US
8 MIN READ TIME
GROUP TEST

GAMING LAPTOPS

We put the newest gaming laptops through their paces, pushing Nvidia, Intel, and AMD’s latest chips to the limit. By Jacob Ridley

Every year, the best gaming laptops get a whole lot better. The latest laptops are more portable than ever, yet somehow don’t sacrifice any gaming performance in order to slim down. It’s really rather impressive, and even the thinnest designs sport all the fancy features that high-end gaming PCs do. We’re talking multicore CPUs, high-end GPUs, and speedy NVMe SSDs. You can even find heaps of RAM and super-high refresh screens under the hood.

In 2022, the latest notebooks come sporting new Intel 12th Gen or AMD Ryzen 6000-series processors. And these are gradually replacing previous generation models today. There are also new Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs – the improved RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti – that show there’s still more performance to be wrought from the familiar laptop chassis of yesteryear.

Group Test

Stealth GS66

MSI £3,100

More F-117 Nighthawk than ninja

1

You might be surprised by the silicon within the MSI Stealth GS66’s slender chassis. It’s the same slimline chassis MSI has been using for its GS66 machines for generations, but the performance is very different thanks to the core components picked for this 12th Gen build. There’s Intel’s finest 20-thread CPU, the Core i9 12900H, alongside the new and improved mobile RTX 3070 Ti.

So far, so good. Where I’m struggling is in the way that MSI has slapped a 4K screen to it, running at a measly 60Hz. Maybe I’m being a bit of an entitled Timmy about this, but no gaming laptop in 2022 should be saddled with a 60Hz refresh screen. The noise is also a little unbearable – this laptop is incredibly loud and there’s no way you could game on it in polite company.

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PC Gamer (UK Edition)
August 2022
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