Mithun Mohandas

It’s been three years since AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D established a straightforward formula for gaming-focused desktop processors by combining eight Zen 4 cores with a large pool of vertically stacked cache along with slightly lower clock speeds in exchange for stronger performance in latency-sensitive games. Knock off a few multipliers off the base and boost clocks, and you’ve got the Ryzen 7 7700X3D which follows that same basic template.

For years, the affordable laptop market has had an odd contradiction at its centre. India is a price-sensitive market, students and first-time PC buyers form a large potential base, and smartphones have proved that volume can come from the lower end of the price ladder. Yet, in laptops, the volume has traditionally skewed upwards. Chitranshu Mahant, Co-Founder and CEO of Primebook, believes the reason is simple: budget laptops have not been good enough.