Intros out of the way, let’s talk about how to find the best laptop for Dota 2. 

Truth is…

Back in the days, DotA 2 COULD run on ANY laptop ….

However, since the introduction of Reborn after Dota 2 was acquired by Steam, the game can now support high graphics and cool effects.

So…

If you want to play the game at maxed out settings, you need a RECENT dedicated GPU (preferably with 4GB vRAM) like the 1650GTX or 3050Ti.

2GB vRAM GPUs also work just fine but you won’t get stable framerates throughout a match if you play at the highest settings, especially when everyone is entangled in a group fight. Those will work for settings 2 and 3 on the graph below.

Recommended Hardware Requirements For Dota 2

If you try to play the game at the highest settings with no dedicated GPUs on a laptop,  you will experience framedrops and this can lead to getting smoked in a group fight.

 

However…

If you don’t mind playing at the fastest settings, pretty much any machine that’s been released within the past 3 years, will run Dota 2 just fine as long as it has 8GB RAM (memory).

Do not listen…

To people saying you can play dota on much older rigs (which usually have 4GB RAM).

Dota 2 is the OLDEST MOBA out there so you will find lots of people understimating and thinking of Dota 2 pre-reborn times when giving advice.

GPU

1. Low Settings (1-2):  No need for dedicated GPUs. Integrated GPUs (they come by default) work just fine. The more recent the laptop (the CPU), the more powerful the iGPU (integrated GPU).

Ex of iGPUs: Intel HD 520/620 Intel UHD & AMD Radeon Vega 5/7 are old but okay. Recent ones are Intel Iris Xe Graphics & AMD Radeon 610.

2.  High settings (3-4): 2GB vRAM GPU for (3) settings & 4GB vRAM for (4 – max) settings.

Minimum (2GB vRAM): MX550, MX450, 1050 GTX.

Note: MX150,MX250,MX230 , Radeon RX 555  are 2GB vRAM GPUs that perform just as good as recent iGPUs. So avoid them if they’re too expensive.

Recommended (4GB vRAM): 1050Ti or a 1650GTX or 3050Ti.  No need to go higher (6GB vRAM GPUs are useless)

CPU

Luckily, for those on a budget, Dota 2 is very CPU bound (engine was coded before LoL and that’s the time where dGPUs were not really powerful). That means small changes in CPU power make a HUGE difference.

1. Number of cores: Dota 2 runs mostly on a single Core. Steam recommends a dual core so you have one core dedicated to Dota 2. TL;DR: Do not focus on # cores single most CPUs have at least 4 now.

2. Clock Speed:  All things being equal. You should focus on picking the CPU with the highest ‘clock speed’ Ex: 4.2GHz over 4GHz.

RAM
4GB RAM: This is found on older laptops. Not enough to even run Windows.
8GB RAM:  Minimum for the game. You can bump framerates if you set up 8GB RAM in dual-channel mode.
16GB RAM:  You’ll get slightly more framerates (due to iGPU using the extra RAM) but it’s more useful for streaming.

Either way whatever you get you can always upgrade RAM. 

Storage

Size: Doesn’t really matter if you’re only playing Dota 2 since the game takes 50GB.
Type: SSD are universal on modern laptops. It’s not going to bump up framerates but it will speed up your computer all around. If you’re buying an old machine off ebay, it is a must to do the upgrade: how to upgrade to an SSD .

Display
FHD: All laptops have FHD now except those below 350 dollars. (You have to double check).
Refresh rates: if you have a dedicated GPU, then it’s worth investing on 120Hz displays since the game will run at +80fps, a 120Hz display will let you SEE all those 80 frames per second. Otherwise, visuals will be capped at 60Hz.

Top 5 Best Laptops for DotA 2 

Instead of talking about the hardware in these machines, I’m going to talk about how much performance you can expect from each of these puppies. 

I’ll attach a youtube video if that same model has tested the game on it.

If not, I’ll just post performance stats (framerates and settings) based on youtube benchmarks from similar machines. 

Please beware that any laptop with higher and more powerful hardware than what will be shown next it’s just going to be wasted money for this game . Surely, useful for other more graphically demanding games but not for Dota 2. 

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1. HP Victus

The Best Laptop For Dota 2

  Intel Core i5-13420H

  8GB DDR4 RAM

   GeForce RTX 3050Ti 4GB vRAM

  512GB PCIe SSD

  15 ” 144Hz Full HD IPS

  5.10lbs

  3 hours

The 3050Ti may seem a little overkill for Dota 2 but if you run the benchmarks, you’ll see it doesn’t go past 100 fps when you set the graphics to (4) which is the highest.

Dota 2 BenchMarks: 3050Ti Laptop – Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3

GPU:  3050Ti RTX

I ran the benchmarks on a slightly different machine. The only thing being different is really the CPU which was a AMD Ryzen 5 5600H. 

Both laptops however have the exact same GPU running at the exact same GPU wattage so the framerates should be more or less the same. Both laptops run at 85W (max for 3050Ti laptop GPus).

You can check on the lower corner of the video that we are running at 85W so the framerates you see on the screen should be the highest framerates (approximately) you could get out of ANY 3050Ti laptop. 

Do note that having those high framerates isn’t really useful even for competitive gaming so you may want to run the GPU at its default wattage (usually 75W). 

All laptops now have a software where you can set the GPU power to normal, balanced and power mode. I recommend you set the mode to normal mode which will still get you high framerates while at the same time keeping temeperatures under control (you want to avoid high temperatures when playing for a long period of time).

RTX Mode 

While you have the choice to buy cheaper 1650GTX laptops from 2020, paying a little extra for an RTX GPU be it a 2050 or a 3050RTX, enables you to use RTX mode which makes a few animations, mostly special attacks, look cooler in some games outside of Dota 2.

There’s no need to go for the higher 3060RTX or 4050RTX GPUs to enable this mode. You can even get the cheaper 2050RTX which we’ll go over next and still get this mode activated.

You should not be wasting money on laptops that cost more than this (+700 dollars), the framerates will be MUCH MUCH higher at higher settings sure but unless you want to play competitively at the highest settings for long periods of time, they’re wasted money.

CPU: Intel Core i5-13420H vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600H

I tested the game on a 3050Ti laptop with a AMD Ryzen 5 5600H. This AMD Ryzen 5 is 3 years older than the Core i5 13420H so obviously it’s going to be a lot weaker in terms of clock speed. What difference in performance can you expect? Well I’d add a 10fps performance difference since most of the workload is done when you have a dedicated GPU.

Although the Core i5 13420H has more cores than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, the performance difference really comes from the difference in CPU’s clock speed so when comparing benchmarks you should look at the clock speed difference.

If you get a weaker CPU, you can always make up for the lack of speed by setting up RAM in dual-channel mode, that will boost CPU’s efficiency and boost fps up to 15fps.

Display: 144Hz

What’s really cool about the HP Victus is that despite being the cheapest 3050Ti laptop with the latest CPU on it, it ALSO has a 144Hz display. Most laptops around this price will only have a 60Hz and rarely a 120Hz so a 144Hz display on a machine that’s under 650 dollars is a very rare encounter.

And it does going to come in handy because the 3050Ti allows you to hit past 120fps except during group fights so you’ll experience the game running at 144fps (a 144Hz display means the screen can refresh, in other words, show 144 framerates per second).

Alternatives & Prices

Note how much more expensive the other 3050Ti laptops are (as of early 2024):

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2. HP Victus 15

Budget Laptop For Dota 2 – 2050RTX

  AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS

  16GB DDR5 RAM

  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050

  512GB PCIe M.2 SSD

  15.6″ FHD 144Hz

  5.06lbs

  3 hours

The hardware on this laptop is a replica of the first laptop with the  exception of the graphics. The 2050RTX is quite weaker than the 3050Ti. Nonetheless, as you’ll see soon, you can still run the game at the highest settings with framerates close, if not, past 100 fps.

Dota 2 BenchMark – Core i5 + 1650GTX (Lenovo Ideapad L340)

GPU:  2050RTX

If you do some research on youtube by checking benchmarks of the 2050RTX vs GPUs found on laptops around the same price, you’ll notice that the 2050RTX performs just as good as a 1650RTX.

However, the main difference is that the 2050RTX allows you to activate RTX mode on games and this includes Dota 2. Thus the difference between this laptop and the first laptop on the list is basically LOWER framerates of about 30fps.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS

The AMD Ryzen 5 7537HS has better multicore performance than 13th generation Core i5 CPUs. Unfortunately, for a game like Dota 2, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ll get more framerates if you’re able to find a 2050RTX paired up with a 13th gen Core i5.

Nonetheless, the AMD Ryzen 5 7537HS performs better than the 12th gen Core i5 CPUs and its predecessors. Thus you should also expect much higher framerates (20fps) if you compare it to 1650GTX laptops because those usually have CPUs that are 2 or even 3 generations older.

Display: 144Hz

Also comes with a 144Hz display which is unheard at this price range. Will you need it? Absolutely, the game easily hits 130fps out of group combats! 

Alternatives and  Prices

The usual price of this laptop is around 520 dollars. Much cheaper than any 1650GTX or any Core i5 13th gen laptop you can find despite having the same RTX 2050 and a CPU with a similar performance. It’s just a no brainer as you can see in the table below.

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3. MSI GF63 Thin

Good Laptop For Dota 2 – 1650GTX

  Intel Core i5-10300H

  8GB DDR5

  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

  256GB PCIe NVMe SSD

  15.6” 60Hz FHD IPS

  4.10lbs

  3 hours

I think there’s no point in featuring another 2050RTX or 3050RTX laptop because the above are basically the best two options for each of the GPUs respectively.

I’m going to talk about 1650GTX laptops for Dota 2 now. Although this may not be a good choice to buy, you’ll learn a thing or two about 1650GTX laptops in case you have no access or the budget to buy a 2050RTX or 3050Ti laptop.

GPU: 1650GTX

As we know by now, the 1650GTX slightly worse than the 2050RTX as shown in the benchmarks below. This applies to nearly every game:

On average its performance is about  10-15 fps less than the 2050RTX.

However, if you look at the benchmarks I ran with a 1650GTX, the performance is almost , if not, the same and this is DESPITE my laptop having a MUCH MUCH older CPU. So what’s the deal?

 

MUX Switch & GPU Wattage:

It has to do with the wattage and MUX Switch. Basically, the 1650GTX I bought runs at full wattage (most 1650GTX do anyway) but also lacks “Optimus”.  Optimus is basically a mechanism that saves battery live by taking away 15-20% of the GPU performance. Most 1650GTX laptops have Optimus. 

Thus if you find a laptop that has no OPTIMUS, like the Lenovo L340, around the same price or lower than the 2050RTX, it’s probably a good idea to buy that instead. 

Display: 60Hz

The main issue with 1650GTX laptops is that because they’re old, for the most part, they’ll have 60Hz displays. However, having higher framerates is still useful in the sense that the higher the framerates the more stable the game will be.

 

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4. HP 15 Laptop

Portable Laptop For Dota 2 

  Intel Core i5-1235U

  16GB DDR4

   MX 550 2GB vRAM

  512GB PCIe NVMe SSD

  15.6” 60Hz FHD IPS

  3.86lbs

  5 hours

If you’re looking for the best performance/money ration on a laptop. None of the MX series are good choice, especially those with MX GPUs like MX 250 and MX150. So why is this even on the list?

GPU: MX550 & 450

Because laptops with a MX GPU, although they perform significantly less (by about 20 fps) than 2050RTX or 1650RTX laptops, they’re MUCH more portable and have way better BATTERIES. Thus they become a good choice for those looking to game while commuting to either work or school.

You don’t want to bring a heavy gaming brick with you all the time. This laptop has a different look to it so people won’t think you’re a gamer. It looks kind of like a MacBook.  

Sure you could buy a laptop without a dedicated GPU( which we’ll go over soon) but it won’t allow you to run the game at high settings with decent framerates.

If you want a powerful but portable gaming rig (around 4lbs – this is the weight of the MacBook Pro), then you want to look at either the MX450 or even better the MX 550.

Dota 2 Benchmark : MX550  

If you check benchmarks on the MX450, you will find that you get

Benchmarks on the MX 550 (on the video above) show that

That’s a huge difference in performance knowing that the MX 550 is only about 17% more powerful than the MX450. 

CPU: Core i5 1240P vs Core i5 1135G7

But it’s really due to the fact that the MX 550 comes with a much more modern CPU.

Thus if prices are almost the same, you should opt for the MX 550 because you’ll also get a much more recent CPU, usually a generation older.

I don’t advice you to pay more than 600 dollars for a MX Series laptop even if they have better CPUs, you won’t see much performance gains from higher end CPUs. BUt if you’ve got the budget and you still want something portable, by all means do it.

Display: 60Hz vs 120Hz

Another reason why you should opt for a MX550 laptop is that most of them come with 120Hz displays. Whereas, most MX450 laptops or MX350 laptops, only come with a 60Hz display.

You’ll definitely find the extra refresh rates useful since the MX550 easily goes past 100fps out of group combat and stays around 90fps while in group combat. Unfortunately, this laptop has a 60Hz but that comes with the advantage of being the cheapest one AND being lighter (3.86lbs vs 4.10lbs).

Alternatives: 

Below you can see a few MX450 and MX550 alternatives. Do note that the laptop I’m featuring is about 600 dollars, much cheaper than most, if not all, current MX550 laptops as of 2024. Some of the more expensive alternatives have a 120Hz display but are a little heavier.

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5. Lenovo V14 G4 R5

Best Cheap Laptop For Dota 2

 AMD Ryzen 5 7520U

  8GB RAM DDR4

  Radeon 610M

  256GB SSD NVMe PCIe

  14′ FHD 60Hz

  4.41 lbs

  5 hours

If you’re willing to play the game at low settings (1), you have MANY MANY options. There is really NO bad hardware for Dota 2 (as long as it’s recent) if you play the game at low settings.

CPU: Core i5/ Ryzen 5  vs Core i3/Ryzen 3

The problem is that although you can run the game with a Ryzen 3 or Core i3 laptop, it will likely get you framerates in the 30s and in the best case scenario 40s, even on the lowest settings.

This is due to two reasons: the lack of dedicated GPU & the fact that iGPUs on those Core i3 or Ryzen 3 CPUs are the weakest. 

Thus, I recommend you spend 350-450 dollars on a Ryzen 5 or Core i5 laptop IF you want to play competitively in this game at low settings. Otherwise, for free-to-play matches and so on….to have fun, you can buy a Ryzen 3 or Core i3 laptop.

The laptop featured here has the LATEST Ryzen 5 CPU (this is the 7th generation).

The performance (single core) is slighitly lower than the 13th gen Core i5 counterpart, however, it’s still significantly faster than 5th gen Ryzen 5 CPUs and about the same as 12th gen Core i5 CPUs. 

GPU: AMD Radeon 610M

The AMD Radeon 610M is found on the 7th gen Ryzen 5 and 6th gen Ryzen 5 CPUs.

Because it’s sort of a recent iGPU, it’s performance is equal than older DEDICATED GPUs . 

If you upgrade RAM to 16GB RAM you can get the performance up to possibly the low end of the MX series in some instances. Why? Because having 16GB RAM on dual channel mode achieve two things:

• It makes the CPU more efficient as we discussed before.
• The extra RAM can be used by the iGPU as sort of a ‘vRAM’.

Dota 2 Benchmark : AMD Radeon 610M

Unfortunately, there are no benchmarks with the 610M AND the Ryzen 5 CPU shown here. The above benchmark tests the 660M and the Ryzen 5 6600H, you should NOT expect about the same framerates because this is a 610M and its much weaker. So why post it? Sometimes you’ll find Ryzen 5 laptops with the 660M if so by all means grab them, they perform just as good as the MX450 without any upgrades.

The performance of the 610M is much closer to the AMD Radeon Vega 3 iGPU found on Core i3 laptops but because this one has a much better CPU, the performance should be higher.

Display: FHD 60Hz 14”

There are MANY laptops that are cheaper and most are actually slower (because they’ll have a Core i3 or Ryzen 3). The price range of 300-400 dollars is full of Core i3 and Ryzen 3 laptops and most of these do not have a FHD display.

This model not only gets you a FHD display under 400 dollars but ALSO a pretty powerful iGPU and a late generation Core i5. It’s probably going to run out of stock pretty quickly. So I apologize in advance if you can’t find it on stock.

What you can do is copy the model’s name and paste it on the google search bar if you can no longer find it on amazon.

Alternatives

Notice laptops with the same iGPU & CPU are much more expensive in general, if you can’t find this laptop anymore and you can’t afford any of the ones below. Look for Core i3 or Ryzen 3 laptops. Note the Acer is on a limited deal and much cheaper than the one featured here , buy it if you still find it on stock. 

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How to Buy Best Laptop for DotA 2

In this guide we are going to cover everything there’s to know about Dota 2 and its hardware usage. This is useful if you want to extract every bit of fps out of your budget.

This is also useful if you’re venturing into older laptops off of ebay (here you have to know what you’re buying so you don’t end up with something that’s totally useless ).

First, let us talk about the bare minimum official requirements.

They are written for desktops but translating them to laptops is easy:

• Dual Core processor 2.8GHz ~ This means any CPU made within the past 10 years basically.
• 4GB RAM ~ Not even useful for Windows 10 and much less useful for Windows 11 both taking at least 3.5GB.
• GTX NVIDIA GPU 930M ~ This is basically telling you to get a 1GB vRAM dGPU.

Those guidelines are pretty useless if you ask me and they’re just not accurate on so many points.

You see Steam assumes you’re all at least getting a laptop or computer made within the past 5 years for which , because of its low hardware usage, the game will run with no hiccups. 

So they just list the bare minimum specs the game will launch and run since the chances of you actually going for a laptop with such low hardware are basically zero.

What if you get a laptop off of ebay with those specs? 

Truth be told, you should be getting ~30FPS on low settings which isn’t bad at all.

The problem however is the RAM listed there, that’s just only going to get you 500MB left (after windows and background processes ) for the game to run and the chances of crashing are going to be pretty high when you’re entangled in a teamfight.

Dota 2 Laptop Requirements

The point is, you can ignore those recommendations and instead follow my advice here:

CPU

 

More specifically, this is because the game engine of DoTa 2 was developed way before we had access to the awesome 2GB vRAM GPUs (which came around 2010) we have today. LoL and the rest of the gang only became prominent after 2012 for which we already had a lot of 2GB vRAM GPUs market. 

This means the code of DoTa 2 is meant to focus more on the CPU than the GPU.

How can you test this? 

Well if you check around youtube, you’ll see fps gains of +20fps if you compare two laptops that have the exact same hardware except for a slightly faster (~100Mhz = 0.1GHz) CPU.

Multithreaded Performance

Dota 2 is not multithreadded , more cores doesn’t help unless you’re also streaming

This is important to keep in mind if you’re buying a laptop for the ultimate DoTa 2 performance because you can definitely overspend a lot of money on laptops with 8 core or 10 core CPUs.

Although Steam has been doing a great job optimizing the Source 2 engine to take advatange of multiple cores. As of 2022, the game is still mostly single threaded (it uses one core for the most part).

You might benefit a bit if you shop for 6 core or 8 core CPUs but clock speed will get you much more performance

Modern CPUs

Intel

CPU	Base	Turbo	Cores
i3 10050G1	1.2	3.4	2
i3 10100U	2.1	4.1	2
i3-1115G4	3	4.1	2
i3 1215U	3.3	4.4	6
i3 1315U	3.3	4.5	6
i5 1135G7	2.4	4.2	4
i5 8300H	2.3	4	4
i7 8550U	1.8	4	4
i7 1165G7	2.8	4.7	4
i5-11300H	2.6	4.4	4
i5 11260H	2.6	4.4	6
Core i5 1240P	1.2	4.4	12
i5 12540H	2.6	4.4	8
i5 13420H	1.5	4.6	8
Core i7 1255U	3.5	4.7	10
i7-11375H	3.3	5	4
i7-11370H	3.3	4.8	4
i7 8750H	2.2	4.1	6
i7 9750H	2.6	4.5	6
i7 10750H	2.6	5	8
i7 12700	3.7	4.7	6+8
i9 8950K	2.9	4.8	6
i9 9900K	3.6	5.1	8
i9-11900H	2.5	4.9	8
i9 10890K	2.4	5.3	8
i9-11980HK	3.3	5	8
i9 12900H	3.8	5	6+8

AMD

CPU	Base (GHz)	Turbo (GHz)	Cores(#)
Ryzen 9 6980HX	3.3	5	8
Ryzen 9 6900HS	3.3	4.9	8
Ryzen 9 5900HX	3.3	4.6	8
Ryzen 7 7745HX	3.6	5.1	8
Ryzen 7 7840HS	3.8	5.1	8
Ryzen 7 6800H	3.2	4.7	8
Ryzen 7 5800H	3.3	4.4	8
Ryzen 7 5800U	1.9	4.4	8
Ryzen 5 7535HS	3.3	4.5	6/12
Ryzen 5 6600H	3.3	4.5	6
Ryzen 5 5600H	3.3	4.2	6
Ryzen 5 4600H	3.0	4.0	6
Ryzen 5 7520U	2.8	4.3	4
Ryzen 5 5500U	2.1	4.4	6
Ryzen 3 7320U	3.4	4.1	4
Ryzen 3 5300U	2.6	3.8	8

Green CPUs: They’re plenty fast to run the game at medium settings and get you up into the 80fps. As you’ll see soon, they also come with really good and recent integrated GPU which is why you’ll get this much performance over older CPUs with the same clock speed yet older integrated GPUs.

Blue CPUs: This is probably as much as you need to hit +80fps (with a dedicated GPU , any) on maximum settings also because they will (99%) come with a dedicated GPU. There’s really no need to go higher unless you feel more “at ease” running the game with at least 120-150fps (which is claimed to be the sweet spot for competitive gaming).

Pink CPUs: Those are just as much CPU power I would get for this game alone, they’re even good for to get both: MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE+ STREAMING. You’ll usually find them on laptops with very powerful GPUs which we’ll go over soon. I can’t give you exact benchmarks for these because that will depend on the GPU too (blue CPUs will 99% have either a 1650GTX or 1050GTX , MX450 GPU).

Red CPUs: These are way way too powerful for this game alone. I would only buy these if I know I’m going to run much more hardware demanding games like Fortnite or Call of Duty. 

GPU(Graphics Card)

Now as long as you get a dedicated GPU and by that I mean a dGPU with at least 2GB vRAM, you should be able to hit ~80fps with all settings maxed out. The issue becomes when you’re on a budget and you can only go after integrated GPUs or older dedicated GPUs.

Integrated Cards

Any GPU that doesn’t have it’s own “vRAM” , is integrated.

Anything that says Intel HD is integrated or any Radeon GPU that doesn’t have the RX or Pro suffix.

Now integrated GPUs are plenty fast today so as long as you grab something modern you can get those 80fps (on medium settings). 

Thus you must avoid the following:

I would only grab those in green if you’ve got no more than 250$ and want to get something off eBay.

If you’ve got something above 250$, you should instead opt for something like the following:

 

Blue GPUs: those are old but not very old (~2018 GPUs) but they’re definitely a lot  better than Intel HD GPUs. You should pay no more than 300$ for laptops with these.

Pink GPUs: these are the latest and the most powerful as of 2022. Once you up that RAM to 8GB RAM or higher, (yes RAM not vRAM), they can perform just as good as entry level dedicated GPUs! I have another post on this!

Discrete Graphics Cards

The following are literally ALL the dedicated GPUs you’ll find on eBay, Alibaba or Amazon (ignoring 9th and 8th gen – aka older NVIDIA GPUs).

Any discrete (dedicated) GPU with 2GB vRAM should let you play the game with at least 60fps on MAXIMUM Settings. Modern dedicated GPUs, especially those with 4GB vRAM, will hit 80 or even 150 fps.

Green GPUs: I would still avoid those in green (unless they’re cheaper than $500) because integrated GPUs like the Intel Xe or AMD Vega 7 will perform just as good if not better once you up RAM to +8GB RAM. 

Blue GPUs: If we are talking about being comptitive, those with blue will do. They will all let you hit +60 fps (more around 80fps, 3050TI 1660 ~120fps) on maximum settings. If you lower down settings to med or low, you can get past 200fps.

Pink GPUs: This is as high as you want to go even for competitive purposes. Anything more is just useless for DoTa 2 alone (those in gray).

Older GPUs

The MX150, MX250, MX230 and the 1050GTX can be considered relatively old so you should pay no more than $500 for each of these. 

Now if you’re fine buying refurbished laptops off ebay witih dedicated GPUs, those will do too as long as they’re not:

Only the 960M, 970M, 950M and 980M are worth considering because the truth “integrated GPUs” like the Intel Xe or the AMD Radeon Vega 7.

Why soome people claim to run DoTa with much older machines and still getting +60 fps?

That only applies to desktops. Laptops are much much weaker than desktops this is especially true if we are talking about older laptops with 9th generation NVIDIA GPUs. Modern laptops (10th gen NVIDIA GPU or RTX GPUs and the latest Intel 11th , 12th and AMD Ryzen 5th CPUs) have dedicated GPUs and CPUs which are pretty close in performance to desktops.

However, CPUs on laptops are downclocked severely to mantain safe temperatures. Thus most desktops , even those with older CPUs, will vastly out perform laptops.

RAM

DotA 2 uses roughly 2GB RAM.
Windows 10 (the latest updates) take ~3GB RAM.

Needless to say 4GB RAM is just not enough. You need at least 8GB RAM.

Streaming

Now if you’re streaming, you want at least 8GB RAM but having a bit more (12GB-16GB RAM) will provide some headroom for everythiing else in the backgrund run without interrupting DoTa 2.

Integrated GPU 

You can massively increase the performance of integrated GPUs by upping RAM beyond 8GB RAM, the extra RAM basically acts as “vRAM” turning your integrated GPU into a sort of “entry level” dedicated GPU with 2GB vRAM.

Dual Channel

Now if you really want to squeeze every bit of framerates (which is definitely a must if you’re going for budget laptops that only have integrated GPUs), you can up your RAM to 16GB RAM and make it dual-channeled. 

I have a whole post on what dual-channel RAM means and how to set it up on your laptop but it basically means having two RAM sticks of the same characteristics (size, brand, type, speed, etc). Doing this, somehow increases CPU “data-reading”efficiency thus improving gaming performance (more framerates).

Storage

Size

Not an issue on every laptop released within the past few years. Windows 10 or 11 take ~40GB, Steam + Dota 2 ~20GB and if you like to save tons of replays ~5GB. Thus you’re looking at 65GB and most laptops have at least 128GB (even the cheap $350 laptops).

Speed: HDD vs SSD

SSD isn’t required to prevent the game from crashing. However, honestly, SSDs are far far better than HDDs and they can make an enormous difference in your computer’s overall performance which includes launching the game. Most laptops have SSDs today it’s only a concern if you’re buying refurbished budget laptops below $300. If you are be sure to do the upgrade later. I have another post on how to do the upgrade (check it out here).

Display

IPS FHD

IPS are not standard yet and there are a lot of “TN” displays on laptops even today. Either is fine unless you plan on doing some graphic design.

The game will look more “colorful” with IPS panels though but not by that much.

Virtually all gaming laptops will have IPS displays with FHD resolutions, it’s only a problem when you start looking at budget laptops.

Refresh Rates: 60 vs 120Hz

Because this is just a MOBA game and not FPS game , refresh rates don’t matter. Save yourself hundreds of bucks by steering away from laptops that have 120Hz or 144Hz although they are kind of unavoidable once you start looking at 3060RTX laptops. 

If you’re getting a 120Hz display at a good price then by all means grab it, it’s not going to bump up your gaming but it will make everything look really cool.

Comments?

If you have any comments, suggestions, questions or recommendations on how to find the best laptop for Dota 2 . Please let me know in the comments below, I’ll try to answer as soon as I can. 

 

Author Profile

Miguel Salas

I am physicist and electrical engineer. My knowledge in computer software and hardware stems for my years spent doing research in optics and photonics devices and running simulations through various programming languages. My goal was to work for the quantum computing research team at IBM but Im now working with Astrophysical Simulations through Python. Most of the science related posts are written by me, the rest have different authors but I edited the final versions to fit the site's format.

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