Gaming laptop advice

Cirantille

Greetings denizens of Tamriel,

Due to my "traveling" lifestyle I can not carry a built computer around so I need a gaming lap-top
Bought mine about 4-5 years ago with help of a friend
Now looking at new specs my head is spinning

Help out a noob here

1) So as I understood so far RAM matters (:P), I currently have 16 gb ram, but I saw 32 gbs are a thing now, should I get this?
Will I see much improvement?
The only "demanding" type of game I run is ESO really, I dont have much time to invest in other online games or mmos, I occasionally play single player ones (I assume they wont eat much ram)
I am asking this because most options I see online are with 16 gb rams, I guess 32 gb is a new thing? Some say it is overkill, I am not sure
I run discord/yt or spotify on background depending on activity

2) Graphics card, I have GTX 1050, graphics look great atm (but how would I know, since I havent experienced a better card yet:))
Do I go for NVIDIA once again or AMD? (Heard AMD might be beating NVIDIA?)
Do I go for intel core or amd ryzen?
As I saw RTX 3000s are a thing now whereas 2000s are more common (So I guess 3000s are newer?)

TLDR: Basically I want to be able to run ESO-PvP smoothly (??) with occasional single player gaming like dragon age, vampire the masquerade (new), skyrim etc

If there is anything else I need to pay attention let me know, also open to brand-series suggestions

What do you use and are you happy with it?

Your advice is appreciated

PS. It will be strictly for gaming & fun purposes, I have an office laptop so disregard running other programmes, I don't care about those

oterWitz

For laptops threads start here if you haven't already: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7248960#Comment_7248960 (a bit more basic than what you're asking though iirc), and this which has a nice nugget of info even though it wasn't super visible and locked for an even less visible thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7280486#Comment_7280486

I don't know enough about the specifics you ask about to be of much more use than that, sorry.

Cirantille

oterWitz wrote: »

For laptops threads start here if you haven't already: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7248960#Comment_7248960 (a bit more basic than what you're asking though iirc), and this which has a nice nugget of info even though it wasn't super visible and locked for an even less visible thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7280486#Comment_7280486

I don't know enough about the specifics you ask about to be of much more use than that, sorry.

Thank you for the links

I just found out that there is no ray-tracing support for eso, grr, why do I even bother then

ResidentContrarian

Even an entry-level gaming laptop like a Ryzen 5 5600H + GTX1650 can run this game easily @1080p. Look for something beyond that for the best price...

This game is not really demanding, and those Ryzen 3 mobile processors are very strong and comparable to desktop CPUs.

Cirantille

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Even an entry-level gaming laptop like a Ryzen 5 5600H + GTX1650 can run this game easily @1080p. Look for something beyond that for the best price...

This game is not really demanding, and those Ryzen 3 mobile processors are very strong and comparable to desktop CPUs.

This is really comforting to know so I don't need to spend thousands of dollars to go extreme

starkerealm

Cirantille wrote: »

oterWitz wrote: »

For laptops threads start here if you haven't already: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7248960#Comment_7248960 (a bit more basic than what you're asking though iirc), and this which has a nice nugget of info even though it wasn't super visible and locked for an even less visible thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7280486#Comment_7280486

I don't know enough about the specifics you ask about to be of much more use than that, sorry.

Thank you for the links

I just found out that there is no ray-tracing support for eso, grr, why do I even bother then

No RTX support yet.

ResidentContrarian

starkerealm wrote: »

Cirantille wrote: »

oterWitz wrote: »

For laptops threads start here if you haven't already: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7248960#Comment_7248960 (a bit more basic than what you're asking though iirc), and this which has a nice nugget of info even though it wasn't super visible and locked for an even less visible thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7280486#Comment_7280486

I don't know enough about the specifics you ask about to be of much more use than that, sorry.

Thank you for the links

I just found out that there is no ray-tracing support for eso, grr, why do I even bother then

No RTX support yet.

Doubt they will add support for something only a small amount of players use, has a restrictive source code arrangement, and doesn't improve performance where they have been focusing on performance improvements.

I don't even know if GPU shadows has ever been implemented on this game yet.

I'd say they have bigger priorities than adding a feature that might not even change anything noticeable in ESO just to justify some players purchase of certain GPUs...

The majority of players must be on old hardware, otherwise they would have increased the requirements by now and forced SSE4/AVX requirements -- that's literally free performance on the table for ZOS and this game if they implement it correctly.

Tommy_The_Gun

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Cirantille wrote: »

oterWitz wrote: »

For laptops threads start here if you haven't already: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7248960#Comment_7248960 (a bit more basic than what you're asking though iirc), and this which has a nice nugget of info even though it wasn't super visible and locked for an even less visible thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7280486#Comment_7280486

I don't know enough about the specifics you ask about to be of much more use than that, sorry.

Thank you for the links

I just found out that there is no ray-tracing support for eso, grr, why do I even bother then

No RTX support yet.

Doubt they will add support for something only a small amount of players use, has a restrictive source code arrangement, and doesn't improve performance where they have been focusing on performance improvements.

Yep. It will be far wiser for ZOS to implement FidelityFX. I mean almost all GPUs can use it. Even older ones, that technically are not supported by it.

Also, apparently it is easier to implement than dlss. So it is basically a "free" performance boost, without the need to alter / optimize in-game world (models, texture assets etc). If ZOS cares about performance improvement, it would be foolish for them not to implement it.

BoGyesz

I played ESO for around five years on an Alienware 17” gaming laptop, which had i7, 16GB RAM and 970M. The game was running perfectly fine in 1080p high.

fred4

Cirantille wrote: »

1) So as I understood so far RAM matters (:P), I currently have 16 gb ram, but I saw 32 gbs are a thing now, should I get this?

Depends on price and availability. I would personally get it for future-proofing, if the RAM is soldered on and cannot be upgraded later. However I use machines a loooong time. Up to 10 years. Due to availability issues I only got a 16GB laptop last year and it's fine. I'm running ESO on an old 8GB desktop and that's fine too, if I don't open up other stuff. If I do, it still runs. Mainly opening / closing / switching between apps is slow. I sometimes run Discord or OBS in the background, which is viable, but not ideal. That's on an 8GB machine. Do not get that as a new machine! In other words 16GB will be fine for ESO plus some background apps, since even an 8GB PC borderline works.

Will I see much improvement?

To speed / performance? No. None.

The only "demanding" type of game I run is ESO really, I dont have much time to invest in other online games or mmos, I occasionally play single player ones (I assume they wont eat much ram)

Not today. If you are looking more than 5 years down the line, maybe they will.

I am asking this because most options I see online are with 16 gb rams, I guess 32 gb is a new thing? Some say it is overkill, I am not sure

What's more important for performance is that the machine has dual-channel RAM. If the machine has RAM slots and it's not all soldered on, that means it should have 2 slots or it should have 1 slot with some additional soldered-on memory on the motherboard. The RAM speed also tends to be somewhat important these days. You're probably looking for DDR-3200 upwards or LPDDR-4266, if you can get it. This information may, however, be hard to find for your laptop. Better just check overall performance on notebookcheck.net.

2) Graphics card, I have GTX 1050, graphics look great atm (but how would I know, since I havent experienced a better card yet:))

ESO is not very demanding on the graphics card. MMOs generally are not. If anything, they are more demanding of the CPU. GTX 1050 is probably borderline by desktop standards, but decent for a laptop and enough for ESO at 1080p.

Do I go for NVIDIA once again or AMD? (Heard AMD might be beating NVIDIA?)

The short answer is: Go for nVidia, if you're ever thinking of streaming. Sounds far fetched to you? Consider that Discord lets you stream to your friends these days, even if you just briefly want to show them something. Graphics cards include compression hardware to help make that happen. nVidia's "nvenc" encoder is much better at low bitrates than AMDs, which is exactly the scenario you have when streaming with OBS or Discord rather than just recording footage to hard disk. Your Internet bandwidth is good, you say? Consider your friends'. Discord / OBS probably just passes the stream to them unchanged. How good your compression is will matter.

Do I go for intel core or amd ryzen?

As of Intel 11th gen, I would say it currently does not matter for games. I'd buy AMD, if I could, but Intel + nVidia is more commonly available. Just be sure to get an 11th gen (or 12th if/when it comes out) processor (for the single-threaded performance), not 10th gen from Intel.

As I saw RTX 3000s are a thing now whereas 2000s are more common (So I guess 3000s are newer?)

Yes, they are. If you want a meaningful upgrade, you probably want at least a 3060. From memory, there is quite a performance gap between the 3060 and the next lower card, which would be a 3050 ti. Think of the 3050 ti has a slightly upgraded 1050 and you probably have it right.

However, once you enter 3060 territory, you're looking at a graphics card that sucks down 80W or more. What's going to hold you back is the thermal design of the laptop, not the graphics card as such. You can buy a laptop with a 3060, a 3070, a 3080. That doesn't mean much of anything, these days, because nVidia have decided laptop manufacturers may run these at a very wide range of power targets. Could be 80W or lower. Could be 150W (in a big, chunky laptop) or even more. You will have to check reviews. If someone offered a 3060 with 16GB VRAM and a low 80W-100W power target, due to the laptop being slim, I would buy that in a heartbeat over a 3070 or 3080. Alas they don't do that. They typically skimp on the RAM for 3060 so they can sell you a 3070 or 3080. Performance-wise these cards are all probably much the same, once you hit the power limits. Also worth bearing in mind is that a desktop 3080 sucks down more than 300W. The laptop 3080 doesn't come close in either power consumption or performance.

TLDR: Basically I want to be able to run ESO-PvP smoothly (??) with occasional single player gaming like dragon age, vampire the masquerade (new), skyrim etc

Is it not running smoothly now? What content are you doing? Basically, if you're not in big battles in Cyrodiil, it should be running pretty smoothly, even on old machines. I mean, you can get better framerates and/or a smoother picture (1440p / 4K) with a better GPU and screen, but you cannot fix the lag.

What do you use and are you happy with it?

Hahaha. I use a Core 2 Quad Q9650 desktop with a 20% overclock - from about 2008. I use a GTX970 from about 2014. Am I happy with that? For big Cyro battles? No. I can seemingly live with low framerates much better than others, but once they drop below 20, it's a problem. Outside of Cyro? Framerates vary from 40 to 80 at 1080p and I'm fine with that.

The laptop I would personally want is a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen4 with a 3070 and vapor chamber. I actually use laptops on my lap. I use the pointing stick (works quite well in games, unlike a touchpad) and I would only use a machine with a centered keyboard, no numpad. This basically narrows it down to exactly that machine for me. The 3070 on account of the fact that it has 8GB VRAM and Lenovo don't offer that on the 3060. Problem is that it's a $4K machine and I have a habit of ruining keyboards when I'm gaming, due to the way I place my hands and press keys at odd angles from the side. Lenovo have occasionally offered some very steep discounts on these machines, but I still probably couldn't justify it. The problem with buying a better gaming laptop, but a nice one in a slim form factor, is the noise and cooling. High power laptops tend to sound like vacuum cleaners and the keyboard can get uncomfortably hot. I think I prefer desktops for gaming.

Cirantille

fred4 wrote: »

Cirantille wrote: »

1) So as I understood so far RAM matters (:P), I currently have 16 gb ram, but I saw 32 gbs are a thing now, should I get this?

Depends on price and availability. I would personally get it for future-proofing, if the RAM is soldered on and cannot be upgraded later. However I use machines a loooong time. Up to 10 years. Due to availability issues I only got a 16GB laptop last year and it's fine. I'm running ESO on an old 8GB desktop and that's fine too, if I don't open up other stuff. If I do, it still runs. Mainly opening / closing / switching between apps is slow. I sometimes run Discord or OBS in the background, which is viable, but not ideal. That's on an 8GB machine. Do not get that as a new machine! In other words 16GB will be fine for ESO plus some background apps, since even an 8GB PC borderline works.

Will I see much improvement?

To speed / performance? No. None.

The only "demanding" type of game I run is ESO really, I dont have much time to invest in other online games or mmos, I occasionally play single player ones (I assume they wont eat much ram)

Not today. If you are looking more than 5 years down the line, maybe they will.

I am asking this because most options I see online are with 16 gb rams, I guess 32 gb is a new thing? Some say it is overkill, I am not sure

What's more important for performance is that the machine has dual-channel RAM. If the machine has RAM slots and it's not all soldered on, that means it should have 2 slots or it should have 1 slot with some additional soldered-on memory on the motherboard. The RAM speed also tends to be somewhat important these days. You're probably looking for DDR-3200 upwards or LPDDR-4266, if you can get it. This information may, however, be hard to find for your laptop. Better just check overall performance on notebookcheck.net.

2) Graphics card, I have GTX 1050, graphics look great atm (but how would I know, since I havent experienced a better card yet:))

ESO is not very demanding on the graphics card. MMOs generally are not. If anything, they are more demanding of the CPU. GTX 1050 is probably borderline by desktop standards, but decent for a laptop and enough for ESO at 1080p.

Do I go for NVIDIA once again or AMD? (Heard AMD might be beating NVIDIA?)

The short answer is: Go for nVidia, if you're ever thinking of streaming. Sounds far fetched to you? Consider that Discord lets you stream to your friends these days, even if you just briefly want to show them something. Graphics cards include compression hardware to help make that happen. nVidia's "nvenc" encoder is much better at low bitrates than AMDs, which is exactly the scenario you have when streaming with OBS or Discord rather than just recording footage to hard disk. Your Internet bandwidth is good, you say? Consider your friends'. Discord / OBS probably just passes the stream to them unchanged. How good your compression is will matter.

Do I go for intel core or amd ryzen?

As of Intel 11th gen, I would say it currently does not matter for games. I'd buy AMD, if I could, but Intel + nVidia is more commonly available. Just be sure to get an 11th gen (or 12th if/when it comes out) processor (for the single-threaded performance), not 10th gen from Intel.

As I saw RTX 3000s are a thing now whereas 2000s are more common (So I guess 3000s are newer?)

Yes, they are. If you want a meaningful upgrade, you probably want at least a 3060. From memory, there is quite a performance gap between the 3060 and the next lower card, which would be a 3050 ti. Think of the 3050 ti has a slightly upgraded 1050 and you probably have it right.

However, once you enter 3060 territory, you're looking at a graphics card that sucks down 80W or more. What's going to hold you back is the thermal design of the laptop, not the graphics card as such. You can buy a laptop with a 3060, a 3070, a 3080. That doesn't mean much of anything, these days, because nVidia have decided laptop manufacturers may run these at a very wide range of power targets. Could be 80W or lower. Could be 150W (in a big, chunky laptop) or even more. You will have to check reviews. If someone offered a 3060 with 16GB VRAM and a low 80W-100W power target, due to the laptop being slim, I would buy that in a heartbeat over a 3070 or 3080. Alas they don't do that. They typically skimp on the RAM for 3060 so they can sell you a 3070 or 3080. Performance-wise these cards are all probably much the same, once you hit the power limits. Also worth bearing in mind is that a desktop 3080 sucks down more than 300W. The laptop 3080 doesn't come close in either power consumption or performance.

TLDR: Basically I want to be able to run ESO-PvP smoothly (??) with occasional single player gaming like dragon age, vampire the masquerade (new), skyrim etc

Is it not running smoothly now? What content are you doing? Basically, if you're not in big battles in Cyrodiil, it should be running pretty smoothly, even on old machines. I mean, you can get better framerates and/or a smoother picture (1440p / 4K) with a better GPU and screen, but you cannot fix the lag.

What do you use and are you happy with it?

Hahaha. I use a Core 2 Quad Q9650 desktop with a 20% overclock - from about 2008. I use a GTX970 from about 2014. Am I happy with that? For big Cyro battles? No. I can seemingly live with low framerates much better than others, but once they drop below 20, it's a problem. Outside of Cyro? Framerates vary from 40 to 80 at 1080p and I'm fine with that.

The laptop I would personally want is a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen4 with a 3070 and vapor chamber. I actually use laptops on my lap. I use the pointing stick (works quite well in games, unlike a touchpad) and I would only use a machine with a centered keyboard, no numpad. This basically narrows it down to exactly that machine for me. The 3070 on account of the fact that it has 8GB VRAM and Lenovo don't offer that on the 3060. Problem is that it's a $4K machine and I have a habit of ruining keyboards when I'm gaming, due to the way I place my hands and press keys at odd angles from the side. Lenovo have occasionally offered some very steep discounts on these machines, but I still probably couldn't justify it. The problem with buying a better gaming laptop, but a nice one in a slim form factor, is the noise and cooling. High power laptops tend to sound like vacuum cleaners and the keyboard can get uncomfortably hot. I think I prefer desktops for gaming.

First of all, thank you very much for taking all the time to answer every point and concern

I think I would buy a new one when 32 GB rams are a more common thing, because even now they seem to be releasing at the end of August or September. They didn't even release them yet! (Looking at you MSI)

I knew about dual channel but I could not figure out from their descriptions, so if it is DDR or LPDDR, it means dual channel? Because they don't usually write "hello, this bad boy has some dual channel"

Indeed, I am playing at highest settings without issue but somehow my heart and soul hoped for better performance in Cyrodiil :P

What concerned me is that now you mentioned that 3000s zone requires more W, does that mean if I buy one I may not be able to supply enough W at basic home W? Or you mean it is just using a lot of W

Ps. For the price, I am personally waiting for Black Friday to see what will I get

fred4

Cirantille wrote: »

I knew about dual channel but I could not figure out from their descriptions, so if it is DDR or LPDDR, it means dual channel? Because they don't usually write "hello, this bad boy has some dual channel"

First of all I should have said DDR4, not merely DDR. No, none of the above means it's dual channel. LPDDR4 is the low power stuff, typically used in ultrabooks. Dual-channel should be covered, if the machine has at least 2 RAM slots, which a high-end gaming machine will very likely have. It's really only a concern with slim / light machines that have memory soldered on. In that case it's not easy to tell. Also machines may only ship with 1 DIMM, in which you should get another and fill both RAM slots.

Indeed, I am playing at highest settings without issue but somehow my heart and soul hoped for better performance in Cyrodiil :P

I had a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen2 for about a week. GTX1650 Max-Q and hex core. It was better than my very old desktop. Better framerates. Even if that meant only 30 to 40 in big battles, instead of my usual 20, that certainly helps make the picture look smoother and make it easier for you to stay oriented and well-positioned. Running in 4K also removes practically all visible aliasing, which is nice. However the lag was still there. It's a server problem. Framerate in this game seems to be tied to your CPU power and network ping as well as your graphics card, by the way.

What concerned me is that now you mentioned that 3000s zone requires more W, does that mean if I buy one I may not be able to supply enough W at basic home W? Or you mean it is just using a lot of W

I'm sure a high-end 2000 series card will also use a lot of power. You might check how much power your current machine uses or simply compare the wattage of your power brick with the power adapter wattage of your prospective purchase. What I'm warning you about is that a more powerful machine may not be your cup of tea, because of the weight of the power brick, the heat, and the fans running like leafblowers. That was certainly an eye opener for me when I had the X1 Extreme Gen2 for a short while. I liked the portability, but I liked gaming on my desktop better when at home. The keyboard got uncomfortably hot and the fans were loud on the laptop, even with headphones. I discovered how much I value silence.

In other words: ESO is not terribly demanding. It's problems are mostly server-side. Skyrim is oooold. Unless you've modded the crap out of that, you may not need a new laptop. You current one may just be in the sweet spot where it's not too loud and not too hot. Power efficiency hasn't moved on by all that much. If you buy something in the same power band as your 5-year old machine, I'm not sure how much better it would be. If you haven't got an SSD and maxed out the RAM on your existing machine, you might go for that first. However I don't know your machine.

With all that said, those Thinkpads are nice machines. The P1 workstation version of the one I mentioned is currently on sale. Their list prices are normally insane, but there seems to be an introductory offer knocking 42% off the the price. If I was living in the US, I would be tempted by the 20Y3004HUS model. RTX3070 and 1440p+ screen for $2,449 right now. The drawback, because these are non-gaming machines, is that the screens will be 60Hz and may have bad response times.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/ThinkPad-P1-Gen-4/p/WMD00000463

This is not so much a recommendation as it is a "sale" alert, if you happened to be into those Thinkpads.

Cirantille

fred4 wrote: »

Cirantille wrote: »

I knew about dual channel but I could not figure out from their descriptions, so if it is DDR or LPDDR, it means dual channel? Because they don't usually write "hello, this bad boy has some dual channel"

First of all I should have said DDR4, not merely DDR. No, none of the above means it's dual channel. LPDDR4 is the low power stuff, typically used in ultrabooks. Dual-channel should be covered, if the machine has at least 2 RAM slots, which a high-end gaming machine will very likely have. It's really only a concern with slim / light machines that have memory soldered on. In that case it's not easy to tell. Also machines may only ship with 1 DIMM, in which you should get another and fill both RAM slots.

Indeed, I am playing at highest settings without issue but somehow my heart and soul hoped for better performance in Cyrodiil :P

I had a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen2 for about a week. GTX1650 Max-Q and hex core. It was better than my very old desktop. Better framerates. Even if that meant only 30 to 40 in big battles, instead of my usual 20, that certainly helps make the picture look smoother and make it easier for you to stay oriented and well-positioned. Running in 4K also removes practically all visible aliasing, which is nice. However the lag was still there. It's a server problem. Framerate in this game seems to be tied to your CPU power and network ping as well as your graphics card, by the way.

What concerned me is that now you mentioned that 3000s zone requires more W, does that mean if I buy one I may not be able to supply enough W at basic home W? Or you mean it is just using a lot of W

I'm sure a high-end 2000 series card will also use a lot of power. You might check how much power your current machine uses or simply compare the wattage of your power brick with the power adapter wattage of your prospective purchase. What I'm warning you about is that a more powerful machine may not be your cup of tea, because of the weight of the power brick, the heat, and the fans running like leafblowers. That was certainly an eye opener for me when I had the X1 Extreme Gen2 for a short while. I liked the portability, but I liked gaming on my desktop better when at home. The keyboard got uncomfortably hot and the fans were loud on the laptop, even with headphones. I discovered how much I value silence.

In other words: ESO is not terribly demanding. It's problems are mostly server-side. Skyrim is oooold. Unless you've modded the crap out of that, you may not need a new laptop. You current one may just be in the sweet spot where it's not too loud and not too hot. Power efficiency hasn't moved on by all that much. If you buy something in the same power band as your 5-year old machine, I'm not sure how much better it would be. If you haven't got an SSD and maxed out the RAM on your existing machine, you might go for that first. However I don't know your machine.

With all that said, those Thinkpads are nice machines. The P1 workstation version of the one I mentioned is currently on sale. Their list prices are normally insane, but there seems to be an introductory offer knocking 42% off the the price. If I was living in the US, I would be tempted by the 20Y3004HUS model. RTX3070 and 1440p+ screen for $2,449 right now. The drawback, because these are non-gaming machines, is that the screens will be 60Hz and may have bad response times.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p/ThinkPad-P1-Gen-4/p/WMD00000463

This is not so much a recommendation as it is a "sale" alert, if you happened to be into those Thinkpads.

That is all great points, I am very glad you mentioned the wattage because I haven't even consider that before
I know what you mean by the crazy fans, my current laptop has this -let's call it- feature, it cools down and works, however people hear it thinks it is a flight taking off or something But I guess I got used to it, so it does not bother me.

I never thought lenovo as gaming brand as well, I was looking into MSI as they seem to have good longevity of life and strong cases that does not break easily.
Also my advice is to use external keyboard, learnt it from hard way that laptop keyboards are not yet up to intense gaming

fred4

Cirantille wrote: »

Also my advice is to use external keyboard, learnt it from hard way that laptop keyboards are not yet up to intense gaming

Yeah. Laptop keyboards also tend to have a another problem, which is a lack of n-key rollover. If you press certain combinations of 3 keys on a Thinkpad keyboard simultaneously, then the 3rd key won't register. This can be very subtle. You might not notice it, unless you have the BIOS configured to beep in that case (the default on most Thinkpads). It depends on how you use the keyboard and whether you have some keystrokes offloadad to a gaming mouse as well. At any rate, mechanical keyboards generally do not have that problem.

Lenovo have their "Legion" brand of gaming laptops, by the way. Also, if you're not reading Notebookcheck.net (or Notebookcheck.com in German), then do. They really do the best reviews, including noise measurements, gaming benchmarks, screen response times, flickering, viewing angles, color accuracy and so on, and so on. It's their own reviews I'm talking about, not the external ones they also link to. The only problem is, they can take their sweet time (worth it, though). Only other site I can think of that might be as thorough is Hardware Unboxed (YouTube). The German "no name" brand is "Schenker", by the way. You might see some laptops covered that are branded differently in the US.

Narvuntien

The biggest issue I had with my gaming laptop is that I kept breaking my keyboard holding down shift to run/gallop

My laptop is a local company that imports and builds gaming laptops, "Metabox", which meant I just drove over and swapped the keyboard over in an hour every time it broke.

In general, I am a fan of Asus/Republic of Gamers Laptops as midrange value for money.

priestnall.andrewrwb17_ESO

Get a desktop; compatibly cheaper and easier to upgrade / repair - tried gaming laptops for a while before going back to desktop. If you have the space and are situated in one place - e.g not living in student accommodation or other temporary residence… get a desktop.

CristiC

Whatever you buy make sure it has TPM 2.0 support for W11, especially if you go for a laptop. Otherwise you will be a proud owner of a very expensive paperweight once Microsoft starts deprecating it after W11 launches.

fred4

CristiC wrote: »

Whatever you buy make sure it has TPM 2.0 support for W11, especially if you go for a laptop. Otherwise you will be a proud owner of a very expensive paperweight once Microsoft starts deprecating it after W11 launches.

This is true. One thing in the back of my mind is that ESO is a DX11 game and DX11 games tend to be bottle-necked on a single thread. I'm pretty sure this is / has been true of ESO. Single-threaded performance has stagnated, but is coming on in leaps and bounds, since AMD is giving Intel some competition. For example here are the single-threaded Cinebench R20 performance scores of some machines:

My gaming desktop with an (albeit overclocked) CPU from 2008: 224
My AMD 4000 series laptop from last year: 450 - only a doubling in 12 years!
AMD 5000 series desktops / Intel 11th gen desktops / laptops: Around 600
Intel Alder Lake (12th gen) coming soon: Rumoured to be up to 800

Alder Lake is a big / little architecture and will require Windows 11 to work properly.

CristiC

I mange to find this bad boy:

https://www.asus.com/microsite/motherboard/ASUS-motherboards-Win11-ready/

Couldn't locate the Intel variant. If someone finds it, post it. A little help from Zos in the form a pinned thread with this infos will go a long way.

Tommy_The_Gun

When it comes to choosing a laptop, you first need to answer yourself - what will you use it for.
Will I be playing a lot of games on it ?
Will I often use it on battery ?
Will I edit a lot of 4 & 8k videos & images ?
Do I often have a lot of websites open in the background ?

There are a lot of laptop types and all of them are good in different ways:

- "Stationary" - Mostly 16 & 17' "thick" devices. They are big, heavy and bulky, so they are more problematic to use on your lap, as a portable device, but for a syationary use, when you only move from place to place and very rarely use them on battery - their flaws turn into pros. They are bigger, which means those have more ports, better cooling (those will pretty much never overheat & thermal - throttle), better upgradybility. Basically those laptops are more like a desktop pc with built-in in battery.

- Universal - Mostly 14' & 15' thin & light devices. Those are good all-arounders, but those have slight worse cooling solutions and external port selection.

- Portable - 13' or less. Those are often 2in1 tablet & laptop combined. Those often have weaker GPUs but there are some devices out there that have dedicated gaming GPUs (like Asus ROG flow for example).

- Handheld - mostly an "honorable mention" as there aren't many of those, but those are still a "full PCs", just packed very tightly. This type of device has one feature that other PCs & laptops don't have - you can play games on battery. Because let's face it - even most power-efficient laptop can't "game" on battery for too long. Also, Steam Deck is on the horizon...

Anyway - for ESO, whatever form-factor you chose - ESO should work fine on it.

As for the laptop components:
- CPU - in general, there is a simple rule here:
Intel - tiny-pinch faster, but significantly more power-hungry (shorter battery live).
AMD - tiny-pinch slower, but is significantly more power-efficient (longer battery live).

As for the cores, I would aim at 4 cores & 8 threads at bare minimum. For more future-proof configuration 6 or 8 cores. ESO is a bit CPU - heavy, so it is better to invest in a better CPU.

- GPU - for a gaming laptop, I think that GTX 1650 (or AMD equivalent) is a bare minimum. Sure, you can run ESO even on a modern integrated GPU or APU, but this is not future-proof at all. Also, if you want to have Ray tracing, then RTX 3060 is a bare minimum. RTX 2060 has almost same performance (if not worse) as GTX 1660ti and if Ray tracing is on, it is too weak to give a decent frame rate.

- RAM - 8 gig is a bare minimum for a laptop, but for a gaming laptop it is 16 gig. As for the 32 gig, you need to answer yourself if you will be able to utilize it. If you play one game and have a couple of websites open in the background, then you don't need it. If on the other hand you play 2 games (one is minimized) and you have 100+ websites open at once or if you edit large files (videos, 3d models etc) - only then you would need that much ram memory. If you are not sure if you will need 32 gig, you can always look for laptop that has upgradable ram, so you can swap 16 gig do 32 gig in the future.

- SSD - 256 gb is bare minimum for a laptop, but for a gaming laptop, I think 512 gb is a bare minimum. Especially if you consider installing large games - like ESO. So even with a 512 gb ssd, you will install Windows, 3 - 5 games, some personal files and... you are out of storage space... also make sure that SSD is an nvme ssd.

Important things to know (you may only know this after watching a laptop review & disassembly to see what is inside):
- Cooling - make sure that laptop has 2 cooling fans ! Often, laptop manufacturers cut costs on that and as a result you get one fan to cool down both cpu & gpu. It is inadequate and such a device will overheat & thermal-throttle.
- WiFi - often, laptop manufacturers cut costs and use slow wifi cards (100 Mb/s instead of 300 or 1000). While it will not cause lag in ESO, games and larger files will take longer to download.
- Make sure Ram works in dual channel. 2x8 gig ram sticks works 20 - 30% faster than 1x16 gig ram. It is something that is also used to cut costs down, while it still looks nice in laptop's specs.
- Upgradybility - a lot of times, various laptop components (ram, ssd, wifi module etc) may be soldered in. In smaller devices it is done to save space, but often it is again done to save costs. And obviously if something is soldered in, you can not replace it / upgrade it. Also, some laptops have additional, empty slot for ssd, so if you will run out of space, you can just install 2nd ssd.
- Check what type of ssd is installed. Even if it is nvme, it may be slower variant. For example 3x2 and not 3x4, or older Pci-e, or in a worst case scenario it may not even be an nvme, but a much slower SATA standard.
- Display - it is something that laptop manufacturers also save costs on. Poor colour accuracy or 60 hz refresh rate, or low brightness. So make sure the display is at least decent. 120 hz is a sweet-spot as you are unlikely to have more FPS on average, so higher refresh rate like 144 or 240 may also be simply put - wasted money.

Cirantille

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

When it comes to choosing a laptop, you first need to answer yourself - what will you use it for.
Will I be playing a lot of games on it ?
Will I often use it on battery ?
Will I edit a lot of 4 & 8k videos & images ?
Do I often have a lot of websites open in the background ?

There are a lot of laptop types and all of them are good in different ways:

- "Stationary" - Mostly 16 & 17' "thick" devices. They are big, heavy and bulky, so they are more problematic to use on your lap, as a portable device, but for a syationary use, when you only move from place to place and very rarely use them on battery - their flaws turn into pros. They are bigger, which means those have more ports, better cooling (those will pretty much never overheat & thermal - throttle), better upgradybility. Basically those laptops are more like a desktop pc with built-in in battery.

- Universal - Mostly 14' & 15' thin & light devices. Those are good all-arounders, but those have slight worse cooling solutions and external port selection.

- Portable - 13' or less. Those are often 2in1 tablet & laptop combined. Those often have weaker GPUs but there are some devices out there that have dedicated gaming GPUs (like Asus ROG flow for example).

- Handheld - mostly an "honorable mention" as there aren't many of those, but those are still a "full PCs", just packed very tightly. This type of device has one feature that other PCs & laptops don't have - you can play games on battery. Because let's face it - even most power-efficient laptop can't "game" on battery for too long. Also, Steam Deck is on the horizon...

Anyway - for ESO, whatever form-factor you chose - ESO should work fine on it.

As for the laptop components:
- CPU - in general, there is a simple rule here:
Intel - tiny-pinch faster, but significantly more power-hungry (shorter battery live).
AMD - tiny-pinch slower, but is significantly more power-efficient (longer battery live).

As for the cores, I would aim at 4 cores & 8 threads at bare minimum. For more future-proof configuration 6 or 8 cores. ESO is a bit CPU - heavy, so it is better to invest in a better CPU.

- GPU - for a gaming laptop, I think that GTX 1650 (or AMD equivalent) is a bare minimum. Sure, you can run ESO even on a modern integrated GPU or APU, but this is not future-proof at all. Also, if you want to have Ray tracing, then RTX 3060 is a bare minimum. RTX 2060 has almost same performance (if not worse) as GTX 1660ti and if Ray tracing is on, it is too weak to give a decent frame rate.

- RAM - 8 gig is a bare minimum for a laptop, but for a gaming laptop it is 16 gig. As for the 32 gig, you need to answer yourself if you will be able to utilize it. If you play one game and have a couple of websites open in the background, then you don't need it. If on the other hand you play 2 games (one is minimized) and you have 100+ websites open at once or if you edit large files (videos, 3d models etc) - only then you would need that much ram memory. If you are not sure if you will need 32 gig, you can always look for laptop that has upgradable ram, so you can swap 16 gig do 32 gig in the future.

- SSD - 256 gb is bare minimum for a laptop, but for a gaming laptop, I think 512 gb is a bare minimum. Especially if you consider installing large games - like ESO. So even with a 512 gb ssd, you will install Windows, 3 - 5 games, some personal files and... you are out of storage space... also make sure that SSD is an nvme ssd.

Important things to know (you may only know this after watching a laptop review & disassembly to see what is inside):
- Cooling - make sure that laptop has 2 cooling fans ! Often, laptop manufacturers cut costs on that and as a result you get one fan to cool down both cpu & gpu. It is inadequate and such a device will overheat & thermal-throttle.
- WiFi - often, laptop manufacturers cut costs and use slow wifi cards (100 Mb/s instead of 300 or 1000). While it will not cause lag in ESO, games and larger files will take longer to download.
- Make sure Ram works in dual channel. 2x8 gig ram sticks works 20 - 30% faster than 1x16 gig ram. It is something that is also used to cut costs down, while it still looks nice in laptop's specs.
- Upgradybility - a lot of times, various laptop components (ram, ssd, wifi module etc) may be soldered in. In smaller devices it is done to save space, but often it is again done to save costs. And obviously if something is soldered in, you can not replace it / upgrade it. Also, some laptops have additional, empty slot for ssd, so if you will run out of space, you can just install 2nd ssd.
- Check what type of ssd is installed. Even if it is nvme, it may be slower variant. For example 3x2 and not 3x4, or older Pci-e, or in a worst case scenario it may not even be an nvme, but a much slower SATA standard.
- Display - it is something that laptop manufacturers also save costs on. Poor colour accuracy or 60 hz refresh rate, or low brightness. So make sure the display is at least decent. 120 hz is a sweet-spot as you are unlikely to have more FPS on average, so higher refresh rate like 144 or 240 may also be simply put - wasted money.

Amazing
I'm really glad I started this topic because your and fred's comments were really insightful and brought many things I haven't paid attention to.

Yes I really dont mind it being heavy with strong case because it will stay at home but will come with me whenever I travel, else I have office laptop I do all my work on.
SSD of 256 is unfortunately not enough I agree with you, grr, I noticed when I tried to move ESO in, it was RIP.
I have 60 hz right now haha, and do I get 60 fps stable? Absolutely not

Cirantille

priestnall.andrewrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Get a desktop; compatibly cheaper and easier to upgrade / repair - tried gaming laptops for a while before going back to desktop. If you have the space and are situated in one place - e.g not living in student accommodation or other temporary residence… get a desktop.

Oh how I wish but for the foreseeable future I will be moving/traveling a lot
It is a dream I have though, one day...

Cirantille

CristiC wrote: »

Whatever you buy make sure it has TPM 2.0 support for W11, especially if you go for a laptop. Otherwise you will be a proud owner of a very expensive paperweight once Microsoft starts deprecating it after W11 launches.

You think they will stop supporting win10 that quickly?

Cirantille

For NA fellows, is it worth to wait for Black Friday?
I heard it is a big thing here

fred4

Cirantille wrote: »

CristiC wrote: »

Whatever you buy make sure it has TPM 2.0 support for W11, especially if you go for a laptop. Otherwise you will be a proud owner of a very expensive paperweight once Microsoft starts deprecating it after W11 launches.

You think they will stop supporting win10 that quickly?

No more security updates from 2025. That's the story for now, unless they change their tune. You could keep running it without, of course. Or you could theoretically do what I do on my work laptop, use Windows 10 LTSC, good until 2028. You will only get that through work with an enterprise licence and it costs about €300 extra. Long term service channel edition, based on Win 10 1809. No MS store. No Cortana. No feature updates. Only security updates. No guarantee of compatibility with future games, I suppose.

Also, if you buy Intel 12th gen (Alder Lake) you will need WIndows 11, because Microsoft adjusted their scheduler for big little. Those CPUs will not likely perform properly under Windows 10.

theCampeR_

Hi, someone might have mentioned this here but i'll say it again if that's the case. ESO is not really a GPU heavy game. so don't go for a RTX series and expect miracles when it comes to performance.

Ram - 16 GB is more than enough but it doesn't hurt to go for 32GB for the sake of making your laptop future proof or if you ever wanted to try another game with higher requirements.

CPU - This is what matters when it comes to ESO. It's a CPU heavy game. Number of cores/ Threads matter a lot. (not sure if this will change after the next patch. but it's unlikely) Over the years, I have gamed on number of laptops and desktops. As per my experience, Ryzen processors stand out for me when it comes to delivering performance on games like these.

SSD - Pretty standard these days. will reduce your load screen times and time consumed while teleporting through wayshrines and stuff. Will not have any effect on FPS though.

So yeah, good luck. Don't break your bank trying to go for a laptop with top end specs if you are just planning to use it mainly for ESO. Performance difference between my 6 year old mid range laptop vs my beast of a desktop that I built this year isn't that great since the game inherently have some performance issues on its own. (prime time lag, FPS drops on large fights, memory leak issues that will gradually drop your FPS overtime while playing) Just keep these things in mind and have fair expectations.

vsrs_au

FWIW: I have a Gigabyte gaming desktop PC at home which I use to play ESO, and the limiting factor is not the hardware, but the network connection. I guess one major reason for this is my location (Melbourne, Australia: "Lockdown City"), because the ping to the ESO EU server is typically about 280ms or more.

When I run ESO on the higher graphics settings, I can sometimes get the temporary black screen during combat, but that occurs less often on lower graphics settings. I'm not sure if this is due to my hardware or network, though: perhaps it's a bit of both?

etchedpixels

Only thing I'd add to this is laptop CPUs come with a TDP rating (thermal design power)

15W or so TDP is a thin laptop only good for bursty activity. Fine for excel forget gaming

As you go up the sizes and battery weights and down in the battery life you can go up in CPU TDP.

The actual clock rate of the CPU generally doesn't matter one iota in a laptop because all but the big heavy gaming laptops can't actually sustain any meaningful speed without going into thermal throttling (ie slowly). For business use and web browsing that's great, for ESO it's not.

My gaming laptop has an underclocked AMD RX580 and a desktop Ryzen CPU. It's also got a 2 hour battery life. There are tradeoffs as you move up. On the other hand you can't game whilst driving, and UK train seats come with power sockets.