Gaming notebooks provide plenty of power for not much money

By Tobias Hanraths Dec 4, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Berlin - Laptops come in all sizes and with any number of specialties these days - so why not also as a gaming machine?

For a long time, the sense has been that you need a PC if you want to let a game really show its mettle. But now laptops are starting to crowd into the market, and not the part focused on simple games for people with time to kill.

'Even in the e-sports realm, we're starting to see more and more notebooks,' said Olaf Wolters, head of the German Federal Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU). As a bonus, laptops are easier to transport than PCs.

But that mobility can come with a price, especially with higher-end merchandise.

A notebook set up to support 3D games costs about 500 euros (662 dollars) more than a similarly outfitted PC, explains Marco Albert of the German computer magazine PC Games Hardware. 'You have to invest at least 1,500 euros for a proper gaming notebook,' he says.

And anyone who wants to see every detail in high resolution might end up paying 2,000 extra euros. With that kind of investment, there's almost no price/performance improvement over a desktop. 'Desktop PCs are only edged out at the absolute top end of the market,' explains Albert.

Whereas standard notebooks are continuously seeing advances in battery life, gaming notebooks can't survive long without a power cord. 'You can only play properly with battery power for about an hour,' said Albert.

Of course, modern laptops can shut down unnecessary components to save energy. But if you want lush 3D graphics, rich sound and an internet connection for online gaming, there's really nothing that can be forsaken. And even then, most gaming notebooks can only run for about two hours on battery power, even if they're just being used for web surfing or office work.

The fact that the notebooks are portable also isn't as big a plus as some might think, notes Kirstin Wohlfahrt of Stiftung Warentest, a German consumer goods tester.

'Really expensive notebooks for gamers often have 17 or even 18-inch displays,' she notes. That means they have some heft to them, usually 3.5 to 4 kilograms. 'You're not going to just lug a heavy device like that everywhere.'

Most players can get by without the most expensive or newest laptop, says Wohlfahrt. 'Our tests show that notebooks from the middle range are absolutely adequate for simple and somewhat older games.'

That means devices in the 750-euro range, with high-quality processors and 4-8 gigabytes of working memory. The difference between one of these and a gaming notebook is usually no more than a graphics card and the size of the display.

Albert agrees: 'The graphics card is the bottleneck when it comes to game performance.' It takes the best chips to get the best pictures. The real question is how long graphics advances can keep up with the growing demands of the games themselves.

PC gamers are used to regularly upgrading their machine so that they can take advantage of the newest advances. 'The push to upgrade isn't as bad as before,' says Albert. 'But it is definitely still there.'

But those kind of upgrades are a lot more difficult with a notebook. A layperson might be able to swap out a hard drive or some working memory, but other components, like the graphics card, are significantly trickier, or even impossible to swap out.

Even if you manage the swap, it might lead to a device overheating. Beyond that, notebook owners invalidate their warranties if they open them up.