With the ongoing GPU availability saga and the insane prices gamers are facing if they want a new graphics card right at present, one of the things we've heard many times is that if you desire a new PC for gaming, yous're better off getting a gaming laptop. The reasoning is that laptops are more widely available, are not ridiculously priced in some instances, and operation has improved a lot in recent years.

Today we're putting that claim to the exam past pitting the new Asus ROG Strix G15 Reward laptop upwards confronting a similarly spec'd desktop PC to encounter whether this all-AMD laptop from Asus is the better value buy for gaming.

We've specifically chosen the Strix G15 because in our stance is one of the best value laptops you can get, offering the Ryzen ix 5900HX and Radeon RX 6800M in a decent package for under $1,700. At present, this isn't going to deliver a super high-end gaming experience, but for the price, it'south typically what yous'd pay for a mid to loftier-cease gaming desktop PC, and then information technology'll exist interesting to see how it compares.

The Strix G15 laptop is the same ane nosotros tested in our Radeon 6800M benchmark review a few weeks agone, with an MSRP of $1550. After you replace the RAM with higher quality stuff, for a performance heave you're looking at spending $1650 all upwards.

On the desktop side, to build something with equivalent hardware we picked a Ryzen 7 5800X 8-core processor, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, 512GB SSD, and then on – we're looking at a barebones hardware cost of around $1,000 without factoring in the GPU just yet. Now, we oasis't gone and listed the absolute cheapest configuration possible for this PC, simply this is a fairly standard gaming build you might consider with reasonable components.

In normal times, this desktop PC would obviously exist a pretty good deal in comparison to the laptop. Y'all'd be able to slot in a Radeon RX 6700 XT in there for less than $500, and the total toll of the system would be around $1500. That would make information technology cheaper than the equivalent laptop model.

Merely that'southward not the case today – the 6700 XT is instead priced around $800 to $900 if y'all want one right now, either on the scalper market or at retail with custom AIB models. That puts this desktop PC build at $ane,800 to $1,900, which is ~15% more expensive than the Asus Strix G15 laptop. The question and then becomes, does it evangelize 10 to 15% more operation?

And before yous scream into the comments arguing that this configuration or that configuration would be cheaper, Intel would be better today, all that stuff – concur your horses considering nosotros'll address that in the conclusion. This test is first and foremost meant to bear witness how the closest possible desktop and laptop configurations compare.

By testing these systems, nosotros'll also get other valuable information that may interest you. How does AMD'south desktop Ryzen 7 5800X compare to their mobile Ryzen ix 5900HX? Both pack 8 CPU cores, but the desktop version packs a chiplet design with more cache, college frequencies and the scope for higher power draw.

The mobile version is monolithic and constrained by laptop form factors, but is even so congenital using AMD's efficient Zen 3 design on TSMC's 7nm process node. This review will give you lot the all-time expect nonetheless into Zen iii on desktop vs laptop.

We'll also run across how shut AMD has been able to become to their desktop GPUs with their new Radeon RX 6800M. The 6800M is a Navi 22 pattern featuring 40 compute units, the aforementioned core layout equally the 6700 XT desktop GPU, which is why nosotros've chosen information technology for comparison today. The only difference being the 6800M clocks lower – 2300 MHz vs 2424 MHz – and features a lower power limit of around 160W in the Strix G15 vs up to 230W for the desktop bill of fare.

All of these questions are pretty interesting. Is information technology better value to buy the Strix G15 today? Does the desktop benefit significantly from its separate ability limits for the CPU and GPU, versus the laptop needing to use SmartShift to balance everything for its much weaker cooler? How efficient is AMD'south Navi 22 design for laptop form factors? Should get a bunch of answers today.

The examination beds once more, on the laptop side we accept the Asus Strix G15 Reward Edition with the 5900HX, 16GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200, and the 6800M. SmartShift is enabled, and we're running the G15 as fast every bit information technology will become in the Turbo way, nosotros haven't limited anything to 45W for apples-to-apples comparisons, this is best vs best.

Our desktop test system is configured with the Ryzen vii 5800X on an MSI X570 Tomahawk motherboard, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory (aforementioned as the laptop, but with meliorate CL16 timings), and an RX 6700 XT Gaming X from MSI.

Both the desktop and the laptop have been tested using an external 1440p monitor, hooked direct to the discrete GPU. I figure if you're ownership a laptop as a desktop replacement, yous probably won't desire to play on the pocket-sized internal 1080p display, so over again this gives us a direct comparison with the best this hardware tin attain.

Gaming Benchmarks

Starting with the gaming results, nosotros have Shadow of the Tomb Raider running at 1440p using High settings. There isn't much of a divergence between the desktop with the 6700XT and the laptop with the 6800M in this title, both evangelize a very playable high frame charge per unit experience of around 120 FPS.

The desktop organization ended up a couple of percent faster, just the laptop is seriously impressive in the level of operation it can achieve.

It's a completely different story in Metro Exodus. This game is very GPU demanding on Ultra settings, and in this title the 6700 XT desktop hands beats the Strix G15, offering 16 percent ameliorate operation at 1440p, and that margin holds whether nosotros're looking at average FPS or one% lows. This is expected to some extent given the much college power limits of the desktop card.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Society is an interesting mixture of CPU demanding, particularly on a unmarried thread, and GPU demanding at 1440p. This is another game where the desktop comes out ahead, particularly in one% lows which are eighteen% higher with the 5800X CPU configuration versus the laptop's 5900HX. Average frame rates are besides college in favor of the desktop, just with a smaller nine percent margin.

Red Dead Redemption ii is pretty straightforward. The desktop PC ends upward vi percent faster than the all-AMD laptop, which is better performance, just we're only talking about a five FPS margin and so the 6800M gets shut to what the 6700 XT can do on the desktop.

Similar the Shadow of the Tomb Raider result, this points to an efficient GPU pattern that scales well to mobile form factors.

Assassinator's Creed Valhalla is a classic championship that hits both the CPU and GPU depending on the exact configuration you take. Here it's a clear win for the desktop platform, delivering 17 to xx percent better performance through higher power limits when using the Very High preset.

Crucially, the 6700 XT is able to evangelize in a higher place 60 FPS most of the fourth dimension, which isn't the instance with the 6800M.

Cyberpunk 2077 is extremely GPU demanding using the Ultra preset at 1440p, so the deviation in CPU between the desktop and laptop becomes a bit irrelevant. The Strix G15 from Asus performs remarkably well up against the desktop configuration: the desktop is simply 7 percent faster, showing that the 6800M can do almost as well as the 6700 XT with a huge reduction in power. Typically in these GPU heavy scenarios we saw the 6700 XT using 50W more than power as measured in HWInfo.

Horizon Zero Dawn is some other pretty typical result. The 6700 XT desktop system ended up 12% faster than the 6800M laptop in average frame rates, which is definitely a noticeable divergence. The desktop platform is able to border closer to the 100 FPS mark, although the laptop doesn't perform badly by any means particularly given the form factor.

Death Stranding is punishing on the mobile arrangement and again ends up one of the larger margins in our testing. The desktop with the Ryzen 7 5800X and Radeon RX 6700 XT came in sixteen% faster than the Asus Strix G15 laptop. Both evangelize a 100 FPS+ experience but the desktop is closer to maxing out a 144Hz brandish if you happen to have ane.

The Hitman 3 Dartmoor benchmark results are really interesting. I was expecting in this game that can striking the GPU and CPU quite hard that the desktop would be well ahead. Simply that'southward not really the example. In terms of i% lows, the desktop and laptop are basically equivalent, and so in the CPU heavy sections of the benchmark pass, whether you have a 5800X or 5900HX it doesn't brand much difference. However on average, the desktop is able to pull abroad, delivering a pocket-size ix percent functioning reward.

For those interested in competitive titles like Rainbow Vi Siege that tend to be CPU limited, fifty-fifty at 1440p, again there isn't much of an advantage to the desktop platform, at to the lowest degree using modern hardware. The 5800X does evangelize eight percent higher frame rates on average, simply nosotros're talking about the difference between 283 and 305 FPS, and then unless you lot are extremely sensitive to latency, both of these systems deliver corking results.

Productivity Benchmarks

What nearly productivity results? Things are worth checking out hither too, as the performance difference between the laptop and desktop varies depending on the verbal workload at hand.

In something similar Cinebench R20 multi-threading, the 5800X comes in 9 percent faster than the 5900HX, which in the Strix G15 is able to sustain up to 90W on the CPU in the heaviest CPU-simply workloads. The 5800X in our exam system used about 140W, and that was enough to sustain slightly higher clocks and deliver better operation.

Single-threaded results were also college on the desktop platform, but but marginally higher, nosotros're talking a 6 percent advantage to the 5800X in Cinebench R20. That'southward down to the 5800X's higher max boost frequency of four.7 GHz versus 4.6 GHz on the laptop, in add-on to other benefits like a larger cache on the desktop model.

In some longer workloads like Handbrake, the desktop has a more substantial performance advantage over the laptop. Here the 5800X was over 20 percent faster, which does make a decent difference to video encoding. Blender was around thirteen percent faster in favor of the desktop Ryzen 7 processor.

Our other CPU limited productivity workloads were a bit of a mixed bag. Our Microsoft Excel test for case was an border instance where the 5800X absolutely smokes the 5900HX cheers to having double the amount of L3 enshroud – 32 MB on the desktop, vs 16 MB in AMD's mobile CPUs.

But in something like 7-Zip Decompression, we're simply seeing a minor advantage for the 5800X of around v%, so the mobile 5900HX is essentially giving y'all decompression performance equivalent to AMD's 8-core desktop CPU.

Then nosotros accept benchmarks like MATLAB, which is a mixture of everything, unmarried-thread demanding, multi-thread demanding, retention bandwidth, enshroud, etc. In this workload again the desktop configuration has a decent functioning advantage, coming in 19% faster. If you need a system for crucial loftier performance work and so a desktop is probably the way to get.

Pretty similar story in Photoshop, while the 5900HX is overall a decent processor, information technology just can't proceed up with the desktop 5800X that uses a unlike configuration of its Zen 3 CPU cores. In this benchmark the desktop was 21 pct faster and hands beats the laptop playing field.

The Asus Strix G15 is pretty solid choice equally a DaVinci Resolve laptop compared to the desktop configuration we tested. The desktop model is about 4% faster and tends to be generally GPU express, so we're seeing a result in line with some of our gaming results that we showed before.

Nvidia GPUs practice announced to be superior for this awarding in general though, so that may come into play if yous were actually ownership a organisation to use specifically for DaVinci.

Adobe Premiere on the other hand is a large win for the desktop platform. In the Puget export test, the desktop system was a massive forty% faster than the Asus Strix G15, and the G15 is a actually solid performer among laptops.

What's the reason for this? Combined CPU and GPU workloads are a worst-instance scenario for laptops. Even with SmartShift, at that place's only a total of 180W of power to go around, divide between the CPU and GPU. On the desktop platform, there is no such constraint, and so the CPU and GPU tin can blast away with a combined 350W of ability if information technology wants to. Premiere hits both components hard, takes reward of this on a desktop but suffers on a laptop by comparison.

In gaming, nosotros don't often encounter situations where the CPU and GPU are both maxed out to 100%, especially with a decent 8-core processor, which is why fifty-fifty in some heavy games we don't really run across this consequence come to light on laptops.

Information technology'due south why gaming laptops tin still exist quite effective even with relatively small and constrained coolers. Simply in productivity workloads where every component is fully loaded, you lot are much better off with a desktop.

Putting Information technology All Together

Looking at a straight head to caput comparison in productivity workloads, the desktop system is faster, just how much faster depends on the specific workload.

In general multi-threaded or single-threaded tests, the desktop is usually less than 10 percent faster, which is a great result for the laptop and the Ryzen ix 5900HX given all the associated constraints.

Simply there are edge cases where the 5800X is significantly faster, usually due to its college cache, and there is the occasional workload like Premiere where the higher ability upkeep of the desktop leads to better functioning overall.

In gaming, like nosotros saw earlier, the desktop system is faster – it has a higher power budget for both the CPU and GPU, and then it can sustain college clocks for longer. But on average, across our 18 game tests, the desktop ended up just x percent faster, and so the combination of Zen three and Navi 22 for gaming is remarkably efficient in a laptop form factor.

This is a smaller margin than I was expecting and shows that high cease laptops of today are quite competitive with mid to high-end gaming desktops.

What We Learned

Overall, I don't remember anyone would be shocked to acquire that when yous spec a desktop to have a very similar configuration to a gaming laptop, the desktop is faster.

We've seen this countless times earlier, whether you compare like hardware on paper, or you attempt and compare similar production tiers or names, it tends to be even more favorable to the desktop. This is just the reality of testing a largely unconstrained platform, versus a constrained platform with limits on cooling and power delivery.

Merely what surprised me throughout this testing is just how close AMD'south mobile hardware gets to their desktop hardware with a similar core configuration. Almost of the time, the Asus ROG Strix G15 is within 10 percentage of the desktop we tested today, whether that's for productivity or gaming.

So what are the practical implications for people buying a PC in 2022? Offset, you can buy a powerful laptop that may suit your operation needs as well as a desktop – and it's not only massive 17-inch beasts where this is true. Regular 15-inch gaming notebooks get very close to today'south mid to high-end mainstream desktops.

It's but true high-finish components that laptops can't replicate: stuff like 12 or 16-core Ryzen processors, flagship level GPUs, Threadripper… everything beneath that is achievable.

This is great news for those of you who happen to need the portability just may exist worried their laptop is short-changing them on performance. A performance-oriented notebook can be a genuine desktop replacement. I hateful, this Strix G15 easily outperforms desktops based on CPUs like the Ryzen v 5600X, Ryzen 7 3700X and Core i9-9900K in many productivity tasks. That'south pretty impressive.

The value equation is a more than difficult and ambiguous adding. With this testing I wanted to run into whether in the current market a gaming laptop could genuinely be a better value pick than a similar desktop.

What I ended up finding was the desktop configuration cost about 10 percent more, and delivered near x percent more gaming functioning. That'due south a very favorable outcome for laptops than in that location's ever been – desktops take nigh always offered way better price to performance ratios – only it's not a resounding win for the laptop form factor.

And that's considering at value parity, I'd still expect most people interested in a desktop to just purchase the desktop. Laptops are far less flexible every bit a platform, with limited upgradeability – usually no CPU or GPU upgradeability – less all-encompassing I/O, louder coolers and then on.

If you're sitting the laptop on your desk, plugging in an external display and peripherals and never moving the laptop around, all the extra little features the desktop offers makes information technology come out on top. Realistically, y'all'd want the laptop to be offering something like twenty%+ better value to consider information technology as a desktop replacement, not just the same toll to operation ratio.

This is without considering that desktops also give you far greater flexibility over tailoring a arrangement to your specific needs. In this review, I specifically compared the 5900HX to AMD'due south Ryzen 7 5800X, simply the 5800X isn't particularly neat value.

If yous bandy out the AMD processor for Intel's Core i7-10700 and bandy over the motherboard to something Intel compatible, you get very like gaming performance at a lower price every bit Intel are offering excellent blindside for buck at the moment. Of a sudden that value equation is dorsum in favor of desktops.

On the flip side, value parity for like components is swell news for those that need portability. Yous're basically getting the performance of a desktop, plus an included display, keyboard, trackpad and battery so you can use it anywhere. Normally these are things that you have to effectively pay for in the laptop's higher price tag relative to the desktop, merely in the current market they're all basically a bonus. And that's pretty nifty for laptop buyers.

Shopping Shortcuts
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