2 laptops - £1000 difference worth it?

[aquasnake]

Hi all,

I would like to replace my desktop with a powerful laptop and wondering if one of these would be fit for purpose. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
I found two of asus's latest duo laptops and I'm wondering if it's worth the extra £1k for the more expensive one? Here are the links:

£2500 - link

£3500 - link

 

[USAFRet]

1TB SSD vs 2TB
8GB RTX 3070 vs 16GB RTX 3080

"worth" is all up to you.

 

[aquasnake]

1TB SSD vs 2TB
8GB RTX 3070 vs 16GB RTX 3080

"worth" is all up to you.

Hi! Does the laptop also have 4k screen where as the cheaper one doesn't?

 

[USAFRet]

Hi! Does the laptop also have 4k screen where as the cheaper one doesn't?

Yep, that too.
Full HD 1920 x 1080 vs 4K 3840 x 2160

 

[aquasnake]

Yep, that too.
Full HD 1920 x 1080 vs 4K 3840 x 2160

I see. So it might be worth it for the 4k then. It has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C™ with DisplayPort™ 1.4 .
Do you happen to know if that supports 120/144hz 4k monitors?

 

[USAFRet]

No, I don't know. One would have to delve deep into their documentation.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

4k screens on a laptop are usually not much better looking than 1080p because they are so small. 4k screens will cause increased power consumption and worse battery life.

 

[aquasnake]

4k screens on a laptop are usually not much better looking than 1080p because they are so small. 4k screens will cause increased power consumption and worse battery life.

Thanks NightHawk. I agree! I'm wondering if even a 1440p laptop would be worth it? Maybe 1080p is simply the best for a 15.6 laptop? I'm now thinking whether i want to ditch my desktop and replace it with a powerful laptop and hook it up to an external monitor!

 

[NeroRomanus]

Hi all,

I would like to replace my desktop with a powerful laptop and wondering if one of these would be fit for purpose. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
I found two of asus's latest duo laptops and I'm wondering if it's worth the extra £1k for the more expensive one? Here are the links:

£2500 - link

£3500 - link

Unless you think that spending about 1000£ for double the M.2 storage capacity and a 3080 is worth it, go ahead.

8GB 3070 - 16GB 3080.

1TB M.2 - 2TB M.2.

 

[cryoburner]

What hardware does your current desktop have?

Keep in mind that laptop graphics cards will tend to be significantly less powerful than the current desktop cards with similar model numbers, so don't expect performance on par with what you see in reviews for those cards. The laptop 3080 doesn't even use the same graphics chip as the desktop 3080. It uses a chip similar to that of a desktop 3070, with slightly more cores enabled, but at significantly lower clocks, and while the exact performance level will vary from one laptop to the next, don't expect a laptop 3080 to perform better than a desktop 3060 Ti.

A laptop 3070 tends to be a bit slower than a laptop 3080, but on average the difference tends to be much smaller than what is seen with the desktop parts, typically less than a 25% difference between the two going by the numbers I've seen, and in some games very little difference at all. Though again, that can vary based on how the laptop is designed, and what sort of power limit the graphics hardware is given.

In my opinion, it's probably not worth the £1000 difference, though the specifications tab isn't loading on those pages for me, so it's hard to tell the exact differences between the two systems. The one has a larger SSD, but that probably only accounts for a £100 difference or so. It has a 4K 120Hz screen as well, compared to the 1080p 300Hz screen on the other, though it sounds like you intend on using an external display anyway. Apparently neither is available for purchase quite yet, so there are likely no reviews of those exact units either, and it's difficult to say how availability might be, given the current GPU shortage.

 

[Flayed]

4k on a 15" screen everything will be tiny would need to scale the desktop

 

[aquasnake]

What hardware does your current desktop have?

Keep in mind that laptop graphics cards will tend to be significantly less powerful than the current desktop cards with similar model numbers, so don't expect performance on par with what you see in reviews for those cards. The laptop 3080 doesn't even use the same graphics chip as the desktop 3080. It uses a chip similar to that of a desktop 3070, with slightly more cores enabled, but at significantly lower clocks, and while the exact performance level will vary from one laptop to the next, don't expect a laptop 3080 to perform better than a desktop 3060 Ti.

A laptop 3070 tends to be a bit slower than a laptop 3080, but on average the difference tends to be much smaller than what is seen with the desktop parts, typically less than a 25% difference between the two going by the numbers I've seen, and in some games very little difference at all. Though again, that can vary based on how the laptop is designed, and what sort of power limit the graphics hardware is given.

In my opinion, it's probably not worth the £1000 difference, though the specifications tab isn't loading on those pages for me, so it's hard to tell the exact differences between the two systems. The one has a larger SSD, but that probably only accounts for a £100 difference or so. It has a 4K 120Hz screen as well, compared to the 1080p 300Hz screen on the other, though it sounds like you intend on using an external display anyway. Apparently neither is available for purchase quite yet, so there are likely no reviews of those exact units either, and it's difficult to say how availability might be, given the current GPU shortage.

Thanks for the replies all.

cryoburner, cheers for detailed reply. It's made me think twice about replacing my desktop with a laptop. I just liked the idea of not having two devices, but just having a powerful portable one that does all the work and can be taken anywhere. I have a gtx 1070 at the moment in my desktop. I have a double set of monitors too, so i'm not sure a laptop would really support that at 144hz each.

 

[King Dranzer]

Simple resolution. You can categorize them into two categories and choose what is suitable for you.

R9 5900H + RTX3070 1080p@300hz:
Suitable for competitive gaming. If you want the smoothest and competitive gaming experience while fine regular day usage purchase it. It will also be good to handle productive workload but inferior to the RTX3080 combo.

R9 5900H + RTX3080 2160p@120hz:
Suitable for productive workload and great for regular daily usage. But not suitable for competitive gaming unless you bring its resolution down to 1080p@120hz which will still be inferior to 1080p@300hz of the cheaper variant if you are competitive gamer and need that ultra high refresh rate.

As I explained above unless you are competitive gamer who can really benefit from that 300hz refresh rate. The R9 5900H + RTX3080 is definitely worth that extra expenditure. But if you think you can benefit from that high refresh rate then yes that R9 5900H + RTX3070 laptop will be better.

 

[memydidydo]

I'd save the 1k and go with the cheaper but still good option.