Laptop Specs Help

[MikeyTaylorGaming]

Hey all.

I've been considering a new laptop recently as I'm currently using a 6 year old ASUS ROG which is getting a little out of date now. It still does everything I want, so it may be a while before I take the plunge and buy a new Laptop but just looking for some info in the meantime for when it comes!

Open to suggestions on any Spec, doesn't have to be i9 processor, though I'm leaning that way for future proofing.

1. Do laptops still come with an extra storage expansion slot? SSD or Sata III?
2. I'm wondering if there's a noticeable difference between the 4070 and 4080 Laptop GPUs?
3. Is there a huge difference in performance between i7 and i9 Processors?
4. is the difference between an i9-13980HX and an i9-13900HX negligable?

I've found an ASUS ROG Strix laptop with 13980HX processor and 4070 Laptop GPU for £2100, which I don't think sounds super unreasonable. The next step up of just changing the GPU to a 4080 and RAM to 32GB takes the price to a whopping £3000!

I'd probably up the RAM from 16GB to 32GB myself right away if getting the 4070 variant, but if the difference between 4070 and 4080 is significant then I'll just go straight for the higher spec (eventually)

The spec of my current laptop is;

• i7-8750H 6 Core
• 1060GTX 6GB VRAM
• 32GB DDR4 RAM
• 1TB Samsung 980 NVME SSD
• 2TB Crucial Sata SSD.

Any help and info appreciated!

 

[FAST6191]

Most high end laptops are about m.2 storage these days, expansion slots vary between extra ones of those, in some cases PCI and a few will take the legacy of DVD drives and have plain sata (sata vs ssd is a meaningless thing as sata ssds are very much a thing, I presume you meant m.2 though).

CPU differences
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...980hx-processor-36m-cache-up-to-5-60-ghz.html
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...900hx-processor-36m-cache-up-to-5-40-ghz.html
So yeah fractional clock difference and all the same other technologies. Direct comparisons of like for like laptop CPUs are harder to come by, and you can probably do something "meaningful" with a synthetic test or find some game that sees one of the clock steps need to be bumped to the next one to maintain a performance threshold but you are going to have to go to those pointless levels.

i7 vs i9 would need more direct numbers to compare. These days they are not so radically different (time was a few features might have been dropped for the i7) but the i9 will tend to have higher clocks and maybe some more cores (and thus threads. hyperthreading being lost to the i7 but today even on the i5) nobody really uses most of the time.

GPU wise. If it was desktop then yes actually quite meaningful https://www.hardwaredb.net/geforce-rtx-4070-vs-geforce-rtx-4080
Laptop comparisons are also hard.

RAM wise. Do check to see it has slots -- some filthy laptop designers (while I have massive misgivings about ASUS ROG line it is more their slimy marketing than hardware quality and extravagant prices than hardware quality at least until it comes to reparability which I find a bit suspect) these days resurrected either the computers of the 80s or took a look at the netbooks of a few years back and decided soldered in is the way. I would be surprised to see it in gamer grade non apple stuff but plenty of surprises have happened in the past.

"it may be a while"
If you are prepared to drop such obscene sums on a laptop (if it is something you need then so it goes) then waiting can be a tricky thing as new things come out every 3-4 months or definitely every 6 which has all sorts of knock on effects to things. Intel have a few things, though NVIDIA seem to have slipped into 2025 for the next notable release. AMD on the other hand are doing some more interesting things and have justifiably captured a fair bit fo the performance market over the last 6 years (Intel possibly being a dead man walking in the eyes of some and an also ran in the eyes of many). Even if you are a raging intel fanboy then then AMD putting out something radical or just plain nice can put massive pressure on the market and thus open up your budget to something higher end still.

 

[Hayato213]

Hey all.

I've been considering a new laptop recently as I'm currently using a 6 year old ASUS ROG which is getting a little out of date now. It still does everything I want, so it may be a while before I take the plunge and buy a new Laptop but just looking for some info in the meantime for when it comes!

Open to suggestions on any Spec, doesn't have to be i9 processor, though I'm leaning that way for future proofing.

1. Do laptops still come with an extra storage expansion slot? SSD or Sata III?
2. I'm wondering if there's a noticeable difference between the 4070 and 4080 Laptop GPUs?
3. Is there a huge difference in performance between i7 and i9 Processors?
4. is the difference between an i9-13980HX and an i9-13900HX negligable?

I've found an ASUS ROG Strix laptop with 13980HX processor and 4070 Laptop GPU for £2100, which I don't think sounds super unreasonable. The next step up of just changing the GPU to a 4080 and RAM to 32GB takes the price to a whopping £3000!

I'd probably up the RAM from 16GB to 32GB myself right away if getting the 4070 variant, but if the difference between 4070 and 4080 is significant then I'll just go straight for the higher spec (eventually)

The spec of my current laptop is;

• i7-8750H 6 Core
• 1060GTX 6GB VRAM
• 32GB DDR4 RAM
• 1TB Samsung 980 NVME SSD
• 2TB Crucial Sata SSD.

Any help and info appreciated!

1. Modern laptop use M.2 NVME SSD to save space.
2. 4080 is going to perform better than 4070.
3/4. You have to look at the CPU specs, in the case of the i9-13980HX and i9-13900HX they are both 8 Core Performance Core and 16 Core Efficient Core, just that i9-13900HX has slightly higher clock speed.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

1. Depends, look for a teardown of the laptop you're considering to see how many slots/what slots they have. Generally speaking, most gaming laptops these days will use NVMe's only, and may have a couple slots available.

2. Based on benchmarks, generally speaking the 4080 will perform around 20-40% better than the 4070 in most games. IMO, as long as you're not spending over 40% more than a 4070 laptop on a 4080, it'd be the better choice.

3. In laptops, no not really. Mobile i9s have pretty bad thermals due to the limited cooling ability of laptops, which results in i9's clocking down and performing basically the same as an equivalent i7 would in most long, intensive tasks (like gaming). It's almost always better to opt for an i7 over an i9 for gaming, especially nowadays when the extra cores you get from an i9 (which used to be a benefit) are only eCores now (which are efficiency cores, AKA lower clocked cores designed more for running background tasks while the performance cores are doing the hard work).

4. As noted by the specs, it's the tiniest bump in clock speed which, these days, is basically irrelevant. Go for whatever is cheaper.

 

[MikeyTaylorGaming]

Great answers all. Covers everything.

If that's the case I'd probably buy a second SSD to fit in the extra slot. Nowhere I look when searching includes info on extra storage slots/ RAM slots!

I hear a lot of builds are bottlenecked bg GPU these days, so if I could find a good deal on a 4080 laptop I'd be happy. Thanks for the numbers @Tom Bombadildo!

Also great info on i9 processors. I've been reading about them recently and yeah it seems the 'efficiency' cores don't benefit intense tasks... Just seems like jargon to boost the core number because 'more cores = better' right?

A high end i7, with 4080 GPU would be fine then I guess! And cheaper.

@FAST6191 I actually meant do they come with an extra M.2 SSD slot OR Sata III connection. The Laptop I have now came with a M.2 SSD and a Sata III Solid State Hybrid Drive. I replaced that with a Sara SSD though and what a huge difference it made over the mechanical(ish) drive!

I'm not desperate by any means to buy a new one, this one is running perfectly fine and gets a clean out every few months to keep it dust free. Never had an issue even to this day so happy to keep using it for Emulation and recording for YouTube at the moment, though I do want to try more intense work loads at some point. It struggles with AAA titles on 1080p these days...

Is there a way to check for slots before a purchase? This ROG I have now had 16GB on one slot with a spare, so bought a second 16GB SODIMM to fill it. So far regularly using 80% 32GB of that with just some 1080p editing

I am not opposed to a AMD CPU, but I'm not familiar with which would be a good choice though I feel they're cheaper overall from what I've seen! But keeping an Nvidia GPU would be better because I like the shadowplay features.

I wanted to stick with ASUS ROG as I've had no issues for so long with their hardware, but if there are any suggestions for other BRANDS, or reasoning for a different CPU etc feel free to enlighten me!

 

[tabzer]

If that's the case I'd probably buy a second SSD to fit in the extra slot. Nowhere I look when searching includes info on extra storage slots/ RAM slots!

I hear a lot of builds are bottlenecked bg GPU these days, so if I could find a good deal on a 4080 laptop I'd be happy. Thanks for the numbers @Tom Bombadildo!

Also great info on i9 processors. I've been reading about them recently and yeah it seems the 'efficiency' cores don't benefit intense tasks... Just seems like jargon to boost the core number because 'more cores = better' right?

A high end i7, with 4080 GPU would be fine then I guess! And cheaper.

@FAST6191 I actually meant do they come with an extra M.2 SSD slot OR Sata III connection. The Laptop I have now came with a M.2 SSD and a Sata III Solid State Hybrid Drive. I replaced that with a Sara SSD though and what a huge difference it made over the mechanical(ish) drive!

I'm not desperate by any means to buy a new one, this one is running perfectly fine and gets a clean out every few months to keep it dust free. Never had an issue even to this day so happy to keep using it for Emulation and recording for YouTube at the moment, though I do want to try more intense work loads at some point. It struggles with AAA titles on 1080p these days...

Is there a way to check for slots before a purchase? This ROG I have now had 16GB on one slot with a spare, so bought a second 16GB SODIMM to fill it. So far regularly using 80% 32GB of that with just some 1080p editing

I am not opposed to a AMD CPU, but I'm not familiar with which would be a good choice though I feel they're cheaper overall from what I've seen! But keeping an Nvidia GPU would be better because I like the shadowplay features.

I wanted to stick with ASUS ROG as I've had no issues for so long with their hardware, but if there are any suggestions for other BRANDS, or reasoning for a different CPU etc feel free to enlighten me!

Do you have a link to refer to? If it doesn't mention extra slots, then it probably doesn't have it.

Considering GPUs are a bit more expensive than the CPUs that support them, I cannot imagine why a company would include a CPU that throttles the GPU. That'd be irresponsible! Anyone got contradicting experience?

 

[FAST6191]

A proper set of specs should list what sticks it comes with (usually as cheap as it gets to make the space but you might find something) but you might have to dip into the manuals (service and general consumer).

Brands is meaningless as a concept really. You usually have entry level slop (most chromebooks through junk you see in supermarkets) made of the thinnest plastic and aimed at lasting 2 years, mid range stuff and business class. Gamer laptops tend to be business laptops with a tacky shell and a gimmick, minus maybe the business features (card/fingerprint sign in, mobile phone modem inbuilt...) along with crowbarring in a decent graphics card, or on rare occasion workstation laptop with a shiny/gamer* graphics card. Sometimes it will have a shiny name (Dell bought out Alienware for instance seemingly to have one, Asus made this ROG nonsense from whole cloth) but same factory/parts bin/designer/...
I almost exclusively seek business class ones after the business cycles them out in a few years -- they are built to handle trips through airports and parts will be available for a decade or more where I have scrapped 3 year old otherwise shiny laptops for clients as nobody wants to sell replacement parts I could get 50 of the next day for a business one.

*a workstation laptop aimed at high end video production, high end CAD, high end 3d graphics production might have an even better card than gamer stuff but pared back for stability at driver level.

Re shadowplay. Most gaming grade (that is to say not Intel) for the last... many years will have some form of native capture option and streaming play option. If it was something you maybe got a monitor to support (freesync vs g-sync maybe) then might stand to hear something but it is all much of a muchness. Equally plenty of things to capture from the video out cable instead that nail resources even less.
On AMD vs Intel then for many years Intel ruled the roost but it seems they have been caught slipping massively (as in company ending on the horizon if they don't pull something spectacular off) and AMD (who bought ATI, the main gaming grade graphics card competitor to nvidia remaining at that point) managed not only to compete on price but features and performance.

On more cores is better then even hardware stuff I will question -- Amdahl's law is a thing to ponder in this, though if offline (as in not live) video encoding is something you care for and have no objection to segmenting video (few have a valid one these days) then hopefully that remains the bottleneck rather than your hard drives. Hyperthreading is and has always been a gimmick that works in maybe two scenarios you could encounter and none most people encounter.