Why game on a notebook

May sound a silly question but those of you who mainly game on a notebook, why? Also what made you choose to use it over a desktop, or those who have both which do you prefer using and why?

 

Simple reason, if I game, I'm always actually on my desk, so why not just get a desktop which is cheaper and more powerful?

a) Because it has too many wires, connections, takes up space

b) because if I ever wanna travel somewhere, I can simply carry my latpop in the Alienware Vindicator backpack and have my beast with me wherever I go, convenience.....

c) because it is more fun to upgrade a laptop, you feel you have achieved something which only a few can do since most laptops aren't usually easily accessible or upgradeable

d) because this is NBR - Notebook Review Forums J/K

 

Why ask a rhetorical question

 

There's a ton of threads about this already

Just to add an actual answer, if you consider the size, form factor, and portability of a notebook, it's an easy thing to deduce.

 

Because im pondering the idea of selling my desktop, and seeing if those with laptops enjoy gaming and whether they wish they had a laptop.

 

I never game sitting at a desk. I love it.

 

Read this thread..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/index.php?threads/772047/
Would you choose a gaming notebook over a desktop?

 

Personally I just hooked my desktop back up. I got tired of fussing with my laptop and its high temps and loud noise. Desktop has a water cooled CPU and a 780 Ti. I've never had to touch the paste on my video card and I used GC Extreme on the CPU block and haven't had to touch it again. For me personally, I'll be using both but the majority of my gaming is going back to my desktop, its not as testy as my laptop is......

 

Well I perosnally also just made he move back to a custom desktop build. Did a X99/5820k/970 combo water cooled CPU and overclocks like a beast.

I only made the move back from the laptop because I realized my personal situation did not call for a gaming laptop anymore. I game in my home time but when I do, I'm at a desk using my external 144hz screen, with an external keyboard, headset, and mouse. My laptop was serving as a desktop and nothing more. For me it was fun upgrading laptops over the last 6 years but ultimately i obviously get much more bang for my buck with the desktop.

Not only that, but after the latest Nvidia clockblockin situation and the loss of socketed CPU and MXM (is slowly happening) I feel laptop gaming is dying for enthusiasts. It's going the way of light and thin. Neutered systems and inadequate cooling and lack of upgrade paths. It became clear to me that desktops were what I needed again.

Let's just say that I probably travel and spend time in airports more than anyone on these boards but lugging a gaming laptop around for 4-5 days in a row just wasn't worth it. The additinal weight/space needed made it less than desireable. When I spent a year and a half overseas it was great. Taking it to work and back in a backpack wasn't bad and it made sense at the time to have a mobile desktop. But again my current situation/life doesn't call for one anymore.

Right now I have my eyes set on either a very very small laptop with a Maxwell chip. Maybe one of those tiny cube like desktop things/small steambox, a power cord, hdmi, 360 controller and steamOS would be all I need. The hotels all have tvs with hdmincant connections.

 

If you are OK gaming at a desk all the time, then by all means, go with a desktop, it's definitely more cost efficient and offers larger screens and overall better performance. Some of us like/need the portability though. Those of us that travel or even within our own households like the flexibility. I wouldn't be able to game on a desktop, given the fact that I have to always monitor my kids and sitting in my den or bedroom when I game isn't realistic considering I can just prop up on a TV tray in the living room, on the kitchen table, or in my basement.

 

Yes you certainly have to consider your situation and determine what your needs are.

When I was starting my career and less stable as far as my living situation (moved a lot for work and career progression) my laptop made sense. But of you plan to game at home and plan to game in one room/at a desktop or office then no a laptop doesn't make sense.

But as HTwingnut pointed out if you can't sit at a desk, then yes I would recommend a laptop. I gamed at the kitchen table before I built up my Den into my mancave office. Without the office and desk, I would have never considered a desktop. That would have looked ridiculous with a desktop setup at our kitchen table.

 

This is pretty much my situation too. I'd much rather have a desktop - more powerful, more cost efficient, cooler, quieter...But I would never get to sit down and actually play. At least with a laptop, I can take it to work and game on my lunch hour, or on the commute. I can sit at the kitchen counter (like I'm doing now), or at the kitchen table.

Basically, given my current life situation, if it weren't for gaming laptops, I wouldn't get to game at all.

Plus, I dislike having two machines to maintain.

 

Yeah I should have pointed out that my life is in the house 24/7. I have agoraphobia so I literally don't leave the house which is why just having a desktop works for me. I used to haul my Alienware into work with me every day when I did sales at Comcast and it did make sense but that machine also never gave me a headache from the high pitched noise and in the 4 years I was using and abusing it daily it never needed any maintenance (although the Bluray drive died at some point and I replaced a squeaking GPU fan). That was Penryn though... Along comes Haswell........

 

Most of the time, it's out of necessity. Personally, I think gaming on a desktop is a more pleasing experience but it's also very static. You can only play/work in one place on a desktop whereas you can play/work anywhere on a notebook. If you like traveling or if like me, you're in college and go home during the breaks (3 months for summer!) , a gaming notebook is very handy.

 

No desk for me, so no desktop. Laptop to the rescue.

 

If you can afford it, have a power desktop that will do all the heavy duty gaming and everything else you can throw at it, then have a secondary laptop that can be used for some light gaming on the go.

If I could do it again that's probably the route I would've taken. The 17.3" DTR is great, but absolutely terrible when it comes to portability.

 

I have agoraphobia too, just I don't have a choice about where I'm working at the moment. I'd much rather sit away from people. I've always been labeled as "homebody" but it's because I get nervous and anxious around other people and larger groups in particular, and had to go to the hospital on several occasions for what I thought was a heart attack but was "only" a panic attack. My resolve now is to just shut down and speak as little as possible and move at my only speed I feel comfortable with, which is usually slowly in those situations. I don't like taking medication for things unless absolutely necessary.

In any case, I'd love to have a job where I work at home all the time. Laptop would still be ideal for me.

 

I am kind of different I guess. My laptop have been pretty much docked for a year on the desk since I finished school. I had thought of getting a desktop with xfire AMD (cheap and to the point), but never did it, yet.

The main problem here is, there is no game worthy for desktop GPU power recently. Next gen graphic = let's not optimize~ When graphic demanding titles only account's for 20-30% of my game time~~ not worth all the trouble huh?

 

Yeah I got all of it... Started off with the occasional panic attack in my early 20s (and a few trips to the hospital before I was diagnosed with panic disorder) but it got progressively worse and I started having them more frequently then the panic attacks switched to generalized anxiety and agoraphobia landed on top of it, I haven't been able to hold down a job since 2009 when I left Comcast after blowing through my FMLA hours and was approved for SSDI last February. Definitely never expected to be collecting social security at 30 but hopefully it's not permanent.

I don't have a desk so using my desktop generally involves a PS4 controller and I use my TV as the monitor. It's definitely not ideal so I'm glad I have both options.

 

Well.. it's kind of nice to bring the laptop and play games in the living-room, when people want to "watch TV together". So I can pretend I'm being social and things. (Thank you, nvidia and intel).

 

I think we are going to see a lot more game streaming. I have used it to stream Steam games from my desktop to my laptop and it actually works pretty well over my 802.11ac router. Depending on how it goes, I may sell my laptop and pick up a much cheaper one with a nice screen, take the leftover money and upgrade my 780 Ti and just stream most of my games. I'm waiting to see what nVidia replaces the 780 Ti with first though, the 980 is just a side grade.

 

I'm still not sold on the whole streaming thing. Unless you're using a game controller, I still find way too much latency for mouse/keyboard gaming. In an ideal world this would be perfect, but it's far from perfect IMHO. Plus I still do game occasionally when visiting family over weekends or whatever, so I need the portability in that respect, albeit less often than not.

 

I didn't really notice a latency issue on the ac router but it was a noticeable issue on N. I'm pretty sure that ac routers are recommended for streaming. In fact, the new Steam Link box coming in November promises 1080p/60 over 802.11ac with low latency. I can tell you the input lag is not noticeable at all for me on wireless any more than it is on wired. My 7260 impressed me with the speed and reliability of the ac link actually.

That doesn't solve your gaming issue away from home though.

 

How high are the temps on your rig while gaming (NP9377s)? I just max fans while gaming and I got no problems. This is without OC btw.

 

Thank you for all the replies, so far I have been using my laptop only and havent missed the desktop at all so far. Love sitting in the lounge tv on and gaming away

 

My first notebook was much quieter and occupied less space while performance-wise being miles ahead of my old desktop, handling any game I wanted to play for years. At first, I even used it as a desktop - with external peripherals. After a while I changed my lifestyle to what you may describe as nomadic, and notebook's mobility became extremely handy. I love the freedom notebooks and full-featured smartphones (e.g. Nokia N900) give. Nowadays I almost never play computer games, though.

 

I like having and maintaining only one system and a laptop offers me the flexibility to be mobile. The portability aspect is pretty big for me and like others have said sometimes I like gaming in places outside of my room. I have built two desktops in the past and they were great but I felt too tied to my room as a result. With a laptop I can take it with me anywhere and game or get work done all on one system.

 

Well my 4940MX has always been hot. Running stock with no undervolt or anything it stays in the 80s under load and hits 89/90 when it is fully stressed.

My 980Ms run in the low to mid 80s at stock.

We keep the house between 20 and 21C year round and my laptop sits on an oak dinner tray with nothing around it but air and the back propped up with two pill bottle caps from Walgreens underneath the feet... There really is no explanation for the heat. I've used IC Diamond, GC Extreme, MX-4, liquid ultra, and currently have ShinEtsu X23-7921-5 on there. GC Extreme and liquid ultra both work well but I'm out of both (tossed my tube of GC Extreme because it went bad after almost a year and the liquid ultra spilled all inside the cap so I tossed that too) and I'm just annoyed fighting with it. My temps shouldn't be that hot, plain and simple.

 

How many times have you repasted the CPU?

 

Well I cleaned up the stock IC Diamond when I got the machine and tried MX-4 three times before realizing that was crap (same with the 880Ms that got repasted as well), then I bought IC Diamond and put that on there, wasn't happy with that so I ordered liquid ultra and put that on the CPU just to realize that my heatsink had almost no contact so the temps skyrocketed and throttled, took that off and put GC Extreme on and used that for a bit before I decided to try another CLU application using a bit extra which was going great but when I sent the machine in to Sager to upgrade to 980Ms I removed the CLU and put on GC Extreme so they wouldn't be able to short out anything when I shipped it to them. While they had it I had them replace the heatsink (they replaced all my heatsinks in fact) and when I got it back it was running great then fell out (I don't know what they put on the CPU but it burned out fast, probably an MX paste?) so I put my old GC Extreme on it which shot right up after about a week and now it has ShinEtsu. So it has been done many times and I'm sure there are a few repastes I missed.

 

Silly question because it's asked EVERY month. Read one of the hundreds of threads.

I hope you are wrong, very wrong. I hope streaming thing dies. They should just give it up, OnLive is not profitable, it's a money pit, the big publishers and investors are just throwing money down the pit hoping somehow it be the holy grail of anti-piracy.

 

Streaming is not gonna die. It is like saying WiFi will die. It's just a preview of wireless display etc.

Sent from my 306SH

 

I once tried the playstation streaming of a ps3 game on my ps4, it felt like I had stepped back to 1992.

 

You're wrong because he's referring to local streaming, which works quite well

 

Yeah the PS3 streaming quality isn't very good. I'll be keeping my PS3 for a long time I think because there might not be PS1 classics either for PS4.

And yes, I was referring to in home game streaming, not commercial game services that don't work.

 

I don't have the room for a desktop to hang out in my 1 bed room apartment. Plus I think it looks tacky with all the wires. I like the fact I can close the lid on my gaming machine and put it in a backpack.

 

A bit OT, but for locally streaming software (not games) from Windows PC to Android netbook (with full-size keyboard and touchpad) what do you recommend? Splashtop?

 

Long time Lurker, Hi all.

I enjoy gaming on a laptop because I have a old 3 story house in the country and this way I can hang out with my wife and kid in various places.

On the deck, Sometimes even under a apple tree by myself on a nice evening.
In the kitchen, living room, you get the point...

I dont travel and game much. Meaning both at the same time.

I have some Apple pro gear for graphics and photography use but a nice gaming laptop allows me to do some Lightroom and Photoshop work as well for my own non commercial projects as well.

 

Soldered CPU and GPU = no laptop. I see no point in buying an expensive bit of tech that will probably be useless in a few years. The component with the highest failure rate being soldered means you will need to ship your entire laptop back to the reseller which places your whole system at the mercy of the courier and more damage, not to mention loss, theft or static. What a joke. To me, this question no longer exists. This is clearly not the way its meant to be played...

 

I've never owned a desktop before. Travel quite a bit, and already need a decent laptop for work, so it's a lot cheaper than buying good laptop + separate desktop that I'd rarely use.

 

I understand.

But I do not expect more than 2 years out of a laptop anyhow.

I used my old Asus ROG 17" with a GTX260 for 3 years and then the screen cracked from a drop.

I got my moneys worth. For me anyhow.

Currently on a Lenovo Y50.

 

So:

Credit: @moviemarketing's sig

 

My needs haven't been desktop compatible for years, the last desktop I owned that wasn't work related was a 386 with Windows 3.1! Like others have said the convenience, space saving and portability is a deciding factor, pretty much a necessity for me. I don't have much desire to play new games so I don't need a new gaming laptop but I do play on PC a lot, a small slim notebook with limited gaming prowess is pretty much the perfect machine for me (until the next allout game is released).

I have a 4 year old daughter so I can sneak a quick game in when she wants to play by herself or watch cartoons, having a screen she can't see means I can play games with horror and violence in while still being in the room with her.

If my needs were different then I would get a desktop, however at the moment if I had one instead of a laptop I wouldn't get to game much at all which would kinda defeat the point!

 

Bought a laptop, I've used it for 4 years now. Would never buy a new laptop and too broke to buy an actually decent desktop.

 

I asked myself the same question as OP several months ago.
It resulted in me selling my notebook and moving back to desktops. Once Skylake and 390X hit the market I will make my move. Just drooling about gaming on this baby with proper hardware

 

Ok, so there is quite alot of you with both. Do you ever find when your around the house that you prefer using the laptop for gaming over your desktop, or is it for particular games. I think I need to get rid of a system, I hate maintaining two and feeling I'm neglecting one and not getting my moneys worth.

 

I still have my old P170HM with the GTX680M but it now spends most of the time switched off. My mini itx is hooked up to a nice 21.5 Aoc screen and the GTX 980 means all games are playable on Ultra. The whole system is nearly silent and very quiet under load. I find myself only playing that now. It's a bit different in my case since I orignally planned to buy a new (upgradeable) laptop and not a Desktop though.

 

What is it that makes it feel like a chore to maintain your laptop and desktop? Are you talking about updating windows, etc?

 

My laptop has a 120hz screen while my desktop has my 55" TV for a display so I enjoy some games a lot more on my laptop but I don't have to worry about thermals at all with my desktop so I tend to use the desktop more. Of course my laptop has a significant video performance lead over my desktop (780 Ti can't hold up to SLI 980M, especially in games that have large framebuffers due to poor optimization) while my desktop has a 500-1100MHz faster CPU clock depending on how heavy the load is since my desktop doesn't throttle ever. So really it depends on what I'm doing. Anything that requires heavy keyboard use goes to my laptop since I don't have a desk. If you think you will have situations where one is more ideal than the other and vice versa, both make sense in my mind. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

I can tell you if I ever had to carry my machine somewhere, I certainly wouldn't be hauling my huge NZXT Phantom with me!

 

For my part, there's the cost - two machines instead of one. Synchronizing data, upgrading components, making sure the same programs are installed. Not the end of the world, but when you have a laptop that performs almost as well as a desktop...

Plus if I didn't use my desktop enough, I felt it was just wasted money sitting in a room. If I was rich, I'd of course have both - even if I only ever used my desktop every now and then, it'd be worth it.