Streaming laptop versus gaming laptop - what is the diff between the two

[WonderWoman]

Hello,

I will be upgrading within approximately 2 months from my 10 year old (but still rockin!) HP DV7 32US. One of the things I will be upgrading will be the laptop itself and I intend to build a couple of desktops also. My questions are similar to each other. What is the difference between a gaming laptop and a streaming & video editing laptop? What are the differences for desktop units also? I haven't looked at specs for units in a very long time and have decided it is time to not only upgrade my hardware but my brain also. I have been a corp. help desk L1 specializing in troubleshooting POS (Point Of Sale) systems and have allowed my skills to lag but I am in computer school currently to upgrade my brain. Please feel free to talk moderately techie with me but remember I am working on cranking up the generator on my brain to get it going again! ROFL

All explanations appreciated.

Sincerely,

Wonder Woman

 

[DVDR_Dog]

All the systems you have described need plenty of horsepower. Pretty much it's how much do you want to spend?
I can speak volumes on video, not so much on gaming other than I have built more than a few systems for friends and customers in the past.
Video system? Here's what I would do.
First you need a couple of different types of storage on your system. A work drive which needs to be able to transfer and store data as quickly as possible SSD with a fast interface. All other hardware being high performance this will be your bottleneck the majority of the time. In addition, you will need some conventional storage to store your finished work or unfinished jobs in queue. Personally I would stick with Intel CPU and chipsets. Video work can be prone to crashing for a variety of reasons including glitches in the source. It's been my experience that Intel stuff while not always bleeding edge is more stable. Video jobs can take a long time to render and a crash means starting over again. (BBL this is a work in progress)

 

[starhawk69]

To answer your question, a streaming PC is set-up for video encoding and transmitting the encoded stream to where ever you are sending data, generally doesn't require a good video card as most of the work is done by the CPU. So you want the fastest CPU to do the encoding and extra RAM is is always a plus. A gaming PC, on the other hand, needs the best video card (GPU) you can afford as that is what determines the frame rate and resolution you can play your games at. Most people who are into streaming games use 2 PC's one to game on and the other to encode and transmit the video stream. Same goes for laptops, except laptops are usually a little behind desktops because of the thermal concerns.
So to sum it up, 2 PC's built for different purposes:
Streaming PC built for encoding and transmitting data, needs Fast CPU with as many cores as possible and a good NIC.
Gaming PC built for playing games at high resolutions and frame rates, needs the best GPU you can afford.
Both will benefit from having more and faster ram, and having two separate HD's. Usually a SSD for system drive and a separate storage drive.
It's possible to build a PC that can do both, but it would cost $$$.
Hope this helps explain the difference between the two.