Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. Features

Why your gaming laptop’s GPU doesn’t matter as much as you think

By
Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming (Late 2017) review open angle
Mike Epstein/Digital Trends

Quick question: What’s the most important component in a good gaming laptop? Let’s set aside subjective elements like design — and those all important LED lighting features — and focus on what makes for a great gaming experience.

The first thing that comes to mind is your GPU, right? It does all the heavy lifting, and it can compensate for  just about any other shortcoming your system has. Processor, RAM, hard drive speed — these can all bottleneck your GPU and hit your FPS a fair bit, but a powerful graphics card can compensate for any of them. With an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 purring away under the hood, you could even be gaming on an Intel Core i3 and still see decent performance.

But there’s one commonly overlooked element that can absolutely spoil that experience, no matter how quick your GPU is: Your display.

As we’re fond of pointing out, gaming laptops — especially budget gaming laptops — tend to skimp on display quality. Even big manufacturers like Dell are guilty of slapping cheap TN displays on otherwise great gaming laptops.

The display is the most important bottleneck for your games. A gaming laptop’s display is literally your window into the game world and as such, it’s one component that can literally color your experience.

Sure you might get 120FPS on Ultra settings with a powerful enough graphics card, but what do those extra details matter if they’re washed out and lifeless? That’s a question we faced during our most recent Inspiron 15 Gaming review.

This $900 laptop is a scrappy little thing. On paper, it runs games just as well as the latest Razer Blade, a laptop more than double the starting price of the Inspiron 15. That’s impressive, until you actually take a look at the Inspiron 15’s display.

Colors are drab, crushed to death by a substandard display panel likely chosen for its cost effectiveness over its visual fidelity. It completely ruins an otherwise great gaming laptop, and subverts the work the GPU puts in.

In the 21st century, it’s unacceptable to roll out a product like the Inspiron 15 with a 1080p display that’s incapable of rendering more than 61 percent of the sRGB color space. That kind of color accuracy means the Inspiron 15’s capable GTX 1060 renders colors you won’t even be able to see on the Inspiron’s stock display. What good is being able to games at high graphics settings when you’re going to have trouble even seeing them?

To be fair, the Inspiron 15 isn’t the worst offender, it’s simply the latest in a long line of budget and even high end gaming laptops which show an utter disregard for display quality. There’s just no reason for it, a great display can make up for mediocre graphical performance but even the most powerful GPU in the world can be hamstrung by a poor quality display.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jayce Wagner
Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
How gaming laptops grew up in 2023
Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 playing Cyberpunk 2077.

Raw power. High refresh rates. RGB. These are some of the defining factors of the best gaming laptops, and they have been for years. But for as much portable power as you could buy, most gaming laptops have skipped a critical element of a great gaming experience: the screen.

In years past, you could find a high refresh rate or good image quality, but you generally couldn't have both. In 2023, gaming laptops grew up, providing both the speed and quality gamers have come to expect, and that sets 2024 up to be an exciting year in the world of gaming laptops.
Let's look back

Read more
This essential GPU feature isn’t as simple as you think
An illustration of Nvidia's Resizable Bar.

Resizable Bar has been a feature on AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, along with Intel and AMD CPUs, for a few years. You've probably heard of it if you keep up with the world of PC gaming. Since its introduction, ReBar has become one of the essential features to enable on any gaming PC, right alongside memory overclocking profiles like Intel XMP. It's so essential that most modern motherboards come with the feature already enabled so you don't have to think about it.

You should leave the feature turned on for general use, even if it doesn't provide a performance boost in every game. The further you dig into ReBar and its support, though, the more complicated it gets. Even if you can turn the feature on and forget about it, there are a lot of idiosyncrasies with ReBar that you should know about if you're looking to get peak performance out of your PC.
What is ReBar?

Read more
The best Lenovo gaming laptops you can buy right now
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro sitting at an angle.

Lenovo is one of the leading manufacturers when it comes to the best gaming laptops. The company’s commitment to innovation is evident in the raw processing power of the latest chips and the precision cooling systems that ensure peak performance.

Even in the design department, Lenovo gaming laptops continue to boast a distinctly industrial look that is universal across its range. They might not be as flashy or flamboyant as something from Asus or Alienware, but there’s a level of sophistication that makes these devices suitable for various settings beyond gaming environments. Here’s a look at some of the best Lenovo gaming laptops if you are planning to buy one.
Lenovo Legion Pro 9i
The Lenovo Legion Pro 9i is a gaming powerhouse boasting top-tier specs, innovative features, and a design that stands out in the crowded gaming laptop arena. The laptop defies expectations with its high-end specifications, including the powerful Intel Core i9-13980HX mobile CPU, an RTX 4090 GPU, and a liquid cooling system. Yes, you read that right, it comes with a built-in liquid cooling solution to deliver the best thermal performance.

Read more