I've owned 2 gaming laptops in my lifetime and both had similar issues that were never fixed.
One was the first gen Alienware M17 with two GTX 270M GPUs (yes two) and an onboard nvidia GPU whose specific model I can't remember. That one suffered from stutters and audio crackling, etc. It was sort of fixed by disabling SLI and the onboard GPU and sticking to a specific driver that was modded, the driver was by someone on the notebookcheck forums IIRC. Later on I think it got somewhat patched with a bios update that let you use SLI without the stutters, but I think the laptop reached EOL without it being fully fixed.
The second was an ROG ASUS laptop with a GTX 460m (I can't recall the laptop model). Pretty much the same story as the OP but I didn't have the knowhow to go deep into the ACPI code. The only change from the story is that latencymon kept attributing the latency spikes to multiple dlls, sometimes it was some wifi driver, other times it was an nvidia one. I don't remember the full fix for that one, but it involved me changing the wifi card and disabling the dGPU (not the onboard one) when I was not gaming so I could watch videos and such without it crackling. Funnily enough it didn't crackle much when actually playing games (it still happened, just very rarely).
I stopped buying gaming laptops after that. Seeing this story makes me think things haven't changed one bit.
I am frequently asked for hardware purchasing advice by family and friends. Starting around 2017 or 2018, if asked to recommend a "gaming" laptop, I have refused. I never had a good experience myself, and more often than not, what I had recommended over the previous years ended up flawed or outright broken. Across every OEM and brand. I tell them to settle for a professional/business SKU with a low-tier dedicated GPU, or give up on laptop gaming entirely. Is it worth the money to pay a "business" premium for a weaker system? No, and I'll tell them that. It's not a good deal in on-paper-dollar-for-performance terms. But at least there's a chance that all of the components function and are supported!
What use is a "good price", when what you get is a quality and support minefield?
With the Steam Deck nowadays there is not much need for a gaming laptop unless you want to play the few games it can't run. Though even integrated GPU's in the more recent laptops nowadays are good enough for running games (usually at low/medium settings, 1080p)
Not a few. You are overestimating steam deck. I have one. It's for small games. And I'm not talking just about AAA or not. Steam deck is pretty weak.
Laptops with the newer nvidia generations that support framegen make this a harder argument. Yes, laptops are always severely power and thermal constrained, but you can run raytraced games at 1440p 240hz on them now. HL2 RTX at that fidelity is a trip. The concept of a high end gaming laptop is a pretty big market, but not when the mfgs and firmware devs can't manage to prevent stuttering that most of their target market would notice and find unacceptable.
I've owned two gaming laptops and never had issues like this.
First one was a Clevo (rebranded as Medion) with a GTX 970m that I bought in 2017. An absolute beast, I lugged it in a backpack around the world for 4 years, including to places you really shouldn't bring a laptop like beaches and rainforests. I passed it my girlfriend's nephew and it is still going strong and being used every day. I repasted once in that time.
My current laptop is an MSI GE66 with an RTX 3070m bought in 2022. It's loud, I've repasted recently because it started overheating. It had some problems with the screen connector which they fixed under warranty fairly quickly. But aside from that it's solid.
One thing about both of these laptops - they are very easy to open and it looks like I could repair/replace pretty much every removable component easily. No glue.
The only thing I consider a real problem is the MSI fan noise. Well, that and the power brick which is the size of a literal brick.
Glad to see that there are laptops that don't suffer like this. But I think the combo of having a steam deck + business laptop beats buying a gaming laptop. Assuming you already own a gaming rig at home.
20 years ago, I had a midrange laptop with a dGPU and while it played games with mediocre results, the laptop experience itself was also mediocre. Stupidly, 10 years ago, I bought a laptop with a dGPU again, but because NVidia didn't play nice with Linux back then, I don't think I've used that GPU for more than an hour or so.
Never again. A laptop with a dGPU runs counter to the things a laptop should be. Keeping gaming activities on a desktop is the best option in my experience.
A few months ago, I started working at an e-waste recycling company, and discovered that used Microsoft Surface tablets are what I've been looking for. My work "laptop" is a Surface Pro 5 with Debian (my work desktop is an Optiplex micro). I'm typing this on a Surface Go (with BlissOS) that I bought for myself. The cameras don't work on either and the work Surface never knows it's battery status, but I don't care (it lasts an entire afternoon with a barcode scanner, good enough for me).
I daily drive Ubuntu on this laptop. It has issues, but the Nvidia GPU is not one of them. Times have changed.
If you don't like a dGPU in a laptop, that's fine. But people have different needs. I travel a lot and do 3d content creation work.
Almost any Ryzen laptop these days will have faster integrated graphics than a SteamDeck just due to the age of the chip set Valve still uses.
I've had 2 now from different manufacturers and the firmware seems alright due to the integrated nature of the API making them all fairly homogenous.
Exactly, you can get decent integrated graphics with any recent Ryzen and you have lots of choice in form factor.
Well, I do play games on my laptops. But that's just a nice perk, what I bought them for is 3d content creation.
Also, comparing a steamdeck to a modern gaming laptop is like comparing a $1 water pistol to a super soaker.
That is my current approach as well. A steamdeck/switch/none + FW13 while traveling.
Laptops are vile piece of shit devices, as a rule.
All the complexity of a PC, in a package the size of a book, with the engineering quality of a Happy Meal toy.
I’m very had very different experiences, with MacBooks.
Well those are just so underpowered it literally hurts. All of disk size, expansion options and memory.
And booting something that isn't a funny variant of a locked down OS is relatively hard.
> Well those are just so underpowered it literally hurts. All of disk size, expansion options and memory.
That’s not a complaint have heard before. My needs aren’t huge and it has a lot more of everything than I need.
> And booting something that isn't a funny variant of a locked down OS is relatively hard.
I wouldn’t want anything else in it, but with a Mac mini I really wish it would run something Linux more easily. They are a great headless server, but the OS is really limiting.
Intel MacBooks were overpriced, under powered, overheating junk. They ran outdated processors at launch day and charged a premium because they had the best screens and track pads money could buy.
Apple Silicon Macs are a 180. Fantastically fast and efficient hardware stuck with an increasingly locked down OS, zero upgrade path and still a premium price.
If you’re holding on to the memory of Intel Macs I can certainly agree, they were not great.
Outdated processors or Super ULV processors? Their obsession with maximizing battery life meant that the processors were unable to throttle highly. Clearly they knew Apple Silicon was coming so they took their time re-engineering the devices. Why bother? At the same time i've heard stories of Apple being very pissed at Intel for delivering such poor chips for their target thermal design.
The trackpad is a device-selling feature though. They really are that much better than the competition.
You complain about complexity and engineering quality, but then say all of the options should be customizable here. I think one has to sort of pick what they want. Terrible build quality since the RAM dimms aren't soldered on, or, a completely un-upgradable system that's packaged nicely.
To go off your McDonald's analogy, you can get a lot of kCals without necessarily getting a lot of nutrients.
Edit: GP comment wasn't yours, but I think my point still stands.
I doubt that build quality and whether RAM is soldered on is related.
MacBook Pro with 8TB of storage and 128GB of unified memory here.
Skill issue.
Yes, and how much did you pay for it.
Just over $6,000
Sounds like money issue, not skill.