-"Dell 15.6 Inch Gaming Laptop" -
This Dell gaming laptop is an excellent mid-range laptop that features a dedicated Geforce GTX 960M GPU. That means that even most recently released games are playable on this system, albeit on lower graphical settings. It also features a sleek design and is a bargain at its current price. Read on for a more in-depth look at this laptop.
- Intel i5-6300HQ 2.3 GHz Quad-Core (6M Cache, Turbo up to 3.2 GHz)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB GDDR5
- 8GB DDR3L Memory
- 256 GB Solid State Drive
- 802.11ac Wireless Adapter
- Windows 10 Home OS
- 1080p IPS Monitor
The most important component to any build is of course the GPU, but that doesn't mean that the other components are worthless. They all play their roles to keep the GPU fed with data.
1.) Intel Core i5 6300HQ Quad-Core CPU
-This mobile Intel processor is based on its "Skylake" architecture featuring 4 cores (no hyperthreading) with 6 MB of L3 cache. While its base clock-speed is 2.3 GHZ, it can turbo up to 3.2 GHZ. However, when playing games, that turbo is more like 2.8-3.0 ghz on all cores, which is still a nice bump in speed.
The 6300HQ Futuremark score of 5360 places it around the performance of a desktop i5 3450, which is around 26% lower than the newer i5 6600k desktop cpu. But in gaming, the 6300HQ was able to deliver framerates on-par with an i7 6700k, providing an average of 88 frames a second, compared to the 93 fps average the 6700k pumped out.
Its suffice to say that even without hyperthreading, this processor has enough power to last a few years, which is pretty important with a laptop.
The 6300HQ Futuremark score of 5360 places it around the performance of a desktop i5 3450, which is around 26% lower than the newer i5 6600k desktop cpu. But in gaming, the 6300HQ was able to deliver framerates on-par with an i7 6700k, providing an average of 88 frames a second, compared to the 93 fps average the 6700k pumped out.
Its suffice to say that even without hyperthreading, this processor has enough power to last a few years, which is pretty important with a laptop.
2.) Nvidia Geforce GTX 960M 4GB GPU
-This laptop features a mid-range Nvidia mobile GPU, the GTX 960m. This GPU is based on Nvidia's "Maxwell" architecture and features 640 cuda cores. It also features memory bandwidth speeds of 80 GB/s, comes with 4GBs of DDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, and is clocked at 1097 Mhz. While that may not sound like a lot of power, this cards performance in games is acceptable given it's a mid-range orientated GPU. What is really enticing about this laptop, is that other similarly priced laptops tend to come with less powerful mobile GPUs.
3.) 8GB DDR3 Memory
-This should be the basic amount of system memory you should accept when choosing a laptop to game with. Most newer titles have 8GB as the recommended required amount, so if you want to game without causing a lot of stuttering during gameplay and long pauses during load times, make sure the system you select comes with atleast this amount. As you can see, this laptop from Dell has got you covered in this aspect.
4.) 256GB Solid State Drive
-This laptop also comes with a 256GB SSD. While that might not be a large amount of storage space, it is enough to get you started. Also, you could simply add another larger SSD to the system in the future whenever you start to feel constrained by the space. And lets not forget that this is an SSD, which is much faster than a normal Hardrive in both reading and writing data speeds.
5.) Windows 10 64-bit
-With this gaming laptop, your getting a copy of Windows 10 with the system. Without a Windows operating system, you could not play 75-80% of the games that are available, not to mention being locked out from using the plethora of apps that is available for the platform. Its pretty much a must have if you plan to game on your laptop.
6.) Other Components
- This laptop comes with a 1080p IPS monitor that features a wide angle display and an anti-glare screen. It also has a 802.11 a/c wireless adapter, 3 USB ports, weighs 7 pounds, and has an average battery life of 4.5 hours.
II. PERFORMANCE
-This will give you an idea about how much performance you can expect to get out of this system from 4 recently released games. These benchmarks will show you just how many frames this system can pump out and at what type of settings you could play on decently enough. Remember that 30 fps and up provides a smooth experience, with higher frames giving smoother gameplay. Every game differs in requirements with the most demanding games requiring more powerful hardware to run at full settings.
For a laptop, this is pretty much slightly above average (for the price). You aren't going to get amazing performance out of this mid-range laptop, but you will get playable performance in 1080p on high settings playing current games. Bump the setting down to medium and you'll get much higher frame-rates (in most cases). Even upping the setting to ultra provided playable frames, just not in most games.
III. CONCLUSION
Pros: If you need a laptop and want to game with it also, or just want to play games on a laptop, then this would be a great system to own. It will give playable performance in games and make everyday tasks on the web faster and more responsive.
Cons: The performance of this system, being a mid-range laptop and all, is lacking the power to run current games fluently at ultra settings, especially if you desire 60 fps in 1080p or higher resolutions.
A good choice if you want a good reliable laptop that will give you decent performance in 1080p at high settings.
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