Currently, the popularity of laptops is increasing every day. It’s difficult to overestimate their convenience, because by choosing not a personal computer, but its mobile counterpart, it is possible to solve several potential problems at once:
- no special workplace required;
- a certain amount of money is saved for the purchase of a full-sized computer desk;
- there are no problems with moving around the room. When rearranging furniture, you don’t need to “rack your brains” where to put a computer desk and the computer itself;
- You can take it with you on any trip. For those who earn through the global network, this is the most significant reason.
However, life continually suggests that in no area can there be a universal answer. So in this case: the most powerful laptop and a productive computer are completely different things. Whatever laptop adherents say, it is on full-fledged personal computers that enthusiasts manage to achieve extremely high test results. Yes there! Laptops haven’t even dreamed of even the well-known triple-slide mode with several video cards (external solutions do not allow to realize all the features).
Despite this, often buyers want to choose the most powerful laptop. Consultants in computer stores are well aware that not everyone needs an electronic typewriter (budget models are unable to fully reveal the capabilities of modern applications). Usually, the most powerful laptop is purchased in order to run resource-intensive gaming programs on it. It is such programs that create a large load on the computing units. What is he, a powerful gaming laptop?
First of all, you need to prepare for the fact that you will have to pay over $ 1,500 for the selected game model (for example, the budget line starts with $ 300).
In addition, although it, as in the classic representative of the class, contains a rechargeable battery, but due to the high consumption of internal components, autonomous continuous operation should not be expected. However, depending on what is considered a short time: many powerful models work under battery power for up to 2 hours.
The heart of any computer is the central processing unit. Quad-core Intel i7 processors with a frequency of over 2 GHz are now installed in the most powerful laptop, and with the use of Turbo Boost technology, which additionally increases by almost 30%, AMD offers a powerful A10 processor.
The next component is RAM. Given its relatively low cost, manufacturers install DDR3 of at least 8 GB with the option of expanding to 32 GB, which is currently more than enough for any application.
Any self-respecting gaming laptop is simply obliged to be equipped with a screen with a diagonal of at least 17 inches, which allows displaying Full HD resolution. Although this does not directly affect performance, nevertheless, playing modern games on a small matrix is similar to putting wheels from an “Zaporozhets” on an F1 car.
The rule of good taste, which should be followed by the most powerful laptop of 2012, is the provided ability to connect a second hard drive and even organize RAID. When using classic hard drives based on magnetic disks, their spindle rotation speed is the same as in varieties for personal computers - 7200 rpm. If the manufacturer decides to install a solid-state type of drive (SSD), then the final performance only benefits from this.
The performance of games depends on the speed of the video card. Therefore, in laptops of this class, it is always discrete. For example, at the time of this writing, the best were the GTX-680M SLI from NVidia and the Radeon HD 7970M Crossfire from competitor AMD.
Since we are talking about top-end models, they are all equipped with USB 3.0 ports.
No doubt, modern gaming laptops are very close in terms of speed to full-fledged personal computers. The only thing that restrains their mass distribution is the price that is still too high for the majority.