Can Gaming Laptops Replace the Desktop? #Helpful Post

hey guys this is Austin computers have

been getting smaller and smaller ever

since the days of mainframes now it just

makes sense right as technology advances

you want to put it into more more

portable form factors so an Nvidia

reached out and want to sponsor a video

on the brand-new Acer predator Titan 500

it felt like the perfect time to ask our

laptops killing desktops and yeah that's

a big question and only 18 millimeters

thick and just over two kilos and wait

this is a great example of how a laptop

like this could not have existed even a

couple years ago the entire chassis is

made of metal it has a narrow bezel

display which is not only bright and

fairly vibrant but importantly it does

have a full 144 Hertz refresh rate over

double what you would find on most other

non gaming laptops these days now this

version of the Triton does have an RT X

2060 inside so it will support g-sync

via an external display but if you were

able to upgrade this to the 2080 version

of the Triton it has g-sync on the

internal display which keeps things

looking even smoother onboard you also

have killer doubleshot pro essentially

this can take advantage of both Ethernet

and Wi-Fi at the same time to route your

traffic through whichever is faster

something that's hard to get across it's

just a level of Polish fit and finish

with this laptop I mean nine does it

look clean with all the blue lighting

although of course that this RGB but on

top of that you've got the little things

which are absolutely nailed this is one

of the best touch pads I've ever used on

any Windows laptop the keyboard is also

great and that screen really does sell

the idea this is a super-fast gaming

laptop even when you're not even gaming

right I mean stuff like web browsing is

still much much smoother than on pretty

much any other laptop and that is a big

big plus so if we get back to the idea

that laptops are coming close to the

replacing desktops one of the very first

things you have to acknowledge is that

laptops have all hot less space to deal

with but it also fits in your backpack

so you know there's that this might

sound obvious but there are some major

advantages going with a desktop Tower

so the big ones is on the power side of

things so now that the desktop not have

to worry about things like battery life

as long as you've got mom paying the

electricity bill you're totally fine one

of the bigger issues is the actual

cooling aspect of things as you can see

with a tower like this you can load it

up with fans RGB is liquid cooling all

that is no problem so things can be run

at much much higher clock speeds it's

just really not a big issue but when you

come over to a laptop which is less than

and spin certain sacrifices

to be made but you know what those

sacrifices are getting smaller and

smaller every year this delivers a very

similar level of performance to this

giant tower right in front of me if we

come back to the Triton 500 you'll see

that a large part of this design is

entirely dedicated to keeping the laptop

cool and that makes sense right with a

2060 inside this can put off over a

hundred watts of heat just from the GPU

alone so because they have all these

different heat sinks as well as the

metal arrow blade fans to keep all that

heat moving it means there's actually

very little throttling even though we

are gaming on such a thin and light

laptop a big part of this is thanks to

the software so we hit the predator

sense button which is very helpfully

label right here you have full control

over a lot of things including the fans

so by default this guy actually runs

with the fans all disabled but as soon

as you start needing any kind of extra

power they will start to kick up now if

we're gaming it's actually fairly quiet

one of the cool parts is is if I come

over to the fan control side and hit the

turbo button you'll see this thing can

really crank up so if you have

headphones on you don't care about a

little bit of noise you can get

significantly better performance out of

the predator and the best part is as

soon as you're done gaming you can just

hit the turbo button and it will bring

the clock speeds back down to normal and

importantly those fans will kick right

back off and actually really is nice to

have the performance when you need it or

the silence when you want it and I

always want the silence I'll give up a

few frames to have a much quieter laptop

I've got the more videos we do like this

the more I just out myself is someone

who's like an old man I'm like oh I

don't know I don't care I just want it

to be quiet and I want to work well

right now there are over 1 billion PC

gamers in the world I think it's a

pretty safe bet to assume that a lot of

those gamers are using desktops right

now but just look at the overall trends

right I mean it wasn't that long ago

they pretty much everyone had a desktop

in their homes

now laptops have largely replaced them

for pretty much anything besides gaming

tasks well I think given how far gaming

laptops have come it's only a matter of

time before gaming is also moving more

and more to the laptop side of things

but my real question is exactly how

close kind of laptop get to a full

gaming desktop so we have come to GDC

here in San Francisco which is the mecca

of all things gaming and tech related

talk just a little bit more about why

the laptop actually makes so much sense

in 2019 also we were looking for an

excuse to come to GDC and if you take a

look inside the Triton you'll see you

the secret sauce that makes all this

work

be highly optimized CPU and GPU to

really elevated laptops to an entirely

different level first off we have the

CPU this is the Intel Core i7

8750 age which is a full 6 core

processor it can clock up over 4

gigahertz when it's boosting no it's

easy to forget that for a very long time

we were capped at around 4 cores not

only on the desktop side but also the

lap top side the idea that we can get

six cores and something that's this than

in light is something that's easy to

take for granted but it's a big deal you

can do more than just gaming on

something like this with that much power

stuff like streaming video editing 3d

rendering all that stuff is totally

possible inside essentially what you're

getting is a more power efficient

version of the 8th gen core desktop

processors there's a lot of advantages

to this malli is that they very similar

layout but because we're dealing with

about less than half the power somewhere

they would have 45 Watts versus 90 Plus

on the desktop side it means that while

you're giving up a little bit of

performance that same basic core

architecture is all here as long as you

have the cooling to back it up which the

Triton definitely does you can actually

still keep those fairly high boost

clocks eaten with all six cores loaded

now the laws of physics do mean that

because we have less than an inch thick

laptop it's never going to have quite

that same level of performance as the

desktop but it kind of doesn't need to

as long as you're getting close enough

and you still deliver the portability I

think it's a trade-off a lot of people

are happy to make don't expect this

trend to go anywhere either as laptops

and desktops share more and more of the

same components it is very likely if the

rumors are true

we want to see the laptops with an 8

core CPUs before too much longer which I

mean to be fair do you need eight cores

of the CPU of a laptop probably not do

you want one I do maybe the more

interesting comparison is on the

graphics side now for years nvidia made

a separate version of all of the

graphics cards they make the desktop

version and then a mobile however for

the last couple years they've

straight-up just made one which works

across the board no no it's not quite

that simple Nvidia and their OEM

partners such as Asia do a lot of work

to make sure that a full RCX card can

fit in a fan light chassis like this but

you might be surprised it just helped

close the graphics card and this laptop

is compared to a much thicker and much

more expensive gaming PC what this means

is that you're getting all the

performance you would expect avatar text

graphics card now the power to play a

lot of

Ultra settings and high frame rates

would you also get some of the cool

bells and whistles including a ray

tracing which we are just very

conveniently standing in front of a

giant booth for really what this means

is that the days of waiting for the cool

bells and whistles from the desktop to

come down to the laptops are over we

really have basically hid feature parity

and typically speaking when something

comes out for the desktop side of things

it's gonna come out for the laptop side

very quickly and generally speaking

you're really not going to be losing a

lot in that process this is something

that's easy to kind of take for granted

right of course laptops should be the

same but again this is a much thinner

much lighter and much more difficult

thing to engineer it's easy to forget

that not that long ago there was a

massive penalty to gaming on a laptop

you had to deal with far inferior specs

both on the CPR on the GPU side and a

lot of times you didn't even have those

same level features I mean I can imagine

if ray-tracing came out five years ago

you would not have been able to play it

on a laptop well it's great to have that

same level of performance with the 2060

inside the Triton as you would get in a

desktop you also have other options as

you go higher up in the product stack so

specifically on the Acer side if you

upgrade this Triton with a our checks

2080 you then get a max Q design now the

max Q design is actually not that

different than what Intel does on their

high-end mobile CPUs so they basically

start from the same building block in

this case the archaic 2080 it's the same

GPU across the laptop as well as the

desktop now there are some slight

differences usually the Mac to design is

a little bit more highly bent it's a

little bit more power efficient just

naturally but on top of that they do a

much better job of bringing down the

power to keep that level of performance

as high as possible so for context

typically speaking in ArcheAge 20 80 has

a roughly 220 watt TDP now on the laptop

side it's usually about half of that

around 100 to 120 watts even though it's

using half the power often times you're

getting anywhere between two-thirds to

three-quarters of that same level of

performance if you excuse all the nerd

talk for a second what this means is

that laptops and desktops are so similar

at this point it really is just a scaled

up version of what you're finding on the

laptop side you go grab a desktop with

some

cooller a ton of heatsinks now of course

there's going to be the laws of physics

which mean that laptops can never quite

match that level of performance when

you're talking about 78% that same level

and something that's a less than an inch

thick that you can fit in your backpack

and take you all day I think that's a

super compelling value proposition I

think a lot of people would prefer to

have one single system this year might

not be a hundred percent as powerful is

the most crazy thing out there we can do

basically everything very well plenty of

battery life most importantly you can

take it with you all day something

that's not really going to happen

anytime soon with the desktop