How to spec your Gaming Laptop | What Laptop GPU to pick?

You’d think if you want more performance from a gaming laptop, you’d just get a higher specced one, right? Surely an RTX 4090 Laptop chip will always outperform a measly RTX 4060 Laptop chip, right? Well, you’d be… WRONG! This Acer Helios NEO 16, complete with an RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, is faster than this Asus Zephyrus G14, complete with an RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, in almost every game. Don’t believe me? Well here’s those two in Cyberpunk – the Neo 16 is running nearly 10 FPS faster, and 20 FPS faster in the 1% lows. Microsoft Flight Simulator? 20 FPS average. Rainbow Six Siege? 50 FPS average. Seriously. So, why? Let me explain, and in turn help you pick what spec is right for you for your next gaming laptop. 

The first, and I think biggest, reason is all to do with thermals and power. Laptops are a finite space with certain constraints that desktops don’t generally have – that being size, weight and noise. It doesn’t really matter that your GPU is a foot long and weighs as much as a baby, because it’s just getting slapped inside a case and left on the floor or on your desk. The size and weight don’t really matter. A laptop, on the other hand, needs to be slim enough to fit in your backpack, and light enough for you to want to carry it around in said backpack. A machine like the G14 is a slim, sleek and elegant machine that weighs just 1.7 kilograms. The Helios NEO 16 is a thicker, heftier machine, weighing 2.7 kilograms – a full kilo more. Most of that went into a heftier cooling package, which allows that 4060 Laptop chip to stretch its legs a lot more than the 4090 Laptop in the G14. 

There’s actually two points here – thermals and power. The former is pretty simple, the less thermal mass, the harder it is to keep the chip cool. The fans have to work harder – making them louder – and you just can’t get as much performance out of the chip as it gets too hot. The latter point is a little more complicated. These chips all have a TGP figure – that being thermal graphics power. That’s the maximum the chip can draw, where generally speaking the more power, the more performance, but also the more heat. Obviously, if the chip is overheating, it has to cut back on how much power it’s drawing, and therefore cut back on how much performance it’s delivering. But the thing is, thinner laptops, regardless of cooling ability, generally can’t draw as much power as larger ones.

That is nicely demonstrated in this Shadow of the Tomb Raider chart. The Schenker Vision 16 Pro I tested had an RTX 4070 Laptop chip – as did the XMG PRO 15, and yet the Vision 16 Pro is at the bottom of the chart, and the PRO 15 is at the top, over 30 FPS faster in both average and 1% low results. Why? Well that’s at least partially down to the TGP rating. The Vision 16 Pro can, at best, flow 95 watts through that 4070. The XMG Pro on the other hand can draw up to 140 watts through its 4070. That’s 47% more power available to the Pro 15, and while it only delivered 23% more performance with that power, you can see just how different two similarly specced machines can perform. 

The other variable is a bit harder to pin down without benchmark results, but in short, it’s what CPU you have. Now this depends a lot on the games you play – some titles like Cyberpunk don’t seem to be too CPU limited in these sorts of situations, whereas a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator seems to care a fair bit more about what chip you’ve got. The AMD chips that I’ve tested seem to perform significantly worse than Intel’s latest offerings, to the point that two very similarly sized machines – the XMG FOCUS 16 and Core 16 – perform wildly differently to the tune of 20 FPS average. The most stark contrast though is in more esports titles like Rainbow Six Siege. The Core 16 offers a full 120 FPS less than its Intel-specced relation, the FOCUS 16. That is an incredibly significant difference, despite things like the TGP being the same. It certainly seems like the 13700HX or 13900HX are your best choice right now – at least for gaming, and from my relatively limited sample size. 

Just to show you the difference in great detail, Hitman 3’s built in benchmark helpfully lets you split out the CPU and GPU performance during the same test. Here are the CPU results from both the Core 16 and the FOCUS 16. The 13900HX in the FOCUS 16 ran at nearly 150 FPS, where the 7840HS in the Core 16 couldn’t hit 120 FPS average. That’s 25% more performance – a pretty significant difference for otherwise pretty equal machines. 

So, long story short on the graphics front, save your money and get the most powerful 4060 laptop you can find. There are of course a couple of caveats there, namely if what you’re after is a desktop replacement style machine that trades some (or most) of its portability for cooling potential, then it might actually be worth it to get a higher end chip, or conversely if you want a thin and light machine. That Zephyrus G14 does get beaten by any moderately thick machine, but if we look at my Fortnite results you’ll see that it is handily outperforming the Core 16, a machine that’s drawing up to 15 watts more power. That larger GPU is considerably more efficient at producing performance, than that 4060 chip. This is a somewhat extreme example, but hopefully you get the point. 

So we’ve talked about the CPU and GPU, but what about the rest of the machine? Well I’ll start with the related components, that being RAM and storage. RAM I’d get 16GB if you’re on a budget, or 32GB otherwise. The higher the speed, generally the better, although I don’t think there’s an insane amount of performance loss between 5600 and 4800 on these sorts of chips. Storage I’d want at least 1TB, and ideally a spare M.2 slot to drop some more storage into later. If that isn’t there, depending on your budget anyway, I might look for someone like XMG who’ll let you customise your spec before buying and drop 2TB in there. 

As for the display, that one seems to be trending towards 1440p and 1600p displays. Honestly I don’t understand why, because these machines really can’t offer anywhere near enough performance to enjoy that resolution, but naturally I’d look for a high refresh rate panel at least. Ideally it’d have a good response time – although you’ll have to look for someone who’s tested that, ideally with one of my open source response time tools which are available at OSRTT.com. Anything with an average less than the refresh rate window is generally good enough. Brightness is a more-is-better metric, around 250 nits being just about enough, and between 400 and 500 nits being a great panel. 

More recently, if you don’t mind a slightly thicker machine, you might get the option of a mechanical keyboard. This Core 16 has one and it’s fantastic. It is a 95 euro option, but if you get the chance to try one I’d highly recommend it. There are a few other things I can’t give you much help on, specifically things like typing feel, trackpad usage, noise and heat dissipation. For those things you’ll have to find some reviews. 

Of course all of this comes back to your budget. If you only have a bit of cash you’re likely to be limited to whatever you can find at that price point, rather than having your pick of the lot, but hopefully this information will still be valuable in helping you save some cash and picking the best machine within your budget. Of course if you’ve got cash to spare, I hope this has still been useful for you. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments down below!