A good gaming laptop can be hard to find, which is why we have put together this guide to help make your purchase easier.

When choosing a laptop it can be as confusing as choosing a car.

How many cylinders? How many Km per Litre? What type of suspension does the vehicle have? These are just a few questions we all know to ask when we are in the market for a new vehicle. And how do we know what questions to ask? It comes from a little research.

We are taught to research a vehicle before we go out and buy it – and the same should be true when you go out to buy a new gaming laptop.

The Gaming Laptop Questions

We know. You have a tonne of questions. What should you look for? What price range can you find one in? How long will it last? These are all relevant questions when you are buying a new gaming laptop in 2025.

One thing needs to be clear here. Gaming laptops are a beast of another nature. They differ from any other mainstream notebooks and particularly the higher end laptops are difficult to find out in the Hawksbury or Penrith and just generally confusing to decipher. Gaming laptops need to be different, especially if you want to play the latest triple A titles like Marvel’s Spider Man 2 or Cyberpunk 2077 or the latest GTA 6 coming out later this year. Even if you just like to explore virtual environments with the Valve Index or Meta Quest 3 (using Quest link), you still can’t just walk into any Computer store in Sydney and buy your average run-of-the-mill computer. Gaming computers are special and even the design is different. Many coming with a chassis that is multicoloured and designed along more visually aggressive styles.

The Basics of Buying a Gaming Laptop in 2025

How much will you spend? That’s hard to say, as there are so many factors and features involved in the final price. You could end up spending anywhere from $1,200 to $5,000 on a gaming laptop. What it comes down to is what games do you want to play? Each game gives you system requirements that are the minimum specifications needed to run the game. This gives you a loose guide as being the minimum requirements the game will be able to physically run, but if you stick to just the minimum requirements then you will not be able to crank the settings up to the max. That’s where things can get a little less science and more of an art. Generally speaking you want a laptop with a decent graphics card or GPU as it is also called, we will cover in more detail about which one is good and which one should be avoided in the Graphics section of this article. Second and is the processor, also called CPU, this is the heart of the computer, it does all the thinking behind what you see, there’s not much point to having the best of the best graphics card without having a processor to keep up.

The Processor

The heart of any system is the processor. The one you choose will impact the performance of the gaming PC. This can be a confusing choice as there’s a whole bunch of numbers getting thrown into the air when it comes to choosing the processor. Let me help take out some of the confusion, the beginning numbers of a processor tell you the year it was produced and the secondary numbers are the tier of the processor. Sound simple? well it does get a little more complicated than that, however for years now Intel have followed this trend and AMD are doing their best to get their acts together in this area also.

For years Intel have made the best gaming processors, meaning the top of the line Intel processor gave you more frames per second than what AMD could produce. This is now not the case, AMD have consistently brought out the best processors for gaming. The best processor for gaming at the moment is the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. As it turns out it gets more complicated when you start looking at how it compares in other tasks, I think we are seeing a theme here, if you’re after a more well rounded CPU the best chip you can get your hands on is the Intel Core i9-14900HX. Realistically though, both of these processors are excellent chips and unless you are running benchmarks or comparing your frames per second count the average person will not be able to tell the difference between these two chips.

You may find that there are some good but less high-powered CPUs being sold in Sydney computer stores. One such processor is the Intel Core i7 – 14650HX 16 core processor and the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS 8 core processor. While not as steep in price these processors can give you the computer gaming muscle you need.

If you are only a mild gamer then an AMD A8 or an Intel Core i5 processor may be all you need.

The Mobile Gamer

Okay, so gaming is addictive and you may not always want to play on a laptop. If you are looking for mobile functionality the same processing speeds apply. Consider the hand held consoles like the ROG Ally or the Steam deck. They provide a similar experience to the Nintendo switch but you’re able to play your steam games or other windows based games from anywhere.

Try to go for a six or eight-core Intel Corei7 or an AMD A8.

Memory

Novice gamers often overlook the memory. This is an important feature to consider as the system’s memory is severely taxed by gaming. Use at least 16GB of RAM but try for 32GB if you really want to game. Games these days don’t really benefit from more than that, however for productivity work there’s applications that need far more ram, if you’re considering a laptop for work and play.

Graphics

Your graphics card is the most important component of a gaming laptop. So before you go into a PC shop in Sydney, It’s important to have an idea of what you are needing. If you are more than a casual gamer you will want a graphics card and not an integrated graphics chip on the motherboard.

Similarly with the CPU, the graphics cards have a confusing number that is reasonably simple to understand once you understand how the number works, when talking about the graphics card I’ve found NVIDIA’s line most simple to explain, the first set of numbers is talking about the generation of cards that came out or the year the most current generation of graphics cards is referred to as the 50 series, then the second set of numbers is the tier that they sit in within the series. The second number looks more like 70,80 and 90. Then, Nvidia make refreshes to their cards within a series which come out after the initial launch, and they look like TI and SUPER. The basics of that is the TI and SUPER are better than the non- TI and SUPER variants. this is reflected in their price.

now for an example: The 4060 is less powerful than the 3080. This might seem wrong at first, however, because the 3080 is higher in the tier of the 30 series than the 4060 is in the 40 series the 3080

To try and help a little more, the way I understand it the 4070 and the 5060 have about the same performance. However the 5060 is able to push out the same performance while running cooler or using less battery.

Then to compare the performance of NVIDA’s cards to each other compare to AMD’s cards there’s a handy tool I use called Passmark I use the find in page function to find the card I’m looking for and then take down the number, then compare that number to the other card or cards which I’m interested in.

I hope that clears up some of the confusion around the graphics cards naming and equips you to know which card you want.

Monitors & Graphics Cards Co-Relate

Another consideration you will need to make is the screen of your new laptop. There’s different resolution screens, different refresh rates, different sizes even different panel technologies. This can be another confusing decision, It’s a big discussion covering all the different combinations. I’ll give you the basics

Screen Resolutions: This refers to the amount of pixels on your screen, or the clarity of the display, this is particularly noticeable as you get closer to your screen.

Refresh rates: This is called Hz and it refers to the amount of times per second the screen updates the image. The higher the number, the smoother the image will look. This can be critical when playing competitive games, could make the difference between winning and loosing.

Screen size: This is the physical size of not only the screen but the overall size of your new laptop, the bigger you go the less portable your new computer will be, but the bigger the screen.

Panel technologies: This part is where it’s difficult to compare on paper, each panel has their strong point

Do you want deep blacks and rich colours and don’t mind the cost so much? OLED is the answer, the downsides are the cost, it’s the most expensive type of display, It’s also susceptible to screen burn in and this display type can’t refresh as fast as other panels.

Want the fastest refresh rate and don’t mind so much the viewing angles? A TN panel is the one you want to go for. this option is found in most budget gaming laptops as it is the least expensive display panel.

There’s always the option to buy an external monitor if you find the perfect laptop without the optimal screen. That allows you to get the perfect portable laptop and the best screen

Note. It is possible to get a rich gaming experience from any gaming PC you buy when you use a single 2GB to 4GB video card. This might be a mid-level AMD RX or a Nvidia GeForce RTX series card.

Hard Drives in Gaming Laptops

Solid-state drives SSDs are the best on the market right now. And they are a hot commodity because they have come down in price over the last couple of years. Why choose an SSD? Because this type of hard drive speeds up your boot time, wakes the system, and launches a game faster than any other type of drive. For the mid-level gamer, a smaller 512GB SSD is a good option however with the price of SSDs coming down a 1TB SSD is a great start. Bigger SSDs are available from any computer store in Richmond. Which in most cases can be upgraded after you’ve bought your laptop if you find you’re running out of space, we can help you upgrading and transferring all your data.

There You Have It

This is the best Little Computer People advice we can give you relating to new gaming PCs. If you are in the market please remember we can quote  you what would be the most suitable laptop for your budget and needs.