Discussion Rate my Gaming Laptop

[Flavoade]

So I bought a new Laptop; its actually my first laptop I have ever purchased myself. I did a little research and went to Best Buy to play on them to get an idea of different products. There was an Acer Nitro 15" with 8th Gen Intel I5 that looked okay for $600 (Link to the Acer). I just wanted the increased performance, and didn't plan on using it for serious gaming. Best Buy had the best price on it so that is why I went to see it in person.

The Acer was out of stock, so the Associate told me that there was a Dell G3 Gaming Laptop $300 off (Link to the Dell G3). It was $160 more than the Acer and had better specs so I said "WTH" and bought it. I needed a Comp anyway as my Desktop recently died.

I could not find reviews on my specific machine as there are various specs, but I was curious to know if I actually bought a decent Laptop? Now that I have a PC with the ability to game, I may return to 'La Raza' . The Dell G3 was $779, with a MSRP of $1079. I cannot find exact specs on this Laptop but it appears to have a 1660 Ti Max Q. Not sure if this is good.

I ran the 3d Mark test and it made a decent score. Its def 4-5 times more powerful than my old Desktop.

So... Any thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[Nmopt]

It's a decent machine, but you could have gotten better deals.

It has 8GB of ram which is the bare minimum. It has a good i5, but for $1000 you could have gotten an i7.
512GB SSD is not much.

For the $1000 you got a good deal, but not the best deal. Its strong in the GPU department, but everything else is in the $750 compartment. The GPU is in the $1250 compartment which makes it a $1000 laptop.

Im sure you'll enjoy it!

 

[mrtomasophalus]

I wouldn't be super sure about saying that's a strong GPU. From my experience most manufacturers will not specify between laptop and max-q GPUs in their specs pages. You just have to guess and find out after purchase unless you find a salesman that actually knows his stuff (rare). I would take a lower series laptop grade GPU over a higher end max-q variant any day, especially considering how nvidia has released multiple levels of max-q devices for several lines of GPUs. Not only could you be getting a max-q without knowing, but you could be getting the bottom of the barrel max-q. Also the system is only as fast as its slowest components. My current RTX 2060 6GB benchmarks better with a more stable system than my old RTX 2070 8GB (both laptop version). My experience with max-q was when I got another laptop with supposedly the same RTX 2070 8GB but ended up getting stuck with the max-q instead. My benchmark scores dropped drastically even with a newer gen Intel processor and upgraded RAM cards. I was furious and ended up settling on fixing up a more stable laptop with the next level down RTX 2060 6GB laptop GPU.

I'm not trying to compare my GPU to yours, but I have found that max-q models are significantly dialed back and rarely perform anywhere near their actual laptop equivalent, which in turn cannot compete with the desktop model. I believe they were only created to make up for a lack of cooling in thinner model laptops that can't support a legitimate thermal dissipation system.

And your storage is a little small considering today's technology, but you did well in the fact that it is a NVME SSD and not an old fashion SATA 3.0 connection or especially not some ancient HDD drive. Your base reading speeds will be at minimum least four times the SATA 3.0 SSD limit which makes a significant difference in computer performance. I would just consider upgrading to 1TB if it starts to get too full. And always turn off the window's automatic defragmentation scheduling. I don't know why computers still have it installed as weekly by default but defraging is for HDD drives and will only hurt your SSD over time.

And 8GB of RAM is no big deal. RAM is one of the easiest and cheapest things you can upgrade on any computer these days. Just look at total GB, number of slots (2 is better than 1 for same amount of GB), frequency (the higher the better but you laptop probably will throttle it past a certain limit so research first), and a decently low CL (a high CL can offset the increased frequency speed and render your actual latency even slower than ram cards with a lower frequency). That and some of the best benchmark scores I've ever seen were off of a 8GB RAM setup that was appropriately tuned to a high end system.

But all of that being said, $799.00 is a great price for a decent laptop that will still run the games you like to play, not to mention that dell is a fairly reliable brand. If it does what you need it to do then I think you've done alright considering you found it $300 below MSRP.

(Side Note: I love gaming but I paid extra and worked on my laptop a bit for the purpose of 3D rendering, computer aided design, and finite element analysis. I just can't afford and do not want to switch to a workstation setup. )

 

[Flavoade]

I wouldn't be super sure about saying that's a strong GPU. From my experience most manufacturers will not specify between laptop and max-q GPUs in their specs pages. You just have to guess and find out after purchase unless you find a salesman that actually knows his stuff (rare). I would take a lower series laptop grade GPU over a higher end max-q variant any day, especially considering how nvidia has released multiple levels of max-q devices for several lines of GPUs. Not only could you be getting a max-q without knowing, but you could be getting the bottom of the barrel max-q. Also the system is only as fast as its slowest components. My current RTX 2060 6GB benchmarks better with a more stable system than my old RTX 2070 8GB (both laptop version). My experience with max-q was when I got another laptop with supposedly the same RTX 2070 8GB but ended up getting stuck with the max-q instead. My benchmark scores dropped drastically even with a newer gen Intel processor and upgraded RAM cards. I was furious and ended up settling on fixing up a more stable laptop with the next level down RTX 2060 6GB laptop GPU.

I'm not trying to compare my GPU to yours, but I have found that max-q models are significantly dialed back and rarely perform anywhere near their actual laptop equivalent, which in turn cannot compete with the desktop model. I believe they were only created to make up for a lack of cooling in thinner model laptops that can't support a legitimate thermal dissipation system.

And your storage is a little small considering today's technology, but you did well in the fact that it is a NVME SSD and not an old fashion SATA 3.0 connection or especially not some ancient HDD drive. Your base reading speeds will be at minimum least four times the SATA 3.0 SSD limit which makes a significant difference in computer performance. I would just consider upgrading to 1TB if it starts to get too full. And always turn off the window's automatic defragmentation scheduling. I don't know why computers still have it installed as weekly by default but defraging is for HDD drives and will only hurt your SSD over time.

And 8GB of RAM is no big deal. RAM is one of the easiest and cheapest things you can upgrade on any computer these days. Just look at total GB, number of slots (2 is better than 1 for same amount of GB), frequency (the higher the better but you laptop probably will throttle it past a certain limit so research first), and a decently low CL (a high CL can offset the increased frequency speed and render your actual latency even slower than ram cards with a lower frequency). That and some of the best benchmark scores I've ever seen were off of a 8GB RAM setup that was appropriately tuned to a high end system.

But all of that being said, $799.00 is a great price for a decent laptop that will still run the games you like to play, not to mention that dell is a fairly reliable brand. If it does what you need it to do then I think you've done alright considering you found it $300 below MSRP.

(Side Note: I love gaming but I paid extra and worked on my laptop a bit for the purpose of 3D rendering, computer aided design, and finite element analysis. I just can't afford and do not want to switch to a workstation setup. )

Thanks, You gave a good breakdown of this laptop. I struggled to find good info on it. The Max Q variant of the GPU was news to me when I posted it. If I would have known I would not have purchased this model. It was a decent price but it is slower like you said. It also has a loud cooling fan.

My desire is to build a gaming PC to run iRacing and F1 2019. I just needed this since my desktop quit working unexpectedly, so I dont intend to game on it, but I likely will upgrade a few components.

Now that I know these are out there I can spot them. The same model was on display but the Sales Dude didnt mention it. Maybe that was why it was so heavly discounted. I knew I might be disappointed a bit, but I went ahead and bought something.

I'll just do better next time

I guess the next question is what what kind of desktop can I build for about $1200 that can handle iRacing? F1 2019 actually has spec requirements that are so high this laptop wont run the game.