High Performance Laptops

When you want to run graphic-intensive applications or to game at a competitive level, top-of-the-line power in your laptop is essential. These devices must be built with the fastest processors, maximum RAM, efficient hard drives, and the latest graphics cards to take on the most compute-intensive applications and tasks.

Dell's range of laptops have been configured to meet the processing needs and workloads of applications for photography, video, gaming, and other demanding platforms.

Performance in a laptop is all about speed – specifically, the speed of processing tasks, accessing memory, and rendering graphics. Powerful laptops can process massive amounts of data and run multiple applications simultaneously. These capabilities are essential for creatives working with video editing software or RAW-format photographs. Students working with 3D rendering platforms, or animation software will also require the power of top devices. Ultimately, a best-in-class laptop lets you work with data and processing-intensive programs while other PCs may have performance limitations.

Several components are critical to seek:

The most powerful CPUs
A computer’s CPU, or central processing unit is one of the main factors in processing speed. Several features contribute to the speed with which a CPU performs.

• Clock speed is the rate at which a CPU can process tasks. Measured in gigahertz (GHz), the higher the clock speed, the faster the laptop will be on average.
• Cores are individual processors – the more cores a CPU has, the more efficiently it can process multiple tasks.
• Threads are virtual cores. Multi-thread CPUs divide a single physical processor into two virtual processors to potentially increase CPU speed.

One of the biggest questions when buying a high-yield device is prioritizing clock speed or cores. It's best to look at the requirements of your primary applications. Some platforms will perform better with faster clock speeds, while others will do better with more cores with multithreading capabilities.

16 GB of RAM or higher
Larger amounts of Random Access Memory (RAM) are essential to laptop performance. RAM provides a place for applications to store data on a short-term basis. When working with large amounts of data or processing-intensive applications, a laptop with more RAM can process tasks faster. With too little RAM, your system will experience bottlenecks and become sluggish as multiple applications try to access RAM simultaneously. To enable faster processing speeds, at least 16GB of RAM is recommended.

Solid-state storage drive
The speed of a storage drive can affect overall performance. Drives permanently store data and allow the operating system to access it. Faster drives enable a computer to process data more quickly. Traditional hard disk drives, or HDDs, are made with moving parts that slow down a computer's performance. Solid-state drives, or SSDs, have no moving parts and are much faster than HDDs. SSDs also consume less power. The technology used to transfer data from an SSD can also impact speed and performance. SSD drives with non-volatile memory (NVMe) interfaces tend to deliver the fastest speeds.

The fastest video cards
A powerful video card can accelerate a laptop’s speed. These components have their own graphics processing unit, or GPU, with separate processors and memory, allowing them to take on responsibility for complex tasks and 3D rendering.

What is a high-performance laptop?
A high-performance laptop is a portable computer outfitted with components to accommodate heavy workloads and graphic-intensive applications with greater speed and reliability. High performance devices typically feature the fastest processors, the latest graphics and video cards, large amounts of RAM, and fast solid-state drives.

What are the benefits of a high-performance laptop?
Applications for working with video, photography, or gaming require enormous resources from a computer. A high-performance laptop is designed to handle these applications easily, maximizing productivity.