Question I have this Modern $1000 Laptop, but why Gaming on it bad?

[very_452001]

Hello,

Its this laptop:

https://www.acer.com/gb-en/support/product-support/SFA16-41/NX.KABEK.002/details

Supposedly its RDNA 2 graphics however I realised it only has 512MB of dedicated VRAM. This laptop has 16GB RAM so how do I get the VRAM to borrow some ram from my main 16GB just for gaming? From here what's the max VRAM it can bump up to?

Lastly how do I unlock the highest TDP Watts Power for this laptop just for gaming while laptop is plugged in? Where do I go in windows 11 settings to enable this because I do not want to be bottlenecked by a lower TDP making gaming slow. Whenever I plug in the charger I want the highest TDP laptop performance automatically and when on just battery then it can go back to the slow Eco mode or whatever, how do I enable this?

Can the hdmi v2.1 port of this laptop output 4k @ 120Hz with Freesync?

Any more optimizations I can do in Windows or AMD settings to squeeze out every juice out of this laptop for gaming while plugged in?

Which are the Best PC games ever according to Metacritic reviews that will run on this laptop @ 4k 60Hz/120Hz max settings? Are remastered PC games optimised?

Finally when I game I have block borders on top and bottom on my laptop screen, its 16:10 screen so where do I go in AMD settings to game at full screen without any cropping of the image?

 

[rgd1101]

return it, and get a gaming laptop

 

[Math Geek]

it takes a $2500 desktop and some to get 4k @ 120+ hz

no change an office laptop with no dedicated gpu is going to even come close to touching that. your expectations are very unrealistic for the hardware you have.

you are basically asking "how do i make my family sedan perform like a $2 mil hyper sports car?" the answer is, "you buy a $2 mil hyper sports car!!"

you need a gaming laptop with top tier hardware to do what you are asking. not an office laptop designed to run MS office

 

[bill001g]

Can it put out a 4k 120hz display, maybe but that means very little. There is a huge difference just between just output a display and doing say rendering in a game. It might let you run a windows desktop at the resolution or maybe play a netflix movie.

You have to remember even with a 4090 that cost way more than your whole laptop you have a massive issue getting it to run 4k at 120hz on almost all games unless you turn down setting or use one of the fake frame generators to get a higher number of frames. In games like cyberpunk even a 4090 is lucky to get 60frames when you set everything to max.

You are likely barely going to get acceptable frame rates at 1080p at 60hz with that laptop on most games. As other have mentioned it is not designed to play games.

 

[DSzymborski]

VRAM isn't the problem here. It could have all the VRAM in the world and it wouldn't help your situation.

This uses the Radeon 660M integrated graphics. These are getting more competent all the time, but this isn't even remotely AMD's highest-end solution; it's comparable, if we're talking power of discrete GPUs, to the GTX 560, a midrange GPU released in 2011. So you can run similar games that would run on a midrange GPU from 12-13 years ago. That's a lot of games, but you're not going to be running things at 4K and modern AAA games, if you can run them at all, may be a nightmare.

The problem, unfortunately, is simply the choice of hardware if gaming was your main goal. This is a midrange office laptop with a fairly high quality OLED display for the price (which is compensated for by weaker specs otherwise). It's simply not a gaming laptop.

Gaming is always going to be a bit challenging on a new laptop, but to maximize it at this price, you have to prioritize gaming features like a discrete GPU and deprioritize things like display quality, touchscreen, lightweight/thin, etc.

I have several laptops, but only one of them can really play any games acceptably, an Alienware 15 R4 with a GTX 1070, bought for like $1300 about five years ago (there was a cheaper one with a GTX 1060, a midrange GPU of the time). But to get that GPU at that price and make it respectable for gaming, a lot of other stuff had to be sacrificed: the display quality is mediocre and it's not a touch display, it's not a two-in-one, and it's a big chunky rectangle that's heavy enough to use as a battering ram.

If you want a gaming laptop with *all* the features, the GPU and the display and the nice, thin form factor and light weight, well, you're going to be talking a $2000-$3000 laptop. In the $1000 range, you have to choose what needs you want to meet and prioritize for those, because you're not getting them all.

 

[Deleted member 2969713]

The integrated GPU of your Ryzen 6600U has a theoretical performance of 1.46 teraflops. TFLOPS are not always representative of actual performance relative to other GPUs, but if the comparison is valid in this case, that would put the graphics capabilities of your laptop at about the same level as an Xbox One (not X). With that in mind, the only games you'll be able to play in 4K are old games starting from about a couple of decades ago or very undemanding indie games. You'll have to be content with lower resolutions for more recent games. Many games on the Xbox One targeted 720p-900p.

Regarding VRAM, I believe the system will dynamically allocate memory to the iGPU as needed. It won't be constrained to 512 MB. Your laptop BIOS may give you the option to set a specific amount of RAM to be dedicated solely to video if you wish.

 

[very_452001]

Can it put out a 4k 120hz display, maybe but that means very little. There is a huge difference just between just output a display and doing say rendering in a game. It might let you run a windows desktop at the resolution or maybe play a netflix movie.

You have to remember even with a 4090 that cost way more than your whole laptop you have a massive issue getting it to run 4k at 120hz on almost all games unless you turn down setting or use one of the fake frame generators to get a higher number of frames. In games like cyberpunk even a 4090 is lucky to get 60frames when you set everything to max.

You are likely barely going to get acceptable frame rates at 1080p at 60hz with that laptop on most games. As other have mentioned it is not designed to play games.

What are the fake frame generators for AMD called and will they help with my laptop?

 

[very_452001]

The integrated GPU of your Ryzen 6600U has a theoretical performance of 1.46 teraflops. TFLOPS are not always representative of actual performance relative to other GPUs, but if the comparison is valid in this case, that would put the graphics capabilities of your laptop at about the same level as an Xbox One (not X). With that in mind, the only games you'll be able to play in 4K are old games starting from about a couple of decades ago or very undemanding indie games. You'll have to be content with lower resolutions for more recent games. Many games on the Xbox One targeted 720p-900p.

Regarding VRAM, I believe the system will dynamically allocate memory to the iGPU as needed. It won't be constrained to 512 MB. Your laptop BIOS may give you the option to set a specific amount of RAM to be dedicated solely to video if you wish.

Hi I cannot see setting in Bios to increase the VRAM. Please advise.

 

[bill001g]

I think AMD calls it FSR3, this is similar to the DLSS stuff from nvidia.

More frames is mostly just to get a bigger number which is why a lot of people call them fake frames. A very simple example would be I just display the same exact frame twice....does that really change anything other than the frame count number.

You see 2 main thing they do. The first is they actually run the resolution at say 1024 and then use fancy up scaling to pretend it is 4k. This is a trick game consoles have used for a long time. Is it really 4k though?
Next the latest generation of these tools actually creates frames and inserts them between the actual frames. These are kinda a guess as to what a frame would look like between the 2 frames. You tend to get some artifacts and distortions if you look close enough.

The downside to this is you see input lag because it takes time to mess around with the video so much.

I don't think it matters anyway. I don't think a integrated GPU has the support for this type of feature.

 

[logainofhades]

$1k for that is a rip-off. $1k can get you a gaming laptop with a 4060.

 

[DSzymborski]

What are the fake frame generators for AMD called and will they help with my laptop?

No. Those things can help with upscaling and the like, but they're not turning a non-gaming GPU into a gaming one. You simply bought the wrong laptop for $1000 if gaming was of significant importance.

 

[Deleted member 2969713]

Hi I cannot see setting in Bios to increase the VRAM. Please advise.

If there's no option, then you can't configure it. But as I said before, it should automatically use more memory for the video when it needs it.