Guide: Optimize your high-end portable gaming notebook for even more FPS

Note: This article was first published on 10th September 2018.

Pushing the envelope of portable gaming notebooks

Affordable gaming notebooks have recently become a thing. In fact, we've previously taken a look at what they can offer to gamers on a budget. Choice is a beautiful thing but what if we actually want a high-end gaming notebook? Just how much do they improve performance and the player’s experience? Does it enable users to indulge in a new class of games without needing to carry a brick around?

Before we jump right into it, we should remind ourselves that what we are looking for is a capable portable gaming notebook, not a desktop replacement.  We want a notebook that is not backbreaking and cumbersome, but it also must be powerful enough to play most games. It also should have a battery life that lasts longer than a potato.

Let's start by outlining what a high-end portable laptop should have. We’re looking at the minimum of an Intel Core i7 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics chip. It also should preferably weigh less than 2.5kg.

Falling nicely into this category is the new ASUS ROG Strix SCAR II, a beast of a gaming notebook (you can check our review here) that retails at $2,898 and $3,398 respectively for two different configurations. For this test, we chose the latter variant, packing a hexa-core Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070. The SCAR II also comes with a 15.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel resolution screen with an IPS-type 144Hz display as well. What's more, the SCAR II weighs just under our requirement at impressive 2.4kg.

The SCAR II may not come with the latest GTX 1080 GPU inside, but it is no slouch when it comes to performance. Here, we hope to share our experience in optimizing and squeezing every juice out of portable high-performance gaming notebooks like this ROG laptop.

Benchmarks to determine gaming experience

As with the ASUS FX504, we’re putting the SCAR II through its paces and, this time, the kiddy gloves are coming off. In the test queue are a mix of visually demanding games as well as some of the more popular online titles, to see how the SCAR II fares and what it brings as a high-end model over its more affordable peer. The games we chose for this gauntlet are:-

• PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
• Fortnite
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Black Desert Online
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

We will look at our experience with each game on the SCAR II, how far we can push it, and what are our recommended settings for the best trade-off between in-game quality and performance.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG)

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) received some optimization since we last played it. Once again, we booted up the game and dialed the video settings up to 11. Even on the Ultra preset, PUBG was giving us a comfortable 70+ FPS. At this framerate, there was an apparent difference in how responsive the game felt, compared to our experience on the FX504 budget gaming notebook.

Unlike the rest of the games on our list, PUBG is more of a competitive type. It focuses less on pretty appearances than on how well you do in it, which then comes down to having a good view distance and maintaining a stable framerate at all times.  Having seen how well it holds up on Ultra, we tweaked the settings around to squeeze out every advantage we could get.

We reduced the preset to Very Low while keeping options like View Distance at Ultra. That simple change gave us 120+ FPS, making the game even smoother with a low input latency. In fact, we were even able to take out two other players – a marked increase from the usual zero.

Fortnite

Fortnite makes it back onto our list as it is one of the most popular games around. It’s similar to PUBG in that it is mostly a competitive battle royale, with our ultimate goal to have it running at 144 FPS. Before we do that, however, we cranked Epic Games' baby up to its – what else? – Epic graphical preset. It lived up to its epic promise and even ran well, effortlessly hovering around 80+ FPS with all the settings maxed out.

For a more competitive set-up, we settled on leaving everything at Low except for View Distance. These settings increased the framerate to 140+ FPS, though it took a slight dip to 135 during an all-out firefight in Squad mode. Solo mode easily maintained that 140+ FPS figure as most fights are quick and brutal 1-on-1s.

Having Fortnite at 144 FPS does plenty for the game’s smoothness and responsiveness. Our attempts at sniping did improve a little with the increased FPS, but that alone didn’t help the fact that we still fumbled when it comes to building barricades.

Our recommendation

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Despite being a game from 2015, CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3 remains unrivaled when it comes to world-building, storytelling and gameplay. The open-world RPG can still be taxing on today's computers with its sprawling expanse and lonely homesteads.

Before we begin, do keep in mind that the game has a framerate limiter that caps the FPS to 60 – you’ll need to disable both this and VSync if you want to reach for the stars. With that out of the way, we jumped into the well-worn boots of Geralt. Like the Witcher himself kicking at a couple of ghouls, we kicked our settings up to Ultra and slid all graphical options to maximum.

The Witcher 3 is breathtaking. It was a joy watching Geralt's white hair swaying naturally as he ran through the forest looking for trouble, the game averaging 55+ FPS. We did not have to look far because Geralt soon found himself surrounded by Nekkers. There was a drop to 45+ FPS during the fight but it was not very noticeable in-game; the only reason we even detected it was because we were keeping a close eye on our counter. With a deadly pirouette, Geralt dispatched the offending Ogroids, leaving dismembered monsters in his wake and bringing our FPS up a healthy 60.

It is perfectly reasonable to run The Witcher 3 on max settings, but you can smooth out those FPS dips by merely turning down NVIDIA Hairworks to Low. For large cities like Novigrad and Oxenford, reducing the number of background characters also helps. This gave us a more seamless experience as we flirted with the dames and slid into dark alleys full of murderous thugs. There were still the occasional slowdowns, but they were much less noticeable.

Our recommendation

Black Desert Online SEA

Black Desert Online (BDO) is not new but it was only available for Southeast Asia earlier this year. One of the key selling points of BDO is its amazing visuals for a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). It doesn't hurt that the player models are deeply customizable and gorgeous, too.

On the highest settings, we maintained a comfortable 85+ FPS, although this does drop with the flashy attacks you throw out. Yet even with all those particle effects, the framerate never dipped below 70 in our tests.

Appearances aren’t all there is to BDO. It has a combat system that functions more like an action RPG than traditional MMOS like World of Warcraft. Your characters learn moves which are executed with certain keypresses, and these can even be chained into a combo attack.

This means that high-level combat and PvP would readily benefit from having a higher FPS, as it gives us lower input delay and a better look at our enemies’ timing. While we could lower settings such as textures, it felt like a waste given how pretty the characters look.

Our recommendation

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is one of the more demanding games out there, so it is only natural that it would find its way into our gauntlet. The game gave us a default setting of High but we’re here to push those limits.

We saw a comfortable 70 to 75+ FPS in the game’s different environments. Playing through these spaces, however, did see some noticeable slowdowns now and again, especially when the level gets bigger and more sprawling. On one occasion, this slowdown did send Lara into an icy grave as she was busy fleeing from an attack helicopter.

Returning to the High graphical preset gave us 85+ FPS on average. Doing so eliminates most of the stuttering, though it does reappear when quickly rotating the cameras or entering previously unexplored areas. Overall, the experience on high felt smoother simply because the game stuttered less.

Our recommendation

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Another Square Enix game? You have to, the publisher knows a thing or two about visually impressive works. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ranks as one of the more graphically intensive games on the market today, so into our fryer it went.

As with Tomb Raider, our first order of business was to max out the settings, leaving in on the Ultra preset with anisotropic filtering set to 16x. Our benchmarks gave us an average of 54+ FPS, while lowering the preset to High bumped the framerate to 70+ FPS.

After admiring Jensen's shiny, chrome-augmented arms, we started playing through the game proper. The framerate stayed consistent on Ultra settings, though only at 50+ FPS in the Dubai map. However, once we got into Prague the game was plagued with stutters.

Lowering the preset to High fixed that but, after a few hours of sticking tranquilizer darts onto people's faces, the stuttering eventually came back. On the bright side, this turned out to be a memory leak from the game itself – a quick notebook restart resolved things, at least for a while.

Our recommendation

Summing it up

Using the ASUS Strix SCAR II as our reference, it’s clear that these high-end gaming notebooks are more than capable of running modern games on their highest settings. However, with great processing power comes great sacrifice: cost. Luckily, advancements in mobile computing mean we are now getting what we pay for, and what we’ve got is a beast.

Where high-end gaming notebooks may fall short is in capitalizing on their 144Hz display, which is often part of the package. We would have to sacrifice texture quality and other graphical luxuries to even achieve that framerate (e-sports games don’t count as they are adequately served by budget models). That said, 60 or higher FPS already ensures a smooth and acceptable gaming experience for most; and the current crop of high-end gaming notebooks easily accomplish that with a few fool-proof tweaks we've doled out in this guide.

If you have the budget to spare and are looking to be able to game while moving about, a high-end portable gaming laptop might fill that niche for you. Early for an appointment? Find an empty desk and clear a few side missions while you wait. Gaming on the go doesn't mean you can't enjoy the striking visuals on a 15.6-inch screen.

Here's a summary of our gaming gauntlet, including rough performance expectations across all game settings:-

*Scores recorded according to in-game benchmarking tools

Table Legend: Red < 60 FPS || 60 FPS < Orange < 90 FPS || Green > 90 FPS

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.