So I am and old and old school computer geek and gamer.
I have always built and tuned my own system from parts, which I gamed pretty heavily on. And then had a cheap laptop for email and video watching. I never really considered gaming laptops because they were much more expensive, for much less customization for much less performance.
I am looking into getting a new system, and incidentally a new laptop. Just being honest with myself I am not a serious gamer anymore. It comes and goes in spurts, many weeks none, most weeks only an hour or two, and then 4 or 5 hours a day when an game I am excited about comes out(Skyrim-Fallout) for a month or so. Then it drops off again for several months.
I also usually by a refurbished laptop for 200 or so, and they last 6-12 months, anre not worth it to fix,then I get another one, but I am tired of that and think I want a good one with a warranty.
So for the first time I am researching gaming laptops. It looks like the tech has advanced far enough that laptops seem to offer everything I need in gaming in the $900-$1300 range, which is more or less what I used to spend on my desktop system. Really all I want is something with an SSD (probably one of the small SSD and larger disk duals) realistically and a video card that will handle the next 3 years or so of games competently, no need for ultra resolutions and frame rates, and I never play FPSs.
The first question for laptop gamers is whether 17 inch is that much better than 15in your experience?
And the second is, am I missing something, or just totally fooling myself?
And are their brands you suggest looking into or avoiding for value and reliability?
No huge hurry, just trying to get a plan together so I am ready to pounce when the Christmas deals come out.
Definitely wait a little bit. Nvidia’s partners are going to start rolling out new gaming laptops with their new GPU architecture really soon. The new architecture is low powered and efficient enough that, for the first time, the laptop equivalent performance is going to more or less match desktop GPU performance!
So a 1060 in a laptop will perform about on par as a 1060 on a desktop (where as a mobile 960 last gen was absolutely not on par with the desktop equivalent GPU.
So make sure you’re getting in on this latest gen of GPU’s. It’ll also open up the possibility of VR on your laptop in the future, if that’s something you want to try.
I bought a 17" Sager (Clevo) laptop from xoticpc a couple years back that I am very happy with. They are definitely a brand to look at for the most bang for your buck. Had no hardware issues with it whatsoever and it still runs like a champ. Only has a GTX 860m but it still easily runs everything I’ve tried.
To get reprojection down to under 1% you need a Titan XP. It’ll be a while before that performance level is mainstream on PCs and available on laptops.
Well a heads up to every body, I finally pulled the trigger, so you can expect the prices to drop by 50% tomorrow.
Amazon had an MSI 6GB 1060 with SSD and 1TB HD in my range(barely with taxes) in time to get it shipped for some hard core in bed vegging over Christmas vacation. And I realized a while ago if I don’t set a check list and follow it, I’ll waste months whining and waiting for “just a bit better”
Read these for full details, but reprojection is the term for what happens when the next frame isn’t ready in time so what the headset does is repeat the last frame so the framerate is still 90 fps. If the framerate drops below 90 fps or too much reprojection occurs you will feel unwell. The RX 480 and GTX 1060 may indeed be the minima, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get a good or even decent experience with them.
I understand reprojection, and it’s something I believe happens all the time, or should be happening, even if the game maintains it’s 90 FPS frame rate, simply because the headset can poll it’s positional information at a faster rate than 90 Hz.
So, in cases of fast head movement, reprojection warps the existing frame so as to make it seem as though the perspective is changing while the headset waits for a new frame.
Maintaining a high frame rate might be an issue in a particular game, but I can’t imagine it being one in the majority. I’ve never heard anyone say that you need a Titan to run VR. I can maybe see someone trying to play a game at max settings that has VR “support” but not built for VR in mind and whose high settings are just too much to maintain that 90 FPS at all times - or possibly a poorly optimized game with frame rate issues. But that’s probably goign to ruin your VR time with that game regardless of hardware.
