Honey I shrunk the cards: Understanding laptop hardware

If anyone had told you ten years ago that you would be able to run PlayStation games on your mobile phone, you probably would have laughed them out of the room before getting back to the utterly convincing and emphatic voice acting of Resident Evil 4.

Fast-forward to today and mobile gaming is bigger than ever. This continuing trend towards mobility also means that increasingly powerful laptops are catching up fast to their big brother desktops when it comes to high-end gaming.

 

Laptop vs. desktop

Okay, so you might already have an ultra-high power setup for your desktop rig, but all that power comes at the cost of mobility.

If you travel a lot, want to attend interactive gaming events or competitions, or just wanna get some epic LAN parties going with your gaming buddies, then the prospect of tearing down your perfect setup and carting it around isn’t all that practical or appealing.

On the other hand, laptops sometimes pay the price for portability in performance, but that’s quickly becoming a thing of the past — some of today’s gaming laptops are able to handle even the most demanding games.

 

Miniaturization ray

Fitting the cooling, space, and power requirements of a high-end GPU into a light and portable laptop case is a challenge that both NVIDIA and AMD have been tackling for years.

There have been some major breakthroughs recently though, and while older mobile GPUs can perform up to 40% slower than their desktop equivalents, today’s newest mobile GPUs and gaming laptops are starting to dispel the myth that mobility means less power. NVIDIA’s GTX 980M is a great example — this mobile card is, according to NVIDIA, able to match up to 80% of the performance of its bigger desktop brother the 980. But even that’s about to be blown clean out the water.

 

Pocket rocket

The latest range of ROG laptops are now packing the NVIDIA 10 series graphics cards (I know, you might have to forcefully place your head in a bucket of ice cold water), which means insanely high laptop gaming power. A GTX 1070 or 1060 found in the new ROG G752 and ROG Strix GL502 laptops for example, are more than enough to comfortably run even notoriously demanding games like Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and The Witcher 3. You may have noticed that the "M" is now missing for mobile graphics, that's right, these are essentially the same as their desktop equivalents (although not clocked quite as high), which is amazing if you think about it - this size with above 90% of the performance compared to desktop graphics cards.

If you’re looking for something with even more punch, then check out the ROG G800.

This little monster features an Intel K-series processor, 4K display, and the almost mythical power of the 1080. This delivers buttery smooth ultra-performance on the games mentioned above with one proverbial hand tied behind its back while sipping a coffee, and will stand you in good stead for the latest titles such as No Man’s Sky and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

 

Future perfect

Talking of coffee, if you’ve got one in your hand put it down, because ROG have also announced the GX800. It features a fully liquid cooled dock that enables the unleashing of not one, but two GTX 1080s in SLI. If you had spilt that coffee, the GX800 could probably have stopped time and sent it to another dimension. It’s also the world’s first UHD 18-inch gaming laptop.

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3DMark 11 and Firestrike Ultra benchmark tests show it’s up to 76% faster than any of the previous generation laptops, and potentially threatens the laws of physics. The revolutionary liquid dock makes sure you can use all that power without leaving a 10-mile crater in the place that used to be your home, too. Oh and it comes with its own suitcase.

 

By Simon Marshall

 

See each and every ROG laptop that is VR-ready here!