Do I need a dGPU for light gaming/entertainment laptop?

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ithilien22

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Feb 13, 2013
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Hey guys - hoping you can help with some advice on a new laptop.

Needs:
- 14" range
- under 4 lbs
- stream video at high resolution
- play some older games at high graphics settings, examples: skyrim, sims 3

My budget is up to $3k, but I'd rather pay for just what I need, not the best of the best just because. I don't need a true desktop replacement, as I have a desktop, but I'm moving into a travel role at work that could keep me on the road a lot so I need a good entertainment rig.

I like the idea of dedicated nvidia graphics, but that narrows the field a lot and I don't know if I truly need it?

I've looked the most at msi's new GS40 phantom but the specs look kind of overkill for someone like me.

Also looked at the surface book, but reviews seem to say that even with the dGPU version, it doesn't play games well.
 
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jaguarskx
While integrated Intel HD graphics are decent enough to play most games at low / medium settings, you will not be able to play Skyrim with high settings even at 1366x768 resolution if you want good frame rates.

Based on my experience setting up Skyrim to play on a friend's laptop that uses the Intel HD 4400 last summer, that graphics core is good enough to play Skyrim with a mix of low and medium graphic settings at 1366x768 or 1600x900 resolution. At the higher resolution I believe FPS ranged between 35 - 45 and at the lower resolution it was around 40 - 55 FPS. That was with an edit SkyrimPref.ini file which disabled all shadows in the game. Otherwise, with shadows performance will be around 5 - 8 FPS lower.

If you want to play...
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Gingerbread

Gingerbread

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Generally a Skylake laptop would be all you need. The integrated GPU is more than enough for what you need, and a mid i5 would be enough, but no idea how expensive the skylake i5s are. Other than that you can get an older laptop with core i5 and something like gt 940m or 840m, both go for something like $700-800.
 
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ithilien22

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Thanks Gingerbread.

In that case, maybe I should go with something like the xps 13. I hadn't looked at it too much because it has integrated graphics, but it's a skylake and has gotten really good reviews.
 
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Ra_V_en

Ra_V_en

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You better save the cash for some more meaningful stuff in your life:
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-budget-gaming-laptop-so-far/
Beyond 1k pricepoint you are getting really small portion of upgrade for a large pile of cash.... that's my opinion.

The answer is simple if you really want a gaming PC then laptop is not the way... in fact the main attributes or laptops which are valuable = battery lifespan + portability diminishes when you go with ultra-performing model. It will be heavy since it requires a hell of a battery to feed the power consumption, it will drain the battery faster then most budget oriented anyways and will be few times more expensive then similar performing PC.
 
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Ra_V_en

Ra_V_en

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When you filter out on amazon you will have some decent number of options.
If you what that to be FullHD or higher then the only noticable option is

ASUS ZenBook UX303UA :
Link

ASUS ZenBook UX303UB:
Link

Besides XPS and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon are still a valid options but certainly they are not really the best deals out there for the cash they ask.

You want something more specific.. filter it yourself:
Link
 
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ithilien22

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@ra_v_en - so by those suggestions, you agree that I don't need dedicated graphics for my purposes?

I haven't looked much at the zenbook, but I have liked other Asus tablets I've owned so I'll give it another look. Thanks also for the Amazon filter link!
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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While integrated Intel HD graphics are decent enough to play most games at low / medium settings, you will not be able to play Skyrim with high settings even at 1366x768 resolution if you want good frame rates.

Based on my experience setting up Skyrim to play on a friend's laptop that uses the Intel HD 4400 last summer, that graphics core is good enough to play Skyrim with a mix of low and medium graphic settings at 1366x768 or 1600x900 resolution. At the higher resolution I believe FPS ranged between 35 - 45 and at the lower resolution it was around 40 - 55 FPS. That was with an edit SkyrimPref.ini file which disabled all shadows in the game. Otherwise, with shadows performance will be around 5 - 8 FPS lower.

If you want to play Skyrim on high settings (or close to it), then I recommend you buy a laptop with a dedicated GPU. A GTX 960m should be good enough to play Skyrim at 1080p and high graphics settings with good performance.

Mobile Skylake CPUs generally comes with the Intel HD 520 graphics core and while it may be a bit more powerful than the Intel HD 4400 it still falls short of a dedicated GPU like the nVidia 940m. However, the Intel HD 520 should be fine for playing the Sims 3.


In case you are interested in playing Fallout 4....

While Fallout 4 is designed around an updated Creation Engine designed for Skyrim, Intel HD graphic core have issues running that game. There are fixes to get Fallout 4 up and running, but results are hit or miss. Some people can run Fallout 4 using Intel HD graphics while other can't. I tested Fallout 4 using the Intel HD 4400 on my laptop can I simply cannot get the game to run even after trying a few "fixes".

For those people who have been able to play Fallout 4 with Intel graphic cores, the result is pretty low performance; under 25 FPS with low settings.
 
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Ra_V_en

Ra_V_en

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Yes I do agree you don't need dGPU if you really want a good lightweight laptop with a decent battery lifespan.
Just be careful when choosing the display resolutions then, those Asus laptops has either FULLHD or even UHD resolution meaning at native it will likely be harder to get a decent framerates with iGPUs, but in that case there is still option to change that within the game options right?

You can check iGPU/dGPU performances on notebookcheck, it will give you an idea what you will be able to play at which resolution.
Imo if you want to go a decent grade gaming laptop then 940m is the very entry level any lower dGPU is just a mater of more wasted power to get similar performance.
On the other hand if you want gaming laptop then we are coming to power consumption culprit... dGPU will need you need more power, only for that you need better cooling solution = more weight, also to make it look decent and not turn off after 30 mins they put more dense battery packs which again is more weight. You pay more and in fact it becomes an opposite of a portable one... "art for art's sake"

 
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ithilien22

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@jaguarskx - I appreciate the insight on Skyrim, having to play at lower settings would be a pretty big drawback for me, as I'm used to the high settings my desktop can run.

Do you think a 940m would do better, or if I'm looking at a dGPU anyway then for the price should I just go for the something like the gs40 phantom that has the 970m?
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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The nVidia 940m will definitely give you a lot better performance in Skyrim. However, it is still only a budget GPU. I would say it could be possible to play Skyrim on high settings at 1366x768 resolution, but performance will probably not be very good; may ~30 FPS.

I have Skyrim on my laptop with a Core i5-4200u and Radeon HD 8850m (a little better than the 940m). I basically play it at 1600x900 with medium settings, but no shadows because I want my FPS to be around 50 or higher most of the time. At 1080p the performance is too low for my liking. I'll check to see how well it can handle Skyrim with the default high settings and shadows enabled at 1366x768 resolution. It should give a general idea of how the 940m may perform.

Of course, if you buy the GS40 with the GTX 970m you can probably play the game at 1080p using ultra settings if the performance hit is not very much compared to using high settings.
 
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ithilien22

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@Gingerbread - cheap is not an necessity, but light and portable still is. I don't want a huge gaming rig to lug around, but I would like a 14" ultrabook that could handle some games.

Given the responses, I'm starting to reconsider the surface book. It has what amounts to the 940m, and I went out on youtube and found some skyrim tests on it that seem decent on high. So maybe that is actually enough for my purposes.

At the end of the day, the gs40 phantom meets all of my specs, but it just seems so overkill if the most graphics intensive game I play is nearly 5 years old now. I don't know, I keep waffling back and forth about it.
 
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jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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People suspect that the GPU used in the Surface Book is basically a 940m with DDR5 VRAM instead of the slower DDR3 VRAM.

It is extremely rare to find a comparison between two graphic cards with the same GPU chip but with DDR3 vs. DDR5. The only one I came across was from several years ago which I believe compared a Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 to a Radeon HD 6670 DDR5. Based on the average of 5 or 6 different benchmarks the DDR5 version provided roughly 22% - 25% better performance.

If the Surface Book does in fact have a 940m with DDR5 VRAM, then it should definitely provide better performance compared to the Radeon HD 8850m in my laptop.
 
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