Need Help buying a gaming+prodcutivity laptop

[VirusDumb]

Budget (including currency): shouldn't exceed ₹65,000

Country: India

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: gonna mess around it a lot, should be able to play (plugged in to charger) upcoming games and games that came out this year at 1080p medium settings 60fps, would be cool if it runs GTA 6 at 720p 30 fps when it comes out for PC cuz I'll be holding it till the end of college, and speaking of college that the battery life should be good enough to run visual studio code and youtube and spotify and a bunch of chrome tabs for an entire day of college without needing to be plugged in, also bonus points if it can edit youtube videos at 1080p without getting too hot

[BahnStormer]

21 hours ago, VirusDumb said:

Budget (including currency): shouldn't exceed ₹65,000

Country: India

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: gonna mess around it a lot, should be able to play (plugged in to charger) upcoming games and games that came out this year at 1080p medium settings 60fps, would be cool if it runs GTA 6 at 720p 30 fps when it comes out for PC cuz I'll be holding it till the end of college, and speaking of college that the battery life should be good enough to run visual studio code and youtube and spotify and a bunch of chrome tabs for an entire day of college without needing to be plugged in, also bonus points if it can edit youtube videos at 1080p without getting too hot

Only mainstream model that comes close to that price is the Lenovo LOQ.... but the newer models come in around but that is 1Lakh: I bought one with a Ryzen 5 7840HS CPU, RTX4060, 16Gb DDR5, 1Tb M.2, 16" 144Hz 1920x1200 screen for that price.

 

Closest you can get to this with Lenovo is a 15" (1920x1200 144Hz) screen, Ryzen 5 7640HS and RTX3050 15" but that is ₹68500 and that GPU is a LOT slower (lower spec cores, less of them and only 4Gb VRAM)....

 

I could hunt around some of the brands that sometimes have cheaper, but it would be guesswork, not personal recommendation.

 

I know the Acer laptop shave some competitive budget versions... but when you push the price that low, they're only offering RTX2050 or GTX1650 (VERY slow).... and with Ryzen 5000, which on the laptops are normally Zen2!

Do you have to buy new? The models they're offering are so old, you'd be better off 2nd hand.

 

[BahnStormer]

Problem you'll have with older laptops is that it used to be rare to get a proper mux.... which can impact performance and battery life: you really need the GPU to completely disable when you're working on battery.... and then to wake up when you're on mains power and gaming.

[VirusDumb]

9 minutes ago, BahnStormer said:

Problem you'll have with older laptops is that it used to be rare to get a proper mux.... which can impact performance and battery life: you really need the GPU to completely disable when you're working on battery.... and then to wake up when you're on mains power and gaming.

which is why i prefer getting a new one, my buddy bought an acer with an rtx 2050 which barely lasts 2 hours, i have my eyes on hp's victus series, but i am not sure if they're enough vfm

[BahnStormer]

I think the closest you'll get to a "new" one is that R5 7000 series LOQ.... RTX3050 isn't great, but at that budget I don't think you're goign to get a hell of a lot better: you can game with it at 1080P and the Ryzen 7000 series LOQ should have a mux.

 

My LOQ16 (R7 7840HS) lasts about 6-7h IF I put in power save mode which drops the screen refresh and disables the GPU.... which is fine if I'm not gaming.

 

It can be charged off a USB charger (or trickle charged off a phone charger but only when it's in standby), but needs the bigger 230W brick to use the RTX4060 at full speed: 3Dmark scores on battery / 140W USB-C / Lenovo brick are 3 very different beasts!

[BahnStormer]

HP Victus aren't great vfm: new that is R63k for R5 7535HS, 8Gb RAM and a RTX2050!

 

R5500 more on the LOQ15 will get you a big step up on all three of those components: double the RAM, newer, more power efficient 25% faster GPU and the 7640HS is 10%-30% faster than the 7535HS.... and also more power efficient!

LOQ15 for the win, but a few percent over your target budget

 

If you wanted an HP: they have a refurbished 7840HS, with the rest of the spec the same as the LOQ15 at amazon, but roughly the same price R69k.

 

HP, faster CPU (probably ~5% faster when gaming, 15% when doing code compile/rendering).... but refurbished.

 

The HP chassis does look more sleek and metal though.... the Lenovo LOQ are the budget range: quite "plastic" and it does have a slightly slower CPU, but personally I've had a really good experience with various Lenovo's: I still own at least 5, going all the way back to a Core2Duo X61: with 8Gb RAM and running win10 on an SSD, plus an i7 3520u Thinkpad X230 and Ryzen 7 5700u Thinkpad E14....

 

I've also had several HPs (820G3, Spectre) and currently have a 840G8.

 

The HPs are okay, but difficult to rate as they have all had different "corporate" builds: my current one has too many different sets of security things slowing it down to count: Netskope, Crowdstrike, CloudflareWARP and GlobalProtect... plus probably more that I can't see!

[VirusDumb]

4 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

HP Victus aren't great vfm: new that is R63k for R5 7535HS, 8Gb RAM and a RTX2050!

i found 2 3050 models one for ₹62k(ryzen 5 5600h) and another one for ₹65k(ryzen 7 5800h) on amazon

[BahnStormer]

At least the 5600H and 5800H were actually Zen3.... my Thinkpad E14 with a 5700U was actually a slightly tweaked 4000 series chip, so Zen2, complete with performance and efficiency.

 

RTX3050 and a Zen3-based mobile chip should be pretty good, but a long way behind any of the 7000 series. 

 

It would be interesting to see what else you're getting  on those as that's a pretty big step backwards from the 7640HS for only R3500 savings (the 6 core 7640HS is 5-10% faster on most tests than the 8 core 5800H, even in multicore).

[VirusDumb]

7 hours ago, BahnStormer said:

At least the 5600H and 5800H were actually Zen3.... my Thinkpad E14 with a 5700U was actually a slightly tweaked 4000 series chip, so Zen2, complete with performance and efficiency.

 

RTX3050 and a Zen3-based mobile chip should be pretty good, but a long way behind any of the 7000 series. 

 

It would be interesting to see what else you're getting  on those as that's a pretty big step backwards from the 7640HS for only R3500 savings (the 6 core 7640HS is 5-10% faster on most tests than the 8 core 5800H, even in multicore).

I mean on paper doesn't sound that bad,16gbs of ram and a 512gb ssd and 144hz display too

[BahnStormer]

If you plot VFM from the cheapest to the most expensive models, there's "sweet spot" in the middle.... once you get out of the complete e-waste range, you will find that paying 10% extra will get you 10-30% more performance (GPU, CPU, battery life, screen quality, materials quality).... then at the top end, you will find the prices will be going up exponentially higher for smaller and smaller improvements in performance: manufacturers will be trying to pack an RTX4080 or RTX4090 into a compact form factor with a small battery and running into the physical limits of getting a high end CPU+GPU to run at a good speed and dissipate all that heat / run on a compact battery.

 

Pricing varies per region. Unfortunately for you, I think that sweet spot based on Indian pricing starts around ₹70k (about 800-850USD), with the LOQ15 I mentioned being one of the few that is below ₹70k, with the only real compromise being the RTX3050 instead of a RTX4000 series: this will get you at least a Ryzen 5 7000, RTX3050 and a decent screen from a known manufacturer.

 

Reducing anything below that will result in an overall much poorer experience: fewer features (I think most Ryzen 5000 did NOT come with a mux as standard!) and older CPUs will not only have slower performance, but they are less efficient, so will normally have lower battery life for the same size/weight battery.

 

It is likely the same storey on GPU performance/Watt, although obviously not if you're comparing a RTX2050 to a RTX4070.... performance per Watt will be better... but it will use more power.

 

I appreciate you may have a hard limit of ₹65k, so if you're going for older hardware, then you should just try to get a 2nd hand model from a good manufacturer and make sure it has a MUX + decent screen with good YouTube reviews... it is features like this that the lesser known manufacturers will try to cheap-out on. This way you at least get a good deal on the older model hardware.

 

The Ryzen 5000 is a big step down from the 7000 series; it's not a bad CPU, but it is 2 years old now - the same reason why the Intel 14th gen is so poor for efficiency.... the 13th and 14th gen are just slightly tweaked iterations of the 12th gen from 2021 (zero IPC improvement with the Intels, just higher clock speeds and much more power).