Every laptop we have figures for

Frame rates measured by Notebookcheck.

What it asks of a laptop

The headline number first: at 1920x1080, High preset, with upscaling switched off, four of the five laptops in Notebookcheck's measured set clear 60fps. The median is 66fps. Only one machine — the RTX 5090-equipped Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate — breaks 100fps, and nothing in the set reaches 144fps. That shape tells you a lot. This is not a game that punishes mid-range hardware into unplayability, but it is also not one that hands out high-refresh frame rates. It sits in the awkward middle: comfortably playable almost everywhere, comfortably fast almost nowhere.

The more interesting story is where the difficulty comes from, and here the data is genuinely odd. Sorted by GPU tier, the means are: RTX 5090 at 102fps, RTX 5060 at 66fps, RTX 5050 at 65fps, RTX 5070 at 62fps. That is not a ladder. The 5070 laptop is the slowest non-5050 result in the set, and one of the two RTX 5050 machines — the Medion Erazer Scout 17 E1, at 76fps — is the second-fastest laptop measured, ahead of every 5060 and 5070 result on the list.

Two caveats before drawing conclusions. Each of the 5060, 5070 and 5090 tiers is represented by a single laptop, so those tier means are single data points wearing a suit. But the two RTX 5050 machines are the useful control: 76fps and 54fps, from nominally the same GPU. That is a 41% spread within one tier, and it is very close to the entire gap between the slowest laptop in the set and the RTX 5070 at the top of the mid-range cluster.

The implication is straightforward. Between roughly 54fps and 76fps, the GPU badge on the box is not the thing determining your frame rate. Chassis, sustained power delivery and cooling are. The Lenovo LOQ's 5060 is explicitly noted as running at 115W, and lands at 66fps; the Medion Scout 17 E1 is a 17-inch chassis with a 5050 in it, and beats it. A large laptop with room to dump heat and a generous power budget can make a lower tier GPU outrun a higher one crammed into a thinner or more thermally conservative machine.

What runs it

60fps at 1080p High: four of five measured laptops manage it, spanning RTX 5050 through RTX 5090. The bar is genuinely low — an RTX 5050 in a well-cooled 17-inch chassis produces 76fps. But the bar is not reliably low, because the other RTX 5050 laptop misses it at 54fps. So: most current-generation laptops from the 5050 upwards will hold 60fps at these settings, but it is not automatic at the bottom of the stack.

100fps at 1080p High: one of five. Only the RTX 5090 gets there, at 102fps. Nothing between the 5050 and the 5070 comes close — the best of that group is 76fps, a full 26fps short. There is a large, empty gap in the measured data between 76fps and 102fps, and no mid-tier laptop bridges it at these settings.

144fps at 1080p High: nobody. Not even the £4,884 RTX 5090 machine, which falls 42fps short of feeding a 144Hz panel natively. If you have a high-refresh screen and want to use it in this game, upscaling or reduced settings are not optional extras — they are the only route, because no laptop in this set gets there with the settings as measured.

The cheapest laptop that handles it

Of the machines with prices attached, the MSI Katana 17 HX (RTX 5070) at £2,312 is the cheaper of the two, and it clears 60fps — at 62fps, only just. That is the narrowest margin of any laptop in the set that passes the bar, which is an uncomfortable place to be paying £2,312 for.

The genuinely instructive result is the Medion Erazer Scout 17 E1. It carries an RTX 5050, no price is listed for it in the measured data, and it turns in 76fps — 14fps clear of the £2,312 Katana. The HP Victus 15-fa2160ng, also an RTX 5050, manages 54fps. Same GPU tier, 22fps apart. Whatever you pay, you are paying for the chassis and the power budget more than the silicon.

At the top, the Medion Erazer Beast 16 X1 Ultimate (RTX 5090) at £4,884 is the only machine over 100fps. That is £2,572 more than the Katana for an extra 40fps at 1080p High — and still no 144fps. It is a defensible buy if you want headroom for higher resolutions or settings this data doesn't cover, but as a purchase justified by this game at these settings, the value is poor.

What this means if you're buying

• Don't shop by GPU tier alone. The measured set shows a 5050 beating a 5070 and a 5060. Within the mid-range, the tier number is close to uninformative here.
• Shop by chassis and sustained power instead. Look for stated GPU wattage — the Lenovo LOQ's 115W figure is the kind of number worth hunting for — and prefer larger chassis if frame rate is the priority.
• Set expectations at 60, not 144. Four of five laptops clear 60fps; none clear 144fps. If you own a 165Hz or 240Hz panel, plan on using upscaling to feed it.
• The mid-range is flat. Every laptop between the 5050 and the 5070 in this set lands between 54 and 76fps. Spending more within that band bought no measured advantage. The only meaningful jump in the data is to the 5090, and it costs £2,572.
• An entry-tier GPU is not disqualifying. A 5050 laptop can produce 76fps here. It can also produce 54fps. Check reviews of the specific model, not the specification sheet.