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Best Gaming Keyboards for Mac 2018 If you spend a considerable amount of time gaming on your Mac, it is important for you to find the right keyboard to enhance your gaming experience. There is a very good reason why there are dedicated keyboards for gaming, which ensure you do not suffer from injuries and improve your overall gaming performance. At the other end of the spectrum is the Mac Pro.The Mac Pro is a workstation and isn’t aimed at gamers, but it’s without a doubt the best Mac for gaming you could buy.
AMD and Nvidia are (still) fighting it out for gaming dominance on the desktop, with new products such as the Nvidia RTX Super line and the AMD Radeon RX 5700 series, as well as in laptops. Right now, the landscape can be confusing, but generally the best gaming laptops are running Nvidia's RTX graphics, which first came to desktop PCs in late 2018, and to laptops in January 2019.
For this roundup, we've taken all the laptops with discrete graphics hardware we've tested over the past year and a half and ranked them based on 3D performance. Below are those with top performance from that group, and you can also scroll through the full list of game benchmark results here.
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If you're building a desktop gaming rig, start with our guide to desktop graphics, but if you're in the market for a gaming laptop, these are the very best ones we've tested. All of these gaming laptops, from just under $1,000 to $5,000 or more, can easily support high-end virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and many new designs fit top-tier graphics hardware into wafer-thin laptop bodies.
When reviewing a gaming laptop or desktop, we run preset performance tests using several games, including Far Cry 5, Metro: Exodus and others, along with standard benchmarks like 3DMark, which is designed to test a computer's 3D graphic rendering capabilities.
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For this list, we're ranking the best gaming laptops in descending order of 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra scores, but the real-world game scores (presented as the number of frames of animation per second the laptop can render) match very closely. Note that these scores are specifically for the exact configurations of each laptop we tested, and almost all can be configured with a wide range of options.
At the very top are two high-end gaming laptops that use desktop-class processors and full-power Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics: the Alienware Area-51m and the Origin PC Eon-17X. Those are both at the top end of the price scale, but gaming laptops at more reasonable prices, including systems from Asus, Dell, Origin PC, Lenovo, HP, MSI and Razer, among others, are all represented.
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New and notable for this summer update of the best gaming laptops are the latest model of the Razer Blade 15 Advanced, equipped with a stunning OLED screen that's good for creative work; HP's novel dual-screen Omen X 2S; and the budget-friendly but powerful Lenovo Legion Y545.
The exact scores and graphics hardware specs for all tested gaming laptops are located here.
Note CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of the products featured on this page.
Sarah Tew/CNETOn top of the satisfying visual refresh rate of Alienware's highest-end laptop, the Area-51m offers an impressive 17.3-inch display, an excellent keyboard, and plenty of processing overhead from PC gaming CPUs and the latest RTX GPUs. Plus, a modular processor and GPU design lets you get inside the case and replace both the processor and graphics card for terrific gaming performance.
Sarah Tew/CNETLike the Alienware Area-51m, the Origin PC Eon-17X features the desktop-class Intel Core i9-9900K processor and the new Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics card. This combination made these our two top-performing laptops so far from all of 2018-2019.
Sarah Tew/CNETThe Acer Predator Triton 900's rotating display is a great idea that's also well executed. The keyboard incorporates mechanical switches that feel very good, and its performance is fast -- though as a laptop, the keyboard and short battery life may be a drawback for some.
Sarah Tew/CNETThe 2018 version of this laptop, with a desktop CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card, was right behind the updated version. It's pricey and has a modest battery life, but it delivers top-notch performance.
Sarah Tew/CNETThis updated Asus ROG Zephyrus combines both a slim, professional-looking design with the expanded power of Nvidia's new RTX graphics card for an excellent gaming experience, though at the cost of battery life.
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Dive into the exact scores and configurations for all the top performers in the full buyer's guide list of 30-plus gaming laptops.
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To find the best budget laptop, read our breakdown of the best gaming laptop under $1,000.
Originally published earlier this year. Updated to reflect new performance scores.
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