All you really need to know is this; the GTX 950 is the new gold standard for
budget gaming cards.
Not exact matches
There's a good reason why most
budget gaming laptops include this
card: It offers a great price - to - performance balance and very long lifespan.
One important thing to remember is that for
gaming the graphics
card is the most important component, as it handles most of the work, so put aside a good portion of your
budget for that, probably around twice what you're going to spend on a processor.
While that does mean new hyper - expensive graphics
cards for the rich and famous, it also means the trickle - down effect will push unprecedented levels of
gaming performance down into the more
budget oriented price points for the rest of us.
It has middle - of - the - road battery life for a
budget gaming laptop — 4 hours, 21 minutes — but it's by far the least expensive laptop with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Max - Q graphics
card, which is fast enough to support VR and to play most modern games at 1920 × 1080 resolution.
As of late 2017, our ideal
budget gaming laptop costs $ 1,200 or less and has an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics
card, an Intel Core i5 - 7300HQ processor or better, 8 GB to 16 GB of RAM, and ideally at least a 256 GB solid - state drive.
You'll need to put more money into keeping a
budget laptop relevant in the long run — through storage and memory upgrades — than with a high - end
gaming laptop that already has a solid - state drive and at least 16 GB of RAM (not to mention a better graphics
card).
With an Intel Core i7 - 4720HQ processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX960M graphics
card with 4 GB of dedicated memory, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB hard drive paired with a 256 GB solid state drive, this model has the most powerful specs for the best price of any
budget gaming laptop we looked at this year.
After testing nine new
budget gaming laptops, we've decided that our top pick is the Lenovo Legion Y520 configured with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics
card, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB solid - state drive.
Of course, what games qualify as eSports titles, and how much power they need, varies greatly, and these low -
budget cards tend to only address part of the professional
gaming market.
To be fair though, our
budget build lacked a dedicated graphics
card, which is certainly more important for
gaming than an SSD.