Help me to choose gaming laptop for ESO and stuff

0utLaw

Hi guys!

I found myself stuck surfing internet in attempts to find a decent gaming laptop, so i thoght maybe ESO community can help me out.
Let me describe what exactly i am aiming at:

First of all i need it to run ESO flawlessly with high-end settings and fps (especially in PVP combat situations). Also im going to play Fallout4 and Skyrim heavily modded, other cool new RPG's and some new FPS shooters like Battlefield 1. Don't wanna see any ghosting on my monitor while playing, and stutters at high to ultra settings.
Budget is around 2000 - 2300$. Need 17 inch display, decent aluminium chassis (preferably unibody like). Life of battery, weight, keyboard - doesn't matter much. Oh yeah, and would be nice if it wouldn't melt my table in stress sessions , so i hope it will have a decent cooling system.

Well, something like that.
Thanks in advance for any good advice, cheers

Rohamad_Ali

I use ASUS ROGs . Never over heated and great system for price .

0utLaw

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I use ASUS ROGs . Never over heated and great system for price .

Have you ever compared ROG's to MSI or Alienware lines for example? Any advantages or disadvantages over them you know?
Thanks.

Rohamad_Ali

0utLaw wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I use ASUS ROGs . Never over heated and great system for price .

Have you ever compared ROG's to MSI or Alienware lines for example? Any advantages or disadvantages over them you know?
Thanks.

Only advantage is price .

Jameliel

https://www.pcgamer.com/msi-gs65-stealth-thin-review/

Invincible

You're going to need a minimum of a 7700hq & gtx1080 or else cyrodil and newer zones are gonna suck.

If you wanna play in 4k.... find another game.

Dreepa

I have been studying that topic for the last year, and it was really hard.
Basically I spend hours on hours on youtube reviews, forums, and laptop review sites, and even ordered some and returned them.

My verdict: Gaming laptops are a technical nightmare. And no manufacture has the perfect setup.

Here is what I concluded:

MSI GT73VR (and all the series that use the same case/layout):

Best for maintenance. Remove cover, get access to all internals. Fan cleaning is easy on this one.A bit thick.
140 hz screen. gsync. Very good overall.
However, drawbacks:
-Low quality fans. If you have bad luck (like a lot do) they start making noises after some time.
-TN panel screen which I found annoying for the way the white color changes with slight changes of the head position.
-Anti glare on the panel is a bit too strong, making fonts not very readable.
-Power limitation: Hybrid power solution means that if you run a 1080 with a big CPU (like HK) the peak power consumption will drain on the battery, even when on power supply. If the battery is empty, power based throttling will occur to a certain degree.

Overall, if you do not care for the things I found annoying with the screen, MSI has a real good overall gaming laptop


DELL Alienware 17 R4 / R5

Very good build quality.
If you have bad luck, you will have heat issues. Very fluctuating quality in the heat sink application.
I love the IPS full HD screen.
If you go for non-gsync it has a switchable internal GPU to use, to maximize running time on battery. You can switch to dedicated GPU with a button.
DELL support is quite ok usually.
Only 2 USB ports
Not so easy to get to the internals compared to MSI, but you get easily to fans and RAM/SSD which is often enough.

In the end I went with this AW17. My first model had those heat issues everyone was talking about. Returned it, got a new one. No heat issues.
However, I had problems with the screen. Dell did send a technician to replace the screen withing 1 week.
No problems since then.


Asus ROG I have no experience with, but they have no easy access to the internals and you read a lot about software issues with asus software stuff.
Also, Asus support has a bad rep in my circles (and I know a lot of tech guys).

ThumbtackJake

Dreepa wrote: »

My verdict: Gaming laptops are a technical nightmare. And no manufacture has the perfect setup.

This. You could build a desktop with equal or greater power for a fraction of the cost. If portability is what you're aiming at, you could always go for a small form factor build. Won't be AS portable as a laptop, but still cheaper. If you need a laptop for something (taking notes in class for example), it'd still be cheaper to build a desktop for gaming and get a basic laptop/netbook for other things.

I'd say the only reason to get a "gaming" laptop is if you are constantly traveling with long train/bus/plane rides, going from hotel to hotel, etc.

Serjustin19

Whatever you buy please don't buy

1. Graphics built in mother board
2. Windows XP (soon to be Windows Vista, makes perfect sense)

0utLaw

Dreepa wrote: »

I have been studying that topic for the last year, and it was really hard.
Basically I spend hours on hours on youtube reviews, forums, and laptop review sites, and even ordered some and returned them.

My verdict: Gaming laptops are a technical nightmare. And no manufacture has the perfect setup.

Here is what I concluded:

MSI GT73VR (and all the series that use the same case/layout):

Best for maintenance. Remove cover, get access to all internals. Fan cleaning is easy on this one.A bit thick.
140 hz screen. gsync. Very good overall.
However, drawbacks:
-Low quality fans. If you have bad luck (like a lot do) they start making noises after some time.
-TN panel screen which I found annoying for the way the white color changes with slight changes of the head position.
-Anti glare on the panel is a bit too strong, making fonts not very readable.
-Power limitation: Hybrid power solution means that if you run a 1080 with a big CPU (like HK) the peak power consumption will drain on the battery, even when on power supply. If the battery is empty, power based throttling will occur to a certain degree.

Overall, if you do not care for the things I found annoying with the screen, MSI has a real good overall gaming laptop


DELL Alienware 17 R4 / R5

Very good build quality.
If you have bad luck, you will have heat issues. Very fluctuating quality in the heat sink application.
I love the IPS full HD screen.
If you go for non-gsync it has a switchable internal GPU to use, to maximize running time on battery. You can switch to dedicated GPU with a button.
DELL support is quite ok usually.
Only 2 USB ports
Not so easy to get to the internals compared to MSI, but you get easily to fans and RAM/SSD which is often enough.

In the end I went with this AW17. My first model had those heat issues everyone was talking about. Returned it, got a new one. No heat issues.
However, I had problems with the screen. Dell did send a technician to replace the screen withing 1 week.
No problems since then.


Asus ROG I have no experience with, but they have no easy access to the internals and you read a lot about software issues with asus software stuff.
Also, Asus support has a bad rep in my circles (and I know a lot of tech guys).

Thank you for such detailed response!

I was also looking at "Razer Blade Pro 17' FHD" model, which goes for 1999$ right now (2.3k before). That model has Nvidia GTS 1060, IPS 120 hz screen but without g-sync, 256 gb SSD + 2 TB HDD, I-7700HQ.

I was wondering first of all, how strong is the difference between GTX1060 and 1070. Im not considering GTX 1080 in laptop cause of price and heating issues mostly. Also curious how bad is it without g-sync, how it will impact my gaming experience for example?

Juju_beans

ESO is cpu intensive so be mindful of that and heating issues with gaming laptops.

0utLaw

ThumbtackJake wrote: »

Dreepa wrote: »

My verdict: Gaming laptops are a technical nightmare. And no manufacture has the perfect setup.

This. You could build a desktop with equal or greater power for a fraction of the cost. If portability is what you're aiming at, you could always go for a small form factor build. Won't be AS portable as a laptop, but still cheaper. If you need a laptop for something (taking notes in class for example), it'd still be cheaper to build a desktop for gaming and get a basic laptop/netbook for other things.

I'd say the only reason to get a "gaming" laptop is if you are constantly traveling with long train/bus/plane rides, going from hotel to hotel, etc.

The thing is that i will be away from home for 5-6 month yearly because of job, i'm a sailor. This is the main reason i decided to get a decent gaming laptop so i can use it both at home and while in voyage.

Heimpai

There isn’t a good answer honestly..my friend had an awesome rog..i had a razer and my shitted itself so i built a desktop, I’ve had 3 gaming laptops, none turned out well

Just stay away from alienware you’ll be paying for the name

Master_Quack14b14_ESO

Honestly, for what you want you will never find a laptop by itself that will perform as expected. However, it would definitely help to know the use case. Do you travel a lot? Just not have enough space? Will the system be used for gaming as well as productivity (work*)?

A gaming laptop only really has a 2 year life span because the low power GPUs in them barely play the newest titles and as soon as a new generation of GPUs comes out, games' graphics will increase to take advantage making your fancy new laptop seem old and slow very quickly.

If you have to have a mobile system, a Razer laptop with the Razer Core will give you the ability to use a full size desktop GPU and give you the ability to upgrade in the future.

For maximum life span and lowest cost, a ITX system built in something like a 'Dan Case' would be ultra portable and have better thermals compared to a laptop.

More info would really be helpful...

0utLaw

Master_Quack14b14_ESO wrote: »

Honestly, for what you want you will never find a laptop by itself that will perform as expected. However, it would definitely help to know the use case. Do you travel a lot? Just not have enough space? Will the system be used for gaming as well as productivity (work*)?

A gaming laptop only really has a 2 year life span because the low power GPUs in them barely play the newest titles and as soon as a new generation of GPUs comes out, games' graphics will increase to take advantage making your fancy new laptop seem old and slow very quickly.

If you have to have a mobile system, a Razer laptop with the Razer Core will give you the ability to use a full size desktop GPU and give you the ability to upgrade in the future.

For maximum life span and lowest cost, a ITX system built in something like a 'Dan Case' would be ultra portable and have better thermals compared to a laptop.

More info would really be helpful...

Well. as i said before, i need laptop because i will be up to half of the year away from home, on the vessel...so yeah, i think desktop in that enviroment isn't solution

I don't really need it for work, only games and multimedia. My main concern is choosing between GPU 1060 or 1070 (1080 will be 2 pricy and as i read it can overheat on thin laptops), and CPU (since ESO is single thread oriented, how much do i need to be in a gooood spot?).

Razer Blad Pro 1060 17'FHD - this is the one i was looking at first, but i was a little discouraged since it has no g-sync (though screen is IPS 120 hz). Though i'm not a big of a techie, so i'm not quite sure how it will affect my gaming...

Also i looked at Alienware models (very good stuff inside they have), but i read that ppl have a lot of issues with different deffects with new models.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

Dreepa

The razor blade is very thin. The thinner the laptop, the harder it is to keep it cool.

Therefore, when it is about real gaming, I would go for a thicker model and sacrifice thinness


As for GPU, the 1070 is the sweet spot and gives you some more room till games will be too demanding for laptop gaming.
1060 offers enough performance for ESO and standard full HD gaming at the moment though.

That being said, I ordered my with a 1070 as I found it to be the best compromise between heat and performance for the next 2 years.

If you think about a higher resolution (which I personally find totally negligible due to the small screen laptops offer) then 1060 will run into it's limits with current 3D blockbuster games.

CPU wise, 8750H is the way to go in terms of performance vs heat vs money.

SydneyGrey

This isn't a laptop, but ....

I highly recommend my Hewlett-Packard DESKTOP-RVI6VAQ
16GB RAM
Processor: Intel(R)Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU 3.60 GHz
64-bit
x64-based processor

Runs ESO and Fallout 4 flawlessly. I couldn't be happier with it.

Serjustin19

SydneyGrey wrote: »

This isn't a laptop, but ....

I highly recommend my Hewlett-Packard DESKTOP-RVI6VAQ
16GB RAM
Processor: Intel(R)Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU 3.60 GHz
64-bit
x64-based processor

Runs ESO and Fallout 4 flawlessly. I couldn't be happier with it.

I have i7 prosessor on my desktop. I don't know the speed. But what is the difference in speed? Is speed GHz?