Buying a New Gaming Laptop

[DamNicePants]

I just want to know if this is good for the money. I have this weird feeling that someone smarter than me will be like "oh I could have gotten that for $300 less" or something. Anyway, so I'm finally going to pull the cord and buy an ok gaming laptop and wanted my fellow gamers to chime in if they wanted to. I've mostly been a console guy but I'm not totally ignorant when it comes to PCs and laptops. The cost on this one I'm looking at is $1200 and I like all the numbers I'm just not familiar with AMD processors. It's only an 8 core but anything more and I know the price is going to start jumping up. To give you a base point, I currently have an Asus with an i-7 paired with 16g ram and a GeForce RTX940m and as crap as that is to enthusiasts I've been happy(ish) with it. Even though it was never bought to be a gaming laptop it plays lots of Xbox one/PS4 games here on Steam with little frame rate and graphical loss. Sorry... I'm rambling. TLDR: Is this a good deal? Suggestions on better offers are welcomed for sure!

MSI Ultra Thin A15 B8VF VR-Ready AI Gaming Laptop, 15.6" FHD 144Hz, AI AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, RTX 4060, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 2TB SSD, Cooler Boost & Quiet Under Load, Wi-Fi 6, RJ-45, Windows 11 Home, Black

The only difference between the one in the link and the one I want is an upgrade from 1tbSSD to a 2tb. https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000C-0J4Z9

[Iceira]

Why even buy Laptop, small screen and none upgradedable afterwards, you need to amke sure you need a transport pc for remote location, any previous laptop user can tell you this they Drop fast in once a highend game pc, and its all a joke and waste of money , if you talk with ppl that has both desktop pc vs laptop owner.

Anyway gl with whatever you do. ( feel free to return in 2 years and there will be many game you cant play gpu card go fast today, and that's the problem in laptop and has always been this way. )

desktop pc , buy better GPU expansion card problem solved.

ps.
again i and other can tell you make sure you need a remote unit.

+ screen size matter today. as gamer ( imo ) ( i doubt you buy monitor or telly as big screen, and you laptop will sux then 2-3 years has past, and here can tell you that.

[StickyPawz]

It seems a fair price for a nice laptop.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by Iceira:

Why even buy Laptop, small screen and none upgradedable afterwards, you need to amke sure you need a transport pc for remote location, any previous laptop user can tell you this they Drop fast in once a highend game pc, and its all a joke and waste of money , if you talk with ppl that has both desktop pc vs laptop owner.

Anyway gl with whatever you do. ( feel free to return in 2 years and there will be many game you cant play gpu card go fast today, and that's the problem in laptop and has always been this way. )

desktop pc , buy better GPU expansion card problem solved.

ps.
again i and other can tell you make sure you need a remote unit.

+ screen size matter today. as gamer ( imo ) ( i doubt you buy monitor or telly as big screen, and you laptop will sux then 2-3 years has past, and here can tell you that.

First off, I appreciate you replying. I got crickets from Reddit. And getting a PC is not an option as I live in a tiny home. And I'm not real hard to please as far as graphics and frame rate goes. I currently have a laptop that was never intended for gaming, despite having an RTX940m, it plays RE2 and 3 remakes with no problem for example. And that was bought in 2017. Ya the graphics are turned down and things like chromatic aberration and bloom are either down or off but I'm not too bothered. I just wanted to make sure this laptop I want to get wasn't much cheaper somewhere else and that the processor isn't a complete potatoe. I don't know much about AMD processors. Always been an Intel guy.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by StickyPawz:

It seems a fair price for a nice laptop.

Thank you.

[Ghostflavour]

if you want a laptop i would recommend you get a high end one with specs that will last you a while because their not upgradeble had the same issue a few years back the specs on the one your looking at look good but keep in mind from the moment you need better specs your laptop is useless for gaming

[Ogami]

Honestly for that money i would wait a bit when the new laptops with RTX 5060 cards will hit the market soon.
The 4060 is not a great card and even inferior in some cases to the older 3060.
Also, with a gaming laptop like that make sure you have adequate cooling like a cooling pad to place it on, because that thing will get hot as hell during gaming.
Which is one of the biggest downsides for "gaming" laptops.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by Ghostflavour:

if you want a laptop i would recommend you get a high end one with specs that will last you a while because their not upgradeble had the same issue a few years back the specs on the one your looking at look good but keep in mind from the moment you need better specs your laptop is useless for gaming

I appreciate that but money is an issue.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Honestly for that money i would wait a bit when the new laptops with RTX 5060 cards will hit the market soon.
The 4060 is not a great card and even inferior in some cases to the older 3060.
Also, with a gaming laptop like that make sure you have adequate cooling like a cooling pad to place it on, because that thing will get hot as hell during gaming.
Which is one of the biggest downsides for "gaming" laptops.

Thanks for replying. I had someone recommend a laptop with a 4070 for less with a slightly larger screen and higher nit rating. I was surprised at how much difference there is between the 4060 and the 4070. I'm definitely a noob. But I am going to look at the release date for the 5060 with specs and price difference. Thanks again.

[smokerob79]

NO....1200 should get you a 4070 not a 4060.....keep looking....

[nullable]

Originally posted by DamNicePants:

Originally posted by Ghostflavour:

if you want a laptop i would recommend you get a high end one with specs that will last you a while because their not upgradeble had the same issue a few years back the specs on the one your looking at look good but keep in mind from the moment you need better specs your laptop is useless for gaming

I appreciate that but money is an issue.

That and his advice is a bit to inflexible. While he is right laptops aren't (very) upgradeable. First your laptop is decently powered. Second, hardware lasts a pretty long time these days, even midrange-y hardware. Third, the moment you "need" better specs your laptop is useless for gaming is just wrong and grossly oversimplified. Obviously at some point you won't be able to play the newest AAA graphical benchmark game. But there will still be thousands of games you can play, not exactly useless for gaming. It's ridiculous hyperbole to claim otherwise.

And it's debatable whether you're better off running midrange hardware for 5-ish years (or whenever the floor of your performance threshold is met) or running highend hardware a few years longer.

Bogus math time

$1200 every five years
or
$1900 every eight years? (or whatever number you want to throw out for highend)

Over 15 years $3600 (3x midrange systems) versus $3800 (2x highend systems) kinda doesn't matter either way and neither way is wrong.

Over 25 years $6000 for 5x midrange systems. Or $5700 for 3x highend systems. Still kind of a wash.

Ultimately you're fine doing what works for you. And sometimes people can't separate their own preferences from viable options. Or they want to believe their preferences are is the optimal choice.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Honestly for that money i would wait a bit when the new laptops with RTX 5060 cards will hit the market soon.
The 4060 is not a great card and even inferior in some cases to the older 3060.
Also, with a gaming laptop like that make sure you have adequate cooling like a cooling pad to place it on, because that thing will get hot as hell during gaming.
Which is one of the biggest downsides for "gaming" laptops.

I think think overheating is less of an issue these days. I definitely experienced it with mid 2000's gaming laptops. And I've always used cooling pads since.

But on my current i7 12700h/3070ti laptop I kinda revisited the issue. And I've not really experienced any thermal throttling issues in years, nor have I seen my cooling pad significantly reduce temps or improve performance (because there's not thermal throttling anyway).

I mean to be fair I still have my laptop sitting on a cooling pad, but I haven't bothered to power the fans in ages. And it's an older cooling pad I bought for a 4th gen intel gaming laptop, it seemed pretty optional then too.

IF your laptop does thermal throttle then maybe a cooling pad can help. If it doesn't, it may be extremely optional.

[HIVEmind]

laptops have poor thruput. buy a mini PC it's better. even a Mac is better than a laptop.

[matt]

A few things to ask yourself:

Do you care a lot about performance? If you mostly play older games and indie games, you don't need anything better than integrated graphics today. That should be fine for games like Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, and The Witcher 3. See this benchmark[www.tomshardware.com]. Even in newer games, performance is often within playable ranges.

If you care about performance, do you care about ray tracing? If not, AMD Radeon GPUs would be a good choice. They'll give you better performance per dollar than Nvidia GPUs at the cost of somewhat worse ray tracing performance.

Finally, consider whether you really care all that much about productivity apps. If you don't use your PC to do video editing or other CPU intensive tasks, there isn't much point in getting a high end CPU. Mid-range CPUs often do the job just as well when gaming and may allow for getting a better GPU.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by matt:

A few things to ask yourself:

Do you care a lot about performance? If you mostly play older games and indie games, you don't need anything better than integrated graphics today. That should be fine for games like Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, and The Witcher 3. See this benchmark[www.tomshardware.com]. Even in newer games, performance is often within playable ranges.

If you care about performance, do you care about ray tracing? If not, AMD Radeon GPUs would be a good choice. They'll give you better performance per dollar than Nvidia GPUs at the cost of somewhat worse ray tracing performance.

Finally, consider whether you really care all that much about productivity apps. If you don't use your PC to do video editing or other CPU intensive tasks, there isn't much point in getting a high end CPU. Mid-range CPUs often do the job just as well when gaming and may allow for getting a better GPU.

I currently play occasionally on a Asus laptop I bought in 2017 to do graphic design with like Corel and photoshop. It just happened to have an RTX940m so I decided to try Steam. Despite its modest to basically potato like numbers it still plays games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3, Evil Within 2, RE:2 remake, RE:3 remake, and they do ok, but being honest I bought Sniper Contract 2 and no matter how low I turn it down the frame rate is just unplayable. So despite having to use nearly bottomed out settings on a lot of those games to me they're not horrible but I do see the value getting like an RTX 4070 and doubling my ram from 16 to 32. Also, I have no intention of using this for anything other than gaming. I think I've just about narrowed down one from Newegg with all around good numbers after getting a crash course in PC/laptop hardware. If you know of anything from anywhere reliable with like AMD 7+/ Intel 7+, RTX 4070, 32gb ram, 2tb SSD, 15"-16" screen, that's at least 300 nit screen brightness for around $1200 before tax let me know. I found one with at that but only 1tb SSD. Thanks for you input. I appreciate people who take time from themselves to help others.

[DamNicePants]

Originally posted by smokerob79:

NO....1200 should get you a 4070 not a 4060.....keep looking....

I am. Thank you.