Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Don’t make this key mistake when choosing a new gaming laptop to buy

Jacob Roach
By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Do you know which 30-series mobile graphics card to buy? It’s a more difficult task than you might think. Nvidia currently offers eight distinct mobile graphics cards: The RTX 3050, 3050 Ti, 3060, 3070, and 3080, as well as the Max-Q variations of those last three. And then there are 42 distinct versions of these cards across the range, leading to widely varied performance depending on the version you get.

This comes down to the TGP, or Total Graphics Power, of the GPU. When designing a laptop, manufacturers have to decide how much board power to allocate to the graphics card, and they have some wiggle room. The more power the card receives, the faster its clock speed can be, which changes the raw power of the card.

Recommended Videos

A chart from u/Fidler_2K on Reddit shows just how different two cards with the same name can be. The RTX 3060 (non-Max-Q version) ranges anywhere between 10.94 TFLOPs to 13.07 TFLOPs depending on the TGP and clock speed. TFLOPs aren’t necessarily indicative of performance. However, it’s important to remember that both these cards still use the “RTX 3060” moniker, so it’s not a stretch to imagine that most potential buyers would assume they’re identical.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

These differences aren’t theoretical, either. Take the MSI GS76 Stealth and Alienware M15, for example. Both machines feature an RTX 3060, but the MSI machine comes with 95 watts of TGP while the M15 has a TGP of 115W. On paper, these two machines have the same graphics card, but they’ll perform differently (for better or worse, we haven’t put the two head-to-head) based on the configurations that MSI and Alienware have settled on.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

And it’s a real problem for potential laptop buyers. Nvidia started requiring manufacturers to list the TGP, clock speed, or both in February, but some manufacturers still haven’t jumped on board. MSI lists the specs on some product pages, while Dell has a separate page listing the TGP and clock speed of cards across its Alienware range. Gigabyte lists the specs, too. On the other hand, Razer and Acer don’t mention them at all.

If you’re buying a gaming laptop, make sure to pay attention to the TGP (where available). It could make a huge difference. The fastest RTX 3050, for example, is faster than the slowest RTX 3050 Ti.

TGP isn’t all that matters when it comes to choosing a gaming laptop. Manufacturers have a lot of leeway when it comes to how they configure their machines, so it’s important to consult individual laptop reviews before making a decision.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jacob Roach
Jacob Roach
Senior Staff Writer, Computing
Jacob Roach is a writer covering computing and gaming at Digital Trends. After realizing Crysis wouldn't run on a laptop, he…
Whatever you do, don’t buy an Nvidia GPU right now
Three RTX 4080 cards sitting on a pink background.

If you're trying to build or upgrade a PC, now is the best time to buy many different components. Black Friday brings huge discounts on parts, making it the best time of the year to stretch your dollar the furthest. But this year, there's one important part you should wait on: a new Nvidia graphics card.

That's not because Nvidia's latest GPUs are bad -- they're some of the best graphics cards you can buy -- but because we're likely on the brink of a major refresh to Nvidia's current lineup of GPUs, and the deals we're seeing now will probably become the norm in just a few months.
A Super refresh incoming?

Read more
Don’t believe the hype — the era of native resolution gaming isn’t over
Alan Wake looking at a projection of himself.

Native resolution is dead, or so the story goes. A string of PC games released this year, with the most recent being Alan Wake 2, have come under fire for basically requiring some form of upscaling to achieve decent performance. Understandably, there's been some backlash from PC gamers, who feel as if the idea of running a game at native resolution is quickly becoming a bygone era.

There's some truth to that, but the idea that games will rely on half-baked upscalers to achieve reasonable performance instead of "optimization" is misguided at best -- and downright inaccurate at worst. Tools like Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) will continue to be a cornerstone of PC gaming, but here's why they can't replace native resolution entirely.
The outcry
Let's start with why PC gamers have the impression that native resolution is dead. The most recent outcry came over Alan Wake 2 when the system requirements revealed that the game was built around having either DLSS or FSR turned on. That's not a new scenario, either. The developers of Remnant 2 confirmed the game was designed around upscaling, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a AAA release in the last few years that didn't pack in upscaling tech.

Read more
Don’t buy the Surface Laptop Go 3 — here’s what you should get instead
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 front view showing display and keyboard.

As a former marketing professional and a laptop reviewer, I often find myself surprised and sometimes confused by the decisions companies make when launching a laptop. An example is when a company introduces just one or two configurations that may not meet the needs of a range of users and, as a result, starts a laptop off on the wrong foot. In that case, I can at least understand the complexity of manufacturing and component sourcing. Although I'll mention a lack of options in a review, I won't necessarily ding a laptop because of it.

Some mistakes, though, are harder to overlook. That's how I feel about Microsoft's Surface Laptop Go 3, which the company introduced at a significantly higher price than its predecessors. The laptop, which is designed and configured like a budget machine, starts at $800 and runs up to $1,000. Those are midrange prices, but the Surface just can't compete against many midrange laptops.
$800 is too much
Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Read more