HP Victus 16 (2023) review: A fast RTX 4070 gaming laptop

Price When Reviewed

$1099.99 baseline | $1799.99 as reviewed

Best Prices Today: HP Victus 16 (2023)

When it involves decently geared up gaming laptops, the worth usually hovers round $1,300 to $2,000. Usually, these fashions have a GeForce RTX 4060 on board. Well, this configurable model of the HP Victus 16 for $1,799 comes with an RTX 4070 and guarantees higher gaming efficiency on this value vary. HP additionally combines the GPU with a robust AMD processor.

The 16-inch laptop computer sits in a sturdy black plastic case. Its RTX 4070 has a TGP of 120 watts, lower than the highest mannequin of this GPU, which is allowed to attract as much as 140 watts in complete. With 4,608 shaders, 36 ray tracing cores, and 144 tensor cores, nevertheless, it’s higher geared up than the RTX 4060. The graphics reminiscence is 8GB in each variants. Like all GeForce 40-series GPUs, the RTX 4070 additionally helps DLSS 3 with Frame Generation.

The processor can be placing within the Victus 16. HP makes use of a present Ryzen 7 7840HS. This Phoenix CPU makes use of eight Zen 4 cores with SMT whereas different notebooks within the value vary of the HP Victus 16 with an AMD CPU often use the 7735HS. This Rembrandt refresh has eight cores of the predecessor structure Zen3+.

We carried out all exams in “Performance” mode. You set the completely different modes in addition to fan management and keyboard illumination within the Omen Gaming Hub tuning software program.

Looking for extra choices? Check out PCWorld’s roundup of the best gaming laptops.

Thomas Rau

HP Victus 16: The good mixture for prime fps

When it involves 3D velocity, the Victus 16 advantages not solely from the RTX 4070, but additionally from the low decision of its 16-inch show. It solely exhibits Full HD with 1920×1080 as an alternative of WQHD decision.

In the 3DMark benchmark, the RTX 4070 is on par with an RTX 3080 from the earlier technology. The benefit over an RTX 4060 is just below 20 p.c within the Time Spy take a look at to simply below 30 p.c within the Port Royal ray tracing take a look at. However, the hole upwards is appreciable. An RTX 4080 is over 50 p.c sooner than the RTX 4070.

Here’s what’s so placing. In 3D Mark, the RTX 4070 within the HP pocket book doesn’t present worse graphics efficiency than the identical mannequin with 140 watts when used on an Intel platform, regardless of the decrease TGP, as a result of with a power-hungry Raptor Lake CPU from the HX collection at its facet, the Nvidia GPU can not at all times exhaust the potential energy consumption.

For comparability, a Core i7-13700HX wants round 96 watts for just below 21,000 factors in Cinebench R23 whereas the AMD processor solely permits itself 60 watts for over 16,000 factors. For a outcome that’s nearly 30 p.c higher, the Intel CPU requires 60 p.c extra energy.

The benefit of a decrease decision is clearly evident within the gaming exams. In barely older video games, the HP Victus at all times delivers playable body charges even with most particulars and ray tracing. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider (SOTTR), the pocket book achieves 147 fps in ultra-high and 107 fps with activated ray tracing shadows in ultra-quality. In Dirt 5, it’s 82 fps and 70 fps respectively in ultra-high and with ray tracing.

In distinction, equally priced gaming notebooks with the mixture of WQHD show and RTX 4060 solely obtain playable body charges of over 60 fps in SOTTR as much as the Medium ray tracing stage and in Dirt 5 solely as much as the High element stage.

In Cyberpunk 2077, the Victus 16 achieves playable body charges in all settings with out ray tracing. In Ultra, for instance, the HP pocket book achieves 87 fps. If you activate ray tracing, it nonetheless works effectively as much as the low stage with 79 fps, however with increased ray tracing high quality, the body price drops beneath 60 fps. With DLSS3 enabled, together with body technology, every thing works in Cyberpunk 2077. Even ray tracing overdrive with path tracing might be dealt with by the RTX 4070 with 75 fps.

Cyberpunk 2077 is without doubt one of the first video games to assist DLSS 3.5 with ray reconstruction. In this model, the upscaling expertise makes use of extra AI computing energy to realize higher ray tracing picture high quality.

Actually, all Nvidia GPUs that assist DLSS can use Ray Reconstruction, together with 2000 and 3000 collection fashions. In Cyberpunk 2077, nevertheless, you must activate Path Tracing for this perform. Its excessive efficiency necessities make the sport unplayable for many GPUs except they will use Frame Generation, which solely applies to the 4000 collection. Even the RTX 4070 within the Victus 16 solely manages 46 fps with DLSS Super Resolution with out Frame Generation. Only with Frame Generation switched on, the pocket book achieves playable body charges with 75 fps.

In regular gameplay, the improved ray tracing high quality is hardly noticeable. Still photographs, nevertheless, present extra distinction in shadow areas and a sharper illustration of mirrored objects.

Thomas Rau

HP Victus 16: Enough cores for nearly all functions

Even in system benchmarks like PC Mark 10 and Crossmark, the HP Victus 16 delivers a really first rate efficiency for its value. Only in CPU-heavy functions does it lag behind notebooks with a Raptor Lake from the HX collection. The AMD CPU can sustain effectively with a Raptor-Lake-H. Only when an utility makes use of all CPU cores, just like the rendering take a look at Cinebench R23, can the Intel CPUs with 14, 16, or 24 cores clearly set themselves aside from the 8-core AMD processor.

The 1TB SSD from Kioxia with PCIe 4 delivers very excessive knowledge charges of over 7 and just below 6 GB/s for sequential studying and writing. In the sensible take a look at, nevertheless, it performs weaker than the present high SSDs from Samsung and WD.

Thomas Rau

HP Victus 16: The followers are below management

Under load, the followers within the Victus 16 function at round 50 dB(A), considerably quieter than comparably geared up 16-inch notebooks. HP adjusts the fan velocity and thus the amount extra flexibly than different producers, who couple the processor’s highest efficiency mode with most fan velocity. In the Victus 16, the fan often spins as much as 54 dB(A) for a short while within the load take a look at, but additionally reduces the noise gently once more with out making a continually altering soundscape that’s extra annoying than loud spinning followers.

HP Victus 16: Good sufficient image high quality

The Full HD show provides a most refresh price of 144 Hz and an image high quality that’s okay for the worth vary of the Victus 16. Contrast and colour copy are good. However, the luminance of lower than 300 cd/sqm is comparatively low. Depending on the sport, it’s additionally annoying that the brightness decreases considerably in direction of the decrease show space.

Thomas Rau

HP Victus 16: Fast USB ports are lacking

The similar applies to the Victus 16’s tools: it’s satisfactory, however different notebooks on this value phase provide extra. This doesn’t apply to the SSD measurement, which at 1TB is on the anticipated stage or the communication {hardware} with Wi-Fi 6 WLAN and Gigabit LAN.

However, the HP pocket book provides many, however primarily sluggish ports. The three Type A ports and the Type C port solely ship USB 3.2 Gen 1 knowledge charges. Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 with the next velocity are lacking. Compared to final 12 months’s mannequin, HP has additionally omitted a card reader.

There are solely two exterior monitor connections. One with HDMI 2.1 and Displayport 1.4a on the Type-C socket, which may also be used to cost the pocket book in the event you don’t need to take the 230-watt energy provide weighing over 700 grams with you. The one optimistic is that the entrance digital camera shows transferring photographs in 1080p.

Thomas Rau

HP Victus 16: Keyboard is mediocre, however the touchpad is nice

The verdict on the controls is equally ambivalent: On the fitting facet of the keyboard is a big numeric keypad whose keys are hardly smaller than these within the core space of the keyboard. The Enter key, nevertheless, is just single-spaced, and the cursor keys, though simply accessible, are smaller. A poor strain suggestions is annoying when typing and enjoying video games – at the very least the keyboard is in-built stably and is quiet even when typing quick.

In the Omen Hub, you possibly can solely set a static illumination in a single colour for the complete keyboard area. It is just perceptible at midnight; in brighter ambient mild, it’s hardly noticeable that the keyboard has a colourful background.

The touchpad is extra pleasing with a transparent strain level that doesn’t acknowledge a mouse click on excessively loudly. The floor provides a pleasing stability between grippy and easy, for quick but exact mouse management.

HP Victus 16: Good endurance

For a gaming pocket book with a 16-inch show, the Victus 16 is kind of mild at simply over 5 kilos. That’s mild for a gaming laptop computer, which often ideas the scales at six kilos or extra. In the battery take a look at, it lasted just below six hours whereas WLAN browsing, one other good outcome.

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This evaluate was translated from German to English and initially appeared on pcwelt.de.