Gaming Laptop recommendation for Strategy Games

[jorge_medion]

Hi,

I started looking and making a budget for a new gaming laptop to play Strategy games. My top budget would be 3,000 € (~2600 £). The games I want to run:

- The heaviest or most demanding: Empire Total War, Napoleon Total War, Shogun 2 Total War, Rome 2 Total War.

- Medium demanding: Scourge of War Waterloo, Ultimate General Civil War, Medieval II Total War, The Seven Years War.

- Lowest or less demanding: March to Glory, Pike and Shot Campaigns, Take Command - 2nd Manassas.

I have been looking at some of them, I am interested in CPU i7-8750H or i7-7820HK and GPU Nvidia GTX 1070 or Nvidia RTX 2060 with 16 GB DDR4 RAM and SSD. What is your opinion?

 

[geofelt]

Strategy games tend to depend on the cpu more than graphics.
The newer gen i7-8750H will be stronger of the two you listed.
I doubt you can do much better.

How much do you need the portability of a laptop?
Perhaps you could build a stronger desktop for the same budget.

 

[jorge_medion]

I need to have a laptop since I am not living in the same place and I need to travel and work abroad. I understand your concerns about using a gaming laptop to play games, but I now have a gaming laptop I purchased in Mexico in 2016 when I was living there, now I am living in Spain (my home country) and this laptop is still with me and runs fine, is the best computer I've ever had and still works great. Since I do not have much time, neither I don't consider myself as a gamer since I do more things with my free time, I don't expend much time playing, just as a casual player, but I play few games, just strategy games.

In this gaming laptop I have Total War games and the games mentioned: Empire Total War, Napoleon Total War, Shogun 2 Total War, Rome 2 Total War, Attila Total War. Except for Attila, where I have the settings on medium/high and Rome 2 where I have shadows on ultra and alpha vegetation off, I play the other Total War games with everything maxed. The fps while are not great, are good enough to provide a good gaming experience. For Rome 2 Total War and almost everything maxed, with the old patch I have 46.9 fps on average, and Attila in medium/high settings I get 39.2 fps on average in the test tool. These are my computer specs.

Alienware 17 R3:
CPU: Intel Core i7 6700 HQ (Base frequency: 2.2 GHz, Turbo frequency: 3.5 GHz)
RAM: 16 GB DDR4 (2132 MHz)
HDD: 1 TB SATA 7200 RPM
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M 3GB DDR5
OS: Windows 10 Home 64 bits
Price: ~1500 € (back in 2016)

I can wait until I have a better financial situation and this computer is still working fine. Considering the limitations of gaming laptops I don't play more demanding games and I decided to stop in Rome 2 Total War. According to my experience with my Alienware, is perfectly possible to have a good gaming experience in the games mentioned since I still play most of them with max. settings (Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2 are older games). Nowadays, there are better gaming laptops than mine, for the same price or a little more expensive with a GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 which is more powerful than GTX 970M and with a better CPU than Intel Core i7-6700HQ. I may consider Thrones of Britannia Total War as well since it is said to have a better performance than Attila Total War, that doesn't work well even in the best deskptop gaming computers.