Today we are investigating two commonly asked questions about gaming laptops: what'due south the performance like on battery and how long do these laptops final in games? We'll also explore if battery life can be extended in any fashion; and do less powerful systems last longer? Nosotros have some bully apples-to-apples information for you, so it should be interesting to learn and accept this as a fleck of an FAQ for gaming laptop buyers.

The reason nosotros say apples-to-apples is that nosotros have the rare opportunity of testing two essentially identical systems where just the discrete GPU is different. This volition let the states test how the GPU difference impacts bombardment life and playability when yous are not plugged in to the wall.

Our test bed consists of two Acer Predator Triton 700 systems, both take typical laptop hardware like a Core i7-7700HQ CPU, a 1080p display, and 512GB SSDs. Ane machine has a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, while the other has a GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q.

Both use the same cooler and largely the aforementioned other hardware. The only other difference is the 1080 Max-Q model has 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB, and a higher refresh 120Hz display with 1000-Sync. Both systems have batteries approximately 50 Wh in size, which is fairly small for a gaming laptop.

As a reference, the iii gaming laptops nosotros recommended in our Best Laptops feature these past holidays had 50 Wh, 62 Wh and 48 Wh sized batteries, in the Asus ROG Zephyrus, Asus ROG GL502VS and Acer Predator Helios 300, respectively. Significant the Triton 700 nosotros are testing with does accept a pocket-sized battery that is all the same not out of the norm for slim gaming laptops.

Then when gaming on battery in that location are a couple of unlike performance modes yous can cull from using the GeForce Experience utility. Called Bombardment Boost, this setting limits the performance of games to a frame rate of your option betwixt 30 and threescore FPS when enabled.

The thought is that you can cap a game's performance, leading to lower GPU usage and less battery drain for potentially longer gameplay on bombardment.

Just in that location's one critical thing to notation here: even when Bombardment Boost is disabled, yous volition never achieve the same level of performance every bit when plugged in. This is down to elementary battery physics: the battery tin can't provide the 180 to 230 watts that the charger provides, and even if it could, it'd likely run at dangerously hot levels and last for most 15 minutes.

And then when gaming on battery, at that place is a significant power limit no matter what settings or tweaks you brand, but go on that in mind.

To explore merely how pregnant the performance driblet is, I ran the Triton 700s through our standard laptop GPU benchmarks on battery and compared the results to the plugged-in numbers I gathered earlier. As y'all can see in these charts, the operation drib is huge in almost cases. Games that were running at 60 FPS or above now struggle to achieve 20 FPS, and beyond the lath, games that were playable on both systems with ultra detail settings are now utterly unplayable when you pull out the charger.

The average functioning drop for the GTX 1060 was 66.eight pct in boilerplate framerates, and 69 percent in 1% lows. This means that on battery, the GTX 1060 model has roughly one third the performance it has on the charger. The GTX 1080 Max-Q is hit a bit harder, with an average drop of 71% in average framerates, and 78 percent in 1% lows, for around one quarter the performance it had previously.

At present of grade, when connected to a charger, the GTX 1080 Max-Q does concord a significant performance advantage over the GTX 1060: across the games tested, that lead is around twoscore percent. Even so on battery, with a crippling power limit in place, that lead is cut and the results are… interesting.

When looking at boilerplate framerates, the GTX 1080 Max-Q still holds a performance lead, though it's been reduced to 21 percentage on average when on battery. Merely when looking at 1% low framerates, the boilerplate event is within a few percent of the GTX 1060. This leads to some intriguing observations.

In some situations, information technology appears the GTX 1080 Max-Q runs more efficiently than the GTX 1060, allowing higher performance under similar ability limits, which is why the 1080 Max-Q is still faster than the 1060 on battery in boilerplate frame rates. Nonetheless, the 1080 Max-Q model suffers from horrendous stuttering under this ability limit in a scattering of titles, in particular Rising of the Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs 2 and Prey.

In these games in that location are regular one to two second periods where the framerate dips to nether 5 FPS, fifty-fifty when you decline the quality settings to reach a more playable boilerplate framerate on battery. The regularity of these pauses suggests the system is struggling nether the power limit, with small fluctuations in battery output potentially causing the GPU to starve of power for brief moments.

So while the GTX 1080 Max-Q can be faster at times on bombardment in otherwise very similar systems, information technology's the GTX 1060 that delivers more than consistent performance on battery, without the aforementioned stuttering concerns. In either case, the performance drops are meaning enough that you'll have to decline the quality levels to low in almost games only to attain frame rates higher up xxx.

The other question is how long exercise gaming laptops actually last while gaming on battery. This is a difficult question to answer in full general considering the wide variety of hardware and battery capacities, but we'll showtime look at some information from the Triton 700 and so I'll discuss the situation a flake more than generally.

The first game I tested with was Mass Effect Andromeda, because it scales downwards nicely and allows you to accomplish more than threescore FPS on the everyman settings on bombardment with these systems. This gives us a good idea of how Nvidia's Battery Boost engineering science works to enhance the battery life of these systems.

With the GTX 1060 system running at full operation, I achieved 52 minutes of gaming, which is brusque though not unexpected for a gaming system. Here the game runs at around 100 FPS in the expanse I tested with and at the everyman settings at 1080p. Capping the game to 60 FPS using Battery Boost didn't accept a massive effect, increasing play time by just 9 minutes for a 17% gain. Yet, the existent gains are seen in capping the game to 30 FPS; now the laptop lasted just shy of twice as long, which is a huge gain. Of course, you will take to put upwards with a panel-like feel at low detail levels, and fifty-fifty then yous won't get two hours of life here, only information technology does show the advantage of Battery Boost.

On the other hand, the GTX 1080 Max-Q model isn't as affected by Bombardment Boost. It achieved around the aforementioned gameplay duration with Battery Heave disabled, at a slightly higher level of performance, yet capping the game to 60 FPS simply increased the battery life by half dozen per centum, and capping to 30 FPS led to just a 26 per centum increase. Going from 100+ FPS to xxx FPS for but thirteen minutes more gameplay in this state of affairs isn't platonic.

It'southward a similar story with Picket Dogs 2. Here the game set to 1080p and the low preset, achieved around 42 FPS in the test area on both systems, and it was surprising to notice the GTX 1080 Max-Q model lasted a practiced 9 minutes, or 23 percent longer. Withal when capped to thirty FPS, it's the GTX 1060 that outperformed the GTX 1080 Max-Q by 20 percent, using its efficiency when underutilized to just hit the 60 minute mark. The GTX 1080 Max-Q barely improved in stamina when Battery Heave was activated to reduce performance by 27 pct.

The final game I tested with is Civilization Six, which similar a lot of strategy games is great for playing on the go. With the performance uncapped, the GTX 1060 model hovered around 45 FPS in a late-game save with everything at the lowest particular level. Surprisingly it managed to final 65 minutes at this performance, and incredibly, capping the game to 30 FPS boosted this effect to 108 minutes. In other words, a 33 percent reduction in frame charge per unit led to a 66 percentage increase in stamina, which is excellent from this system. And Culture Six is very playable at a locked 30 FPS.

Civilization 6 also lasts longer than normal with the GTX 1080 Max-Q, merely it's again a championship where Battery Boost's 30 FPS cap has no meaning impact on battery life.

In general, these battery life figures are quite low, and that'south a product of the mere l Wh battery within the Triton 700. Many other larger and heftier gaming laptops characteristic larger batteries, in the 75 to 100 Wh range, and those typically concluding between 1 and three hours in games. Yeah, that'south still not ages, simply it's a little better than these numbers.

I will say, though, that if you are planning on utilizing Bombardment Heave you should also enable V-Sync, as for some reason you get nasty tearing in some games with V-Sync disabled and Nvidia capping the frame rate to 30 FPS.

If you're thinking of ownership a gaming laptop and want to play games away from the power outlet, based on these tests I'd recommend a few things: 1) pick and choose the game carefully, something closer to a eSports title that doesn't rely then heavily on sheer GPU ability will do better, 2) don't get something too powerful, as you lot won't be harnessing the extra power and it likely won't last as long compared to a less powerful arrangement.

The GTX 1060 provides a decent mix of plugged-in power and battery stamina when capped to xxx FPS, though if you lot desire to do a lot of gaming on battery, something like a GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti could be a meliorate pick. No thing the situation though, don't expect to get a lot of functioning out of a system running on battery ability.