Thinking of going laptop and need advice

[SpeedZealot369]

Hey forum so I have been wanting for awhile to get a laptop for some portability. The main issue is as I'm sure everyone is familiar with is sacrificing some gaming horsepower. I currently have a i7 3.4 ghz in my pc, along with a single radeon 5850.

I am looking at a laptop that has a

Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz

along with a

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 485M 2GB GDDR5

not to shabby at all but my main concern is how much gaming power if at all am i going to lose out on? I'm not sure how powerful that gpu is compared to mine. the cpu is definitly slower even though it is second gen i7.

Thanks 🙂

 

[StrangerGuy]

I'm pretty sure you got a laptop that is:

1. Not really portable
2. Crap to mediocre LCD compared to a cheap desktop IPS
3. Pretty expensive
4. Because of 1, 2 and 3, you probably won't move it a lot, negating the actual benefit of a laptop
5. All this for a mobile GPU for with the same performance on par with a desktop GTX 460 1GB

It is worth it? You be the judge.

 

[Zen0]

Hey forum so I have been wanting for awhile to get a laptop for some portability. The main issue is as I'm sure everyone is familiar with is sacrificing some gaming horsepower. I currently have a i7 3.4 ghz in my pc, along with a single radeon 5850.

I am looking at a laptop that has a

Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.0-2.9GHz

along with a

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 485M 2GB GDDR5

not to shabby at all but my main concern is how much gaming power if at all am i going to lose out on? I'm not sure how powerful that gpu is compared to mine. the cpu is definitly slower even though it is second gen i7.

Thanks 🙂

The high end mobile GPUs are about 1/2 as fast as a similar high end Desktop GPU. Comparing top to top, the discrepancies get higher... around 4x+ the difference.

A Laptop can provide a similar gaming experience as a high end Desktop, but the difference will be the resolution, Anti-aliasing, effects, shadows etc that must be turned down immensely.

 

[Arkadrel]

how much gaming power if at all am i going to lose out on?

Probably around ~15-20% on the GPU performance.

On CPU you ll go from 3.4ghz -> 2.0ghz which will hurt performance.
How much? No idea, depends on how cpu intensive the game your playing is.

I'm pretty sure you got a laptop that is:

1. Not really portable
2. Crap to mediocre LCD compared to a cheap desktop IPS
3. Pretty expensive
4. Because of 1, 2 and 3, you probably won't move it a lot, negating the actual benefit of a laptop
5. All this for a mobile GPU for with the same performance on par with a desktop GTX 460 1GB

It is worth it? You be the judge.

^ Above, agreed with.

High end gameing laptops usually end up weighing half a ton, with crappy battery life. So they just end up sitting in one place, like a desktop does, and they usually cost ~3x as much for simular performance (as a normal desktop pc).

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Any laptop with the specs you've listed is going to be a beast and not very portable. You're looking at more of a desktop replacement, more than you are a laptop.

If you're SERIOUSLY interested in mobility, you should look around the 800 dollar price point and find something with a HD5670, HD6550 or a GTX 450m/460m and call it a day. Weaker GPUs but those laptops will have a fairly low 720p resolution and will perform quite nicely regardless at medium settings.

That is what I would aim for if you already have a capable gaming machine at home and are just looking for a laptop that can also game in a pinch.