Price Gap for Notebooks vs Desktops

I see at least a few people on every video game forum talking about how they could build a desktop computer for $400 that will run every game on max settings for years to come.

My question is how big is the performance gap really between a laptop of price X and a desktop of the same price? Say you have $2000 to spend.

 

For $2000, I could build a multi-monitor, hexa-core, triple-SLI/CrossFire system with SSD + HDD and more RAM than you could possibly use, housed in a fancy water-cooled case. Meanwhile, you could probably get a laptop with (maybe) dual GPUs that are less powerful than desktop equivalents, a single quad-core processor that is less powerful than a desktop equivalent, less RAM, hard drives, etc, and chances are, a lower quality display.

For $400, I could probably build a well-performing gaming machine that performs quite adequately in modern games. For the same amount of money, you could get a bargain-basement AMD Athlon II or Pentium laptop with 3-4GB of RAM and a middling-sized HDD, without the hope of playing most modern games.

So yeah, there's quite the performance gap if you're willing to give up portability. I've always said that a good idea is to get a powerful desktop plus an ultraportable.

 

I don't think 400 will cut it, but if you up the budget to say 600-700, you can do pretty well. Main thing is that in the notebook market Intel doesn't really have much competition, since energy efficiency is a huge deal on a mobile platform. For desktops AMD actually kinda has their stuff together, and offers huge value.

 

I occasionally find mid-tower cases at Fry's for $0.00 after rebate. Get one of those, buy an Intel Core 2 Duo + mobo combo for $120, get a ~400W PSU for $50, get 2GB of RAM for $20, a AMD Radeon 5770 for $120, and an inexpensive 1600x900 monitor for $90. I believe that's exactly $400, and it'll handle most modern games quite nicely

 

I'm actually running a first gen 65nm Conroe, and I can tell you it's definitely a bit outdated. The great thing about a desktop computer is you can upgrade piece by piece, and going with something 2 generations old is not a good idea imo. You also forgot the hard drive lol.

I'd go with something like an AMD Phenom II X4 + motherboard which can be had for 200, DDR3 4GB (2GB is definitely not enough these days) for about 100. I'd personally want a PSU that is a bit more expensive because you do get what you pay for. As for a monitor 900 pixels vertically is a bit lacking, I'd try to get like a 1680x1050 or a 1920x1080, which adds like 30-40 bucks. The stuff I described probably adds like 200 to that 400. You also need some peripherals, but I suppose those don't count.

 

I dont doubt that you could get an insane gaming rig for 2000$. However, a hex-core, triple sli, ssd, watercooled system is probably going to be a lot more than 2000$.

For instance, Any 6 core intel at newegg is 999$, less with a discount or coupon. Triple sli/crossfire-assuming a 150$ card x 3=450$. Motherboard and psu for the lot-200ish. watercooling-maybe 50$-100$. Case-anywhere from 0-200$ Then ram (say 100-200$) and then an ssd (which really varies, anywhere from 100-600+) and a hdd(50+). Multi monitors (assuming you get a fantastic deal of 100$ ea on some really good monitors)=200-300(2/3display). I left out some stuff, and some prices are underpriced.

Anywhere from 2700$-upwards of 4k.

However the point is proven, a 2000$ laptop is not going to perform anywhere in the neighborhood of a 2000$ gaming rig. That's the price you pay for mobility. I cant lag a desktop to class everyday. The best option for most is essentially just get a light laptop for travel and a powerful rig for home.

 

Dude, hard drive.

Doesn't necessarily have to be Intel. The AMD 6-cores range from $180 to $230 on Newegg, for example. I'm sure the Phenoms can't match the i7s in raw performance, but I'm also sure a 6-core 3.3GHz Phenom is more than enough CPU for any game.


But anyway, before we get sidetracked into a purely desktop tangent, I think the gap is closing, at least. My laptop packs a desktop 5770, which can play pretty much any games at 1080p with fairly high settings. Sure, you can blame minor consolitus on hardware requirements, but laptops a couple of years ago couldn't even play 3D games very well.

 

The point is you pay for mobility. Just like how 15.6" notebooks are significantly cheaper spec wise than shoving all that processing power into a 13.3" notebook.

In a high end laptop, you have to pay for the design of the cooling system, and for manufacturers to make it portable. R&D costs money and goes into the final price of the notebook.

Also do realize with buying a branded notebook you get a manufacturer's warranty vs trying to troubleshoot problems yourself (most techies here won't have that issue).

 

Most people who have desktops get prebuilts as well, which come with the same manufacturer's warranty as an equivalent notebook. As a percentage of total PC sales, the DIY desktop crowd is tiny.

As for the gap between desktops and laptops, I'd say that the gap is fairly narrow at the entry level, and increases dramatically as you go up in price. A $400 desktop won't be anywhere close to twice as fast as a $400 laptop, but a $2000 desktop will certainly be at least twice as fast as a $2000 laptop.

 

Well regarding monitor, for gaming, lower resolution the better as far as performance is concerned. If you're making a rig that will manage today's games decently for under $500 then it makes sense to buy a lower res screen. In either case, including screen in a purchase price is also questionable because most people already have a screen, and they tend to last through several builds.

 

Both the desktops in my sig were built for somewhere around $1000 each, and both blow the $1000 (new, though I picked up a refurb that was heavily discounted) laptop in my signature out of the water in terms of just about everything (except power consumption).

 

Lately I've been really tempted to jump the gap into desktop gaming...

Its not just the "I get more for less" thing, but the upgrade capabilities...

You can upgrade your system constantly, without having to buy a whole new system every time...

 

well i have an asus g73 about 10 months old which i paid $1400 for. it runs all the games i play very well but i think it has a few drawbacks that make upgrading expensive because its a laptop

- hard drive is either 5400 or 7200, makes fraps do a huge hit on performance
- processor is i7 seems like a compromise between single core and multi core
- video card cant be upgraded without replacing the computer, and is a single gpu. even though i dont think many current games benefit from crossfire/sli its still a feature im missing out on. i also had a dell xps before this with 8800 in sli but it had mega temperature problems
- the design of this laptop specifically makes cooling a problem because it vents out the back

 

If you really don't need the convenience of a laptop a desktop makes more sense.

But even some laptops (like my Sager) have some upgradeability. More and faster RAM, faster CPU (supposedly Ivy Bridge compatible), GPU (MXM IIIb isn't going anywhere real soon). But then again you pay the premium.

 

^ yes, but even upgradable laptops don't come as near desktops, in terms of upgrades.

With a desktop PC you can choose any CPU or GPU available in the market... you can get every new CPU/GPU that comes out on the market, as soon as it is available, if you want...

 

True, true. Next year I plan on a new gaming desktop. This year I spent upwards of $2300 on my new laptop all said and done. I basically have to buy all new for my desktop except maybe the SSD, HDD, and ODD, and hoping to come in under $1500, but I'm sure that $1500 will be a pretty hefty machine, and even today $1500 would be significantly more powerful than my laptop.

Anyhow, I digress. Bottom line is laptops are in a much more compact package with lesser cooling and power, more or less.

 

I agree with that. I need portability and power and laptops offer it. I have little or no space in my house so laptop certainly is best option. Also your power bills are much less compared to if you had a desktop.

 

well of course, the portability advantage is unquestionable...

in my personal case, I need mobility for non-gaming needs, and I have the space in my house to host a desktop.

so, I've been considering trading my M15x for a netbook/CULV ultralight notebook + an all-powerful desktop... maybe sometime this year...

 

That's it. I've kinda kicked myself again and again, main reason I need a powerful GPU is primarily for gaming. It's a hefty price tag. Otherwise a $1000 laptop would do, and probably last me three years without problem.

 

You know HTWingNut I am taking donations for a LGA2011 build and an x220t..

I mean Clevo based notebooks are quite the exception in upgradability, but it's a price you pay.

 

You can do a 800$ laptop with expresscard 2.0 (sandy bridge) and a i7-2720QM, with a diy vidock graphic card (with gtx 460) for 200$ more.

So, you will have a nice laptop for portability and power for games at home.

With that setup, you can reach the 20000 pts in 3Dmark 06.

For best portability, check for a HP 2560p or a Lenovo X220.
For the graphics, you can have a GTX 460 for less than 100$.

 

does that Vidock external graphics thing actually work? I might be interested in it.

 

I've never had any luck with upgrading desktops. First it was because all the gpus went to PCI express and my motherboard didn't support it. So then I had to upgrade that, and the type of ram changed so I pretty much ended up buying a whole new computer.

The second time my processor couldn't be upgraded enough to make a big enough difference so I had to replace the motherboard, ram, and I needed a new video card anyways so there was about 75% of the computer that got upgraded again.

At least with laptops it seems like I'll buy one, and then when I go to upgrade someone's always willing to buy my old one, so I get at least something out of it, rather than trashing a whole system to save a couple parts.

 

There is some truth to that. Intel is notorious for changing sockets all the time too, so your upgrade path is somewhat limited if you buy high end initially. AMD on the other hand tend to maintain the same sockets and even make some backwards compatible.

I'm to the point that I will have to buy a whole new machine too. I'm just curious if they're going to phase out the PCI-Express slot any time soon. I'd hate to buy an Ivy Bridge setup next year and then have limited GPU options. That's what happened to me as well from AGP to PCI-E. I had a fairly high end GPU (8800 GTX I think) at the time and then BAM everything went to PCI-express and was hard to get anything a whole lot better in AGP.

 

Yes it works very well and a lot of people have done it.

You can see this here : http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-vidock-experiences.html

Nobody has experimented it with expresscard 2.0, but it should do a 50-60% better performance over the expresscard 1.0.

 

I wonder if we'll ever see a Thunderbolt version of the vidock... It already works decently with the 1x PCIe lane in Expresscard so I can't wait to see how much 4x PCIe lanes can do

 

I for one can build a nice gaming laptop for 400$.

Acer is where its at... You buy a broken one for like 80$, an MXM motherboard for like 70$, decent GPU like the 9600m GT for 100$, then the rest for CPU, RAM and HDD. Got a little legroom for cooling mods too

Before anyone brings up how horrible acer is, let it be known that their chassis integrity is on par with MSI. Cooling probably not as good... but at least they leave room for you to mod it, unlike MSI.

Of course it will never be as good as a desktop, personally I don't care at all. I've never had a desktop. Laptops... have prestige and subtlety like no other machines...

 

HWtools, who produce the DIY vidock , are developping a Thunderbolt adapter. It should performs at about x2 2.0, so very very good! But, only Macbook pro and the futur Sony hybrid have the port for now.