Looking at a gaming laptop

gooober

gooober

gooober

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27 Oct 2012
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Hi guys, recently moved into a new house and due to lack of storage I am thinking of selling my p.c and buying a gaming laptop. I know about 10 years ago when I looked at them, laptops was a lot more expensive I comparison. Is rhat still the case or have they all kind of leveled off? Are they easy to upgrade ?

Any thoughts and opinions to going for a would be great. Thanks.
 
A rough idea of a budget would be helpful.

Gaming laptops can be a relatively easy way to hold of a modern GPU without paying scalped prices for desktop GPUs. The laptop versions of a GPU are usually quite a bit slower than a similarly named desktop GPU.

Upgradability is usually pretty limited. CPUs are nearly always soldered, RAM is usually upgradable but some gaming laptops have some soldered RAM, usually storage can either be added too or upgraded, GPUs are very rarely upgradeable.
 
Minstadave said:
A rough idea of a budget would be helpful.

Gaming laptops can be a relatively easy way to hold of a modern GPU without paying scalped prices for desktop GPUs. The laptop versions of a GPU are usually quite a bit slower than a similarly named desktop GPU.

Upgradability is usually pretty limited. CPUs are nearly always soldered, RAM is usually upgradable but some gaming laptops have some soldered RAM, usually storage can either be added too or upgraded, GPUs are very rarely upgradeable.
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Aww ok. So basically of you want to upgrade a laptop u need to buy a new laptop? So its best 2 spend the money now so it lasts longer I guess ? I mean realistically at this moment in time I have 1000 + what I would get for my p.c which would be minimum of 500 I would say. So roughly 1500
 
We are seeing a paradigm shift in mobile computing. The majority of current gaming laptops are just over marketed tiny desktops that happen to have the a ability to remain running for a short period (at greatly reduced performance) if accidentally unplugged.

Personally I have a low power notebook with 5-6 hours battery for my mobile tasks and a desktop for my heavy workloads. No current gaming laptop (outside of the M1X) could replace either with acceptable performance or battery life. Not even close.

I would hold off buying as the M1X has just given gaming laptops their redundancy notice and AMD are about to bring RDNA2 graphics to its APU’s early next year.
 
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gooober said:
Aww ok. So basically of you want to upgrade a laptop u need to buy a new laptop? So its best 2 spend the money now so it lasts longer I guess ? I mean realistically at this moment in time I have 1000 + what I would get for my p.c which would be minimum of 500 I would say. So roughly 1500
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Yeah upgrade potential is pretty limited, you're stuck with whatever CPU and GPU it comes with so it's worth being careful about getting your spec right. Fortunately you can get some pretty decent hardware currently, with 8 core CPUs being available even on mid-priced laptops.

The other thing to be aware of is that gaming laptops are quite noisey, particularly compared to a desktop.

One of the best buys at the moment around your budget is the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. Stock is patchy but you can get some good deals using discount codes when it's in stock. I got mine for about £900 with the 3060 but you can get it with a 3070 if budget allows. It is a bit chunky but value wise it's pretty solid and has a great screen.

The Legion 5 non-pro can be had a bit cheaper but the screen isn't as impressive.
 
jigger said:
Personally I have a low power notebook with 5-6 hours battery for my mobile tasks and a desktop for my heavy workloads. No current gaming laptop (outside of the M1X) could replace either with acceptable performance or battery life. Not even close.
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Simply not true, I have a ROG Zephyrus G14 with a ryzen 4800h (8c/16t) with a 1660ti and I get over 10 hours battery life.
 
Jigger is under the impression a Macbook is imminently about to become the gaming laptop of choice and that everyone needs long battery life in their gaming laptop, despite the fact gaming is a mess on MacOS with many games not working, the rest mostly running badly plus most gaming laptops are used on wall power.

Several people have tried to explain this to him but he just shifts the goalposts, refuses to discuss the issue and will eventually throw his toys out of the pram and puts anyone that challenges him on ignore.
 
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jigger said:
A 1660ti is equivalent to what desktop card? A RX550? 5700G?

And you game for 10 hours?
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It's only 10% slower than the desktop 1660ti.

It was an example to comparing it to your notebook which only gets 5-6 hours for general desktop use, where a gaming laptop is 'not even close' when it would destroy that in terms of battery and performance (if it needed it). Doom eternal for example can lock at 120fps at max settings so it can also do good performance too.

No plus it wouldn't get 10 hours battery life with gaming.

But you can do both with a good quality gaming laptop, it's a really good option if you have limited space, like the OP..
 
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Defy Belief said:
It's only 10% slower than the desktop 1660ti.

It was an example to comparing it to your notebook which only gets 5-6 hours for general desktop use, where a gaming laptop is 'not even close' when it would destroy that in terms of battery and performance (if it needed it). Doom eternal for example can lock at 120hz at max settings so it can also do good performance too.

No plus it wouldn't get 10 hours battery life with gaming.

But you can do both with a good quality gaming laptop, it's a really good option if you have limited space, like the OP..
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I mean when actually putting the hardware to reasonable use I get 4-5 hours. Some of the gaming laptops use desktop levels of power with a 100 watt hour battery. That type of gaming laptop wouldn’t come close.

100 watt GPU and a 50 watt CPU and the system is done within 45 minutes. So the performance would need to be 11x to match and probably more like 25x before I would consider it destroyed.

No gaming laptop could come close.
 
jigger said:
I mean when actually putting the hardware to reasonable use I get 4-5 hours. Some of the gaming laptops use desktop levels of power with a 100 watt hour battery. That type of gaming laptop wouldn’t come close.

100 watt GPU and a 50 watt CPU and the system is done within 45 minutes. So the performance would need to be 11x to match and probably more like 25x before I would consider it destroyed.

No gaming laptop could come close.
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Eh :cry: so what we have gathered then is that my laptop can beat your notebook in terms of raw power and battery life.

Can it also offer a good gaming performance like a desktop? Yes. You do realise when you do proper gaming on a laptop, you plug it in right?

If your sig is correct your desktop also has a 75hz refresh rate and a 1800x which isn't near a 4800h. Baring in mind mines not even close to a top model but no gaming laptop coming close?

Also as a side note I have a 3070ti desktop also.

I'm done here. :eek:
 
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Defy Belief said:
Eh :cry: so what we have gathered then is that my laptop can beat your notebook in terms of raw power and battery life.

Can it also offer a good gaming performance like a desktop? Yes. You do realise when you do proper gaming on a laptop, you plug it in right?

If your sig is correct your desktop also has a 75hz refresh rate and a 1800x which isn't near a 4800h. Baring in mind mines not even close to a top model but no gaming laptop coming close?

Also as a side note I have a 3070ti desktop also.

I'm done here. :eek:
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Nope, we have learnt you can browse the internet for 10 hours and I can get 6 hours of work from my notebook.

We know a 150 watt laptop can run for sub 45 minutes on 100wh battery. To game for 10 hours that laptop would require a very large battery.
 
jigger said:
We are seeing a paradigm shift in mobile computing. The majority of current gaming laptops are just over marketed tiny desktops that happen to have the a ability to remain running for a short period (at greatly reduced performance) if accidentally unplugged.

Personally I have a low power notebook with 5-6 hours battery for my mobile tasks and a desktop for my heavy workloads. No current gaming laptop (outside of the M1X) could replace either with acceptable performance or battery life. Not even close.

I would hold off buying as the M1X has just given gaming laptops their redundancy notice and AMD are about to bring RDNA2 graphics to its APU’s early next year.
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The M1X will cost about £5K. You cannot compare that with a decent gaming laptop that costs £1000-£1500 and if you did I would prefer to go for a normal gaming laptop
 
ROG Zephyrus G14 battery.
Capacity: 4940mAh / 76Wh / 4-Cell

GTX 1660 Ti Mobile power use 80 watt~
90-70% the performance of the desktop.

Add the rest of the system that 76watt hour battery isn’t lasting long at all.

Dell XPS 13

i7 1065G7 15 watt
6 cell 60 watt hour battery.
 
jigger said:
Nope, we have learnt you can browse the internet for 10 hours and I can get 6 hours of work from my notebook.

We know a 150 watt laptop can run for sub 45 minutes on 100wh battery. To game for 10 hours that laptop would require a very large battery.
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But the laptop for working tasks wont even be utilising the gpu, it will run at 0% and the onboard graphics will be used only (So it acts just like your beloved notebook) so the battery life will still be strong, I can run my 4800h at 12W...and as mentioned you plug it in when gaming, gaming laptops don't run at full speed for gaming when on battery life either.
 
Defy Belief said:
But the laptop for working tasks wont even be utilising the gpu, it will run at 0% and the onboard graphics will be used only (So it acts just like your beloved notebook) so the battery life will still be strong, I can run my 4800h at 12W...and as mentioned you plug it in when gaming, gaming laptops don't run at full speed for gaming when on battery life either.
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I do use the IGP and I have my chip set to around 11 watts generally. If the 4700U was released a year earlier I would have bought that, though some of my tasks are memory heavy and the low power 3733mhz RAM on the XPS system wasn’t widely available at that time.

Your example between the 4800 and 1065G7 shows what was achieved in mobile computing in a single year.
 
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