Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is the CPU or GPU more important for this game?

I have a choice of two similar laptops. One has a slightly better CPU while the other has a slightly better GPU. I'm wonder which would benefit this game the most?

Generally better GPU tends to be always a better choice for gaming.

At this point, however, the game is in development and unoptimised so who knows what it will need most when it is finished.

I have an i7 with 16 gigs of RAM, a 1060 with 6 GB of RAM, and a solid state drive.

I experienced some lag on a recent play-through.

I then started a Skyrim highly modded play-through with 4K textures:

I began experiencing lag that grew over time (same as BG3).

After eliminating the possibility of a memory leak, I discovered a cooling issue, that when resolved left me lag free.

SOOO...a mid tier rig like mine should have no issues and is probably major over-kill.

You mean, you cannot try the game on both and compare the performance? Are you choosing which laptop to buy? Go to the game store page (either on Steam or GOG) and compare the "Recommended Configuration" with the choices you have. Going above it won't hurt, that's for sure. Just remember that exceeding the requirement in, say, GPU won't give you anything if other components are below the line - you won't notice any advantage. Rig should be balanced to make sense.

Broadly speaking, unless the rig is really old (say, 6+ years old) you should have no problems in either department, provided it has enough memory. 16 GB is a must nowadays, and if you intend to keep using this laptop for some time, I would say aim for 32 GB. Make sure you don't confuse the system RAM with the graphics RAM (the one installed on / allocated for the graphics card). They are different, and the latter is somewhat less important, especially if you are okay with playing on minimal graphic settings.
Good NVMe SSD will also help - make sure it's at least 1TB, or the laptop has additional M.2 slots so you can install additional storage in the future, if need be.

The above also applies to Macs, with the exception that you can't expand the hardware capabilities yourself.

Generally not a good idea to buy a rig in advance for a game that may not be out until way over a year or longer.

Both laptops are more than enough. But they are slightly different
ROG STRIX SCAR 17
FHD 17.3" 360Hz
RTX 3080-16GB
Ryzen R9-5900HX
32GB DDR4-3200Mhz

ROG STRIX SCAR 17
QHD 17.3" 240Hz
RTX 3070ti-8GB
i9-12900H
32GB DDR5 4800Mhz

This is why I wanted to know which would benefit this game most.I'm getting the laptop anyway and was struggling to decide on what to get hence my asking what some of my favourite games would appreciate most.

If you can get both for a similar price, I think this is a better option, for BG3 8GB of VRAM will be more than enough, and in graphic power with both you will be fine, the two CPUs will not have any problem either. Also, the laptop with the 3080 I see has the FHD (1080p) screen, I don't see the point of that GPU with a screen like that.

Ah, so it's Intel vs. AMD, basically. This has to be more of a matter of personal preference. Myself, I usually stick to Intel silicon, due to professional reasons (the software I use in my work is better optimised for Intel, and licences are cheaper because they are per-core). But it's not this way for everyone.

Specifically for gaming, you will be better off with the CPU that gives the highest single-core frequency (well, performance really, but usually frequency is a sufficiently good indicator of it). Look for reviews of these CPUs on the net, this should give you an idea which one suits you better. Newer chip is also better, as it will stay relevant for longer. The 12k Intel series is their latest and according to reviews is quite good, so might be worth an investment; not sure about AMD, I don't monitor their lineup.

Apart from that, the display panel is quite different between the two: Full HD (1920*1080) with refresh rate so fast you will have a hard time noticing it, vs. 2K (2560*1440) which is still more than fast enough. For me, laptop screens are a big pain point; I would recommend to look at them side by side and decide which one your eyes are more comfortable with. This includes things like colour depth and contrast, as well. For these 2 models, this is probably the most important difference.

Intel version has a newer memory spec (DDR5 vs. DDR4) with a significantly higher frequency. A nice extra to have if you decide to settle with Intel, but it shouldn't be a decision maker.

The graphics chips and their memory aren't really relevant here, unless you plan to connect a really big external display (or several displays) to your laptop and use them as your main screen. By the time when 8GB of video memory will be below the minimum, your laptop will be sufficiently old and lagging behind in many aspects, not just this one. Regarding the video performance, my 2K monitor is plugged into 1070Ti, and I run BG3 on Ultra with pretty much no issues. Even if Larian will add ray tracing to the game, both of these cards are overkill.

Also, look for things you didn't mention here, such as storage and the potential to expand it in the future. Usually, the faster disk gives you the highest subjective performance increase, because storage is usually the slowest part of a PC.

Something like that.

Yep. It might make sense as a pro-level competitive multiplayer rig (think CounterStrike or Overwatch). Otherwise, this is just a ramjet installed on a wheel cart.

Whats a GPU? Butter smooth on my 64g ram apple M1 max. Doesn't even get that warm. Get 5+ hours battery playing. That chip is just insane lol.