Planning to buy a new gaming laptop. Need advice.

**Incendio** · May 02, 2018, 03:26 AM

I am saving money for the future because I really want to have a good experience with Shogun 2, Rome II and Attila Total War but I can't have a desktop computer because I don't have space and I usually travel. I have a question concerning two gaming laptops I have seen:

MSI Titan SLI GT83VR 7RE-257ES: https://www.amazon.es/MSI-Titan-SLI-...ords=msi+titan

MSI Titan Pro 4K GT75VR 7RF-073ES: https://amazon.es/MSI-Titan-Pro-GT75...ords=msi+titan

Sorry, descriptions are in spanish but I think you can easily understand specs (at bottom). My questions are: What is the difference between CPU HQ and HK in a gaming laptops? To run Total War games, is better to have SLI Nvidia Dual GeForce GTX 1070 with 8 GB DDR5 or a single Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X in order to achieve a better performance?

Thank you in advance

**z3n** · May 03, 2018, 01:31 AM

Well, if you have good internet everywhere you travel you can play your games using moonlight stream on your desktop computer (you can set it so it uses the MTSC exe which is windows remote control). Problem is, you'd have to leave your desktop computer on. Moonlight stream uses a NVIDIA technology called gamestream, and allows extremely fast connections (fast enough to play games and watch movies if you want in real-time). It's probably more cost effective to do it that way. One problem however is that you have to port forward your router so that the ports are open for it. It's a possibly complicated step for you but maybe worth it in the end.

Regardless, if you're dead set on getting a gaming laptop, SLI sucks because it's not really 2 times the performance and doesn't help much in some games like Total War. (I used to have SLI titans before getting a single GTX 1080TI). Total War is mostly dependent on your CPU because of all the little guys running around all the time on your screen with the AI/Pathfinding grinding away in the background alongside of all the unit calculations (hitbox/hitpoint/animation calculations etc).

Get a 1080 or 1080ti if you can (somehow) in a laptop nowdays. I heard they were looking at desktop cards in laptops but I never checked if they managed to. Your order of importance for total war games generally is CPU > GPU > SSD > RAM

edit:
Obviously if you go the moonlight stream/gamestream route you need a NVIDIA card (but you were already looking at nvidia cards so I felt it wasn't necessary to point that out...but just in case.)

If interested I can explain how it works in detail. I have used it to watch movies and play games as far away as Texas is from Ontario. (over 1000 miles), you do need a good upload speed from the home computer and download speed from the client laptop/computer though.

**Love Mountain** · May 03, 2018, 12:12 PM

HK is the same as HQ, except HK means the processor is unlocked. "Unlocked" meaning you can fiddle around with the multipliers and base clock to overclock it. I don't suggest this on a laptop, inf act, I'd suggest undervolting it to reduce power draw and temperatures.

Both of the laptops you linked are adequate if not overkill. I'm assuming you're okay with the giant size of the laptops? Because there are smaller machines that will be hotter and noisier, but will obviously be much easier to carry around.

**Incendio** · May 23, 2018, 04:49 AM

Hi. Thank you for your replies, I almost forgot them. I have a very stupid question: if I live in Spain, could I purchase a laptop in another country to delivery at home? The thing is here there is a few variety of gaming laptops, some of them are from 2016 and they are expensive. Do you know if I can purchase laptops from abroad? For example UK or US? Thank you in advance. PS. I don't care about the keyboard if is in english.

**King Athelstan** · May 23, 2018, 05:39 AM

You'll have to check the individual websites to see whether they ship to Spain or not

**Incendio** · May 25, 2018, 06:02 AM

Thank you King Athelstan.

I do not have much idea about CPU's, processors. How can I choose a good CPU for a gaming laptop to play Total War Games. According to z3n above, my priorities should be: CPU > GPU > SSD > RAM. Yet I noticed this is 100% real and correct and I will give you an example, with my current rig: CPU i7-6700HQ base freq. 2.6 GHz Turbo to 3.5 GHz, RAM 16 GB DDR4, GPU Nvidia GTX 970M I have bottlenecks with Empire Total War with 5k units per side, noticed that the game is not lagging but animations, can this be a proof that CPU is bottlenecking but I have more than enough GPU? And this is exactly what I want to avoid when I purchase a new gaming laptop. I didn't know that SSD is so important in Total War games but let's please focus on what has been problematic since years in Total War games, especially in Empire Total War, the CPU. Could you please explain me how to choose a good CPU? I understand that GPU is relevant as well but I am more concerned about CPU right now.

**King Athelstan** · May 26, 2018, 07:17 AM

It actually looks like your GPU is the weak spot there. With laptop cpu's there isn't always a lot of choice. You'd have to look at the benchmarks for the cpu's available to you, and see what performs better, as I haven't invested myself in laptop cpu's much. Oh, and try to avoid gpu's that end in m, such as the gtx 970m as they're a lot worse than the full version.

**Incendio** · May 31, 2018, 01:29 AM

And that's the reason I am thinking about investing in another gaming laptop by the end of the year or next year. I am planning to leave this one only up to Rome II deleting Attila because I am not happy with performance and I'll see for the next one. For the next computer, I can only afford a good CPU with a decent GPU or a good GPU with a decent CPU, for example: i7-8700k with GTX 1060 or i7-7700HQ with GTX 1080, I don't have budget for both, but I am happy with older Total War only if I can enjoy them in quality with good stable fps. Which option would be the best for Total War? 1) good CPU + decent GPU or 2) decent CPU + good GPU?

**King Athelstan** · May 31, 2018, 03:13 AM

It's usually always better to get a better gpu, and the difference between the gtx 1080 and 1060 is quite large. If you have those two options for the same price, go with the one with the 1080. Also, what resolution are you playing at?

**Incendio** · May 31, 2018, 03:57 AM

My resolution is 1920x1080 and I am happy with it.

**King Athelstan** · May 31, 2018, 04:08 AM

Well, any of those laptops will run that without a problem, so you're best of picking the cheapest. ~~And sending the rest of the money to me~~

**♔Greek Strategos♔** · June 06, 2018, 04:19 PM

Total War games are very CPU demanding though, since most of their graphic processes are (wrongly ofc) based on your CPU and not GPU. If you're an only Total War gamer keep that in mind.

**Incendio** · June 07, 2018, 03:35 AM

Originally Posted by ♔Greek Strategos♔

Total War games are very CPU demanding though, since most of their graphic processes are (wrongly ofc) based on your CPU and not GPU. If you're an only Total War gamer keep that in mind.

Total War games are the most demanding games I have by far. Other games I own and will own: Scourge of War (demanding but less demanding than any Total War from Empire), Ultimate General Civil War, Ultimate General Gettysburg, The Seven Years War, Pike and Shot Campaigns.

**King Athelstan** · June 07, 2018, 04:33 AM

Well, a gtx 1060 or above will serve you sufficently at 1080p, so get a laptop with at least that, and 16GB RAM and focus the rest on the CPU, though getting an SSD aswell wil help a lot with loading times

**♔Greek Strategos♔** · June 07, 2018, 07:27 AM

Originally Posted by Incendio

Total War games are the most demanding games I have by far. Other games I own and will own: Scourge of War (demanding but less demanding than any Total War from Empire), Ultimate General Civil War, Ultimate General Gettysburg, The Seven Years War, Pike and Shot Campaigns.

Originally Posted by King Athelstan

Well, a gtx 1060 or above will serve you sufficently at 1080p, so get a laptop with at least that, and 16GB RAM and focus the rest on the CPU, though getting an SSD aswell wil help a lot with loading times

Yep. Like King Athelstan said, if you're playing such games on 1080p go for a 1060gtx with 16GM RAM and a good CPU plus SSD, which will help you during saving and loading times (not with FPS or graphics though). No need to spent extra money for an 1080 or even 1070, except if you're going to use this laptop for many many yrs. If you wanna be future proof and you can actually spent some money then prefer the 1070 instead. But never a 1080gtx on 1080p cause it's 100% waste of money plus extra heat and power cost.