Can a mod please delete my account?

[VotingCanadian]

Can a mod please delete my account?

[Sorenson]

You get a lot less performance for the same amount of money. If you can only have one device then a laptop makes sense. 

[MrMcMuffinJr]

well a laptop is always going to be more expensive with the increased complexity. a lot fo the components are always completely proprietary

 

[minibois]

1 minute ago, VotingCanadian said:

I've been on the PCMR discord server, the subreddit and their forum. I've generally seen some people finding laptops/gaming laptops worse than PC's (at the same price range). Why is this? I think a gaming laptop is great for a person that doesn't have the time/knowledge to built a PC and also wants the option of portability.

 

EDIT: Not only in the PCMR community.

Gaming laptops often have poor cooling solutions, meaning they run loud/hot and sometimes even throttle.

They also - except for RAM and memory - cannot be upgraded, which is something anyone defining as 'PCMR' would very much dislike.

Often people in these communities would rather suggest a cheap laptop and good PC, over a gaming laptop.

 

Personally I am not much of a fan of these laptops either, but I see the reason they exist.

I just wish some companies did a bit of a better job on these devices.

[Jurrunio]

Some buy a laptop but never bring it outside? You have to ask them

[kelvinhall05]

You spend more to get:

1. Worse performance to an equally priced desktop

2. Shitty thermals

3. Mediocre keyboards and trackpads (usually)

4. Can't even use them as a laptop since they're almost always big, heavy, and always have shit battery life

[bellabichon]

The biggest problem I personally have with gaming laptops is cooling. You're essentially trying to fit a full gaming PC into a case that's usually an inch thick, which is always gonna cause cooling problems. 

[NineEyeRon]

Gaming laptops suit someone who has multiple places where they base themselves and move often. Such as someone who has multiple homes or is away from home somewhere more temporary for parts of the week or month.

 

This can be common for anyone in education or their first few years of work when they are yet to settle anywhere and may still frequent their parents house.

 

Gaming laptops do have a place and a purpose, for those who have the need they are a lifesaver when it comes to gaming.

 

There are probably some who should have just bought one or even two PCs instead but you will have to ask those people why.

[steelo]

28 minutes ago, VotingCanadian said:

I've been on the PCMR discord server, the subreddit and their forum. I've generally seen some people finding laptops/gaming laptops worse than PC's (at the same price range). Why is this? I think a gaming laptop is great for a person that doesn't have the time/knowledge to built a PC and also wants the option of portability.

 

EDIT: Not only in the PCMR community.

They are generally more expensive than their PC equivalent and run hotter.

 

A $500 PC is usually much more powerful than a $500 laptop

[PlayStation 2]

There’s an argument to be made in terms of the price to performance factor not being there for laptops like it is on a desktop, but you’ll generally gain portability. For some a gaming laptop doesn’t offer enough of that as they’ll generally compromise heavily on battery life and thermals to give you that in a more compact form factor, but for others it’s enough of everything for them to be more justifiable than a gaming desktop of some sort. 

Personally, I own my powerful-enough desktop for when I don’t care to move around and an entertainment laptop for when I wanna use my shit on my bed or if I’m out somewhere.

[VersuS]

As everyone else has mentioned compromise is the big one, but comparable performance because of design restrictions is another huge factor. Thermals matter, you make the space smaller and reduce airflow and it goes down. I think they would get a lot less grief if they gave mobile gpus entirely different names to desktop variants or gave them the extra power to perform like the desktop gpus with the same name.
Also, they are a steeper learning curve. A laptop gamer that goes deep into it tends to have to learn to understand more when it comes to tweaking, troubleshooting, maintainence etc as few laptops have as much of a community to turn to as desktop components, so there are less complete step by step guides for stuff. (There are exceptions - alienware r series, razer blade etc but generally speaking they dont have the same longevity due to the nature of laptops and the inconvenience of repairs and limits on upgradability).

[upchur09]

Bought a sweet gaming laptop so that i can game while I travel. I was going to teach English in china... after that went down the drain I was going to teach in Italy... for obvious reasons I am now staying with my parents (UK) for a bit longer than anticipated but at least I have this sweet laptop to keep me occupied.

Edited March 18, 2020 by upchur09
spelling

[AngryBeaver]

With all of the game streaming providers popping up a gaming laptop is becoming even worse of am investment.

 

If you have a decent internet connection and a decent gaming pc you can also stream from it via various options like steam streaming, nvidia streaming, etc.

 

So I still think buying a much cheaper, but still decent laptop is the best route to take. Then take advantage of all the other ways to play your games via streaming.  I mean for 450-600 you can get a very respectable laptop with integrated graphics.  For another 700-800 you can build a pretty solid budgeting gaming pc.

 

The above setup would have much more gaming power than a 1500-1800 dollar laptop in most cases. Then since the home machine is doing the heavy lifting the temps and battery life on the laptop would be excellent.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 hour ago, AngryBeaver said:

With all of the game streaming providers popping up a gaming laptop is becoming even worse of am investment.

 

If you have a decent internet connection and a decent gaming pc you can also stream from it via various options like steam streaming, nvidia streaming, etc.

 

So I still think buying a much cheaper, but still decent laptop is the best route to take. Then take advantage of all the other ways to play your games via streaming.  I mean for 450-600 you can get a very respectable laptop with integrated graphics.  For another 700-800 you can build a pretty solid budgeting gaming pc.

 

The above setup would have much more gaming power than a 1500-1800 dollar laptop in most cases. Then since the home machine is doing the heavy lifting the temps and battery life on the laptop would be excellent.

Counterpoint to this.

 

1) Most people outside of cities do not in fact have a good enough Internet connection to do streaming.

 

2) Even for those of us who do have a good internet connection many people (such as myself) like to play games to pass the time on trains, buses, et cetera, where the wifi, if present at all, is never good enough for streaming

 

3) Steam streaming only works for Steam games. Nvidia streaming only for Nvidia-equipped systems. Some of us have large collections on GoG.com or other services not to mention first-party launchers making Steam streaming limited at best. Nvidia streaming does not work at all unless your system is nVdida GPU equipped ruling it out for a lot of people

 

3) Game streaming is not a good solution. It is often laggy, sometimes to the point of unworkability, and generally complicated and confusing. Compare this to running a game from steam, which requires three clicks from the desktop

 

4) A gaming laptop is not necessarily expensive. While I agree that expensive gaming laptops are not a great value, budget ones such as the Acer Nitro 5 offer very respectable performance handling most AAA titles at 1080p 60 high settings, and are often available in the $750 range, only $150 more than what you suggest spending on a game streaming semi-thin client. With a budget gaming laptop such as the Nitro 5 you also get the advantage of being able to do work such as basic CAD or video/image editing on the go which, to my knowledge, is not possible to stream from a desktop without a lot of complication.

[AngryBeaver]

49 minutes ago, orbitalbuzzsaw said:

Counterpoint to this.

 

1) Most people outside of cities do not in fact have a good enough Internet connection to do streaming.

 

2) Even for those of us who do have a good internet connection many people (such as myself) like to play games to pass the time on trains, buses, et cetera, where the wifi, if present at all, is never good enough for streaming

 

3) Steam streaming only works for Steam games. Nvidia streaming only for Nvidia-equipped systems. Some of us have large collections on GoG.com or other services not to mention first-party launchers making Steam streaming limited at best. Nvidia streaming does not work at all unless your system is nVdida GPU equipped ruling it out for a lot of people

 

3) Game streaming is not a good solution. It is often laggy, sometimes to the point of unworkability, and generally complicated and confusing. Compare this to running a game from steam, which requires three clicks from the desktop

 

4) A gaming laptop is not necessarily expensive. While I agree that expensive gaming laptops are not a great value, budget ones such as the Acer Nitro 5 offer very respectable performance handling most AAA titles at 1080p 60 high settings, and are often available in the $750 range, only $150 more than what you suggest spending on a game streaming semi-thin client. With a budget gaming laptop such as the Nitro 5 you also get the advantage of being able to do work such as basic CAD or video/image editing on the go which, to my knowledge, is not possible to stream from a desktop without a lot of complication.

If you are paying for a streaming service I think 25-40 mbps is plenty

 

You have a valid point on number two, but it is still doable if you go with one of the higher cost providers like verizon.

 

On point 3 these were just two options I tossed out that are readily available and easy to setup for pretty much anyone. There are a handful of other solutions. Btw you can add ANY game to steam and launch it via steam streaming. For example I can add WoW to it and play if I wanted and I have done it in the past.

 

On point 3b... I would say it depends on a lot of factors. If you are wanting to play a very competitive fps game at a high level then yes... it will make a difference. On other games though it isn't really an issue.

 

Lastly. The specs on that nitro would be much worse than my proposed system. I can easily purchase a 4th gen i7 enterprise dell/hp machine and toss in a 1050, 1050ti, 1650, etc. Which would cost me 300ish in total. You can build a 6 core rx580 or better build for 500-600 new.

 

I actually have a pi4 I use for streaming 4k gaming to a tv in my house (for when I am on dad duty). I have also taken it on vacations with a wireless m/kb for our teenager to play on. It also doubles as a plex box too.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

On 3/18/2020 at 8:37 PM, AngryBeaver said:

If you are paying for a streaming service I think 25-40 mbps is plenty

 

You have a valid point on number two, but it is still doable if you go with one of the higher cost providers like verizon.

 

On point 3 these were just two options I tossed out that are readily available and easy to setup for pretty much anyone. There are a handful of other solutions. Btw you can add ANY game to steam and launch it via steam streaming. For example I can add WoW to it and play if I wanted and I have done it in the past.

 

On point 3b... I would say it depends on a lot of factors. If you are wanting to play a very competitive fps game at a high level then yes... it will make a difference. On other games though it isn't really an issue.

 

Lastly. The specs on that nitro would be much worse than my proposed system. I can easily purchase a 4th gen i7 enterprise dell/hp machine and toss in a 1050, 1050ti, 1650, etc. Which would cost me 300ish in total. You can build a 6 core rx580 or better build for 500-600 new.

 

I actually have a pi4 I use for streaming 4k gaming to a tv in my house (for when I am on dad duty). I have also taken it on vacations with a wireless m/kb for our teenager to play on. It also doubles as a plex box too.

As regards the specs on the Nitro, yes they are worse than such a PC you are talking about, but that doesn't matter. Last I checked what mattered to most people was the gaming performance and given that I own a laptop with very similar specs to the Nitro 5 (XPS 15) in every area that matters for gaming performance I can say from experience that that sort of specs can play just about anything you'd like at 1080p high/ultra with 60+ fps and often over 100 even on more intensive titles