Hey. As the title says, I finally got my first gaming computer. It's a laptop with a Geforce GTX 1050ti, Core i7-7700HQ@ 2.80Ghz, 8GB Ram, etc. I was gonna get a desktop but for my situation where I might be moving/going to college hopefully soon I figured it was for the best to get something more easy to move around in case I need to move it around a lot.

I've been testing to see what the specs are capable of such as watching videos on it. I've only played a few games as of now to see, such as Vanquish and Team Fortress 2 which both run fantastic at highest setting and have good framerates, but they are both older games so i'm not sure if that's quite a good test of it. I've played PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on it a bit which runs well and can be played at high/ultra settings if I want to but the framerate is more inconsistent and was dropping significantly in certain areas such as when a lot of explosions are happening in the red zones. 

I have a few questions though for those who know more about this stuff. 

1) What ballpark of games am I looking at being able to run on this thing? Can I run current gen games on it? I know it will vary from a game to game basis but just in general what am I looking at being able to run on it here.  When I was playing PUBG the Nvidia thing recommended that I play on lowest settings, which was surprised by, like aren't the specs able to handle it better? I've seen videos of it running Witcher 3 and stuff. 

2) Sort of similar to the first question but are the specs I have good, like where do they lie on terms of power.

3) What are "Drivers"/what are they for? I heard about having to update drivers and such when hearing about proper PC gaming, since i've been PC gaming for a long time, have my Steam account since 2010 but this is the first time I actually have a computer that has the proper hardware dedicated to it. So I went onto GeForce's site and downloaded the NVIDIA Gefore Experience drivers thing which says it helps get the best possible performance out of hardware for your games, and it replaced what original Nvidia settings my computer came with.  I'm assuming this is a good thing though since it's from NVIDIA themselves, so surely they know the best to do for their own GPU?

4) Is there anything I should be doing to make sure it stays in top shape? 

Again i'm not new to PC gaming or anything this is just the first time I have a computer that has good hardware dedicated to playing games so i'm taking it more seriously lol. 

Welcome to the PC master race. Enjoy the huge variety of games.

Nice specs

Congrats. It's cool how affordable gaming laptops are starting to become. I just got one myself with specs as good as my desktop rig for barely over a grand.

1+2. If I'm not mistaken you should be able to run games at or above PS4 settings with those specs. By default I'd select 1080p with medium settings for modern games and adjust as you go.

3. It's the software for your hardware. So long as you stay up to date with Geforce Exp you've got nothing to worry about. I prefer picking my own settings over the ones that Nvidia recommends, but they're another good starting point for those unfamiliar.

4. A lot of the old tricks and programs are less important these days. Keeping drivers, antivirus, and security patches up to date are the most important bits. New laptops often come with plenty of bloatware you might want to uninstall, too (just be careful not to uninstall an important driver by accident).

Welcome.

Now you can finally play Deus Ex, with HD texture mod.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the help! One more question if you don't mind, cause I forgot to ask about this as well. When playing games on a laptop, there's a difference between playing it plugged in and unplugged, where as it obviously runs games better when plugged in. The Nvidia driver thing even has different optimization options for plugged/unplugged gameplay.

Is it bad to just leave it plugged in all the time when gaming then even if it's already at full charge, because otherwise I see no reason to ever really play any games with it unplugged if it won't run as well as when it's plugged in. I don't want to damage the laptop or battery or anything by leaving it plugged in all the time though. (if that's possible I mean , like can it overheat or damage the battery/hardware from that? I do have a big cooling pad with 4 fans under my laptop to hopefully keep it cooled down). 

I'd look into a cooling pad for your primary gaming area. Charging the battery can make it hotter but so long as you're not careless the performance gains are worth it. Just unplug it when you're done gaming/charging/shut down to avoid battery damage.

I was adding that into my previous comment while you replied to it lol, but yeah I do have a cooling pad with 4 fans directly underneath my laptop. It plugs into the laptop itself to turn on. My main worry is somehow the laptop getting damaged and the hardware degrading/not performing as well as it should be due to it or something to where some point down the line it can't run games as well as when I first got it. Is that possible in anyway?  It's why i'm so worried about somehow damaging it by leaving it plugged in too long when i'm gaming or not or something or it overheating.

By default your laptop will be on balanced power, running games will run at max, and normal stuff such as internet surfing will limit power to save the battery. You can change this stuff though, personally if you are at home, always keep it plugged in while gaming.

The only thing which will degrade over time is the battery, all batteries do, your components won't be damaged by over use of plugging in. Your laptop should be fine, unless you ever bought a shitty Aorus which always hit's 90c on the CPU.

If you're using a competent cooling pad and not leaving the laptop plugged in 24/7 you should be fine. It's not like we're overclocking this thing.

True, lol. I'll probably just leave it mostly plugged in then when i'm gaming, it seems to vary per game anyway. Vanquish for example runs just a well when unplugged compared to plugged in so I don't really need to plug it in to play that, but for others like PUBG it seems to make a big difference. I'll then unplug  it when i'm doing other things like just going on the internet and stuff like that that's basically not gaming. That should be fine then hopefully.  Thanks for the help again.