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Laptop for Gaming
A few years ago I bought a gaming laptop from ASUS... not top of the line... it was around $1200. It's a G75V and I really do like it and it has worked well for MMORPG's, but I would really like to be able to play more FPS style games.
The problem I have, with Planetside 2 especially, is that when I move the mouse to look around, things kind of blur and it's not really smooth. It's fairly subtle, but it really makes aiming kind of hard.
I compared it to a friend's desktop computer and his looks super smooth and clear.
Has anyone else that plays games on a laptop experienced this and know what I am talking about? I get this even on the lowest settings. The graphics setting level doesn't affect the severity of this issue.
So anyway .. my question is: Is this just a common thing with laptops (maybe the screen) or has the technology improved for this particular issue in the last few years?
I would really like to get a new gaming laptop, but I'm kind of hesitant thinking I may have the same issue. (A new desktop is kind of not a possibility at this time.)
Here is some info on what I currently have:
Intel core i7 2.3GHz
16GB RAM
nvidia gtx 660M 2GB
Maybe it's just not beefy enough to handle fps games without blurring?
The problem I have, with Planetside 2 especially, is that when I move the mouse to look around, things kind of blur and it's not really smooth. It's fairly subtle, but it really makes aiming kind of hard.
I compared it to a friend's desktop computer and his looks super smooth and clear.
Has anyone else that plays games on a laptop experienced this and know what I am talking about? I get this even on the lowest settings. The graphics setting level doesn't affect the severity of this issue.
So anyway .. my question is: Is this just a common thing with laptops (maybe the screen) or has the technology improved for this particular issue in the last few years?
I would really like to get a new gaming laptop, but I'm kind of hesitant thinking I may have the same issue. (A new desktop is kind of not a possibility at this time.)
Here is some info on what I currently have:
Intel core i7 2.3GHz
16GB RAM
nvidia gtx 660M 2GB
Maybe it's just not beefy enough to handle fps games without blurring?
Comments
Of course there is a huge difference between the 660m and the 980m.
I guess what you have is like this one?
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-gt72-dominator-pro-g-034-17-3-laptop-intel-core-i7-24gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-256gb-solid-state-drive-aluminum-black/4556211.p?id=1219766811218&skuId=4556211
One thing I really like A LOT about mine is that it never gets hot at all on the keys. How is the MSI GT 72 with the heat?
Hell a 980m is only slightly worse than 970 and maybe 15% worse than Gtx 980 so eg with that card you will get insane performance.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Depending on the game, the GPU will get hot, but the keyboard and the bottom of the laptop never get hot. I've been really happy with it
He probably needs the mobility. usual reasons - being a student, travelling a lot, moving houses frequently, doesn't want to be confined to one room, needs it for other purposes which the desktop is not suitable, e.g. Watching movies in bed.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015PYYDMQ/ref=s9_simh_gw_g147_i5_r?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-1&pf_rd_r=0BDK8PQE23HYA74ZGDKJ&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2079475242&pf_rd_i=desktop
From the benchmarks it looks like it will be able to play battlefield 4 and black ops 3 on ultra settings at 1080p and 30fps, which is really good for a $760 laptop. They show benchmarks for other games too, but not for planetside.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-960M.138006.0.html
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
BUT...
If I'm playing graphics intensive games, I plug the laptop in to a LAN and then use Steam to stream it from my (much beefier) desktop. It looks b-e-a-utiful.
Surprisingly good bang for the buck are the Acer Notebooks. I have used these a few generations ago and was very happy with them. The downside is there are 27 versions of each one so look at the specs carefully; e.g one will have the same processor but a smaller driver or another will have a SSD paired with a mechanical drive. Skylake i7 Version here...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834315129&cm_re=acer_gaming_notebook-_-34-315-129-_-Product
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
If you ignore cost, does it really need to be the same computer at work as at home? If you work on work stuff from home, and having two separate machines would mean needing to copy gigabytes of stuff back and forth every day, then perhaps it does need to be the same computer. But if you do work stuff at work and games at home and not the other way around, you're likely better off with two separate computers.
Gaming laptops are necessarily slower than gaming desktops, and also fundamentally a proposition of packing too much heat into too little space. They also tend to have short life expectancies as a result. If you go high enough up the chain to get more performance, you can easily end up paying more for a single gaming laptop than you would for two separate desktops that would each outperform the gaming laptop at their respective tasks. And if you're not happy with the laptop you have now, you're going to be looking at spending an awful lot on a new one, as you wouldn't be happy with spending $1000 to merely get an extra 10% performance.
I bring this up because I think it's best for you to get the best computer setup for your personal needs. Laptop needs vary wildly from one person to another. For a lot people, the suitable thing to do is to get both a high performance gaming desktop and a cheap, portable laptop, for example. It sounds like that's likely not a good fit for you. But if you don't explain what you're going to do with it, mostly what people will recommend is what they like for their own needs. You don't want to buy something that would be great for someone else's needs but wildly inappropriate to your own.
Do you get a blur at all on your current ROG when you look around in fps games?
But your old laptop is already decently capable, so it's not like you're replacing some awful Ultrabook. In that case, you should be looking at a large upgrade, not a small one. You don't want to spend a bunch of money for a modest upgrade and in six months, be right back where you are now, needing to upgrade again.
For the CPU, you want a 45 W version of a Broadwell or Sky Lake processor. Sky Lake is better, but Broadwell is also acceptable, as Sky Lake is still fairly new and not that much better. Older Haswell processors are not. You're trying to pack as much performance into that TDP as you can, and the die shrink from 22 nm to 14 nm matters a lot. Furthermore, you want a 45 W CPU, not some lower wattage one, as lower power consumption requires lower clock speeds, and hence less performance.
For the GPU, you want a GeForce GTX 970M or better. Prices climb so quickly if you go over a GTX 970M that you might want to just get that and be done with it. AMD isn't competitive in laptop GPUs at the moment, so you want Nvidia.
For memory, you want two identical memory modules. You probably want two 8 GB modules, but two 4 GB modules works, too. You definitely don't want just a single 8 GB module, as that will cut your memory bandwidth in half for no good reason.
For a monitor, now that you can get G-sync in a laptop, that's probably what you want. That will make animations smoother at a given refresh rate.
You definitely want an SSD. Depending on your storage capacity needs, it would be nice if you can get just an SSD and nothing else. That's not necessarily practical for people who need 1 TB or more of storage, however, so if you need huge amounts of storage, you'll need both an SSD and a hard drive.
And then you need something that checks off all of those boxes. For example, this does, provided that you upgrade the monitor, memory, storage, and OS:
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8677-clevo-p670re3-p-8650.html?startcustomization=1
With the upgrades, that comes to around $1600. You can probably find something comparable from other sources. Actually, you can probably find almost exactly the same thing from other sources, as a lot of places sell rebranded Clevo laptops. Feel free to shop around, but expect to end up paying something in that ballpark.
Do be warned that a high-powered gaming laptop is not going to be the most portable laptop. That is, it's not going to be some 13", 3 pound device that you could comfortably carry around all day but is awful at gaming. But it sounds like you're interested in moving it perhaps a few times per day at most, not carrying it around all day long, so you don't need extreme portability.
Thanks for the very detailed advice. I guess that's close to what I wanted to spend too ... I was hoping for under 1500, but a little bit more may work.
I'm not concerned about the bulkiness and weight. I'm used to that with my current one.
MSI GT72 $1798.00, comes with free 27" monitor.
MSI GE72 $1398.00, comes with free backpack.
The good thing about MSI laptops are their concentration on making a balanced hardware build, dissipating heat comfortably, good input feel, and a good monitor.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check those out .. but I have to say, jonp200's comment about the heat makes me hesitant to get MSI
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
That said, some gaming laptops have worse problems with heat than others. I'd stay far away from any gaming laptops that go out of their way to advertise how exceptionally thin they are. If the basic problem is too much heat in too little space, going out of your way to use as little space as possible tends to make the problem worse, not better. Non-gaming laptops that don't put out much heat (at the expense of not offering much performance, either) can get away with being smaller and thinner without overheating.
I couldn't find a bottom shot of the Sager Quizzical linked. I know some Sager models have dual cooler / fan rear exhausts. Can't recall how good the intakes looked. Clevo's are good. Don't count them out. It's crazy though how their cases vary. One would think that they would have a good airflow design by now and stick to it. But their cases are all over the place.
One thing I wouldn't have gotten is one with side exhaust or little to no intake. I'd probably go to Lowes and grab some screen and put it over the vents regardless if it already has screened.
The Asus I have now is really good with heat. It never gets hot and very very rarely feels even warm on the keys. The last Asus I had before this one got annoyingly hot, but their case design was changed a lot since that one.