Laptop Suggestion Request

[PlagueMaid]

Hi, this is my first forum post and I'm pleading with you all to give my small request a chance. I will be in the market for a laptop in the near future and have been trying to rebuild my love for the game for a while now. I currently have an HP laptop that barely survives on Low settings and 30 minutes of being online as a chibi cow or invisible. It's not a great laptop but I'm not in the market for a desktop as I have a very "mobile" lifestyle. Here is some quick info to keep in mind with your suggestions:

• Budget: $500.00 USD to $1,000.00 USD 
• Desired Settings: Medium to High (Interested in SL Photography)

Thank you all in advance for giving your suggestions. I also have two options I was given from a friend. Unfortunately both have sold out and one says it may or may not be restocked.
Option 1: HP 250 G10 Laptop
Option 2: ASUS ZenBook

[Kathrine Jansma]

Your main problem with this budget will be, that a discreet GPU is often out of reach. That would be the thing that helps the most with good graphics. You might be lucky to see some NVIDIA RTX 4060 with 8GB VRAM and a last gen CPU + 16 or 32 GB RAM for the machine in the range, but most are more expensive.

For example (no idea how good the exact model ist):

HP Victus Gaming Laptop 15.6" FHD IPS 144Hz Intel 12-Core i5-12500H Processor 16GB DDR4 1TB SSD GeForce RTX 4060 8GB Graphic Backlit USB-C B&O Fast Charging Win11 Black - Newegg.com

A little above that, but a little more expensive would be:

MSI Thin GF63 Gaming Laptop 15.6" FHD IPS 144Hz Intel 10-Core i7-12650H Processor 32GB DDR4 1TB SSD GeForce RTX 4060 8GB Graphic Backlit USB-C Nahimic Win11 Black - Newegg.com

All the non discreet GPUs (like Intel Xe etc.) are much much worse than a dedicated GPU like a 4060, e.g. see some benchmarks here:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-4060-Laptop-GPU-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-80EUs_11455_10364_10395.247598.0.html

Even the fastest non-discreet GPU in a AMD Ryzen 7840 is much slower than a 4060.

 

[PlagueMaid]

18 minutes ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

Your main problem with this budget will be, that a discreet GPU is often out of reach. That would be the thing that helps the most with good graphics. You might be lucky to see some NVIDIA RTX 4060 with 8GB VRAM and a last gen CPU + 16 or 32 GB RAM for the machine in the range, but most are more expensive.

I would like to know what you would recommend if I went a little higher than $1,000.00 USD and get what you're describing. I'm willing to do so but also am wary of spending more due to budget. 

23 minutes ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

All the non discreet GPUs (like Intel Xe etc.) are much much worse than a dedicated GPU like a 4060, e.g. see some benchmarks here:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-4060-Laptop-GPU-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-80EUs_11455_10364_10395.247598.0.html

Even the fastest non-discreet GPU in a AMD Ryzen 7840 is much slower than a 4060.

What do you mean by worse? As in it wouldn't be able to handle the graphics?

[Sephy McCaw]

intel graphics are mostly on board made for light tasks such as watching videos, editing images and light gaming, they will struggle running sl at mid-high detail.

[PlagueMaid]

30 minutes ago, Sephy McCaw said:

intel graphics are mostly on board made for light tasks such as watching videos, editing images and light gaming, they will struggle running sl at mid-high detail.

Would you recommend raising my budget then?

[Sephy McCaw]

Yes, but there is a system on Newegg with 4050 for 849$ before tax but you can shop around as long as it has a discreet gpu you should be fine.

[Kathrine Jansma]

2 hours ago, PlagueMaid said:

What do you mean by worse? As in it wouldn't be able to handle the graphics?

It can handle the graphics, but your frames-per-second will be in the single digits when there are multiple avatars around and it will not like larger draw distances.

For example the Radeon 780m iGPU in a fast Ryzen 7840u is around 50-100% faster than an Intel XE iGPU in many cases, but a mobile RTX 4060 is about 4x as fast as the 780m. 

(https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-780M-iGPU-analysis-AMD-s-new-RDNA-3-GPU-takes-on-its-competitors.714019.0.html )

If you can afford it, try to get a laptop with a Nvidia RTX 4060 and 8 GB VRAM and at least 16 GB of RAM. The RTX 4050 only has 6GB VRAM which is a bit low for today and it is around 20% slower than a 4060. 

More VRAM basically means more textures can be loaded and it can handle more details and larger draw distances better. 

 

 

[PlagueMaid]

41 minutes ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

It can handle the graphics, but your frames-per-second will be in the single digits when there are multiple avatars around and it will not like larger draw distances.

For example the Radeon 780m iGPU in a fast Ryzen 7840u is around 50-100% faster than an Intel XE iGPU in many cases, but a mobile RTX 4060 is about 4x as fast as the 780m. 

(https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-780M-iGPU-analysis-AMD-s-new-RDNA-3-GPU-takes-on-its-competitors.714019.0.html )

If you can afford it, try to get a laptop with a Nvidia RTX 4060 and 8 GB VRAM and at least 16 GB of RAM. The RTX 4050 only has 6GB VRAM which is a bit low for today and it is around 20% slower than a 4060. 

More VRAM basically means more textures can be loaded and it can handle more details and larger draw distances better. 

Thank you so much for explaining this I finally get what you are talking about. I will try and up my budget so that I can get the bang for my buck! Is there a system out of my budget that you think meets those type of specs. What would you say about this https://www.newegg.com/gray-xotic-pc-tuf-gaming-f15-fx507vu-es53/p/2WC-000N-0E0H8?

[Structura Finesmith]

You can also go the thrifty used route, since you're looking at laptops:

Second Life in general is a "rendering problem" rather than a "load everything quickly" problem. You can get there with a gaming computer, but you'll end up spending a LOT in order to do so.

The HP ZBooks, however, even older ones, are absolute BEASTS at rendering. I'm quite satisfied with the 6-yr old one I'm currently using.

(Caveat: I don't go clubbing or do shopping events - so I don't know how well it will perform under those conditions.)

HP "ZBook 17"  - the G3 to G6 models come in around $500 - $700 on average, if you're less worried about cosmetics and don't mind the occasional scratchy-denty things provided everything works.

You can then use what's left in the budget to upgrade and max out the RAM - they can take usually up to 64GB of DDR4 SODIMMs, I think 3200mhz?

Check on Ebay, and make sure it comes with an "nVidia" card in it. Toss a specific (affordable!) model of ZBook in web search and add "specifications" and you should find the HP page listing the POSSIBLE video cards that might be in it. Obviously, the closer you get to the max nVidia spec for that model, the better you'll be.

(Also make sure the seller has a power cord with it - I've seen a few on ebay that don't have a power cord...)

 

 

[AmeliaJ08]

If you are prepared to consider used:

HP Zbook and Dell Precision (with minimum Nvidia Quadro T2000 graphics) on the used market are a great value ($500ish) and often cheaper than 'gaming' laptop equivalents using largely the same hardware. For reference the Nvidia Quadro T2000 is pretty much identical to the Geforce GTX 1650Ti laptop GPU and should be considered about the minimum comfortable dGPU spec required for SL in 2024, IMO. I see them on eBay all the time. Since these are considered 'workstation' laptops they're usually loaded with RAM, 32GB is a common config with the T2000 GPU. They're well built laptops too, if that matters to you... I know I don't much like plastic laptops.

I think the life of these machines will be limited by the 4GB VRAM they have though, it works but SL is VRAM hungry and 6GB minimum would be better. Of course 6GB+ VRAM laptops means more expensive.

Or:

If you want to consider something newer but still used and more gaming focused then Asus Zephyrus are my favorite line of gaming laptops because of the build quality. You might find a good deal on one with the mobile RTX 3060 or 3070 GPU, both of which are very capable as SL machines if they have 16GB or more of system RAM.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 4 by AmeliaJ08

[AmeliaJ08]

10 hours ago, PlagueMaid said:

Thank you so much for explaining this I finally get what you are talking about. I will try and up my budget so that I can get the bang for my buck! Is there a system out of my budget that you think meets those type of specs. What would you say about this https://www.newegg.com/gray-xotic-pc-tuf-gaming-f15-fx507vu-es53/p/2WC-000N-0E0H8?

I wouldn't spend that much for a 4050 laptop.

It's all about that dGPU, you can do better. It's a fine laptop dGPU but given SL isn't leveraging anything special about the 40 series Nvidia chips you would have a much faster SL machine if it had a 3060, 3070 (or even 3080) laptop from the previous generation which I think are still on sale or available refurb'd.

You really have to dig into the specific specifications of each chip but if you look up Nvidia 3060 laptop GPU and Nvidia 4050 laptop GPU on the techpowerup database you will see the differing specs, the 3060 laptop GPU is a lot more powerful than the 4050 laptop GPU and it's the kind of differences that will be noticeable in SL.

40 series has some advantages in power draw etc and newer feature support but the 4050 an inferior chip to the 3060 as far as performance and SL likes as much graphics performance as you can afford.

 

 

Edited March 4 by AmeliaJ08

[Sephy McCaw]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

If you are prepared to consider used:

HP Zbook and Dell Precision (with minimum Nvidia Quadro T2000 graphics) on the used market are a great value ($500ish) and often cheaper than 'gaming' laptop equivalents using largely the same hardware. For reference the Nvidia Quadro T2000 is pretty much identical to the Geforce GTX 1650Ti laptop GPU and should be considered about the minimum comfortable dGPU spec required for SL in 2024, IMO. I see them on eBay all the time. Since these are considered 'workstation' laptops they're usually loaded with RAM, 32GB is a common config with the T2000 GPU. They're well built laptops too, if that matters to you... I know I don't much like plastic laptops.

I think the life of these machines will be limited by the 4GB VRAM they have though, it works but SL is VRAM hungry and 6GB minimum would be better. Of course 6GB+ VRAM laptops means more expensive.

Or:

If you want to consider something newer but still used and more gaming focused then Asus Zephyrus are my favorite line of gaming laptops because of the build quality. You might find a good deal on one with the mobile RTX 3060 or 3070 GPU, both of which are very capable as SL machines if they have 16GB or more of system RAM.

 

 

 

 

 

quadro cards are not made for gaming, they are for studio type work so they dont play friendly with the game drivers.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Sephy McCaw said:

quadro cards are not made for gaming, they are for studio type work so they dont play friendly with the game drivers.

They play just fine with studio drivers and SL is not an application that benefits from game ready optimization from Nvidia.

A Quadro T2000 will perform within a couple of FPS of a 1650Ti given its slightly lower clock speed but every other specification is identical. It's the same TU-117 die with a slightly lower TDP thanks to its lower clock speed.

In general though you are right, Quadro is not the ideal platform for gaming but... they support all the necessary APIs and game ready optimization doesn't mean much in all cases, comparable Geforce GPUs will perform quite similarly in many cases.

Edited March 4 by AmeliaJ08

[PlagueMaid]

16 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I wouldn't spend that much for a 4050 laptop.

What about a 4060? I looked into the thread with more detail and found I was misreading the advice. I'm really impressed with this one as it's supposed to be "budget friendly." MSI Thin GF63 It's RAM heavy but I looked at a review of it and it's meant for college students. It looks pretty sad in the display wise, but they say for the budget you sacrifice other things. 

Now my next question is since you said 30XX would fair better to the 40XX dGPUs; would you have an example or your own experience with a model with said graphics card(s)?

[Kathrine Jansma]

In the end, it is your preferences and budget that shape the best solution.

The various components involved in a laptop are always tradeoffs between weight, heat, price and performance.

Those need to be compared to your needs, like size, in general smaller means slower and/or more expensive. If you want top performance in a 13" laptop, you pay a premium compared to larger ones like 15.6" or 17.3". So you must decide how large/heavy you are going in sacrifice for other desirable properties.

Then you mention screens, FHD screens like 1920x1080 or similar have far less pixels than a 4k screen. So you need a smaller GPU to have good results. If you go from FHD to 4k you would need a (simplified) roughly 4x as powerful GPU for same results, as you need to render more pixels. Its not actually that bad, but higher resolution means you need more punch from the GPU. So pick your sacrifice. If you absolutely love crisp sharp 4k displays, your GPU performance will be lower, but you might be happier. If you love to have higher FPS you might prefer FHD and a 144, 165, 200 or whatever high Hz display. And if you have a docking station and/or some external screen attached the laptop screen might not matter at all. So you must decide whats important for you.

Same with RAM. I tend to get as much RAM as i can. But for most people 16 GB or 32 GB is good enough, so the majority of middle class laptops are sold with one of those amounts today. For graphics work, software development or other memory hungry things, more is better of course, so the uptick for 64-GB is worth it, especially as many newer, especially small laptops have RAM soldered onto the motherboard, which is faster and smaller, but makes upgrading later impossible. Some, especially larger laptops still allow to install more RAM later, but that seems to be rare. So if you want to just run SL 16 GB might be okay. If you'd like to run SL and something else in parallel, e.g. photoshop or so, you want more, like 32-GB or 64-GB. 

SSDs tend to be mostly no brainers today, as the price dropped enough. 512 GB is pretty small, 1 TB tends to be enough for most. In a pinch you can always buy some external SSD with fast USB to carry more data. So unless you know you need vast amounts of space for video editing or similar, go for 1 TB or so.

Now GPUs, which is the essence for SL. SL loads a lot of textures and meshes. Those need space in the VRAM of the GPU, otherwise they would get pushed out and reloaded all the time. So the more fidelity and textures you see on screen, the more VRAM would be needed. There is no real upper limit there, if you crank up your draw distance, you may be able to even fill 48 GB of VRAM on a 20.000 $ Workstation card. So it is always a compromise. 8 GB is a good amount to go with Full HD screens or a little bigger, it is also the usual amount you can get for reasonable mid-range prices. It is good enough for today and a bit into the future. More VRAM also makes various tools run better too, e.g. Blender, AI tools, etc. There are some reports that a few contemporary games do not even start with 6GB VRAM anymore, so i would consider 8 GB the minimum for useful.

So, if one looks at 'minimum 8 GB VRAM', the options start to thin out. A RTX 3060 GPU usually has just 6, so is out. A RTX 4050 similar. So we are either talking RTX 4060 which is a good choice for FHD screens. Or we are talking about some RTX 3070 or RTX 4070, which are much faster, but also heavier and more expensive, so usually only available in 16" or 17" models or with a significant price uptick. So 30xx is an option to safe money if you go for a 3060 with less VRAM, but the 3070s i saw were still more expensive (and faster) than a 4060. If you want to go for 4k or 2560x1200 screens, a 3070 is worth a consideration. There might be bargains to be had with inventory clearing of 3070s but i didn't see any nice ones on newegg right away.

ANY dedicated GPU will drain your battery rapidly while in use, so expect to plug it in for maximum performance. Battery life with full 3D load will be about 1-2h max. Thats one of the reasons many laptops do not add a dedicated GPU, iGPUs can work longer (and a lot slower) on batteries. But as always, tradeoffs.

For CPU you usually have not much of a problem, most models offered together with a decent GPU are powerful enough, so it is mostly a matter of preferences between Intel and AMD and nitpicking on details. 

Other things some people care for are quality of life details, that usually increase the price. I tend to love fingerprint readers for unlocking my machine with Windows Hello, but that is rare in gaming machine, same with webcams, some are better or worse. Keyboards quality is also a thing and varies widely. Maybe you want RGB lighting or maybe you hate it? Or maybe you absolutely need a RJ45 jack for networking or are totally happy with Wifi? And so on.

So to come to a decision, you could set your rough budget target, then go through the decision points i listed above and should come up with a list of criteria you can priorize and match to the laptops you consider.

That said, from the raw power i think the MSI one you listed is decent, but i have no idea about the other qualities like screen, keyboard, haptics, looks etc.

[AmeliaJ08]

7 hours ago, PlagueMaid said:

What about a 4060? I looked into the thread with more detail and found I was misreading the advice. I'm really impressed with this one as it's supposed to be "budget friendly." MSI Thin GF63 It's RAM heavy but I looked at a review of it and it's meant for college students. It looks pretty sad in the display wise, but they say for the budget you sacrifice other things. 

Now my next question is since you said 30XX would fair better to the 40XX dGPUs; would you have an example or your own experience with a model with said graphics card(s)?

That does seem like a very good specification, RAM heavy is a good thing

My comparison between was more about the 4050 specifically, if you look up the specification of the 4060 Mobile GPU you will see it is quite capable:

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4060-mobile.c3946

I would say on balance the 4060 Mobile GPU is a better option than the 3060 Mobile GPU, primarily because the specification is quite similar but it includes 8GB of VRAM and its theoretical performance is a little bit higher. In some respects it is down on the 3060 specification and yet the magic of being a little bit newer means it is very comparable and often slightly faster than the previous generation. It also supports the very latest in Nvidia specific technologies that don't matter at all to SL but might if you are wanting to do other gaming (DLSS 3 primarily). That 8GB VRAM is the big upgrade though, VRAM is king:

 

Of course with laptops you have to consider build quality, thermal design etc and I simply could not say if that MSI is a good laptop in those respects. With a 45W CPU (https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/core-i7-12650h.c2536) and a 115W GPU (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-4060-mobile.c3946) it has quite a thermal load to deal with, gaming laptops tend to be designed to cope better with this than Ultrabook laptops but that is no guarantee. Some degree of thermal throttling can usually be expected to maintain temperatures but do read many reviews of this specific laptop with this specific configuration to get an idea of how it actually performs and what to expect.

And yeah, all said above definitely applies. Don't expect to be able to use this kind of specification while on battery etc since it just isn't feasible. That MSI does seem to have a very small battery which should translate to about 5-6 hours when new of run time (while not using the dGPU at all), if battery life matters to you. I'm not sure this matters to many since obviously we can't use laptops like these when on battery for long but just to make sure there's no expectation of a truly mobile SL experience

 

 

Edited March 5 by AmeliaJ08

[PlagueMaid]

6 hours ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

So to come to a decision, you could set your rough budget target, then go through the decision points i listed above and should come up with a list of criteria you can priorize and match to the laptops you consider.

That said, from the raw power i think the MSI one you listed is decent, but i have no idea about the other qualities like screen, keyboard, haptics, looks etc.

Thank you so much for coming back and explaining this to me! I'm feeling a little more confident in looking at my options now with the information you and others have given to me. I'll probably come back and share the one I had chosen and get feedback on it. I appreciate you.

[PlagueMaid]

HP Victus Gaming Laptop, 15.6" FHD 144Hz Display, 12th Gen Intel 12-Cores i5-12500H, GeForce RTX 4060, 64GB RAM, 2TB PCIe 4.0, WiFi 6, Backlit KB, Keypad, RJ45, HDMI, USB-C, Mytrix HDMI, Win 11 Pro - Newegg.com 

I've landed on this laptop and would like some opinions on the specs. Thank you all for the help! 🖤

[Kathrine Jansma]

I would consider it good for the price point.

It is a bit hard to find exactly this model reviewed, as HP makes dozends of variants of the machine. This seems to be the model you have there:

https://laptopmedia.com/laptop-specs/hp-victus-15-1202/

The screen and keyboard seem to be the weak spots, but that is pretty typical in this price range i would say. In a pinch you can always plug in a better external screen and keyboard when it matters. 

According to the HP website and tests it has two SO-DIMM RAM sockets and a slot for standard SSDs, so in theory you could upgrade it later, but 2TB/64GB is already the maximum supported and buying a cheaper model with 32 GB and upgrading looks more expensive. But you could do it if you have to save 100$ now and can spend 150$ for an upgrade later.

Edited March 6 by Kathrine Jansma