Grab a Gaming Laptop for $549! Intel 12th Gen HP Victus Drops to New Low

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By Stewart Bendle
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A capable budget gaming laptop at a surprisingly low price

HP Victus 15 Cover Image
(Image credit: Future)

It's certainly not the most powerful laptop on the market, but if you're looking for a gaming laptop on a budget, this HP Victus 15.6 is likely to be one of the most affordable options out there. Best Buy is offering the HP Victus 15 (Model:15-fa0031dx) for $549, knocking a whopping $250 dollars off of its previous price and making it a steal considering it was already one of the best gaming laptops under $1500 when we tested it at $799.

Taking a look at the hardware inside the HP Victus 15, we get an 8-core 12th Generation Intel i5-12450H processor with 4 P-cores and 4 E-cores, with 12 threads and a max turbo frequency of 4.40 GHz. This processor is more than adequate to run any modern game and certainly won't be a bottleneck for the GPU. 

Speaking of graphics, the Victus 15 is powered by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 mobile GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM. This is a modest GPU and won't let you play modern AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077 with all sliders maxed. But, with a boost clock of 1560MHz, this chip should handle most games at medium settings with no issues. 

For the screen, we have a 15.6-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (FHD) and a refresh rate of 144Hz. The high refresh rate makes this a great low-priced choice for esports gamers as well. 

HP Victus 15.6" Gaming Laptop: was $799, now $549 at Best Buy

HP Victus 15.6" Gaming Laptop: <a href="https://shop-links.co/link?publisher_slug=future&exclusive=1&u1=hawk-custom-tracking&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2Fhp-victus-15-6-gaming-laptop-intel-core-i5-12450h-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-512gb-ssd-mica-silver%2F6503849.p&article_name=hawk-article-name&article_url=hawk-article-url" data-link-merchant="bestbuy.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">was $799, now $549 at Best Buy
This budget gaming laptop comes packed with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12450H processor, 8GB of Memory, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics. For storage, the HP Victus 15 has a 512GB SSD.

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Other features of this gaming laptop include Bang & Olufsen audio for its twin speaker setup, a backlit keyboard for low-light gaming, and a decent selection of ports. There is an HDMI 2.1 output and 3x USB 3.0 ports comprising 2x USB 3.0 Type A, and 1x USB 3.0 Type C.

Overall this is an impressive budget gaming laptop, especially at or near this impressively low price. 

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Stewart Bendle
Stewart Bendle
Deals Writer

Stewart Bendle is a deals and coupon writer at Tom's Hardware. A firm believer in “Bang for the buck” Stewart likes to research the best prices and coupon codes for hardware and build PCs that have a great price for performance ratio.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • SyCoREAPER
    A 1650 isn't a gaming card. It's a card that can play some games, ergo the laptop is not a gaming laptop.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    sycoreaper said:
    A 1650 isn't a gaming card. It's a card that can play some games, ergo the laptop is not a gaming laptop.
    I have a 1650 in my laptop and it plays games just fine. It's not SOME games, it's most games out there. Including rahter new titles, too. Unless you only play AAA games at highest settings I guess.
    Reply
  • SyCoREAPER
    KyaraM said:
    I have a 1650 in my laptop and it plays games just fine. It's not SOME games, it's most games out there. Including rahter new titles, too. Unless you only play AAA games at highest settings I guess.

    You appear to be missing the point. A 'gaming computer' is a high end computer meant for gaming at as close to higher settings as possible and as high a Framerate as possible.

    I have a spare laptop with a 1650 and a desktop with a 1650, not that I have to prove myself but I'll take pictures if I have to. While both 1650's as you indicated are capable, they are no longer gaming cards. They are dated and struggle to even maintain 60fps in most modern titles unless you have potato settings.

    to reiterate, nothing wrong with the 1650, it can play games but it's not a modern card by a longshot. There is no Nvidia DLSS support and I don't think AMD has rolled out FSR for Nvidia yet (1650 is btw the oldest Nvidia card they support). Developers are continuing this idiotic trend of making their games so overly demanding that some games can't even be played at higher resolutions and get a decent Framerate.

    My laptop and wife's laptop aren't the highest end and still struggle with some games, even with FSR and DLSS turned on respectively. Mine has a Ryzen 9-5900HX and Radeon RX6800M and wife has a Ryzen 7 5800H 3 with RTX 3060 6GB.


    4GB of vram is simply not enough these days. 6GB is the absolute bare minimum. If you are happy with your card that's great, I'm not mocking that nor am I saying it's not capable. It's just not a gaming card anymore. It's a regular old graphics card that is over 3 years old. Gaming is a term dubbed for new, state of the art hardware. It's also a label that quickly get washed away at the rate that new hardware comes out.
    Reply
  • KyaraM
    sycoreaper said:
    You appear to be missing the point. A 'gaming computer' is a high end computer meant for gaming at as close to higher settings as possible and as high a Framerate as possible.

    I have a spare laptop with a 1650 and a desktop with a 1650, not that I have to prove myself but I'll take pictures if I have to. While both 1650's as you indicated are capable, they are no longer gaming cards. They are dated and struggle to even maintain 60fps in most modern titles unless you have potato settings.

    to reiterate, nothing wrong with the 1650, it can play games but it's not a modern card by a longshot. There is no Nvidia DLSS support and I don't think AMD has rolled out FSR for Nvidia yet (1650 is btw the oldest Nvidia card they support). Developers are continuing this idiotic trend of making their games so overly demanding that some games can't even be played at higher resolutions and get a decent Framerate.

    My laptop and wife's laptop aren't the highest end and still struggle with some games, even with FSR and DLSS turned on respectively. Mine has a Ryzen 9-5900HX and Radeon RX6800M and wife has a Ryzen 7 5800H 3 with RTX 3060 6GB.


    4GB of vram is simply not enough these days. 6GB is the absolute bare minimum. If you are happy with your card that's great, I'm not mocking that nor am I saying it's not capable. It's just not a gaming card anymore. It's a regular old graphics card that is over 3 years old. Gaming is a term dubbed for new, state of the art hardware. It's also a label that quickly get washed away at the rate that new hardware comes out.
    Pffft. Yeah, about the nonsense I expected...

    Sorry, but a gaming PC is a PC predominantly used for gaming, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't matter if it has a 1050(Ti) or a 3090 installed. Not all gamers even want highest possible FPS, most are very happy with 60, and the low-end is perfectly fine with 4GB VRAM as well. Again, AAA isn't everything and many, many modern games are nowhere near those ridiculous levels of hardware requirements. The only difference between the 1050 and the 3090 is that one is an entry-level gaming machine and the other high-end, but both can be used as gaming machines. Heck, the most popular gaming GPU is still the 1060. Think about that for a second. Or is a workstation not a workstation anymore just because it's 3 years old and there are better ones out now? No. It's not. And neither is a gaming PC. What you are doing here is gatekeeping, and gatekeeping is very rightfully looked down upon. But, hey. I could now declare that no computer that runs a GPU below the 3070Ti in my main rig is a gaming computer now, after your 'logic'. That includes both yours and your wife's computers, and also consoles because they are woefully underpowered compared to high-end PCs despite their entire existence being that they are used for gaming. Better buckle up and get better machines! Sounds ridiculous to you? Because it is, just as your claim is. Thankfully, you are not the who decides what is a gaming PC and what isn't.

    And, yes, thank you, I'm very happy with my gaming laptop. It does exactly what I want it to do, enable me to game when I don't have access to my rig at home or my old one with a 1070, which I guess isn't a gaming PC for you either because it's so old, at my parent's.

    If your machines struggle with anything you are doing something fundamentally wrong. I recommend trying out 1080p instead of 1440p or 4k and being content with FPS below 200 in AAA games.

    And no, this is not discussable. It's simply fact.
    Reply