Determining spec range for a living room laptop

[Harry Voyager]

Trying to decide if I want to get a laptop and trying to figure out what exactly I'd be looking at in overall price. Location is continental US. 

 

Basic use-case is playing action or RPG type games on a tray table in the living room while watching other things. Basically Diablo or Telltale type games. Maybe World of Tanks, but probably not, or the latest Civ game. Generally lighter games that I could pause it drop without an issue.

 

I have a high powered desktop for AAA titles, so I don't think those are in the use case. This would also be my gaming device when I travel. That's a couple of times a year, so portability would be nice, but probably not essential. Device security would be a need, though. 

 

I'd probably be looking at 15-17", since it would be living on a TV tray most of the time and I prefer to use a mouse, and I'd probably want to be able to use it for at least five or so years. I'm thinking the indy/casual game subset doesn't jump in power that much over the years though, so thinking that's more viable than say, wanting 5+ years of AAA gaming. 

 

Are integrated graphics to a point where that's viable for my goals, or should I look for something with discreet graphics? If discreet graphics can do the job, both the Iris equipped Ice Lakes and the incoming Ryzen 4000 APUs look very nice. 

 

At the same time, this would be a secondary device, and would be piling from the same budget I'd be using for my desktop upgrade path (4K VR flight sims need more GPU. Lots more GPU. More GPU than a 2080 Ti...) 

 

So thoughts? This something that a mid range laptop these days can do, or would that be pushing into the $1k USD range? 

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

Trying to decide if I want to get a laptop and trying to figure out what exactly I'd be looking at in overall price. Location is continental US. 

 

Basic use-case is playing action or RPG type games on a tray table in the living room while watching other things. Basically Diablo or Telltale type games. Maybe World of Tanks, but probably not, or the latest Civ game. Generally lighter games that I could pause it drop without an issue.

 

I have a high powered desktop for AAA titles, so I don't think those are in the use case. This would also be my gaming device when I travel. That's a couple of times a year, so portability would be nice, but probably not essential. Device security would be a need, though. 

 

I'd probably be looking at 15-17", since it would be living on a TV tray most of the time and I prefer to use a mouse, and I'd probably want to be able to use it for at least five or so years. I'm thinking the indy/casual game subset doesn't jump in power that much over the years though, so thinking that's more viable than say, wanting 5+ years of AAA gaming. 

 

Are integrated graphics to a point where that's viable for my goals, or should I look for something with discreet graphics? If discreet graphics can do the job, both the Iris equipped Ice Lakes and the incoming Ryzen 4000 APUs look very nice. 

 

At the same time, this would be a secondary device, and would be piling from the same budget I'd be using for my desktop upgrade path (4K VR flight sims need more GPU. Lots more GPU. More GPU than a 2080 Ti...) 

 

So thoughts? This something that a mid range laptop these days can do, or would that be pushing into the $1k USD range? 

Upper mid range laptops like a dell G5 with a gtx 1650 and i5 will do the trick. The older 1050ti models will do to and are usually a fair bit cheaper if you can still find them. Just make sure they have 16gb of ram and all should be good.

[Harry Voyager]

Is the 1650 really necessary? That's going to push the price into the $1k range right off the bat, and I'm looking to keep well below that, in to 500-700 range. 

 

Edit: Spoke to soon. Maybe something like this? https://www.microcenter.com/product/606363/msi-gf63-thin-9sc-257-156-gaming-laptop-computer---black

[genexis_x]

How much you're willing to spend? I guess you don't have any preferences on weight and battery life?

[Harry Voyager]

@genexis_xProbably in the $600-700 USD range, but I can be flexible in the price of its worth it. It's more any money I put into this is no RT that cannot be put into a GPU upgrade later this year, and on the high end stuff I'm doing, I've maxed out my 1080ti, so yeah, that's going to be expensive, even if Big Navi drives some price competition back into the market. 

 

I'd ike to keep it at a reasonable weight, <6lbs, since if I'm doing work travel I'll be humping this along with my work laptop (HP a book ~freeking heavy). 

 

Battery life is a moderate deal. ~4h unteathered as a productivity (word processing and Internet) should be more than sufficient. 

 

Size turns out to be an issue, so it looks like I'm going to want to go with a 15" one. 

 

I'm wondering if it would be worth it to wait for the Ryzen 4000 based ones to hit the market and look for one with one of those paired to a 1650 max-q, or just go with the MSI one I referenced above. 

[Harry Voyager]

Another option might be this with a ram upgrade; https://www.microcenter.com/product/606146/asus-tuf-fx505du-mb53-156-gaming-laptop-computer---black

 

The CPU is somewhat slower, but the GPU is significantly faster. 

 

Thoughts? 

[genexis_x]

On 1/9/2020 at 3:09 AM, Harry Voyager said:

Another option might be this with a ram upgrade; https://www.microcenter.com/product/606146/asus-tuf-fx505du-mb53-156-gaming-laptop-computer---black

Avoid Asus FX505

Quote

action or RPG type games, Diablo or Telltale type games. Maybe World of Tanks, but probably not, or the latest Civ game. Generally lighter games, have a high powered desktop for AAA titles, gaming device when I travel

 

portability would be nice, but probably not essential <6lbs

~4h

1650 isn't the best value, would suggest getting 1660Ti. You can get a decent one under $1k

[Harry Voyager]

@genexis_xTo close the loop, one of my expected expenses came in well below what I was expecting so I was able to go with a $1k budget, and considering what had been previously discussed, I ended up going with a Maingear Vector that I was able to get on sale for $1k. 

https://www.microcenter.com/product/610074/maingear-vector-156-gaming-laptop-computer

 

Overall, I'm very happy with it. It runs everything I've thrown at it so far (though, admittedly I haven't, yet, tried Star Citizen on it) and 15" is just the right size for the area I've got to work with. It's basically hanging out on a tray table by the living room couch. Might need to look at fixing the upholstery on the couches, though, but that's a problem for a different venue. 

 

I might upgrade the ram to 32Gb at some point, if decide to do DCS on it (the game is notoriously ram heavy and has hitches if you have less than 32Gb available) and I do like that it looks like there's an extra NVM.e slot and that the WiFi card is replaceable. Both of those should extend the useful like if the laptop significantly. Durability may be an issue in the future, but for what it does, it's relatively light weight, and runs very well, at the moment. 

 

After looking at various benchmarks of the 1650 Mobile Max-Q vs the 1660 Ti Mobile and the Radeon 580 desktop part, what you said makes sense. Basically it looks like anything that will run on a Radeon 580 will run on a 1660 Ti mobile, and given the availability of the 580's, everything can run on it and I'm figuring that's going to be a min spec card for some time. 

 

After digging around for 1660 Ti laptops, I wanted to get one that was at least as fast as an I7-4770K so I could run everything I'd been running on my old desktop, which pushed the current Ryzen APUs a bit below the running.

 

I'm expecting the upcoming 4000 series parts to offer excellent multi-threaded performance, like their Zen 2 desktop counterparts, and competitive single thread performance, but not much I'm running is multi-thread heavy, and I'm expecting them to be 3-6 months from being buyable so I decided not to wait for them.

 

And, given the current limits of mobile GPU power, I'm not sure how much even a 3950X would gain me, when it's paired to a 1660 Ti mobile. I suspect what the 4000 APUs are more likely to do is bring enough integrated graphic power to make thin-and-light gaming more generally viable. Really cool, but different from my use-case. 

[genexis_x]

It's a Tongfang GK5-X which is decent, good choice!