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Gaming Desktop vs. Gaming Laptop? Help Me Win This Debate


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My desktop is at least 10-12 years old - I had it built and it was beefy for its time.

My spouse insists that I should just “get a good gaming laptop,” but I feel like the power, cooling and GPU requirements that SL with PBR needs just won’t be met. Not to mention fooling around in Blender in classes, trying to get my head around the new pipeline.

I may not need to do much in Blender, but I like inworld photography, social events, and playing with lighting. No machinima. I like immersion - husband says I can do that with dual monitors, then relax on the couch for a little blogging, music, and chat. Sure, that might be nice. But I don’t think I’d get my preferred experience.

Laptop yes or no? Decent specs? 

Desktop yes or no? Good enough specs for AAA gaming too?

Can anyone give me good reasons to argue for my preference for a good gaming desktop, instead of settling for a laptop that’ll just be a hot potato? I’m off to spec out a good desktop build for cost comparison.

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My < US$1000 gaming notebook (an Acer Nitro) works fine for me in SL, at least for how I use SL.

So, just choose carefully.  

You will get different answers from different users.

It depends a lot on whether you really need the power of a gaming desktop, or if you really need a higher-end gaming notebook or can use an expensive one like I do.

 

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I think the spouse wants a new laptop lol, or wants to keep tabs on you more...

But if you have a desktop, a laptop - even a 'gaming' laptop would be a downgrade. while a beefy one would likely work, you will never get the performance of a dedicated desktop GPU, or the cooling of a desktop, plus the upgrade ability of a desktop. And one other thing, connecting via LAN vs Wifi is still better in SL

meet him halfway get a basic laptop for "relax on the couch for a little blogging, music, and chat"

 

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6 minutes ago, Jackson Redstar said:

But if you have a desktop, a laptop - even a 'gaming' laptop would be a downgrade. while a beefy one would likely work, you will never get the performance of a dedicated desktop GPU, or the cooling of a desktop, plus the upgrade ability of a desktop.

Personally, I disagree based on my own experience. I upgraded from an old desktop to a gaming notebook/laptop and I'm just fine. (It has a decent GPU because it is a modern gaming notebook/laptop, not one of those with the worthless integrated GPU's.)

CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12500H (3110.4 MHz)
Memory: 16089 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.4317)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 30.0.15.1274
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 512.74

Admittedly, that may not be enough for SOME people, but it works just fine for me.

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6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Personally, I disagree based on my own experience. I upgraded from an old desktop to a gaming notebook/laptop and I'm just fine. (It has a decent GPU because it is a modern gaming notebook/laptop, not one of those with the worthless integrated GPU's.)

 

probably right I haven't used a laptop since like 2012 so my experience is a bit dated.  The only experience I have is my SL partner and her laptop, yeah, if you get a laptop need to spend the big bucks and get a full fledged gaming laptop, not a even a decent 'business' model like hers works - she can't even run PBR and even struggles on non PBR FS

Edited by Jackson Redstar
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23 minutes ago, Jackson Redstar said:

The only experience I have is my SL partner and her laptop, yeah, if you get a laptop need to spend the big bucks and get a full fledged gaming laptop, not a even a decent 'business' model like hers works - she can't even run PBR and even struggles on non PBR FS

Another point - mine was only about US$800 (it was "last year's model" when I got it) - they are cheaper now than they used to be.

So, yes - "gaming" notebooks/laptops used to be expensive, and still are for a "high end" model.  

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1 hour ago, Lelani Carver said:

Desktop yes or no? Good enough specs for AAA gaming too?

Depends on the games in question and how well-optimized they are. Which games are you considering? Second Life on its own runs pretty "heavy" in populated areas, but that's nothing compared to some of the more popular games on the market. Some are pretty beastly, even on the best systems.

Personally, I'd never game on a laptop. Between the heat management, cost, and upgrading shenanigans, I just can't be convinced it's a good investment. You're looking at...mehhh, maybe $2000-2500 or so to be able to play the newest AAA games. You can go a bit cheaper than that, but it might not have the longevity.

I snagged my desktop for $999 during Black Friday in 2020 and I can upgrade it with ease as game specs get more demanding over time. So far, I've only had to upgrade and replace the PSU a few months ago, which was pretty budget to begin with. I regret nothing.

If budget is a concern, you can try a site that lets you configure the parts and have them build it. That can work out well over standard pre-builts, if there are sales. 

Also, yeah, wait for sales. Around Black Friday is a great time to shop around. Mine was a midnight flash deal on Skytech, but all of the big builders have offers around that time of year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestapc/ is a great help for pre-builts/build configs, and https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ is awesome for scoping out the parts you may want in it.

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Unless you are on the move a lot, and need to take your computer with you, I would suggest a desktop.  It is slightly less expensive, more than likely expandable, and will probably save you a small bundle for another decade.

Not that I have anything against laptops, I loved my laptop, but ultimately it just stayed in the same spot, it was great for my needs because I don't have an office.  I have a roller desk, so it was easy to move it out of the way when I was not using it.  Unfortunately, replacing a laptop every four to five years, gets expensive. 


It really depends on your situation, what you plan to do with it, how much space you have, your financial considerations, and so on.  A laptop might be better, even if it is stationary, if you lack the space for a desktop, it has a much smaller footprint as well as less cables to worry about.  I really enjoy my desktop, but the monitor is clamped to that same roller desk, I have wires for my keyboard, mouse, monitor power supply, display cord, and they are all zip tied together.  It is rather unsightly, but then, I am not likely to be hosting any parties anytime soon, it was cheaper, and hopefully in another five years I will not have to dish out yet another $1,000 on a new budget gaming laptop.

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I have both laptop and desktop.  I ONLY use the laptop (a pretty expensive one, not a cheapy) for emergencies.  I CAN log in on it and I CAN pay my rent but it is NOT a good experience. Part of that is the wifi thing and it has been well documented for almost two decades that wifi erodes your experience (my tests were 33 percent or so difference in FPS and graphics loading).

I agree with the folks that say get a desktop unless of course you just want to chat with friends and not actually DO anything in SL.   Honestly a laptop these days == even a pricey one is painful. 

In the OLDEN days (like almost 20 years ago I used a17 inch top of the line HP laptop otherwise know by friends as the "magic machine" and I could do pretty well. I did however burn out a heat sync (under warrantee) and burned my thighs the computer got so hot.  So not all that great back then either (directly connected not wifi) .  

And the of course there is the PBR issue ^^

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Either is fine.

Laptop will need a dedicated GPU however so either a 'workstation' or 'gaming' laptop, ideally with an Nvidia GPU.

Downside is the heat issue, laptops with dedicated GPUs powerful enough for a good experience in SL run hot and noisy. WiFi is fine, just providing some balance since I see the nonsense that refuses to die out is alive and well in this thread.

 

Edited by AmeliaJ08
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8 hours ago, Istelathis said:

more than likely expandable

8 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I can upgrade it with ease

9 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

the upgrade ability of a desktop

You said your "desktop is at least 10-12 years old" and if in all that time you were never tempted to upgrade anything until now, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay of hardware… if that's true, maybe you wouldn't be much inconvenienced by the minimal ability to upgrade a laptop. For me, though, I've always considered laptops as essentially disposable devices that need an upgrade replacement every few years.

(To be fair, though, lately I've only been tempted by super-portable, super lightweight Surface-like notebooks that could as well be tablets, the extreme opposite of "gaming"… although for the moment I'm making do with a mostly useless iPad Air for that kind of portability.)

Also, I've never had trouble using home wifi for SL, especially when it's gotten so cheap to add another 6e node to the mesh. Sure beats stringing cable. My desktop happens to be plugged in to one of those nodes for no particular reason, since it's all wifi back to the router.

 

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10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

For me, though, I've always considered laptops as essentially disposable devices that need an upgrade replacement every few years.

I think now that notebooks / laptops are "cheap enough" FOR ME (I can't speak for everyone else), if I have to upgrade every few years, that is acceptable. 

(I may not say the same thing once I am on a fixed income.)

I also never bothered to upgrade my last desktop PC.  At some point, of course, it was so out of date that there was not really an upgrade path for the CPU (I'd have to replace the entire motherboard). It just seemed pointless to upgrade once I was finally ready for something faster.  The heat, the noise, the lack of portability, all led me to selecting a notebook/laptop after I consulted people on the Forums and took the leap.

 

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17 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Also, I've never had trouble using home wifi for SL, especially when it's gotten so cheap to add another 6e node to the mesh. Sure beats stringing cable. My desktop happens to be plugged in to one of those nodes for no particular reason, since it's all wifi back to the router.

I have 1Gbps Internet and 1Gbps switches connecting my various 6e nodes. I can get 830Mbps on hardwired devices and the full 1Gbps on anything connected via WiFi to my base router. That's because any wired device must share the aggregate 1Gbps on my home's backbone while I have nearly 3Gbps available through-the-air to the base router. I actually have one extension router detached from the wired backbone because the backhaul channel is faster.

I have run SL mainly over WiFi since the day I started over 16 years ago. I have never seen performance degradation as a result. I'm sure some people have had issues with WiFi. I have not been one of them.

Edited by Madelaine McMasters
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Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

I think now that notebooks / laptops are "cheap enough" FOR ME (I can't speak for everyone else), if I have to upgrade every few years, that is acceptable.

My emergency backup kid has been my "hand me down" excuse to refresh my computer and network hardware for the last dozen years. Now that he's married, I'll step up my refresh rate.

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10 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I have run SL mainly over WiFi since the day I started over 16 years ago. I have never seen performance degradation as a result. I'm sure some people have had issues with WiFi. I have not been one of them.

I "forget" that I use WiFi, because I use a mesh WiFi network at home.  Basically (for those who don't know), each node ("hub") in the WiFi mesh network communicates with the other nodes, and the "main hub" (which is connected to the wired internet) - the point being that the individual nodes communicate with each other at "extra fast" speeds, so there isn't much latency at all due to the "WiFi" aspect. 

Anyway, I plug my PC's into the individual mesh Wifi Hubs (directly or with routers to share the signal), so the PC's think they are "wired".

I need to upgrade my mesh WiFi network, it's really old and no longer supported. (But it controls all my home automation equipment and is integrated with Alex so, I just have to choose something that replaces the functionality 1-for-1).

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19 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

For me, though, I've always considered laptops as essentially disposable devices that need an upgrade replacement every few years.

Yeah, but that starts to hurt a bit if you're spending almost (or over) $2000 a pop. That's why I never went that route. 😂 That plus I'd want a big monitor, which essentially negates the whole purpose of using a laptop.

It really, really, really depends on the games outside of SL she's trying to run (and type of gaming - 1080p, 1440p, 4k, does FPS matter, etc.). Is she trying to run Elden Ring? Cyberpunk 2077? Black Myth: Wukong? Escape from Tarkov? Upcoming games releasing in 2025? Or older things like Counter-Strike 2 that will run fine at 1080p or 1440p on a sub $1000 rig? AAA on its own is a big category. Need more infos.

That will essentially determine whether she can make do with a budget, mid-range, or higher-end laptop or if a desktop with very occasional, modest upgrades here and there to keep up with new releases will be a better and more affordable experience.

I can't speak to the Blender usage. 3D modeling is a whole other ball of yarn.

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7 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Yeah, but that starts to hurt a bit if you're spending almost (or over) $2000 a pop. That's why I never went that route. 😂 That plus I'd want a big monitor, which essentially negates the whole purpose of using a laptop.

It really, really, really depends on the games outside of SL she's trying to run (and type of gaming - 1080p, 1440p, 4k, does FPS matter, etc.). Is she trying to run Elden Ring? Cyberpunk 2077? Black Myth: Wukong? Escape from Tarkov? Upcoming games releasing in 2025? Or older things like Counter-Strike 2 that will run fine at 1080p or 1440p on a sub $1000 rig? AAA on its own is a big category. Need more infos.

That will essentially determine whether she can make do with a budget, mid-range, or higher-end laptop or if a desktop with very occasional, modest upgrades here and there to keep up with new releases will be a better and more affordable experience.

I can't speak to the Blender usage. 3D modeling is a whole other ball of yarn.

I think it's great to get the perspective from an "actual gamer" like you, vs. a "casual non-power SL user" (like me)!

 

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Some people want to have the convenience of using SL while in bed or generally away from the "big" computer. What you can do in these cases is to have a beefy desktop PC running SL and stream the screen to a laptop/tablet/whatever. It works quite well.

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3 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Either is fine.

Laptop will need a dedicated GPU however so either a 'workstation' or 'gaming' laptop, ideally with an Nvidia GPU.

Downside is the heat issue, laptops with dedicated GPUs powerful enough for a good experience in SL run hot and noisy. WiFi is fine, just providing some balance since I see the nonsense that refuses to die out is alive and well in this thread.

 

Yeah, that's why I invested in a five fan laptop for my current one. Along with regular maintenance, it's likely why I still have mine running well after six years of (ab)use.

I open mine up three times a year to get the dust off and repaste the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU once a year. I also clean the cooling pad. I've changed the battery twice this year, but it's hard to get a new OEM one at this point. The current one from Inland (I think that's the brand) is just fine. Can't do SL or anything serious without it while plugged in.

So... basically mine is just a more portable desktop assistant... a giant PDA lol! Remember those things? I used to own a Palm Pilot. Yep. Anyway...

In the end just use whatever suits your overall needs best. We can only help you out, OP. Good luck.

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1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:
2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

For me, though, I've always considered laptops as essentially disposable devices that need an upgrade replacement every few years.

Yeah, but that starts to hurt a bit if you're spending almost (or over) $2000 a pop. That's why I never went that route. 😂 That plus I'd want a big monitor, which essentially negates the whole purpose of using a laptop.

Oh, yeah, re-reading my post I didn't quite say what I meant, which was that "gaming laptop" isn't for me either, for that same reason: they're too expensive to dump every few years, and instead I use a desktop for SL. But also I've been known to do some upgrades to my desktop that would be impossible with a laptop, so if the OP hasn't been tempted to uprade their desktop in 10-12 years they might be fine with a gaming laptop, no upgrades necessary.

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29 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh, yeah, re-reading my post I didn't quite say what I meant, which was that "gaming laptop" isn't for me either, for that same reason: they're too expensive to dump every few years, and instead I use a desktop for SL. But also I've been known to do some upgrades to my desktop that would be impossible with a laptop, so if the OP hasn't been tempted to uprade their desktop in 10-12 years they might be fine with a gaming laptop, no upgrades necessary.

Very true! Though, the part I bolded is a big maybe. Games are getting so huge these days (130+GB isn't uncommon), so as long as she chooses a laptop with a large enough SSD or something that can be upgraded, she'll be fine with future releases. GPU, heat, and airflow matters are a whole other thing, of course. 

If the OP wants, she can check both desktops and laptops over on Newegg. They've got pretty decent benchmark score charts showing a specific build's performance with certain games (whether or not they're playable and the expected FPS in 1080p, 1440p, and 4k).

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4 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

If the OP wants, she can check both desktops and laptops over on Newegg. They've got pretty decent benchmark score charts showing a specific build's performance with certain games (whether or not they're playable and the expected FPS in 1080p, 1440p, and 4k).

If you find one you like, you can always check and you will probably find "last year's model" available for a few hundred dollars less. (That's what I did for my low-end gaming laptop. Does ONE model year really make that much of a difference when comparing Eggs and Onions?)

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If you get a lap top one thing that you can do is plug it into your full size monitor so you aren't squinting at a tiny screen. At times I will also use plug (I use wireless) a regular keyboard and mouse into it also.

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5 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

If you get a lap top one thing that you can do is plug it into your full size monitor so you aren't squinting at a tiny screen. At times I will also use plug (I use wireless) a regular keyboard and mouse into it also.

I use a KVM switch to go between my work and home PC's for keyboard, video, and mouse. (Both happen to be notebook PC's.)

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