Current Events > Gaming laptops seem like a huge rip

(+) Yeah! (+)

I guess they're worth if you have infinite money and really want to play a AAA game on max graphics on the move

My laptop:

Razer Blade Advanced 15 inch
240 Hz 1080p screen
RTX 2080 Max-Q w/ 8 GB VRAM
16 GB RAM
512 GB Samsung NVME 3.0 SSD

It cost me about $2,000.

Yes, you can build a similar desktop for around $1,300. But the portability is extremely nice and I also use my laptop for work, so I think it's worth the premium.

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They're mostly useful for people who travel a lot or frequently go to LAN parties. If you do most of your gaming at home it's generally not worth it.

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you can buy good 2060 laptops for $1200 at the moment.

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My dad bought me an Alienware back before it got bought out by Dell, thing lasted me like a year and a half before it started acting on the fritz and the CD-ROM functionality got weird as hell.

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Arcanine2009 posted...

you can buy good 2060 laptops for $1200 at the moment.

Yes and the performance differential between the mobile 2060 and the 2080 MQ is only like 15%, which is pretty negligible.

2060 MQ, however, is a bit more significant.


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Another thing to point out is that gaming laptops are much better-designed than they used to be.

They run cooler, and have better thermal systems. They also tend to have 120 or 240 Hz screens, making them ideal for 1080p gaming with high refresh rates.

And Razer, at least, also has vapor chamber cooling which allows them to use higher-wattage mobile GPU variants, which gives a noticeable performance boost.

But the best thing is that gaming laptops aren't ugly plastic turds anymore. The Razer Blade looks like a professional black MacBook, ROG Zephyrus just looks really svelte and cool, and MSI makes some really nice ones too. They're also a lot thinner than before.


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I could actually justify picking one up now if I did a bit of work on them...but that's quite a stretch.

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its not that bad. dock it to any tv and game anywhere.

i thought anything under a 980M was a ripoff but it gave you what you wanted with quality performance on a laptop.

i feel the gtx 10-series are great mobile videocards.

then nvidia mobile took a step back with 20 series max-q. reminds me of the 900Mseries mobile videocards without the loss. the max q is an efficiency upgrade for mobile gaming. sounds really familiar to 900M series gaming laptop pitches.

then again last i check, a mobile 1070 was just under 20% performance? & no rtx than a 2080maxq. been awhile since i checked because i have a 1070 gaming laptop and was amazed how well its keeping its value after all this time.

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It's a testament to just how far behind AMD is in the GPU space that their literal enthusiast desktop card - the "above the flagship" Radeon VII, has similar benchmarks to most of nVidia's low voltage thin and light laptop GPUs.


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HBOSS posted...

its not that bad. dock it to any tv and game anywhere.

i thought anything under a 980M was a ripoff but it gave you what you wanted with quality performance on a laptop.

i feel the gtx 10-series are great mobile videocards.

then nvidia mobile took a step back with 20 series max-q. reminds me of the 900Mseries mobile videocards without the loss. the max q is an efficiency upgrade for mobile gaming. sounds really familiar to 900M series gaming laptop pitches.

then again last i check, a mobile 1070 was just under 20% performance? & no rtx than a 2080maxq. been awhile since i checked because i have a 1070 gaming laptop and was amazed how well its keeping its value after all this time.

A lot of people don't know this because nVidia doesn't advertise it, but there are actually two variants of Max-Q GPUs. There's 80W and 90W variants of the 2080 MQ, for example. The 90W variant runs about 10% faster than the 80W variant, putting it basically on the level you'd expect from a mobile GPU compared to its desktop namesake. Only a few laptops use the 90W variant, though. Razer and Alienware IIRC.

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Arcanine2009 posted...

you can buy good 2060 laptops for $1200 at the moment.

This. That cheap Walmart EVOO gaming laptop isn't half bad

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2020 Acer Predator Helps 3000 was $1200 yesterday. Dunno if it was a 4th of July sale or anything

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DarkRoast posted...

"above the flagship" Radeon VII

Their real FlagShip is the "RX 5700XT".

They don't really sell the "Radeon VII" anymore.

And non of this will matter in 2-3 months.

Both AMD & Nvidia are releasing their "Halo" Graphics Cards soon.

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