Best laptop to play Total War games?

[Incendio]

Which of these 2 laptops is more suitable to play Total War games? I am mostly interested in Rome 2, Shogun 2, new Pharaoh but also other total wars:

ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 G733PY-LL038W
Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX, 17.3" IPS anti-glare 2560 × 1440 240 Hz, RAM 32GB DDR5, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 16GB, SSD 1000GB, webcam, USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB-C, 4-cell battery, Windows 11 Home MUX Switch + NVIDIA® Advanced Optimus

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 G834JZ
Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i9 13980HX Raptor Lake, 18" IPS anti-glare 2560 × 1600 240 Hz, RAM 32GB DDR5, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, SSD 1000GB, numeric keypad, webcam, USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB-C, 4-cell battery, Windows 11 Home

[alhoon]

Are you boasting now, or do you actually ask if those supercomputers can handle games that are from 2011 and 2013?!!?
You must be boasting. Obviously, both of those 4000$-5000$ can run S2TW and R2TW at all systems full. And they would be able to run even games that come out in 2025 on Ultra.

[Incendio]

No, I am not boasting. Let me explain... I got a promotion at my job, I will see a raise in my salary and I want to purchase a gift for myself. Unfortunately I live abroad and at this moment I prefer a laptop over a desktop, when I lived in my country I had desktop.

Currently I own this laptop: MSI GE75 Raider 2020

CPU: Intel Core i7 10750H
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 at 2933 MHz
Hard Drive: 512 GB SSD + 1 TB 5400 rpm
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 Super

Contrary to what others may think, some Total War games run well, others not and I have lag. I tested a lot, I checked benchmarks and I got to the conclusion that the problem is the CPU, I think Intel Core i7 10750H is just good but not enough for some games, I am mostly interested in rts games, I know... rts and laptop is not a good idea either but possible. My MSI is doing acceptably good in thermals but not good with lots of units/ships (Shogun 2, Rome 2, Napoleon TW, Attila, even Troy). With not so many units Shogun 2, Three Kingdoms, Empire, Napoleon are the games that run better. I don´t know why Attila and Troy performs not good in my laptop.

I have been thinking, researching a lot in this topic and I know Total War games are very demanding on CPU. So I am thinking about not doing the same mistake I did on my MSI GE75 and now prioritize CPU over GPU (altoough in 2020 there were not so many options as we have today), GPU is important for me but for the games I want to play mostly I am ok if I sacrifice GPU power to give more CPU power, I do not need 100 fps, I am ok with 70 fps. I rather sink to 30 fps and never go beyond 80 fps than having 140 fps and sink to 10 fps.

In the country Im living will be difficult to get the i9 13980HX but surely I will be able to get i9 13900HX instead. In that case, it worth getting the i9 13900HX or go for the Ryzen 9 7845HX?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

I have no means to test nor personal experience to recommend, so I went for the next best option and just shoved both CPUs into a search engine. I quickly realized a full report would take a lot of time and I won't go down that road unless you think it would be useful. However there's a few links of interest which I'll comment on as well as some assumptions just looking at the laptops.

cpu-world.com - What I get from this is that the Intel has higher overclock and overall performance potential, but if you're not interested in overclocking then the AMD may be a safer bet. The Intel is obviously superior on cores but you probably know that Total War tends to sink all its eggs in one or a few cores and doesn't take full advantage of this, so the obvious superiority on this is not as obvious here. However it seems in terms of power you're still served with the Intel core.
PassMark - Corroborates the idea of higher single-core potential from Intel.
Geekbench Intel vs AMD - These aren't very clear cut numbers but the average from what I can tell is that the intel core tends to ek out a bit more in general.

You're looking for the better deal least likely to encounter issues at scale (attila always gives issues as a rule and all tw tend to give issues with high unit count, but I digress) - the second laptop strikes me as being able to smooth out the edges better, but marginally. I'm a cheapskate so I wouldn't consider any more than a marginal price difference worth it since they both seem more than competent enough to me running TW and if I encountered issues I'd try to fine tune at a software level by tweaking settings and optimizing background settings/system processes and whatnot. But if you have money to burn option 2 seems engineered to be just a bit better.

Anyway, I'm always in the market for a laptop if there can only be one after your purchase...

[alhoon]

No, I am not boasting. Let me explain... I got a promotion at my job, I will see a raise in my salary and I want to purchase a gift for myself. Unfortunately I live abroad and at this moment I prefer a laptop over a desktop, when I lived in my country I had desktop.

Currently I own this laptop: MSI GE75 Raider 2020

CPU: Intel Core i7 10750H
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 at 2933 MHz
Hard Drive: 512 GB SSD + 1 TB 5400 rpm
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070 Super

Contrary to what others may think, some Total War games run well, others not and I have lag. I tested a lot, I checked benchmarks and I got to the conclusion that the problem is the CPU, I think Intel Core i7 10750H is just good but not enough for some games, I am mostly interested in rts games, I know... rts and laptop is not a good idea either but possible. My MSI is doing acceptably good in thermals but not good with lots of units/ships (Shogun 2, Rome 2, Napoleon TW, Attila, even Troy). With not so many units Shogun 2, Three Kingdoms, Empire, Napoleon are the games that run better. I don´t know why Attila and Troy performs not good in my laptop.

I have been thinking, researching a lot in this topic and I know Total War games are very demanding on CPU. So I am thinking about not doing the same mistake I did on my MSI GE75 and now prioritize CPU over GPU (altoough in 2020 there were not so many options as we have today), GPU is important for me but for the games I want to play mostly I am ok if I sacrifice GPU power to give more CPU power, I do not need 100 fps, I am ok with 70 fps. I rather sink to 30 fps and never go beyond 80 fps than having 140 fps and sink to 10 fps.

In the country Im living will be difficult to get the i9 13980HX but surely I will be able to get i9 13900HX instead. In that case, it worth getting the i9 13900HX or go for the Ryzen 9 7845HX?

I will go with the i9 option. For future games. Both laptops are more than good enough to handle either of these games. Honestly, your i7 RTX 2070 Super SHOULD be able to handle both S2TW and R2TW on ultra without any issues at all. I am surprised you have issues. You have a good 2020 laptop, which should be more than enough to run 2013 games like a breeze, unless you have very high resolution I.e. 2K QHD should be fine, but if you have 4K UHD perhaps that's a problem.

Which makes me assume that the laptop is not the issue, but the games are not optimized for newer computers!

In my new computer, very very new computer (slightly better than the one you have, but 1920 x 1080) I have tried only 3K, not the older games.

Thus, I would ask other players of this fine community whether new systems have issues with older games. I have seen somewhere that a guy with a beast of a computer has issues with M2TW. Not sure if that's because of something in his computer or the game.

Anyway, my laptop runs 3KTW at ultra (again HD) at 100+ FPS. HP OMEN 17-cm2002nv Laptop (but 32GB RAM)
Here are the specs

17” FHD, Intel® Core™ i7-13700HX, 32GB DDR5 RAM, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060, Windows 11 Home

[Incendio]

I will go with the i9 option. For future games. Both laptops are more than good enough to handle either of these games. Honestly, your i7 RTX 2070 Super SHOULD be able to handle both S2TW and R2TW on ultra without any issues at all. I am surprised you have issues. You have a good 2020 laptop, which should be more than enough to run 2013 games like a breeze, unless you have very high resolution I.e. 2K QHD should be fine, but if you have 4K UHD perhaps that's a problem.

Which makes me assume that the laptop is not the issue, but the games are not optimized for newer computers!

In my new computer, very very new computer (slightly better than the one you have, but 1920 x 1080) I have tried only 3K, not the older games.

Thus, I would ask other players of this fine community whether new systems have issues with older games. I have seen somewhere that a guy with a beast of a computer has issues with M2TW. Not sure if that's because of something in his computer or the game.

Anyway, my laptop runs 3KTW at ultra (again HD) at 100+ FPS. HP OMEN 17-cm2002nv Laptop (but 32GB RAM)
Here are the specs

17” FHD, Intel® Core™ i7-13700HX, 32GB DDR5 RAM, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060, Windows 11 Home

With the recent patches I can play Shogun 2 and Rome 2 better even with 20 vs 20 or more units which is great. I get around 78 fps in Rome 2 with a mix of ultra shadows, everything else in extreme 4x antialias. I run Three Kingdoms at approx. 70 fps in benchmark in ultra. Troy unfortunately I get around 67 fps but lagging in big battles, I dont know why, but I guess i7 10750H is not good for that game.

One of the biggest problems I have is with SSD, 512 GB is low, just look at Three Kingdoms that needs 60 gb alone. That´s why I am heading also for larger hard drive sizes. I have other games in my mind: Sea Power and Broken Arrow, as said, I am mostly interested in rts/strategy games.

How good is HP? I´ve seen amazing discounts on this brand and you can even find HPs with RTX 4080 and even 4090 not so expensive and is generous with the hard drive size. 2 TB SSD would also be amazing. As long as yours is not overheating could also be an option for sure. I am planning to go ahead at the end of the next week.

[Incendio]

Finally this is what I got and I am now writing on this laptop:

Asus Rog Strix Scar 18 Nebula
CPU: Intel Core i9-13980HX
RAM: 64 GB DDR5-4800MHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
Hard Drive: 4 TB de PCIe 4x4 RAID 0
OS: Windows 11

Is very expensive but I am very happy with it. It runs Total War games very well.