A lot of you have been asking how well the new 20 series laptops actually perform in
games, so let’s find out with some real game play! I’ll be testing with Battlefield
5 with ray tracing on to get an idea of how these new laptops actually go.
The laptop that I’m testing with has top end specs for a thin and light machine, so
we’ve got an Intel i9-8950HK along with Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, one of the
most powerful laptop combinations we’ll have available when the new models are out
from January 29th. While the CPU and graphics could both be overclocked, they were run at
stock settings here.
Testing was done at CES 2019 on the show floor, I spent around 20 minutes playing Battlefield
5 and have recorded some frame rates with RTX on at low, medium, high and ultra setting
presets so that we can get an idea of how these RTX laptops actually perform. This was
a very rough test, I was literally holding my camera in one hand and trying to do stuff
in the game in another, it’s by no means a proper benchmark or showing normal performance,
but I think it does at least give us some idea of what to expect. Just in case you’re
wondering, we can’t install software on the systems to do proper testing and measure
frame rates or temperatures, this laptop had the frame counter showing though so I was
able to use that.
All testing was done in campaign mode at 1080p with Direct X 12 and ray tracing enabled.
Starting out with low settings we seem to be getting around 90 frames per second, not
bad at all, definitely very playable, but personally I think the game looks better with
higher settings and ray tracing off compared to RTX plus low settings, so let’s see if
we can go higher.
Next up I’ve tested medium settings, V-Sync was turned off every time to prevent a 60
FPS cap. With medium settings we seem to be sitting around the 70 frames per second point,
and again very playable without any problems.
High settings are where we start to see lower performance. For the most part while actually
playing the game high settings did feel ok for me, there were a few little hiccups but
overall it was going better than I expected from a laptop. I was getting around 50 FPS
averages at high, and the game does look much nicer now.
Ultra settings weren’t too different in terms of the average frame rate being shown,
but the game did feel different while playing. Even with these top end laptop specs I wouldn’t
want to play this game at 1080p ultra settings with ray tracing on, it seemed to be in the
mid 40 FPS range during my testing.
The results weren’t too different from a desktop 2070 that I recently tested, though
worth remembering that the tests weren’t completed in the same manner so not an apples
to apples comparison, and of course different CPUs and memory. I will of course be doing
much more in depth testing when I have new laptops available, so get subscribed for that!
The results didn’t surprise me too much, we can get a playable experience with RTX
on with the 2080 Max-Q, which you’d hope given it’s one of the higher laptop options
available, but even at 1080p with top end laptop hardware don’t expect max settings.
It will be interesting to see how the 2070 and 2060 laptops do, given high settings are
only just usable with 50 FPS on the 2080 Max-Q in this title. Of course for best experience
you’d play with RTX off, but that wasn’t the point of my test. I wanted to get an idea
of performance with ray tracing enabled in an actual game given that’s what all the
marketing hype is around, and to me if you need a high end 2080 Max-Q to just get a playable
experience on high settings then it’s not looking great for the lower end options, at
least until the game is further optimized and improved in future. I’m expecting a
performance boost in games outside of RTX compared to the 10 series, but I haven’t
been able to test that yet.
I hope this brief testing has given you a little taste of what to expect when it comes
to RTX graphics with ray tracing enabled in a laptop. I’m aware that this wasn’t ideal
testing, but it’s the best I’ve been able to do and I thought it might be better than
nothing, so let me know if you found it useful, and if you’re new here don’t forget to
subscribe for the rest of my CES coverage and future RTX laptop testing.