Laptop recommendations?

"puzzlezaddict;c-17410115" wrote:
That's unfortunate, but not surprising, given the price. The question then is whether you want to pay $1,000-1,100 for a laptop with an Nvidia 1660 ti, or $1,200 for a 2060, which is about 11% better. The 1660 ti is right at recommended requirements for Planet Zoo, so you'd get good performance either way, but the extra speed of the card would give you some breathing room or perhaps allow you to max out some settings that you otherwise wouldn't.

The other option you could go with is a 2060 and a weaker processor. But the CPU options in laptops are limited. Except for a few high-end (and extremely expensive) models, the only four CPUs you find in this generation's gaming laptops are the Intel i5-9300H and i7-9750H, and the AMD Ryzen 5 3550H and Ryzen 7 3750H. The 9750H is 30-something percent better in performance than the other three, which are all within a few percentage points of each other on gaming-related benchmarks. As far as Planet Zoo is concerned, the 9750H is above the recommendations, and the others are about halfway between the minimum and recommended CPUs. On the flip side, the 9750H runs hotter than the others by a significant margin, although like all modern processors, it will throttle before it gets hot enough to damage itself. If you want to see some laptops with a weaker processor, I can certainly find some, but keep in mind that you'll probably be sacrificing some performance in Planet Zoo, even though TS3 will still run on ultra.

The best models with the 1660 ti are (hopefully) the same as they were yesterday. I found two with a 2060 that appear to not be sold out and cost $1,200 each (if you factor in the MSI rebate). The two have the same specs, except that the Lenovo has a 1 TB SSD, whereas the MSI has the usual 512 GB version.

https://www.newegg.com/black-msi-gl-series-gl73-9sek-411-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155239?Item=N82E16834155239
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1462365-REG/lenovo_81sx000fus_15_6_legion_y540_gaming.html

(The MSI is a bit cheaper from a third party upgrade company on Amazon. Normally I wouldn't want a laptop that had been upgraded by a third party, but in this case, they only touched the RAM, so it's probably fine. Probably.)

It looks like the Lenovo has better gaming performance and battery, whereas the MSI has better cooling. These reviews are pretty long and kind of dense, but you can check out the categories that matter to you, or just skip to the end for some overall ratings.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GL75-9SEK-Laptop-Review-An-average-mid-range-gaming-laptop-with-loud-fans.435496.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Legion-Y540-with-RTX-2060-laptop-review-Gaming-laptop-with-good-sound-and-144-Hz-panel.428659.0.html

Cyberpower does have a prebuilt laptop with a 2060, pretty much the same as the one that's sold out now:

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Prebuild-Tracer-III-15V-ET9924

The other good options with a 2060 seem to all be $1,400 and up, and the performance gain would still be quite small.

Thank you again! So would you recommend the ones in your latest post over these two from your first post?:

https://www.newegg.com/aluminum-black-msi-ge-series-ge65-raider-432-gaming-entertainment/p/N82E16834155331?Item=N82E16834155331

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-g3-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i7-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660ti-512gb-ssd/6350873.p?skuId=6350873