The most important component of agreat gaming laptopis undoubtedly its graphics card, which can single-handedly make or break a gaming experience. Budget laptops offer decent gaming performance at 1080p, but you will need to shell out more for anNvidia RTX 4070or higher. The RTX 4070 and higher GPUs are capable of running games at 1440p without lowering the graphics settings and are among the best in the business.

TheHP Victuslineup of gaming laptops is focused on offering the best value for money and should be considered for gamers on a budget. Other notable value-oriented gaming laptop lineups include the Asus TUF, Acer Nitro, and the Lenovo LOQ.

HP - Victus 16.1" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7-8845HS - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

You can pick up an HP Victus gaming laptop with anNvidiaGeForce RTX 4070 GPU foras little as $1000, which is almost a steal at this price. Usually, you can get the computer for its retail price of $1500, but websites likeBestBuyoften run such deals and are worth looking at.

Specs

What You Gain and Lose With This Laptop

The laptop is offered in a variety of configurations, but the one on sale comes with anAMDRyzen 7 8845HS processor, which has8 cores and 16 threads. This chip is adequate for 2K gaming, and light productivity work is also feasible on this laptop. The laptop gets16GB of DDR5 RAMrunning at5600 MHzand can be user-replaced. For storage, you get only512GB of SSD, which, thankfully, can be upgraded. It has an aluminum build overall with some plastic parts, and generally, you will not have bending or flexing issues. Just like all gaming laptops, the HP Victus is chunky and weighs about 5.1 lbs, which is something to consider if you’re looking to commute with this machine.

The cost savings equate to aggressive corner-cutting in the form of only a 1080p IPS display and arefresh rate of 144Hz. Considering most gamers are fine with gaming in FHD, this isn’t a deal-breaker, and you’re able to always pair it with a more premium monitor. The colors and contrast look decent, and so do the viewing angles. The screen gets plenty bright and mitigates reflections admirably. Color accuracy isn’t something to write home about, so media editors will definitely need an external monitor with better color accuracy. The fact that you can get a beastly GPU at this price can make all inconveniences look like nitpicking.

HP - Victus 16.1" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7-8845HS - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070

The major selling point of this laptop is its graphics card: theNvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 8 GB of VRAM. As expected, the laptop version of a 4070 will get less VRAM, which isn’t a huge concern, as 1080p gaming isn’t taxing on the VRAM. If you decide to hook the laptop to a 1440p monitor, you can turn on Nvidia DLSS and leverageAI frame generationto boost the frame rates without messing up the picture quality a lot. The GPU draws 120W of power, which makes up for the slightly low VRAM, and can run resource-intensive games with relative ease. Overall, the RTX 4070 will excel at almost any AAA game you throw at it. For such a low price tag, it’s all an enthusiastic and budget-conscious gamer can ask for.

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HP - Victus 16.1" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7-8845HS - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070