So I really don't know much of anything when it comes to mobile's hardware specs. I know in a general sense that desktop stuff is cheaper and better, but there seems so much variance between stuff I am really not to sure which is really a decent deal. Ah, should mention I'm not really interested in this, I don't have a good reason for wanting to game on the move. This is for a friend, I presume it's so he can just play games while he waits between classes while at school and possibly have some lan parties(maybe that's just me teehee). As a comparison this is what he has. Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge GTX 660 Ti 8 gb 1600 ram other decent mid tier stuff. I mention that because he asked about if he could find something equivalent or better for about 1000$. I promptly responded no, but I hope you guys can give me a good idea about how well laptops could do in comparison.
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-gaming-laptops-1/ Does this help? I send the article to every person mentioning they need a new laptop that can run something even moderately demanding.
Well, graphic wise you'd need at least a *80M to compete with the 660 ti. In the benchmark result list i use, the 660 ti is scored at 4690, and the 680M is at 3517, the closest alternative for the 660 ti in a gaming laptop would be the 880M (4313), and the ONLY more powerful mobile gpu is the 980M (6307). I have yet to see AMD having alternatives. Oh, and the laptops featuring the 980M are usually more in the 2000 $ price range, so if your friend want to have something so-called a "decent" laptop that can compete with his desktop, he would need to shell out something like 3x what his desktop costed.
You're not going to get a useful gaming laptop at budget. For a couple hundred more, you can get pretty decent specs, but those machines are cutting every possible corner that can be cut. Keyboards, trackpads, panels and disk drives are going to be horrible. However those don't show up on a spec sheet. Unfortunately, those are the things that let you actually interact with the machine, it turns into an unpleasant experience. But some oems get creative in their cost cutting. I know trickster's laptop hasn't received graphics drivers since the release drivers. Hire a programmer to tweak the drivers for your unique machine, but don't keep him around to update those drivers. Reviews are performed early in the device's lifetime when those original drivers aren't too old. Not two years later when the device is almost useless. Overall, a laptop is a unified device that has many unique parts working together. It's not a box of specs like a desktop can be. You get what you pay for.
Just get a decent laptop or go for a really expensive gaming laptop, everything in between pretty much is as Spartacus said, corner cutting. Next laptop I get, despite how overpriced I know it is, will be a Razer Blade of some kind. It's thin, light and powerful, and regardless of the cost, that is what I want.
This might not be a horrific laptop for $1000. http://slickdeals.net/f/7441482-gig...s-8-1-64-bit-999-or-less-newegg-back-in-stock But a 870M is old hat. I think it's basically an underclocked 660 Ti. Just keep in mind that the keyboard, trackpad, speakers, screen & other "touchy feely" stuff will usually be dogshit. If it doesn't show up in a spec sheet, then there's no incentive to make it not-shit.
If he's willing to compromise on resolution or image quality (he may be required to depending on the resolution of his desktop and whatever laptop he gets), he can save on graphics performance, and (in general) price. Yeah it's old, but is still relevant since there are still plenty of Kepler GPUs (desktop and mobile) that haven't been succeeded by Maxwell GPUs. EDIT: I checked the specs of the 870M and it has a slightly higher core clock than the 660 Ti, but the usual lower memory clock. 870M: 941 MHz core clock, boost, 5 Gbps memory 660 Ti: 915 MHz core clock, 980 MHz boost, 6 Gbps memory However the 660 Ti shouldn't really perform worse because of the higher memory clock and since desktops probably have more thermal room than laptops, on average, which would help the boost.
That's a really good point. The fewer pixels that need to be lit up, the lower your performance requirements. If you can snag a respectable dGPU on a 768p display, you can really hit it out of the park. Usually that stuff only shows up on mobile-minded machines though. Not that those are bad, since you need to actually carry your laptop.
If I remember right even though the 660ti has a decent memory it is 192 bits, which can cause some problems. It is one of the reasons it doesn't handle something like msaa real well. Thanks for the help so far everyone.
You could buy a laptop from Sager Notebook or XOTICPC. Customising options is pretty easy and there's a wide variety of things to add.
About a year ago, I was saying the same thing. Mobile gaming still isn't a good value and definitely doesn't age well. However, the performance disparity really isn't that bad. Some games are pretty fucking close: But most still have a decent margin: And that's with nearly identical "chips". We're mostly just varying clocks and other ancillary stuff due to thermal restrictions. We whine about desktop gaming getting stale due to increased efficiency, but a by-product is that laptops are getting pretty fucking performant if you can ignore their other inherent limitations.
No masochist would by a laptop you can drive over. It has no value if all you do in life is game, and by yourself, but with mobile gaming you can even use it for classroom (with the added bonus of doing all your downloads on the university connection), and also able to LAN with your friends in a much simpler and cleaner fashion.
