Looking for a Gaming Laptop - Blu-ray Forum

Mavrick · 08-16-2018, 07:18 PM

I won't have space for a proper PC for about 2-3 years so I thought I would go the gaming laptop route since my current laptop is about 5 years old running on an old i3-3217 CPU which is just not cutting it anymore, it's time for an upgrade.

99% of my gaming is done on Console given the lack of PC. So I'm probably not going to be using the Laptop for my AAA gaming needs every day. It will sort of be a stepping stone for me to access PC gaming for the first time in pretty much 15 years!

Based on budget I'm looking at around £1000 I could go up a couple hundred if the cost to benefit ratio was worth it.

I know I'm going to be looking at the lower end of the gaming laptop market at that price, but I have seen a few with the GTX1060 for around the £1000 mark.

I'm wondering though if the advantage of a 1060 is worth the extra couple hundred over the 1050ti when you consider I'll be playing on a 15-17" screen. Looking at banchmarks, the 1050 ti was able to hit around 44fps in BF1 1080p Max Settings, vs 73fps with the 1060.

On such a small screen couldn't I just drop the graphics settings to achieve a better framerate whilst not really noticing much of a drop in graphics in part to the small screen?

As for CPU I'm leaning towards the i5 more so than the i7 which I think for my needs at the moment will be pretty much overkill, and I'm guessing jumping from a 5 year old i3 to an i5 will be a pretty noticeable difference anyway?

I've also noticed that one of the laptops have a G-Sync displays. I take it that the 1050 ti and the 1060 both support this? Looking at specs most of the laptops don't seem to mention anything about G-Sync so would I be better off with it or without it?

Lots of questions I know but any advice would be appreciated.

Here are a some of the options I have available to me https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/gaming...-criteria.html

I was leaning towards this one https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...82908-pdt.html

dyne · 08-16-2018, 07:37 PM

G-Sync negates the need to use V-Sync during gaming, which can give a performance boost. Basically it syncs the refresh of the monitor to the gpu so there's no screen tearing. I have a G-Sync monitor for my PC and it's really great.

Mavrick · 08-17-2018, 10:36 PM

Been doing some more browsing today and locked it down to two possible candidates.

ASUS ROG Strix GL703GM-EE063T £1179.99 (£1079.99 after discount)

ASUS FX504GM-EN150T £1099.99 (£999.99 after discount)

I was leaning towards the first one as it has a slightly bigger screen. My current Laptop is a 17" display so I felt that the smaller screen could put me off.

But the smaller one packs a bigger SSD and comes with a free software pack containing:

Battlefield 1 (ARV: US$39.99)
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (ARV: US$14.99)
Gamer Sensei (ARV: US$15.00)
Hello Neighbor (ARV: US$29.99)
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (ARV: US$29.99)
PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS: Intel® Jacket (ARV: US$20.00)
World of Tanks (ARV: US$21.00)
Total Value: US$170.96

So I'm torn between the two. Do I pay more for the bigger screen but smaller SSD plus no free games.

Or do I pay less for the bigger SSD but smaller screen size but free games.

dyne · 08-18-2018, 01:22 AM

Personally I would get the bigger screen and smaller drive. You could always get an external for games you’ve already finished but don’t want to delete.

Suntory_Times · 08-20-2018, 07:03 AM

I'd wait a little longer for the new gpu's to be out.

Mavrick · 08-20-2018, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dyne

Personally I would get the bigger screen and smaller drive. You could always get an external for games you’ve already finished but don’t want to delete.

I decided on the bigger screen. But when I went to order it had already sold out. Which might be a stroke of good luck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suntory_Times

I'd wait a little longer for the new gpu's to be out.

As I just saw after it had sold out some new GPUs were getting ready to be revealed this week.

What would you recommend ST?

Suntory_Times · 08-20-2018, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mavrick

I decided on the bigger screen. But when I went to order it had already sold out. Which might be a stroke of good luck.

As I just saw after it had sold out some new GPUs were getting ready to be revealed this week.

What would you recommend ST?

We really don't know enough about the new cards yet, so i'd just patiently wait for them to come out. But if your looking at a 17" screen, i'd just aim for 1080p (unless you intend to connect it to a uhd/4k tv), i'd be inclined to likely say the 2060/more mid range laptop will probably be more then enough for the next few years. This is speculation as we don't have all the details on the new gpu's yet (and in the next 2ish years we may see a large jump in system requirements for games as new consoles likely release), so ultimately I feel it is best to wait it out for a little longer and see where all the cards fall. Then when the new gpu's are out, decide

Also even with gysnc/freesync you still don't want your frame rates dipping into the 40's. In terms of current cards and with the reality that some games are poorly optimised games I really think the 1060 is the minimum gpu to go for, if you want a quality experience. 30fps is all fine and well on consoles or when playing with a controller, but I can't stand it with a m+k, which you will need to use in competitive shooters like bf4. With that said the 2060 will likely closely match the 1070 though, and I would wait even if it is a few months for the new gpus to release and then start looking into what is a good fit for you.

As for the games you mentioned that are free, they either all go for very little, or aren't exactly great. Good cheap games are easy to be had on pc, especially if you don't need them day 1. More exactly, prioritise the machine itself over any packaged in games as being happy with the laptop is more important then a game or two (or even more when talking about older releases).

Mavrick · 12-08-2018, 09:06 PM

I notice that there have been a few listings popping up online for laptops sporting an RTX 2070 MAX-Q design.

There seems to be a lot of talk about a reveal at CES in January, I've seen the 6th mentioned a few places and that they could release as early as the end of that month but most likely February.

I'm obviously going to wait and see what January brings, but I had an Alienware 17 R5 sat in my basket for a while.

I was going to go with the 8th gen i7-8750H (6-Core, 9MB Cache, up to 4.1GHz w/ Turbo Boost) and a GTX 1070 OC with 8GB GDDR5 paired with 1x16GB, DDR4, 2666MHz.

The only thing I couldn't decide on was what panel to put in it.

Options were:

17.3" FHD 1920x1080 60Hz Anti-Glare NVIDIA G-SYNC Enabled 300-nits IPS
17.3" UHD 3840x2160 60Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC 300-nits IPS w/ Tobii IR Eye-tracking
17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC, 400-nits, TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking
17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz Anti-Glare 400-nits with TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking
17.3" FHD 1920x1080 60Hz Anti-Glare 300-nits IPS

I can't seem to find any comparisons between the TN and IPS panels on these laptops. I'm led to believe the the TN panel is actually very good for colour accuracy, obviously not as accurate as the IPS panel but more so than a lot of other TN panels.

My only issue was that the IPS panels were stuck in the past at only 60Hz and even the 120Hz are lagging behind compared to the competition which seem to have all moved on to 144Hz by now.

I ended up deciding on the 17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC, 400-nits, TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking, I still had the nagging feeling in my mind that the TN panel would stick out like a sore thumb to my eyes though.

Question is which of those panels would you guys have chosen?

I'm interested to see what the new mobile RTX cards are going to offer. The current RTX 2070 offers a 30% increase in performance over the GTX 1070 for a 30% price increase. It's essentially a GTX 1080 with Ray Tracing.

I would love to see what performance increase it offers in the laptop side of things. Will its performance gains be worth the extra cost.

KcMsterpce · 01-10-2019, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mavrick

I can't seem to find any comparisons between the TN and IPS panels on these laptops. I'm led to believe the the TN panel is actually very good for colour accuracy, obviously not as accurate as the IPS panel but more so than a lot of other TN panels.

TN has better response times, and are cheaper to produce, while also allowing for higher refresh rates vs. the cost of an IPS.
IPS displays have much, much better color gamut/richness. Over the last couple years, IPS panels with high Hz rates are becoming more commonplace as well. I would go IPS over TN in a heartbeat, especially if it's 110Hz or higher.

Quote:

My only issue was that the IPS panels were stuck in the past at only 60Hz and even the 120Hz are lagging behind compared to the competition which seem to have all moved on to 144Hz by now.

Well, the stability and performance 90Hz to 110Hz can be noticed by very discerning gamers. After 120Hz, I doubt many would be able to tell you truthfully the difference between a constant, stable 110fps versus 120fps, or even 144fps.
The other consideration is that you are looking into GPUs that won't provide a constant 90fps (or better) for high end games at max settings. 1080p should be fine, but getting a 60Hz 4k panel would just tax any laptop GPU and probably perform anywhere from 20-45fps (realistically) at max settings for AAA titles. I would not recommend getting a 4k display. I would personally look into a 1080p IPS panel at 110Hz or higher.
G-Sync is really, really good. No need for V-synch (as previously mentioned), and if you're gaming, and fps rates are peaking at 90fps and dipping into the 50fps range, it's much harder to notice with G-Sync. However, without G-Sync you would get juttery motion, screen tearing and other aberrations more easily.

Quote:

I ended up deciding on the 17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC, 400-nits, TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking, I still had the nagging feeling in my mind that the TN panel would stick out like a sore thumb to my eyes though.

1440p is my preference versus 1080p. I don't like 4k on a laptop, it's just not very beneficial. I had a 15.6" 4k laptop, and many programs wouldn't scale down to 1080p or 1440p resolution, so I would have microscopic icons and text (Photoshop is an example). Annoying. Plus, I was gaming at 1080p since 4k was ridiculous slow. It would be better now if you were using a 2080 Max-Q, but even that will struggle unless you punch down to medium settings while playing in 4k.
A 1440p display allows for the 1070, or any RTX series card to utilize better framerates and performance than with 1080p. 1080p will kind of bottleneck the RTX card's performance. It would be like putting tiny spare tires on an F1 car.

As for opting to get a laptop with an RTX card... sure, it will cost a little more, but you will also get more longevity out of your purchase.
Likewise, this month and next month expect some big discounts on current 10-series laptops to clear stock for the RTX versions. That's a bonus.

Mavrick · 02-20-2019, 08:21 AM

I took delivery of the MSI GS75 Stealth yesterday.

Never owned a gaming laptop before so was amazed that it was thinner than my current vanilla laptop and it is only a few mm wider, amazing considering my old one was a 15" and the MSI is 17". The almost non existent bezel really cuts down the size, so you get a 17" screen in a 15" sized laptop.

The other most obvious improvement is the build quality. It's slightly heavier than my old laptop but it has a metal case which feels nice and cold to the touch. The only down side is the screen has a bit more flex to it than I'd like, but I'm not going to be flexing my screen daily so shouldn't be an issue.

The temps on it seem to be sitting right at 40c when just using it for everyday tasks like browsing and YouTube. The fans aren't even running so it is literally silent during regular usage which my old laptop certainly wasn't. Even when firing up games and benchmarks the fans have yet to hit fill speed. Temps during the benchmarks I've done were sat around 60c/70c have yet to see it hit the 90c or above temps I was seeing in the reviews of the 2080 Max Q model. Maybe I'm just not playing it long enough to get it that hot.

Mine has the i7 8750H, 2070 Max Q and 16gb ram with 512gb M.2 PCIe SSD. The OS is blistering fast running on that thing. It's my first time with an OS on SSD so coming from old HDD to this is like some sort of miracle, everything just happens so fast it's insane.

The screen is also quite stunning, it's a 1080p 144hz IPS "type" panel. Colours and brightness are crazy, it's something like 300nits and silky smooth, there is no g sync, but after some hard thinking I was ok losing it in order to gain much better battery life. Most g sync laptops were lasting 2 hours unplugged. This one lasted about 7hours yesterday whilst I was finding and installing everything.

I'll get some pics up later
Only question I have now is what free game to choose, Anthem or BFV

KcMsterpce · 02-20-2019, 11:10 AM

Congrats on a great gaming laptop choice!
Maybe get Anthem as your free game.
I have played every BF game and spent thousands of hours on them. BFV was free for me, and I still only put 4 hours into it. Played another 30+ hours on BF1 since I got it, too.
*Shrug* Maybe just ask yourself which game style you prefer, and choose that game. Both will certainly give you plenty of eye candy with the RTX 2070!

I don't think I'll be upgrading my laptop with the current-gen GPUs and might wait about another year, but the MSI that you have is one of my top three options. What gets me most is the THREE M.2 PCIe slots. I have so many NVme drives laying around now, that I could easily fill those up with my own drives, and have a lot of storage space haha

I love G-Sync. My current MSI that I am typing with right now is 144Hz but no G-Sync. There is a difference, especially with wide dips in fps. I personally don't consider battery life to be an OPTION with a gaming laptop. That's a kind of silly concept for me. When reviews make it a "con" that a super powerful performer has bad battery life, I don't get why it should even be considered a negative. I would put in "pro" if it happened to be significantly MORE long-lasting than other gaming laptops with the same specs. Otherwise, it would not factor into my review.

But I digress... if I really think battery life is something I want to extend, then I force disable G-Sync and make the laptop run entirely on the CPU graphics. Boom.

Mavrick · 02-20-2019, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KcMsterpce

Congrats on a great gaming laptop choice!
Maybe get Anthem as your free game.
I have played every BF game and spent thousands of hours on them. BFV was free for me, and I still only put 4 hours into it. Played another 30+ hours on BF1 since I got it, too.
*Shrug* Maybe just ask yourself which game style you prefer, and choose that game. Both will certainly give you plenty of eye candy with the RTX 2070!

I don't think I'll be upgrading my laptop with the current-gen GPUs and might wait about another year, but the MSI that you have is one of my top three options. What gets me most is the THREE M.2 PCIe slots. I have so many NVme drives laying around now, that I could easily fill those up with my own drives, and have a lot of storage space haha

I love G-Sync. My current MSI that I am typing with right now is 144Hz but no G-Sync. There is a difference, especially with wide dips in fps. I personally don't consider battery life to be an OPTION with a gaming laptop. That's a kind of silly concept for me. When reviews make it a "con" that a super powerful performer has bad battery life, I don't get why it should even be considered a negative. I would put in "pro" if it happened to be significantly MORE long-lasting than other gaming laptops with the same specs.
But I digress... if I really think battery life is something I want to extend, then I force disable G-Sync and make the laptop run entirely on the CPU graphics. Boom.

If I had already had a GTX laptop I certainly wouldn't have bothered with the RTX lines thus year. It's only because I'm a first time adopter that I went for the RTX.

It certainly is great having 3 M.2 slots. I'm tempted to get a 1tb 970 evo but I feel like there could be a price drop on them below £200 In the next few months. So I'll make what I have last for now.

As for the battery life it wasn't really a concern for me, I was all set on having a laptop with it, but it just turns out that it's not an option for the GS75, at least not yet. Maybe in a few months we will see some more options but having a laptop last upwards of 6 hours on battery for everyday use is a nice bonus. Obviously when gaming I'd be plugged in anyway.

I think for the first generation these Mobile rtx cards are ok. Based on the benchmark results it was putting it around 1070ti and 1080. How accurate those results are I'm not sure but it is what it is.

I just need to finish setting it up today, spent hours yesterday installing steam and origin etc as well as finilding all my favourite programs I use and reinstalling them all. It's my first time with Win 10 as well coming from win 8.1 so it's a bit of a learning curve but it's not too bad.

KcMsterpce · 02-20-2019, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mavrick

As for the battery life it wasn't really a concern for me, I was all set on having a laptop with it, but it just turns out that it's not an option for the GS75, at least not yet. Maybe in a few months we will see some more options but having a laptop last upwards of 6 hours on battery for everyday use is a nice bonus. Obviously when gaming I'd be plugged in anyway.

What I was implying is:
- Reviews account for battery life with the dedicated GPU enabled, and G-Sync turned on. Then, they say "battery life is terrible compared to the 20+ hours life of this [laptop that is basically the same power draw and performance/requirement of a cell phone]" and proclaim it to be a "con".
- Second, it would be great if they did two things that takes five minutes: Disable G-Sync in Nvidia Control Panel. In Win10 Power Options, force integrated GPU on battery.
That would be a more fair comparison, and something worth discussing in laptop reviews if you really think people care enough about gaming/POWER laptops' battery life.

Because, like you said, if you want battery longevity, you would not be expected to realistically be gaming on it. You would be using the same way as the low power draw, lower performance laptop that has the super-long battery life. A more fair comparison.
Heck, to even further extend the life, make Power Option settings that limit CPU performance to 40%, and so on...

Mavrick · 02-20-2019, 01:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KcMsterpce

What I was implying is:
- Reviews account for battery life with the dedicated GPU enabled, and G-Sync turned on. Then, they say "battery life is terrible compared to the 20+ hours life of this [laptop that is basically the same power draw and performance/requirement of a cell phone]" and proclaim it to be a "con".
- Second, it would be great if they did two things that takes five minutes: Disable G-Sync in Nvidia Control Panel. In Win10 Power Options, force integrated GPU on battery.
That would be a more fair comparison, and something worth discussing in laptop reviews if you really think people care enough about gaming/POWER laptops' battery life.

Because, like you said, if you want battery longevity, you would not be expected to realistically be gaming on it. You would be using the same way as the low power draw, lower performance laptop that has the super-long battery life. A more fair comparison.
Heck, to even further extend the life, make Power Option settings that limit CPU performance to 40%, and so on...

Indeed, they could go in to more detail in their battery tests. I've read a lot of laptop reviews over the past 6 months or so and it's one area that they hardly go in to in any detail. They usually just tell you what video file they are using and what screen brightness they set it to and if they have put it in to airplane mode then they tell you how long the battery lasted whilst it was on loop.

I think the main people that would really care about battery life are students who are going to be stuck in class and are using the laptop for work as well as play.

There was one brand this year, I forget which one it was but they were using AI to switch G-Sync off when it wasn't needed to extend battery life which seems like a pretty simple solution that I'm surprised hasn't really been made a standard across the board already.

Mavrick · 02-20-2019, 05:16 PM

Just found out I got a free copy of Black Ops IIII, I just registered the laptop on the MSI site and it was there under Relative Promotions next to my product. It was an Intel offer, I hadn't even seen anything advertising it but I'm glad I saw it.

Had to go through hoops uploading pictures of invoice and barcodes, then it sent me to Intel, where I had to answer a survey then it sent me to log in to Call of Duty site, then I had to link my Battle.net account.

Pretty great that you get two free AAA games.

There is also an off for $15 free Steam credit for leaving reviews on Websites. I don't think I can be bothered with that, can I even use $ on my UK£ steam account?

KcMsterpce · 02-20-2019, 05:54 PM

Congrats on the free swag as well!
I don't know how review credits for Steam works at all. I registered my MSI when I got it last February (wow, a year already?!), but I didn't look at anything after MSI said "congratulations you are registered!" I do remember I had to scan my receipt, put in a couple different barcodes, and jump through a few more hoops to get it done.

As for using $ (I think you mean US dollars) on a UKE Steam account (UK based)... I think it wouldn't be a problem at all. You'll just get what Steam's transfer rate is from their bank the day you deposit it. I think Steam is one of the better websites for adjusting to people in locations not related to their account location/affiliation.
However, it can be confusing setting up the user options/preferences to get it all to work.

Either way... USD deposits are most likely transferable.

Mavrick · 02-21-2019, 11:01 PM

Seem to have hit a bit of a snag with Geforce Experience, it started an update and it ended up with a BSOD...

When it restarted Gerforce Experience tries to open but all I get is a blank page with index.html at the top...

It automatically reopens every time I close it. The icon in my tray says there is an update available but I'm not able to fetch it since something screwed up during the previous attempt. Any ideas?

KcMsterpce · 02-22-2019, 10:58 AM

Before I go investigating into the BSoD codes and checking other methods of fixing it, I would just roll back to a previous driver version, and do a completely new/fresh install:

First, disable Geforce Experience from opening on startup. You can do this by opening Task Manager, (CTRL+ALT+DEL then select "Task Manager", or right-click on the bottom windows menu bar on desktop in an empty area, then select "Task Manager", OR press Windows Key+X and select it in the shortcut menu), click "More Details".
On the "Startup" tab, look for GeForce Experience, left-click it and select "Disable" on the bottom right of the window.
Reboot

Now, continue to this:

Download the previous Nvidia driver, or even one before that.
Uninstall GeForce Experience in Win10 Applications (Windows Key+X, "Apps and Features").
Reboot.
Install ver 418.81 or whatever it is (I know the current one is 418.91 and it came out within the past week. Use any update before that one), and choose the complete install, not the update/shorter version.

Maybe that will help.

Sometimes, a new driver update can be wonky with specific hardware combinations.

Mavrick · 02-22-2019, 03:16 PM

Thanks for that.

I had to uninstall Geforce Experience completely and do a fresh install of v3.17.0.126. That sorted out the issue of it not opening.

It did start to download the latest driver you mentioned I paused it though since it was about 1am by that point. So I'll try it again later.

If it does it again I guess I'll just quit using it and manually download new drivers.

It was interesting though that there seems to be quite a few people with the RTX laptops that have had the same error in the past couple days...

https://forums.geforce.com/default/t...blue-screen/2/

KcMsterpce · 02-23-2019, 01:43 AM

It makes sense that the new RTX laptops are having common issues. Most likely due to Nvidia's need to troubleshoot fixes after gathering glitches/conflicts from a wide release.

A brand new driver just got released (419.17). I would recommend giving it a go.

Also, if there's no reason for you to USE GeForce, why not just keep it uninstalled?
For me, the only reason I keep mine is because I use ShadowPlay. Otherwise, I'd be happier not having it installed at all.

08-16-2018, 07:18 PM	#1
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	Looking for a Gaming Laptop I won't have space for a proper PC for about 2-3 years so I thought I would go the gaming laptop route since my current laptop is about 5 years old running on an old i3-3217 CPU which is just not cutting it anymore, it's time for an upgrade. 99% of my gaming is done on Console given the lack of PC. So I'm probably not going to be using the Laptop for my AAA gaming needs every day. It will sort of be a stepping stone for me to access PC gaming for the first time in pretty much 15 years! Based on budget I'm looking at around £1000 I could go up a couple hundred if the cost to benefit ratio was worth it. I know I'm going to be looking at the lower end of the gaming laptop market at that price, but I have seen a few with the GTX1060 for around the £1000 mark. I'm wondering though if the advantage of a 1060 is worth the extra couple hundred over the 1050ti when you consider I'll be playing on a 15-17" screen. Looking at banchmarks, the 1050 ti was able to hit around 44fps in BF1 1080p Max Settings, vs 73fps with the 1060. On such a small screen couldn't I just drop the graphics settings to achieve a better framerate whilst not really noticing much of a drop in graphics in part to the small screen? As for CPU I'm leaning towards the i5 more so than the i7 which I think for my needs at the moment will be pretty much overkill, and I'm guessing jumping from a 5 year old i3 to an i5 will be a pretty noticeable difference anyway? I've also noticed that one of the laptops have a G-Sync displays. I take it that the 1050 ti and the 1060 both support this? Looking at specs most of the laptops don't seem to mention anything about G-Sync so would I be better off with it or without it? Lots of questions I know but any advice would be appreciated. Here are a some of the options I have available to me https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/gaming...-criteria.html I was leaning towards this one https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...82908-pdt.html

08-17-2018, 10:36 PM	#3
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	Been doing some more browsing today and locked it down to two possible candidates. ASUS ROG Strix GL703GM-EE063T £1179.99 (£1079.99 after discount) ASUS FX504GM-EN150T £1099.99 (£999.99 after discount) I was leaning towards the first one as it has a slightly bigger screen. My current Laptop is a 17" display so I felt that the smaller screen could put me off. But the smaller one packs a bigger SSD and comes with a free software pack containing: Battlefield 1 (ARV: US$39.99) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (ARV: US$14.99) Gamer Sensei (ARV: US$15.00) Hello Neighbor (ARV: US$29.99) PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (ARV: US$29.99) PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS: Intel® Jacket (ARV: US$20.00) World of Tanks (ARV: US$21.00) Total Value: US$170.96 So I'm torn between the two. Do I pay more for the bigger screen but smaller SSD plus no free games. Or do I pay less for the bigger SSD but smaller screen size but free games.

12-08-2018, 09:06 PM	#8
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	I notice that there have been a few listings popping up online for laptops sporting an RTX 2070 MAX-Q design. There seems to be a lot of talk about a reveal at CES in January, I've seen the 6th mentioned a few places and that they could release as early as the end of that month but most likely February. I'm obviously going to wait and see what January brings, but I had an Alienware 17 R5 sat in my basket for a while. I was going to go with the 8th gen i7-8750H (6-Core, 9MB Cache, up to 4.1GHz w/ Turbo Boost) and a GTX 1070 OC with 8GB GDDR5 paired with 1x16GB, DDR4, 2666MHz. The only thing I couldn't decide on was what panel to put in it. Options were: 17.3" FHD 1920x1080 60Hz Anti-Glare NVIDIA G-SYNC Enabled 300-nits IPS 17.3" UHD 3840x2160 60Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC 300-nits IPS w/ Tobii IR Eye-tracking 17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC, 400-nits, TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking 17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz Anti-Glare 400-nits with TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking 17.3" FHD 1920x1080 60Hz Anti-Glare 300-nits IPS I can't seem to find any comparisons between the TN and IPS panels on these laptops. I'm led to believe the the TN panel is actually very good for colour accuracy, obviously not as accurate as the IPS panel but more so than a lot of other TN panels. My only issue was that the IPS panels were stuck in the past at only 60Hz and even the 120Hz are lagging behind compared to the competition which seem to have all moved on to 144Hz by now. I ended up deciding on the 17.3" QHD 2560x1440 120Hz AG NVIDIA G-SYNC, 400-nits, TN+WVA Tobii Eye-tracking, I still had the nagging feeling in my mind that the TN panel would stick out like a sore thumb to my eyes though. Question is which of those panels would you guys have chosen? I'm interested to see what the new mobile RTX cards are going to offer. The current RTX 2070 offers a 30% increase in performance over the GTX 1070 for a 30% price increase. It's essentially a GTX 1080 with Ray Tracing. I would love to see what performance increase it offers in the laptop side of things. Will its performance gains be worth the extra cost.

02-22-2019, 10:58 AM	#18
KcMsterpce Blu-ray Samurai Member since:May 2011 Location:Germany 4K collection:168 Blu-ray collection:700	Before I go investigating into the BSoD codes and checking other methods of fixing it, I would just roll back to a previous driver version, and do a completely new/fresh install: First, disable Geforce Experience from opening on startup. You can do this by opening Task Manager, (CTRL+ALT+DEL then select "Task Manager", or right-click on the bottom windows menu bar on desktop in an empty area, then select "Task Manager", OR press Windows Key+X and select it in the shortcut menu), click "More Details". On the "Startup" tab, look for GeForce Experience, left-click it and select "Disable" on the bottom right of the window. Reboot Now, continue to this: Download the previous Nvidia driver, or even one before that. Uninstall GeForce Experience in Win10 Applications (Windows Key+X, "Apps and Features"). Reboot. Install ver 418.81 or whatever it is (I know the current one is 418.91 and it came out within the past week. Use any update before that one), and choose the complete install, not the update/shorter version. Maybe that will help. Sometimes, a new driver update can be wonky with specific hardware combinations. Last edited by KcMsterpce; 02-22-2019 at 11:09 AM.

08-16-2018, 07:37 PM	#2
dyne Blu-ray Baron Member since:Feb 2011 4K collection:77 Blu-ray collection:508 Trading Score:7	G-Sync negates the need to use V-Sync during gaming, which can give a performance boost. Basically it syncs the refresh of the monitor to the gpu so there's no screen tearing. I have a G-Sync monitor for my PC and it's really great.

08-18-2018, 01:22 AM	#4
dyne Blu-ray Baron Member since:Feb 2011 4K collection:77 Blu-ray collection:508 Trading Score:7	Personally I would get the bigger screen and smaller drive. You could always get an external for games you’ve already finished but don’t want to delete.

08-20-2018, 07:03 AM	#5
Suntory_Times Blu-ray Champion Member since:Mar 2008 Location:The Grid Blu-ray reviews:16 Trading Score:23	I'd wait a little longer for the new gpu's to be out.

02-20-2019, 08:21 AM	#10
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	I took delivery of the MSI GS75 Stealth yesterday. Never owned a gaming laptop before so was amazed that it was thinner than my current vanilla laptop and it is only a few mm wider, amazing considering my old one was a 15" and the MSI is 17". The almost non existent bezel really cuts down the size, so you get a 17" screen in a 15" sized laptop. The other most obvious improvement is the build quality. It's slightly heavier than my old laptop but it has a metal case which feels nice and cold to the touch. The only down side is the screen has a bit more flex to it than I'd like, but I'm not going to be flexing my screen daily so shouldn't be an issue. The temps on it seem to be sitting right at 40c when just using it for everyday tasks like browsing and YouTube. The fans aren't even running so it is literally silent during regular usage which my old laptop certainly wasn't. Even when firing up games and benchmarks the fans have yet to hit fill speed. Temps during the benchmarks I've done were sat around 60c/70c have yet to see it hit the 90c or above temps I was seeing in the reviews of the 2080 Max Q model. Maybe I'm just not playing it long enough to get it that hot. Mine has the i7 8750H, 2070 Max Q and 16gb ram with 512gb M.2 PCIe SSD. The OS is blistering fast running on that thing. It's my first time with an OS on SSD so coming from old HDD to this is like some sort of miracle, everything just happens so fast it's insane. The screen is also quite stunning, it's a 1080p 144hz IPS "type" panel. Colours and brightness are crazy, it's something like 300nits and silky smooth, there is no g sync, but after some hard thinking I was ok losing it in order to gain much better battery life. Most g sync laptops were lasting 2 hours unplugged. This one lasted about 7hours yesterday whilst I was finding and installing everything. I'll get some pics up later Only question I have now is what free game to choose, Anthem or BFV

02-20-2019, 11:10 AM	#11
KcMsterpce Blu-ray Samurai Member since:May 2011 Location:Germany 4K collection:168 Blu-ray collection:700	Congrats on a great gaming laptop choice! Maybe get Anthem as your free game. I have played every BF game and spent thousands of hours on them. BFV was free for me, and I still only put 4 hours into it. Played another 30+ hours on BF1 since I got it, too. Shrug Maybe just ask yourself which game style you prefer, and choose that game. Both will certainly give you plenty of eye candy with the RTX 2070! I don't think I'll be upgrading my laptop with the current-gen GPUs and might wait about another year, but the MSI that you have is one of my top three options. What gets me most is the THREE M.2 PCIe slots. I have so many NVme drives laying around now, that I could easily fill those up with my own drives, and have a lot of storage space haha I love G-Sync. My current MSI that I am typing with right now is 144Hz but no G-Sync. There is a difference, especially with wide dips in fps. I personally don't consider battery life to be an OPTION with a gaming laptop. That's a kind of silly concept for me. When reviews make it a "con" that a super powerful performer has bad battery life, I don't get why it should even be considered a negative. I would put in "pro" if it happened to be significantly MORE long-lasting than other gaming laptops with the same specs. Otherwise, it would not factor into my review. But I digress... if I really think battery life is something I want to extend, then I force disable G-Sync and make the laptop run entirely on the CPU graphics. Boom.

02-20-2019, 05:16 PM	#15
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	Just found out I got a free copy of Black Ops IIII, I just registered the laptop on the MSI site and it was there under Relative Promotions next to my product. It was an Intel offer, I hadn't even seen anything advertising it but I'm glad I saw it. Had to go through hoops uploading pictures of invoice and barcodes, then it sent me to Intel, where I had to answer a survey then it sent me to log in to Call of Duty site, then I had to link my Battle.net account. Pretty great that you get two free AAA games. There is also an off for $15 free Steam credit for leaving reviews on Websites. I don't think I can be bothered with that, can I even use $ on my UK£ steam account?

02-20-2019, 05:54 PM	#16
KcMsterpce Blu-ray Samurai Member since:May 2011 Location:Germany 4K collection:168 Blu-ray collection:700	Congrats on the free swag as well! I don't know how review credits for Steam works at all. I registered my MSI when I got it last February (wow, a year already?!), but I didn't look at anything after MSI said "congratulations you are registered!" I do remember I had to scan my receipt, put in a couple different barcodes, and jump through a few more hoops to get it done. As for using $ (I think you mean US dollars) on a UKE Steam account (UK based)... I think it wouldn't be a problem at all. You'll just get what Steam's transfer rate is from their bank the day you deposit it. I think Steam is one of the better websites for adjusting to people in locations not related to their account location/affiliation. However, it can be confusing setting up the user options/preferences to get it all to work. Either way... USD deposits are most likely transferable.

02-21-2019, 11:01 PM	#17
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	Seem to have hit a bit of a snag with Geforce Experience, it started an update and it ended up with a BSOD... When it restarted Gerforce Experience tries to open but all I get is a blank page with index.html at the top... It automatically reopens every time I close it. The icon in my tray says there is an update available but I'm not able to fetch it since something screwed up during the previous attempt. Any ideas?

02-22-2019, 03:16 PM	#19
Mavrick Gaming Moderator Top contributor Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Wales Home Theater Gallery:121 4K collection:62 Blu-ray collection:813 iTunes collection:1 Blu-ray reviews:5 Trading Score:1	Thanks for that. I had to uninstall Geforce Experience completely and do a fresh install of v3.17.0.126. That sorted out the issue of it not opening. It did start to download the latest driver you mentioned I paused it though since it was about 1am by that point. So I'll try it again later. If it does it again I guess I'll just quit using it and manually download new drivers. It was interesting though that there seems to be quite a few people with the RTX laptops that have had the same error in the past couple days... https://forums.geforce.com/default/t...blue-screen/2/

02-23-2019, 01:43 AM	#20
KcMsterpce Blu-ray Samurai Member since:May 2011 Location:Germany 4K collection:168 Blu-ray collection:700	It makes sense that the new RTX laptops are having common issues. Most likely due to Nvidia's need to troubleshoot fixes after gathering glitches/conflicts from a wide release. A brand new driver just got released (419.17). I would recommend giving it a go. Also, if there's no reason for you to USE GeForce, why not just keep it uninstalled? For me, the only reason I keep mine is because I use ShadowPlay. Otherwise, I'd be happier not having it installed at all.

Best PC Game Deals