I’m very out of the loop when it comes to current laptop hardware, but I’m in the market for a new one. There are some features and specs that I’m sure I want, but I have no idea what brands are the best or where to start my search! I have no specific budget. A great deal would be awesome but I am willing to pay a lot for something I can use well into the future.
Here are some features I’m looking for:
16GB RAM (Preferably DDR4)
SSD Storage
Long battery life
At least 1080p resolution
CPU at least 3.0GHz
GPU able to handle high-end graphics
I’ve tried looking at brands online but there are so many that seem to get good reviews, and it’s hard to compare from a game developer’s perspective. Can anyone help?
I just bought a lenovo ideapad flex(didn’t care about the whole touchscreen and flex part though). It has 8GB RAM, SSD, 1080P, 7th-gen i5 @2.5GHz, and an R7 M460. This isn’t near what I would call high end, but that can be a good thing for testing since not all gamers have high end machines like some of the devs do. It is also plenty fast enough for development on the go(haven’t done too much testing yet though). The good part is that I only paid $650 for it. If I had a higher budget, there are other options I could have gotten, but that was the best deal I could find in the price range I had available. I could have gotten more RAM or HD space, or even a better processor, but then I would have had to deal with only integrated intel graphics…I can’t skimp that far on the GPU.
The only issue I see is the fact that you want both battery life and a dedicated GPU. Those 2 things aren’t generally compatible, although if you have one like mine you can turn off the GPU when it makes sense to(not very often in gamedev though).
If you don’t mind paying highly, then there are many options for you. What types of games are you developing? In my opinion with a good budget it is easy to find a good machine. It is when you have a limited budget that challenges come.
Any of those should help get you started…and set you back quite a bit.
MSI is generally the brand I recommend when someone wants a gaming laptop. Below is one of their laptops that has a modern Intel i7 processor, 16GB RAM (upgradeable to 64GB), and a GeForce GTX 1070.
Only problem is, like @kburkhart84 mentioned, gaming laptops almost never have very good battery life. Typically you’ll see about three hours and that’s it. If you expect to game on it you had better expect a way to keep it plugged in. Or carry a tiny inverter generator like the one below (runs for up to eight hours on 2.1 liters of gas).
I have the dominator pro that is linked to above. I really like it but the battery life is not good. There are gaming laptops that will do graphics switching that will have better battery life. The Alienware 15 that I bought before the MSI was able to switch to the integrated graphics to save power but it also had heating issues so I returned it for the MSI.
Read reviews, check out both MSI and Asus gaming laptops. Remember to read what people says about cooling.
I have a bit older gaming laptop and it overheats. Very annoying. I have changed thermal paste and cleaned the fan many times but the problem keeps reoccurring.
So look for a powerful laptop with as good cooling as possible while still fitting your size constraints.
As already mentioned battery life isn’t something you will get with a gaming laptop unless you go for those which are very energy efficient, but those are also quite a bit less powerful. The more powerful the GPU and CPU the worse battery life it will have. The powerful ones are already very heavy and clunky as they are so they can’t really have bigger battery either.
Also worth note is that your laptop will almost certainly not run at full spec when running from battery. (If you look at the capacity of the battery and the maximum power usage of the components this is pretty clear.) That’s not often noticeable for a CPU as these days they’re designed to seamlessly ramp up and down depending on what you’re doing. It is very definitely noticeable in the GPU department, though. If you’re planning to run from battery then keep in mind that the beasty GPU under the hood will only be working at a fraction of its usual power.
A laptop with an i9 series processor sounds amazing… until you discover that it has serious thermal throttling problems with just about any heavy load. Worse yet it’s heavy and has horrid battery life. Like reviewers have been mentioning it’s basically a laptop for people who want to treat i9 as a status symbol and don’t expect to make real use of it.
Below is my recommendation for a portable workstation. Just looking at the numbering of the i7-8700 CPU may lead people to believe it’s slower than the above i9-8950HK CPU but it has better performance with less thermal throttling.
Additionally it’s only slightly more than half the weight of the i9 series laptop and has about double the battery life.
Beefy laptops are awesome, but they’re not exactly super portable, and when you’re on the go it’s not necessarily raw horsepower that’s your priority. And even if it was, you’re not getting it if you need the battery.
The problem is that they all throttle (at least the ones that came out in the last 12 months), quite easily too, making all that horsepower a little less meaningful.
They are super bulky, they make a ton of noise AND they throttle. Wanting one of those to not be an issue is reasonable I think.
I think that Intel dropped the ball a little bit with the temperatures with coffee lake and all manufacturers are currently struggling to cool it.
Sorry, I wasn’t being clear there. I meant that I assumed the thing you were responding to was sarcastic. I was making a failed attempt at agreeing with you.
Exactly, that’s what I was referring to in my next sentence. If you want the horsepower it’s got to be plugged in, which obviously has a huge impact on its usefulness on the go.
Edit: Wait, you mean thermal throttling on top of not having enough juice for full speed on battery? Yikes.
I have a beefy Alienware 17 R4 (2017Q4 - I7-7820K, 1440p@120Hz, 32Gb RAM, GTX 1080, a mounth of SSDs). I only use it plugged in, but it is very rare that I want to use it on the go (I don’t fly that often, when I go by car I’m driving), when I want to use it I have power, so whatever.
I don’t carry it around daily, when I do, I have a bag so I can. The only thing: I use bean bag holder when it’s in my lap because it’s getting f***ng hot, but it does not throttle.
The thing is, it’s a desktop replacement. It’s better than a desktop, because you can move it more easily and you can use it with or without a desk and monitor.
But if you want something to carry around all the time and want to work in the park, well, you should choose a less beefy one (and not Alienware at all).