4 controversial laptop trends that should never have made it mainstream

[KING19]

I didnt know where to post this but this article on notebookcheck is interesting and it mentions some truths about bad trends with mainstream laptops that we been discussing on NBR for years.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/4-controversial-laptop-trends-that-should-never-have-made-it-mainstream.599710.0.html

 

Here's some trends that should of been in the article IMO

 

Soldiered on RAM, and WIFI especially on thin and light laptops

Laptop webcams still on 720p in 2022...

No separate touchpad buttons. Personally i always hated clickpads and after using them for years my opinion on them hasnt changed.

 

 

 

 

[John Ratsey]

More and more components soldered onto the mainboard helps with reducing thickness and weight for those who want less of both - the challenge is to select something appropriate from among the limited hardware options on offer. I suspect that soldered components also improve reliability compared with socketed components although, if anything does go wrong, it's more difficult to fix.

 

Regarding the ports, it's up to the potential purchaser to study what is on offer and select something appropriate to their needs. I recently bought one of these which has a good selection of ports given the size. My only complaint is that I'd like a full-sized SD card slot.

 

However, on a more positive note I sense that's there are signs of a move away from the 16:9 displays (which should never have become mainstream) to panels which provide more vertical real estate. There was once a time when 4:3 was almost standard although the 80 columns x 8 lines of the Epson PX8's display could be considered to be the ultimate in widescreen.

[solidus1983]

@Mr. Fox is going to be proud of me for saying this.

 

A laptop trend that shouldn't of made it mainstream was BGA, anything soldered be it CPU/GPU/RAM/WiFi they shouldn't exsist as they are the hands of obsolescence and obsolescence is the hand of the devil. Be gone BGA begone. 

[Mr. Fox]

5 hours ago, KING19 said:

I didnt know where to post this but this article on notebookcheck is interesting and it mentions some truths about bad trends with mainstream laptops that we been discussing on NBR for years.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/4-controversial-laptop-trends-that-should-never-have-made-it-mainstream.599710.0.html

 

Here's some trends that should of been in the article IMO

 

Soldiered on RAM, and WIFI especially on thin and light laptops

Laptop webcams still on 720p in 2022...

No separate touchpad buttons. Personally i always hated clickpads and after using them for years my opinion on them hasnt changed.

Yup. CPU, GPU, RAM, WIFI, storage... soldered is bantha fodder. Touchpads with discrete buttons also suck, but not nearly as much as buttonless clickpads do.

25 minutes ago, solidus1983 said:

@Mr. Fox is going to be proud of me for saying this.

 

A laptop trend that shouldn't of made it mainstream was BGA, anything soldered be it CPU/GPU/RAM/WiFi they shouldn't exsist as they are the hands of obsolescence and obsolescence is the hand of the devil. Be gone BGA begone. 

Amen. Common sense is becoming very difficult to identify. Laptop engineers seem to be collectively devoid of it. 

[Hertzian56]

Not to mention the hypocritical lip service these manufacturers give to green tech, what happens when any of that soldered stuff fails? Yep the old garbage can, back when we had removable modular laptops if one component failed we could get another one and thus didn't just throw the whole thing away. I'm not even confident if you go out of your way to recycle anything that it actually gets recycled, or the movable definition of recycled means selling it to Asia so it can be heated up, releasing all sorts of pollution, so they can extract the precious metals. The rest is buried somewhere. I had a roommate who was deeply into recycling and he showed me that almost everything we think can be recycled, ie put in the blue can, is not actually recyclable, it was an eye opener for me. We also hear about how even recyclable stuff just gets dumped in the same landfill by various civil entities but they of course collect the higher fees for the privilege. Just liars everywhere.

[Reciever]

In my line of work there is no blue can, only wrapped pallets of equipment. 

Here's the kicker, much of it is untouched, unused, still in original packaging. 

Nonprofits are no better than for-profit in my estimation.

 

Although some may be remiss in this line of thought, I do hope Clevo see's the light and goes AMD for their next DTR on AM5. I imagine they dont want to redesign their flagship every couple of years because intel decided it wants a new socket. I doubt it will make any ripples, but Intel needs to be put on notice on that (plus I could have a Clevo laptop in the future)

[defcon42]

11 hours ago, John Ratsey said:

More and more components soldered onto the mainboard helps with reducing thickness and weight for those who want less of both - the challenge is to select something appropriate from among the limited hardware options on offer. I suspect that soldered components also improve reliability compared with socketed components although, if anything does go wrong, it's more difficult to fix.

 

Regarding the ports, it's up to the potential purchaser to study what is on offer and select something appropriate to their needs. I recently bought one of these which has a good selection of ports given the size. My only complaint is that I'd like a full-sized SD card slot.

 

However, on a more positive note I sense that's there are signs of a move away from the 16:9 displays (which should never have become mainstream) to panels which provide more vertical real estate. There was once a time when 4:3 was almost standard although the 80 columns x 8 lines of the Epson PX8's display could be considered to be the ultimate in widescreen.

Thank you for an objective voice of reason. Hard to find these days.

[defcon42]

7 hours ago, solidus1983 said:

@Mr. Fox is going to be proud of me for saying this.

 

A laptop trend that shouldn't of made it mainstream was BGA, anything soldered be it CPU/GPU/RAM/WiFi they shouldn't exsist as they are the hands of obsolescence and obsolescence is the hand of the devil. Be gone BGA begone. 

My perfectly running BGA machine always bursts out into uncontrollable laughter when reading "statements" like this. As @John Ratseyhas already stated correctly, everything has it's pros and cons.

[John Ratsey]

Here's an example of the nearly everything soldered approach. The SSD is a socketed M.2 2230 under the silver cover next to the CPU so that's upgradable (which I've done). While I would have preferred more than 8GB RAM I've been impressed with the performance. Perhaps the weak link in the design is fitting some ports on the end of the mainboard rather than on a separate daughterboard but that might be a conscious design decision due to speed requirements of thunderbolt.

 

The final product is a slim 13" machine that weighs just under 2lbs and has a good battery life - a notebook with a keyboard in what is normally tablet territory (and who expects to have upgradable components in a tablet?).

 

 

[seanwee]

12 hours ago, KING19 said:

I didnt know where to post this but this article on notebookcheck is interesting and it mentions some truths about bad trends with mainstream laptops that we been discussing on NBR for years.

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/4-controversial-laptop-trends-that-should-never-have-made-it-mainstream.599710.0.html

 

Here's some trends that should of been in the article IMO

 

Soldiered on RAM, and WIFI especially on thin and light laptops

Laptop webcams still on 720p in 2022...

No separate touchpad buttons. Personally i always hated clickpads and after using them for years my opinion on them hasnt changed.

 

 

 

 

My top nitpicks would be

 

1. Soldered ram/wifi cards, also Asus zephyrus's semi soldered ram (8/16 gb soldered, one dimm free)

2. Blocking/having restrictive fan intakes to "reduce dust buildup"

3. Max-q design gpus

4. Removal of numpads

5. More thin = more better

 

Things i'm grateful for

1. Mux switch

2. 99.9 whr batteries

3. HDR displays

4. Type-C charging (assuming a beefier main adapter remains the primary option)

 

[seanwee]

8 hours ago, solidus1983 said:

@Mr. Fox is going to be proud of me for saying this.

 

A laptop trend that shouldn't of made it mainstream was BGA, anything soldered be it CPU/GPU/RAM/WiFi they shouldn't exsist as they are the hands of obsolescence and obsolescence is the hand of the devil. Be gone BGA begone.

6 hours ago, Hertzian56 said:

Not to mention the hypocritical lip service these manufacturers give to green tech, what happens when any of that soldered stuff fails? Yep the old garbage can, back when we had removable modular laptops if one component failed we could get another one and thus didn't just throw the whole thing away. I'm not even confident if you go out of your way to recycle anything that it actually gets recycled, or the movable definition of recycled means selling it to Asia so it can be heated up, releasing all sorts of pollution, so they can extract the precious metals. The rest is buried somewhere. I had a roommate who was deeply into recycling and he showed me that almost everything we think can be recycled, ie put in the blue can, is not actually recyclable, it was an eye opener for me. We also hear about how even recyclable stuff just gets dumped in the same landfill by various civil entities but they of course collect the higher fees for the privilege. Just liars everywhere.

1 hour ago, defcon42 said:

Thank you for an objective voice of reason. Hard to find these days.

1 hour ago, defcon42 said:

My perfectly running BGA machine always bursts out into uncontrollable laughter when reading "statements" like this. As @John Ratseyhas already stated correctly, everything has it's pros and cons.

Both sides of the argument make sense in the right situation.

 

For ultrabooks soldering on certain components makes sense, like the cpu and gpu since they will be designed with a certain power envelope in mind. Ram and wifi card will depend on the specific size target the manufacturer is trying to hit but seeing as even super thin and light 750g laptops like the Fujitsu UH-X can come with an upgradable wifi card slot I don't see a reason why it can't be done in any other laptop.

 

For gaming laptops ram and wifi card upgradability are a must, no excuses can be made for not having that (I'm looking at you Asus and Alienware). Cpu and gpu on the other hand will depend on the laptop form factor. (Originally I wrote a lot more but decided to shrink it down) Basically, DTR class laptops (>4kg) MUST come with socketed cpus and mxm gpus, Medium sized laptops (2.8-3.5kg) MUST come with Max-p gpus, and only smaller sized/thin and light laptops (<2.3kg) can come with sub 100w Max-q class cards.

[Sandy Bridge]

Many of the items mentioned fall into the bucket of "lack of upgradeability/worse upgradeability than in the past".  This isn't surprising on an enthusiast's forum.

 

What's more interesting to me is thinking about what can be done to improve the longevity of machines.  We aren't in an era where a computer is obsolete in a year anymore, but in laptops there are limited options when something does become the limiting factor other than buying a whole new machine.  And yet that's very inefficient from a materials standpoint, and inefficient from an economic standpoint in many cases, too.  I taught a family member to replace their internal laptop battery last year, which meant for $70 or so they could fix what was broken in a $700 laptop.  Even if you pay a shop to do it, you'd often still be saving money - just like it's cheaper to replace a flat tire on a bicycle than to buy a new bicycle.

 

Environmentally, it's also not great to be throwing out a whole laptop instead of, say, one stick of RAM.  Even if they get recycled, a lot more effort goes into recycling a whole laptop, and you'll be left with more non-recycleable parts.

 

So there's momentum behind right-to-repair efforts, which I think is a good thing.  But there's also a cultural reason for the lack of upgradeability - many people, once they have sufficient wealth, adopt a "if it breaks, we'll replace it" mentality to most items, aside from vehicles, housing, and perhaps items that are difficult to move such as a stove.  In part this is due to how inexpensive many appliances have become - it's not economical to repair a $20 toaster - but where wealth allows it, it often creeps up into more expensive categories, including computers.  The local Micro Center does a good business fixing and upgrading older computers, but I don't doubt that they also sell a lot of new ones to people who could have repaired or upgraded their old one.

 

Part of it's also on the industry, whether intentional or not.  Even when being able to replace CPUs and GPUs was the norm, upgrade options were often limited.  You might have one newer generation of CPU, no equivalent of buying an A320 desktop mobo in 2017 and putting a Ryzen 9 5950 in it in 2022, and I don't recall there ever being standardized heatsinks for GPUs, so at least when I looked into GPU upgrades, it was a non-starter even when I did have an MXM GPU.  Maybe, with more competition, there would have been a Cyrix offering overdrive-style upgrades for older CPU sockets on laptops in the late 2000's.  But as it was, the industry if anything had a profit incentive to sell you a whole new laptop rather than that upgraded GPU.

 

Aside from upgradeability?  I'm not a fan of 16:9.  Currently replying to this topic on a 10-year-old 16:10 monitor, that still has empty space around the edges of this post reply box.  I'm not saying we all have to go 5:4 (although I did use a 5:4 monitor at work in the mid-2010s), but I likely would have upgraded this monitor 5 years ago if there had been a 27-inch 16:10 model on the market.

[K4sum1]

I see people mentioning in this thread soldered thin and light laptops with long battery life. The Framework laptop proves that it can be modular but still thin, light, and have long battery life.

[toastofman]

Seems like both have their place in the market: more "ultrabook" style laptops for slim configurations and heavier customizable laptops with more robust modularity.  The problem is, the market trend is pushing customizable laptops out for the sake of the thin BGA laptops.  Look at this very forum.  There are people waiting for an MXM gpu to release (A4500), and eyeballing an install in a 10-year old laptop.  That is a lot better than just building barely-not-yet-obsolete eWaste and spending an enormous amount of advertising time and money convincing people that this is "better for them."  For many, it just isn't, but I get that it's better for company's financial statements.

 

Part of the problem is that manufacturers have left the MXM standard behind, and most of the ones we have of the "modern " GPUs are non-standard with funky shaped boards or core offsets and turned ram modules.  Now yes, I'm sure there is a great reason for these things, like increased power requirements or what have you, but deviation from the standard is yet another sign of the takeover of BGA stuff.

 

 

[ratchetnclank]

On 2/15/2022 at 10:56 PM, John Ratsey said:

More and more components soldered onto the mainboard helps with reducing thickness and weight for those who want less of both - the challenge is to select something appropriate from among the limited hardware options on offer. I suspect that soldered components also improve reliability compared with socketed components although, if anything does go wrong, it's more difficult to fix.

I feel like this is more around planned obsolescence and/or forcing prices of models with more ram to ect to be more profitable for the manufacturer. If the ram is soldered if you want 32GB you have to buy the upgrade from dell or whoever or even worse the 32GB option might mean you also have to have the model with a RTX 3080 instead of a 3070 or a 4k screen instead of a 1080p ect.

 

It's all about squeezing maximum profit from the purchase. I honestly doubt user replaceable ram adds anything to thickness at all. It's just user hostile for the sake of it.

[toastofman]

On 2/17/2022 at 2:17 PM, ratchetnclank said:

planned obsolescence

 

Agreed.  With all of it, but especially the planned obsolescence... 

 

I bought a dishwasher recently and found out the one I was replacing was about 6 years old.  It was having electronic control board failure issues, and not wanting to just ditch it I called a repair service to see if they could diagnose why it was failing, and if it was fixable.  The technician told me they used to pull the boards out, test the relays and caps on em, and switch em out.  They said it was a quick process and most times, a relay and a few caps would get most of them back running for <100 USD.   About 8-10 years prior there was a manufacturing shift, and they began dipping the control boards in an epoxy resin compound.  They said that the thick layer of resin made the boards more water-resistant, and I certainly wouldn't argue that it was true.  One thing it DID do according to the tech is make it to where they were no longer repairable (EDIT: to be clear, the tech also told me that water-compromised control boards weren't a real issue or problem from the cheapest to the most expensive manufacturers in his over 15 years on the job).  To remove the resin safely the tech explained that a laser-etching machine had to be used to burn it off at a perfect level to where the board wasn't overheated and the resin vaporizes completely.  He explained since his company was so big, the extra resource wasn't worth the time.  So my only option was a "new" control board that would take 2 weeks to get, and would cost 500 dollars along with 90 bucks for the diagnosis.  I went to Lowes and bought a new dishwasher for 800, and sold the old one at a recycler for 25 bucks.

 

Different tech/hardware, but same concept.  It's made to be not repairable, or if it IS "repairable" the cost is ~50% or more of a new replacement.

[KING19]

3 hours ago, ratchetnclank said:

I feel like this is more around planned obsolescence and/or forcing prices of models with more ram to ect to be more profitable for the manufacturer. If the ram is soldered if you want 32GB you have to buy the upgrade from dell or whoever or even worse the 32GB option might mean you also have to have the model with a RTX 3080 instead of a 3070 or a 4k screen instead of a 1080p ect.

 

It's all about squeezing maximum profit from the purchase. I honestly doubt user replaceable ram adds anything to thickness at all. It's just user hostile for the sake of it.

 

This.

 

I understand soldering the CPU and GPU on laptops somewhat because laptops are already pretty limited compared to a desktop. Hell about 95%+ people never heard of MXM plus MXMs are pretty expensive and cost higher than a normal desktop GPU because there barely a market for them. But soldering RAM, WIFI, and even SSDs is still shady to me and i blame Apple for making these trends mainstream especially with Internal batteries. RAM, SSDs and WIFI cards dont take much space even on thin and light laptops. They're pretty much the only upgrades we can do on a laptop.

[solidus1983]

1 hour ago, KING19 said:

 

This.

 

I understand soldering the CPU and GPU on laptops somewhat because laptops are already pretty limited compared to a desktop. Hell about 95%+ people never heard of MXM plus MXMs are pretty expensive and cost higher than a normal desktop GPU because there barely a market for them. But soldering RAM, WIFI, and even SSDs is still shady to me and i blame Apple for making these trends mainstream especially with Internal batteries. RAM, SSDs and WIFI cards dont take much space even on thin and light laptops. They're pretty much the only upgrades we can do on a laptop.

 

BGA'ing anything to a motherboard is just planned obsolescence in an attempt to continue the trade of people purchasing a new system, thus making more e-waste.

 

Although more expensive having socketed CPU's , MXM, SO-DIMM, Wifi, Storage is the ideal way. It although doesn't seem it would mean less e-waste then having everything on the mainboard. If a CPU dies you simply replace the CPU, if GPU dies you replace the GPU etc your not throwing a complete system just to replace 1 faulty part.

 

This is on advantage that Framework has if one part is faults its just a module change not the whole system, so i don't mind frameworks BGA solution however most OEM's are spending too much time focusing on how many times they can milk it rather then Quailty of their solutions.

 

If apple and co have thier way you'd be buying a new laptop when a cap goes poop. So i will be sticking with any DTR that offers socketed items only. Although the big corps are going to kill it off soon enough i am sticking to my guns. If you make a socketed system with off shelve replacables you have my custom. If you don't your don't have my custom.

[Reciever]

Framework is a step in the right direction but it's not much different as it's also bga. I look forward to what they come up with next but as of now I can't seem to muster interest for it.

 

I don't mind bga laptops for the cpu but the gpu unless I am mistaken is the highest failing component, and makes little sense to use that strategy.

[electrosoft]

I see value and merit in both big true DTRs and T&Ls. I love DTRs and they will be my mainstay ( because I like to tinker ) till they are grossly outclassed performance wise but I also keep T&Ls around (see sig) because there are situations where I'm not lugging my X170 out in the field or for onsite telemetry or Pi/robotics tinkering. I would also not drop thousands on a laptop with many points of failure that can render it pretty much DOA. GPUs have a higher rate of failure than many of the other components. System boards fail. I've had a few laptops have their GPUs die or their system boards die and I was able to source and replace that one part versus replacing the entire logic board.

 

Soldered on ram and storage does send me into super fits (my Swift 3 has soldered on 8GB grrrr) but I also realize that is me and my preferences. In the end, companies want to make money and when they see market forces at play showing general consumers prefer lighter and thinner along with great battery life AND they can maximize profits? No one can be surprised at the outcome.

[ryan]

I hate when a car is lighter and faster, this trend needs to end and die off with teslas going first. honestly people like sleeker thinner and each year faster laptops I have a thin and light gaming laptop I bought 1 month ago, and it is as fast as a desktop 3060 and i9 9900k desktop cpu, while being thin and light, laptops are around 0.5in to 0.9in thick nowadays, and I don't mind.  why on earth would I want a thick heavy clunky laptop that still hits 100c even without max stress. Some laptops are better at cooling like clevos but the performance gain vs size gain is small. its not like your going to get anything like 40 fps more out of a thick heavy vs a thin light. I went the heavy route with a 6990m and it was awesome but the performance was only a few fps faster than the thin 0.8in 6970m laptops at the time, so you can see the trend hasn't changed in a long time neither have the results.

 

 

it was just a spin on thin and lights

 

but honestly the future is streaming games and ultrabooks. geforce now has gotten so good now that I might use it even though I have a 3060

[toastofman]

2 hours ago, ryan said:

I hate when a car is lighter and faster, this trend needs to end and die off with teslas going first. honestly people like sleeker thinner and each year faster laptops I have a thin and light gaming laptop I bought 1 month ago, and it is as fast as a desktop 3060 and i9 9900k desktop cpu, while being thin and light, laptops are around 0.5in to 0.9in thick nowadays, and I don't mind.  why on earth would I want a thick heavy clunky laptop that still hits 100c even without max stress. Some laptops are better at cooling like clevos but the performance gain vs size gain is small. its not like your going to get anything like 40 fps more out of a thick heavy vs a thin light. I went the heavy route with a 6990m and it was awesome but the performance was only a few fps faster than the thin 0.8in 6970m laptops at the time, so you can see the trend hasn't changed in a long time neither have the results.

 

I don't think that's right.  Like, at all.  Starting with the 900 series Nvidia, there have been enormous generational leaps in laptop graphical horsepower.  Like, each successive generation is a very big improvement, and while there will be a ceiling hit eventually (maybe even the current gen is the ceiling), for the moment laptop power is in a good spot.  The performance is scaling up well from gen to gen. 

 

The issue is that manufacturers don't want to build MXM standard stuff anymore.  They want their stuff to be usable with their own OTHER parts, and thats it.  2 examples:  Dell and HP.  The Precision 7710 and 7720 were MXM board systems, and starting witht eh 7730 they went to DGFF.  So its dead.  HP's Zbook G5 (2018) and G6 (2019) are MXM boards, and starting with the G7 they are an HP-proprietary board with a "beam connector," a throwaway part that needs to be replaced with every disassembly.

 

Thicker laptops are better at cooling because the builders use the extra thickness to build out adequate cooling.  Ironically, the thin and light laptops hit 100c right away until they throttle back, and the thicker laptops have an easier time handling the thermal load.  With card-to-card comparisons you might be right, but the issue is that on thicker MXM laptops you have the OPTION of the upgrade so in that respect there isn't a point in comparing.  I know for my part, I saw slight thermal issues on my HP Zbook 17 G5 on the CPU.  I shimmed the CPU (.03mm) and saw a 29% increase (across 3 runs before and after) in 3dMark Firestrike physics score, so yes.  Adequate cooling has the power to really perk up a system.  It's only one result but imagine the same thing on a GPU.  It would very easily trim 20-30% off the power of the GPU to restrict it to a lower power state because of throttling.

 

Not saying the thin and light laptops don't have a place.  They do, and are very great systems.  Heavy laptops have a lot of value to the market as well, and they are being pushed out:  Not because they are inferior, but because a 10-year old product that has been upgraded several times doesn't provide any additional revenue.

[Hertzian56]

MXM, when it was more universal and thus had more used stock available on eb etc was actually pretty decently price, more competition etc GPU failure a pretty big thing and to be able to just swap that out and be able to get one from NON-manufacturer greedy pricing was it's downfall. The bean counters made sure it was phased out. Buy a whole new laptop vs buying components was a much better value but involved less profit for the manufs. Big things are obviously cpu/gpu and they can obviously just put a less powerful desktop i3/i5 with less cores/heat etc in a laptop to have the full socketed versions but won't. It's pretty egregious to get down into soldered RAM. I don't know that I would want to go back to a heavy desktop for a long time if ever really, just doesn't fit my present situation. Obviously disposable tech is much more profitable and that's all that matters to these scum.

 

So I'd say 1. bga cpu/gpu/soldered ram 2. Laptops have less I/O and slow cheap I/O like slow memcard slots etc 3. Design for non-replaceable or hard to replace keyboards and screens in some cases. 3. flimsy builds/less durable for a portable device, needs to be thicker 4. In some cases over aggressive default fan speeds leading to early failure and possibly cpu/gpu frying because of that. 5. Same cooling setups and lack of vapor chambers and other better cooling tech including low quality thermal paste 6. better fan tech/noise reduction. The number order isn't necessarily order of importance but I'd say #1 is really #1.

[seanwee]

6 hours ago, toastofman said:

 

I don't think that's right.  Like, at all.  Starting with the 900 series Nvidia, there have been enormous generational leaps in laptop graphical horsepower.  Like, each successive generation is a very big improvement, and while there will be a ceiling hit eventually (maybe even the current gen is the ceiling), for the moment laptop power is in a good spot.  The performance is scaling up well from gen to gen. 

 

The issue is that manufacturers don't want to build MXM standard stuff anymore.  They want their stuff to be usable with their own OTHER parts, and thats it.  2 examples:  Dell and HP.  The Precision 7710 and 7720 were MXM board systems, and starting witht eh 7730 they went to DGFF.  So its dead.  HP's Zbook G5 (2018) and G6 (2019) are MXM boards, and starting with the G7 they are an HP-proprietary board with a "beam connector," a throwaway part that needs to be replaced with every disassembly.

 

Thicker laptops are better at cooling because the builders use the extra thickness to build out adequate cooling.  Ironically, the thin and light laptops hit 100c right away until they throttle back, and the thicker laptops have an easier time handling the thermal load.  With card-to-card comparisons you might be right, but the issue is that on thicker MXM laptops you have the OPTION of the upgrade so in that respect there isn't a point in comparing.  I know for my part, I saw slight thermal issues on my HP Zbook 17 G5 on the CPU.  I shimmed the CPU (.03mm) and saw a 29% increase (across 3 runs before and after) in 3dMark Firestrike physics score, so yes.  Adequate cooling has the power to really perk up a system.  It's only one result but imagine the same thing on a GPU.  It would very easily trim 20-30% off the power of the GPU to restrict it to a lower power state because of throttling.

 

Not saying the thin and light laptops don't have a place.  They do, and are very great systems.  Heavy laptops have a lot of value to the market as well, and they are being pushed out:  Not because they are inferior, but because a 10-year old product that has been upgraded several times doesn't provide any additional revenue.

GPU wise i'd like to see them allow the top end chips to draw more power like the recently released 3080ti mobile. At its current 160+ 15w config its quite noticeably hamstrung seeing its barely 10% faster than the 150+15w 3080 mobile.

 

Cooling wise poor thermal interface material is the main limiting factor in most laptops, cheap bulk paste just isn't good enough anymore. Even thicker laptops will throttle just as badly as a thin and light with the combination of ever hotter cpus and cheap factory paste. Its good to see laptop manufacturers like Asus address it by using Liquid Metal on the cpu, albeit with limited success due to their automated application method leaving dry spots still.

[Reciever]

12 hours ago, ryan said:

I hate when a car is lighter and faster, this trend needs to end and die off with teslas going first. honestly people like sleeker thinner and each year faster laptops I have a thin and light gaming laptop I bought 1 month ago, and it is as fast as a desktop 3060 and i9 9900k desktop cpu, while being thin and light, laptops are around 0.5in to 0.9in thick nowadays, and I don't mind.  why on earth would I want a thick heavy clunky laptop that still hits 100c even without max stress. Some laptops are better at cooling like clevos but the performance gain vs size gain is small. its not like your going to get anything like 40 fps more out of a thick heavy vs a thin light. I went the heavy route with a 6990m and it was awesome but the performance was only a few fps faster than the thin 0.8in 6970m laptops at the time, so you can see the trend hasn't changed in a long time neither have the results.

 

 

it was just a spin on thin and lights

 

but honestly the future is streaming games and ultrabooks. geforce now has gotten so good now that I might use it even though I have a 3060

Car analogies never work well. For instance name one car that is lighter and faster year over year from inception. This is not the point, the point is I will have 5+ years with that machine in service, while you may have been on your third replacement like Linus and his Razer laptops. You couldnt justify the 6990m therefore all of it was bad is really short sighted as well, king of the hill is where the money is at, always been that way. Not every generation is the same.

 

The thing you omit here is that we had a 980m converted to 980 DT and it worked just fine.

 

The future may be streaming for some and it may work well for them, but a high power GPU is still running it.