Every laptop we have figures for

Frame rates measured by Notebookcheck.

What it asks of a laptop

Very little, and the measured figures make that unusually obvious. All 18 laptops in Notebookcheck's data set clear 60fps at 1080p on the High preset with upscaling off. Seventeen of the 18 clear 100fps. Nine — exactly half — clear 144fps. The median is 144fps. There is no laptop in this sample that fails to run Dota 2 at a playable frame rate, and only one that fails to run it at a rate most people would call comfortable.

The more interesting signal is how the numbers refuse to sort themselves by GPU tier. Look at the tier averages: RTX 5080 leads at 203fps from a single machine, RTX 5090 follows at 188fps across five, then RTX 5060 at 151fps, then RTX 5070 at 145fps, then RTX 5050 at 124fps. The 5060 group beats the 5070 group. That is not how a GPU-limited game behaves.

Individual results make the point harder. The HP Omen 16-ap0091ng, on an RTX 5060, returns 184fps — ahead of the RTX 5090 in the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (178fps) and comfortably ahead of the RTX 5090 in the Razer Blade 16 (162fps). A mid-tier GPU beating two top-tier ones by 13 to 22fps tells you the bottleneck sits somewhere other than the graphics silicon: CPU throughput, memory latency, and how aggressively the chassis lets the processor boost. The gap between the fastest result here (208fps) and the RTX 5050 machines clustered around 122-142fps is roughly 50-70 per cent, which sounds large until you consider that the price gap between those machines runs to several thousand pounds.

In short: this is a forgiving title where extra GPU spend converts into frame rate at a terrible exchange rate. What separates the results is platform behaviour, not raw graphics horsepower.

What runs it

60fps: everything. Eighteen of 18 laptops. The slowest result in the entire set is the MSI Cyborg 15 at 83fps, and even that is comfortably above the threshold. If your criterion is "does it run", no laptop in this sample fails.

100fps: 17 of 18. Only the MSI Cyborg 15 misses. Every other machine — including the RTX 5050 in the HP Victus 15-fa2160ng at 122fps, the Medion Erazer Scout 17 E1 at 131fps and the Acer Nitro V14 AI at 140fps — clears three figures. That means the entry-tier RTX 5050 is, on this evidence, a 100fps-plus part for this game in most chassis.

144fps: nine of 18, and this is where the results get genuinely scrambled. The list of machines that hit or exceed 144fps runs: Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (208fps), Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 (203fps), Schenker XMG Neo 16 E25 (197fps), Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (193fps), HP Omen 16-ap0091ng (184fps), Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (178fps), MSI Katana 17 HX (162fps), Razer Blade 16 (162fps) and Razer Blade 14 (145fps). Note the composition: RTX 5090s and 5080s dominate the top, but an RTX 5060 machine sits fifth and an RTX 5070 machine seventh, while other 5070 laptops — the HP Omen 17z-db100 at 143fps and the ASUS TUF Gaming A18 at 131fps — fall short of the line.

The power figures explain some of that. The Razer Blade 14's RTX 5070 runs at 115W and manages 145fps; the TUF A18's RTX 5070 also runs at 115W and manages 131fps. The Lenovo LOQ's RTX 5060 at 115W returns 126fps while the Lenovo Legion 5 15AHP G10, same GPU and same 115W, returns 142fps. Identical parts, 16fps apart. That is chassis and platform, not the GPU.

The cheapest laptop that handles it

Of the priced machines in this data set, the MSI Cyborg 15 at £984 is the cheapest, and it is also the slowest at 83fps. It clears 60fps with room to spare, so it plays the game perfectly well — but it is the single machine here that misses 100fps, and it does so by a wide margin against other RTX 5050 laptops. The Acer Nitro V 16 AI hits 142fps on the same GPU tier, 59fps clear of the Cyborg. That is a chassis penalty, not a silicon one, and it is worth knowing before you buy on price alone.

The ASUS TUF Gaming A18 at £1,489 is the value pick with real headroom: 131fps from an RTX 5070 at 115W, which is more than an RTX 5060 at 115W manages in the Lenovo LOQ. The MSI Katana 17 HX at £2,312 reaches 162fps and is the cheapest priced machine here to clear 144fps.

Above that, the money stops working. The Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate at £4,884 returns 193fps and the Razer Blade 16 at £4,979 returns 162fps — the same as the £2,312 Katana, for £2,667 more. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 at £3,662 is the sharpest of the expensive machines at 203fps, second-fastest overall on an RTX 5080 rather than a 5090.

What this means if you're buying

Do not buy a laptop for this game. Buy it for whatever else you play, and treat these figures as a floor check.

If you are shopping specifically to feed a high-refresh panel, the practical advice runs against instinct. Spending up to an RTX 5090 does not reliably buy you 144fps here — two of the five RTX 5090 laptops in the sample land at 178fps and 162fps, within reach of far cheaper hardware. What correlates better with a good result is a well-cooled chassis with a strong CPU platform, which is why the £2,312 Katana matches a £4,979 Blade 16.

If you already own a current-generation gaming laptop, the answer is that it runs this fine. The only meaningful risk in this data is buying at the very bottom of the market and landing in a thin, thermally-limited 15in chassis, where an RTX 5050 that should deliver 122-142fps instead delivers 83. Check reviews of the specific model, not the GPU on the box — on this evidence, that is where the frames actually go.