one in it and nothing else really. In the same position as you but swear things are fare more expensive now that say 2 years ago. Nvidia putting a full gpu with no real competition probably helps to inflate the prices.

Cromulent · 17 Sep 2016 at 17:41

PhoenixSP said:
minimum of a 10 series gpu means your looking at ~£1300 for the cheapest laptop with one in it and nothing else really. In the same position as you but swear things are fare more expensive now that say 2 years ago. Nvidia putting a full gpu with no real competition probably helps to inflate the prices.

Ah, OK. Thanks for the tip. I was thinking perhaps to have a budget of about £1500 so I could stretch to that I guess. I just really need a gaming laptop in the next few weeks / months. Preferably before Christmas.

Do you know if there are any new releases coming out in the next few months that I should hold out for like a new Intel CPU or something? If not I might just buy one this week or something.

MiSJAH · 17 Sep 2016 at 18:33

~£2,000 for gtx1070.

If you're going for the gtx1060, try and get a gtx980m as its much of a muchness, but a shed load cheaper

PhoenixSP · 17 Sep 2016 at 19:43

MiSJAH said:
~£2,000 for gtx1070.

If you're going for the gtx1060, try and get a gtx980m as its much of a muchness, but a shed load cheaper

From what ive read the new 1060 is nearly 2x more powerfull than a 980m 8GB but only 1/3 more expensive.

MiSJAH · 17 Sep 2016 at 23:56

My GTX 980m firestrike score - 10,046
Desktop GTX 1060 score - 10,605

The notebook GTX1060 is slightly hindered by cooling unless in a huge chassis.

At best 5% performance increase for 35% more in cost.

gupsterg · 18 Sep 2016 at 00:05

Cromulent said:
IHow much do you think it would cost to get a reasonable gaming laptop?

Cromulent · 18 Sep 2016 at 12:51

MiSJAH said:
My GTX 980m firestrike score - 10,046
Desktop GTX 1060 score - 10,605

The notebook GTX1060 is slightly hindered by cooling unless in a huge chassis.

At best 5% performance increase for 35% more in cost.

Thanks for that. I'm quite surprised that a 980M is only equivalent to a desktop 1060. I would have thought it would be more than that to be honest.

Are there any websites out there that compare mobile GPUs to desktop GPUs? I only really know stuff about desktop GPUs and have no idea what the performance of mobile GPUs is. I guess from that information I would be looking at getting a 1070M at the very least assuming that it is faster than a 980M.

Cromulent · 18 Sep 2016 at 16:34

OK did some work on the benchmark sites and found out that an i7 6700HQ laptop with Nvidia 1070 is about 50% slower than my desktop system which seems reasonable. So I was thinking of getting this laptop:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...hd-ips-i7-6700hq-gaming-laptop-lt-24e-ms.html

Do you think I'd be able to do some video editing for YouTube on that machine as well? Would be using Adobe Premiere CC, Adobe Photoshop CC and Adobe After Effects CC.

MiSJAH · 18 Sep 2016 at 16:48

Yeah. The MSI GT series are great notebooks.

What desktop do you have, as the 1070 is on par with a Titan x?

Edit: if you still have the Zotac 980ti the 1070 in the GT62 will eat it alive.

Cromulent · 18 Sep 2016 at 16:54

MiSJAH said:
Yeah. The MSI GT series are great notebooks.

What desktop do you have, as the 1070 is on par with a Titan x?

Great to hear that the MSI is a good laptop.

I have a i7 3930k (6 core / 12 thread) CPU with an Nvidia 980Ti. On the Firestrike benchmark results page it seems that the 1070 with the i7 6700HQ scores about 5200 but my desktop system scores over 10,000 so yeah it seems like that laptop is going to be about 50% slower.

I compared scores by using this page:

http://www.3dmark.com/search#/?mode=advanced

MiSJAH · 18 Sep 2016 at 21:25

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gpu-hierarchy,review-33383.html

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU16/1489

The 1070 is a better and more powerful card than the 980ti but your desktop cpu makes a big difference.

Either way you'll have two great systems.

Cromulent · 19 Sep 2016 at 13:32

MiSJAH said:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gpu-hierarchy,review-33383.html

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU16/1489

The 1070 is a better and more powerful card than the 980ti but your desktop cpu makes a big difference.

Either way you'll have two great systems.

Awesome. Thanks. Looks like I'll be ordering a new laptop in the next few days

. I really need a laptop at the moment so I can get on with some work and play some games when I'm not working.

Cromulent · 22 Sep 2016 at 19:55

Well I went ahead and ordered my laptop

. It is due tomorrow. Quite looking forward to seeing how well it performs. It will be nice to have a mobile gaming machine if I can't always be on my main gaming rig.