4 controversial laptop trends that should never have made it mainstream

[Clamibot]

7 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

ohno its not lack of knowledge its different levels for expectations: "upgradeable" for them means ure allowed to swap one ram stick and one ssd 😂

 

Heh heh. They are using the wrong definition for the word upgrade then. What they mean is expandable.

 

Expandability is the ability to add onto the system by adding more RAM or more drives.

 

Upgradeability is the ability to swap core parts like the CPU and GPU for newer generation parts that offer more processing power.

 

Swapping a hard disk for an SSD would be classified as an upgrade. So would be swapping out your RAM for faster RAM. However, adding more of something is not upgrading the system, it's expanding it. So adding more drives or more RAM is not an upgrade, it's expanding the system. Their terminology is incorrect.

[aldarxt]

I really hope this "Thin is in" is just a marketing trend to sell everything off the conveyerbelt to make some fast money!!! I can't see the military or medical field wanting these smart phones on steroids to do the jobs they do in hospitals and covert missions. I have to believe the Professional Industry will eventually need the most durable hardware they demand which when what they have now wears out...   well...

Then, well I guess they will get ROBOTS, I am pretty confident thats where everything is going

[jaybee83]

13 minutes ago, aldarxt said:

I really hope this "Thin is in" is just a marketing trend to sell everything off the conveyerbelt to make some fast money!!! I can't see the military or medical field wanting these smart phones on steroids to do the jobs they do in hospitals and covert missions. I have to believe the Professional Industry will eventually need the most durable hardware they demand which when what they have now wears out...   well...

Then, well I guess they will get ROBOTS, I am pretty confident thats where everything is going

ure right in this regard, the only reason why nvidia still keeps supporting standard mxm design cards for quadro type gpus (most recent example is the A4500 based on ampere) is their contractual requirement by existing military, industrial, medical and scientific systems that still use these kinds of cards. lucky for us this also gives us a way forward, albeit ultra expensive one @3500 USD for a single A4500 😅

[win32asmguy]

35 minutes ago, Clamibot said:

 

Heh heh. They are using the wrong definition for the word upgrade then. What they mean is expandable.

 

Expandability is the ability to add onto the system by adding more RAM or more drives.

 

Upgradeability is the ability to swap core parts like the CPU and GPU for newer generation parts that offer more processing power.

 

Swapping a hard disk for an SSD would be classified as an upgrade. So would be swapping out your RAM for faster RAM. However, adding more of something is not upgrading the system, it's expanding it. So adding more drives or more RAM is not an upgrade, it's expanding the system. Their terminology is incorrect.

To me anything labeled as a DTR should be as modular as one might find an ITX board. So modular cpu, gpu, memory, storage, wifi. The closest for Alder Lake would be high end mobile workstations from Dell, HP and Lenovo. The NH55JNNQ could have also fit the bill if they had a model without any Nvidia GPU.

[KING19]

5 hours ago, aldarxt said:

I really hope this "Thin is in" is just a marketing trend to sell everything off the conveyerbelt to make some fast money!!! I can't see the military or medical field wanting these smart phones on steroids to do the jobs they do in hospitals and covert missions. I have to believe the Professional Industry will eventually need the most durable hardware they demand which when what they have now wears out...   well...

Then, well I guess they will get ROBOTS, I am pretty confident thats where everything is going

 

Its been the trend for laptops for years now. Most OEM's been copying Apple trying to be as thin as possible and having every component to be soldiered to the motherboard. Professional companies often use business type laptops which are much better than consumer based laptops, Better durability, better warranty and not to mention their features as well. Dont expect any consumer based laptops to receive the same treatment as business type laptops.

 

Here another controversial laptop trend that hasnt been mentioned yet. Inverted motherboards!. To me its worse than a soldiered CPU/GPU because its makes upgradeability very difficult to do because you would have to remove the motherboard to do so. Dell been doing this with their Alienware series.

 

Example:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Predator-Triton-500-SE-review-Slim-gaming-laptop-with-RTX-3080-Ti-and-Alder-Lake.627537.0.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aldarxt]

I'd like to know what the hospitals are going to mount on their COWs, rollable desks with docking stations that their laptops plug into they push into a patients room so they know who is alive or dead.

 The mxm type of laptop was durable enough for this job but these new slims dont seem up to the task. What could the hospitals be planning to do? I know, ROBOTS

[Reciever]

1 hour ago, aldarxt said:

I'd like to know what the hospitals are going to mount on their COWs, rollable desks with docking stations that their laptops plug into they push into a patients room so they know who is alive or dead.

 The mxm type of laptop was durable enough for this job but these new slims dont seem up to the task. What could the hospitals be planning to do? I know, ROBOTS

The hospitals around here have been using thin clients for that for about 10 years now.

[aldarxt]

4 hours ago, Reciever said:

The hospitals around here have been using thin clients for that for about 10 years now.

Oh so they just plug into the thunderbolt port, how about that modern tech lol

[Reciever]

4 minutes ago, aldarxt said:

Oh so they just plug into the thunderbolt port, how about that modern tech lol

nope, DP to VGA adapter, they use carts with built in batteries. Most of what they do is done via browser. No need for thunderbolt on the frontline for the franchise I supply. Lot of WYSE client 5070's out there in the wild. Even then they are debating just replacing them with laptops, problem is they already have so many built in battery carts that buying laptops would be redundant.

 

The heaviest they go for is the 7820 desktop precision for diagnostics, if they are locally connected to a monitor then they might grab some barco GPU's and corresponding monitors.

[Papusan]

On 6/12/2022 at 1:57 AM, Reciever said:

That's hardly a new design philosophy. 

 

Honestly surprised you aren't pointing out that the cpu is soldered as well since they mention ram being soldered, something that's been done on xps 13's for 5+ years at this point. 

No need to mention this if you look at the new smartphone sized motherboard for the junk. And people are more hanged up in Dell's "new design choice" of the chassis than the soldered on Cpu 🙂

 

Personally, I'm starting to feel like the quest for thinner, (lighter) devices is becoming too costly to continue. 

It's bad enough the new XPS 13 has ditched the microSD card reader, but that's admittedly a niche port that many people never have cause to use. But the headphone jack?! As my colleague Henry T. Casey noted, even Apple hasn't gone so far as to remove the headphone jack from its new MacBook Air 2022 (which is thinner than the new XPS 13, by the way), and Apple is the company that kicked off this anti-headphone jack trend in the first place.

 

So if you're frustrated by the lack of a headphone port on your next XPS laptop, know that it's gone because Dell claims laptops are now getting so thin they can't even accommodate a 3.5mm jack.

 

New Dell XPS 13 kills the one thing it shouldn’t — and I’m upset
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/new-dell-xps-13-kills-the-one-thing-it-shouldnt-and-im-upset 

[Reciever]

Well as far as I'm concerned it's karmic balance lol I'm still jaded they shrunk it from dedicated mic and headphone Jack's before doing away with it altogether. 

[ColtC7]

On 2/16/2022 at 3:10 AM, 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. 

Still rocking Mobile Haswell here(4600M), though I will upgrade to a Ryzen desktop soon.

[Papusan]

The scam and notebook trend continue.... 
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 headed to laptops with an AD103 GPU
More here:

 

[zhongze12345]

Wow I really am out of touch with these vain new trends... not a single one of my 11 laptops has a soldered Wifi card. I didn't even think about the fact that Wifi cards can even be soldered. What a shame considering that Intel has deleted drivers for older Wifi cards from their websites (they say it's for "security", but downloading drivers from a sketchy website is far riskier).

The Centrino N6200 in my Latitude E6410, which I prefer to travel with over my XPS 15 7590, recently started acting up in Windows 10, and I had to download a driver from a sketchy site since Dell's latest driver doesn't install on Windows 10.

Just watch as tons of laptops go to waste in 8 years because someone can't find a basic wifi driver for their computer.

Deleting drivers is a pretty a**hole move in itself, but doing so when the components are soldered is an even bigger a**hole move.

[jaybee83]

On 12/28/2022 at 11:40 PM, zhongze12345 said:

Wow I really am out of touch with these vain new trends... not a single one of my 11 laptops has a soldered Wifi card. I didn't even think about the fact that Wifi cards can even be soldered. What a shame considering that Intel has deleted drivers for older Wifi cards from their websites (they say it's for "security", but downloading drivers from a sketchy website is far riskier).

The Centrino N6200 in my Latitude E6410, which I prefer to travel with over my XPS 15 7590, recently started acting up in Windows 10, and I had to download a driver from a sketchy site since Dell's latest driver doesn't install on Windows 10.

Just watch as tons of laptops go to waste in 8 years because someone can't find a basic wifi driver for their computer.

Deleting drivers is a pretty a**hole move in itself, but doing so when the components are soldered is an even bigger a**hole move.

 

becomes ever more important to save all compatible drivers for your machines, even more so for laptops! exactly for this reason...

[Clamibot]

On 12/30/2022 at 6:56 PM, jaybee83 said:

 

becomes ever more important to save all compatible drivers for your machines, even more so for laptops! exactly for this reason...

 

Yup, I did exactly that for my Alienware 17 R1 after I got it. I think Dell removed the download for those drivers like 6 or 7 years ago. I still have them available if I do another fresh install of windows.

[M4980]

On 6/12/2022 at 7:41 PM, jaybee83 said:

ure right in this regard, the only reason why nvidia still keeps supporting standard mxm design cards for quadro type gpus (most recent example is the A4500 based on ampere) is their contractual requirement by existing military, industrial, medical and scientific systems that still use these kinds of cards. lucky for us this also gives us a way forward, albeit ultra expensive one @3500 USD for a single A4500 😅

 

Question is, will MXM type A even be able to continue with lovelace?

They bumped up the 4050 mobile to 115-140w which is absolutely ridiculous considering the 3050 mobile was a 45w-80w part

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

I'd hope there's a new lower tier SKU coming to fit the 60w tgp area

[jaybee83]

4 hours ago, M4980 said:

 

Question is, will MXM type A even be able to continue with lovelace?

They bumped up the 4050 mobile to 115-140w which is absolutely ridiculous considering the 3050 mobile was a 45w-80w part

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

 

I'd hope there's a new lower tier SKU coming to fit the 60w tgp area

 

huh thats crazy... welp in theory MXM-B cards would go up to 150W no prob in standard form factor. as for MXM-A, doubtful...

 

but looks like Nvidia is changing tunes, as in maxing out wattage for all tiers, only differentiating via clocks and CUDA cores...huh

[solidus1983]

1 hour ago, jaybee83 said:

 

huh thats crazy... welp in theory MXM-B cards would go up to 150W no prob in standard form factor. as for MXM-A, doubtful...

 

but looks like Nvidia is changing tunes, as in maxing out wattage for all tiers, only differentiating via clocks and CUDA cores...huh

 

It seems that way however with the ever growing thin and lights its going to be an even more hot mess. MXM-B as we know can go as high as 200w. But how its going to be cooled as the node gets smaller beats me.

[1610ftw]

12 hours ago, solidus1983 said:

 

It seems that way however with the ever growing thin and lights its going to be an even more hot mess. MXM-B as we know can go as high as 200w. But how its going to be cooled as the node gets smaller beats me.

 

Last generation gets cooled pretty easily in BGA with not much less watts.

Did some TimeSpy runs on an MSI CreatorPro X17 and temps for the GPU did not even reach 60 degrees with 165W TGP and ca. 13.9K Time Spy.

That was all stock with no extra cooling and I would expect similar for at least the bigger TongFang, Asus, Lenovo and so on. 

 

So I do not really see 200W as the issue here except that Nvidia will usually start throttling at ridiculously low temperatures.

 

The real issue is that MXM seems to be off the table except for workstations from Lenovo and HP and those are usually gimped with regard to TGP nor do I find them desirable with their recent trend to smaller 16" screens and other limitations.

 

 

 

[jaybee83]

13 hours ago, solidus1983 said:

 

It seems that way however with the ever growing thin and lights its going to be an even more hot mess. MXM-B as we know can go as high as 200w. But how its going to be cooled as the node gets smaller beats me.

was referring to MXM-B standard form factor, the non-standard cards such as the Clevo desktop 980 did indeed go up to a whopping 200W!

[M4980]

On 1/2/2023 at 10:21 PM, jaybee83 said:

 

huh thats crazy... welp in theory MXM-B cards would go up to 150W no prob in standard form factor. as for MXM-A, doubtful...

 

but looks like Nvidia is changing tunes, as in maxing out wattage for all tiers, only differentiating via clocks and CUDA cores...huh

 

Nevermind, NVIDIA announced today at CES the true TDP ranges for these lovelace mobile GPUs, it's looking good for MXM type A still!

NVIDIA announces GeForce RTX 40 Laptop GPU series, RTX 4090 with 9728 CUDAs and 16GB GDDR6 memory - VideoCardz.com

 

Interesting that they allow the 4070 to go down to 35W

[zhongze12345]

On 1/1/2023 at 11:05 PM, Clamibot said:

 

Yup, I did exactly that for my Alienware 17 R1 after I got it. I think Dell removed the download for those drivers like 6 or 7 years ago. I still have them available if I do another fresh install of windows.

Oh wow those drivers were taken down very soon... thankfully it seems that Dell keeps their Latitude drivers on their website for a while

[zhongze12345]

On 1/2/2023 at 4:21 PM, jaybee83 said:

but looks like Nvidia is changing tunes, as in maxing out wattage for all tiers, only differentiating via clocks and CUDA cores...huh

Realistically, in 99% of laptops, the only differentiating factor will be CUDA cores and clocks rather than wattage. Pushing a 4050 mobile at 115W definitely won't put it at a good place in the performance vs power curve (my Quadro A4000 mobile/RTX 3070 mobile @ 115W is just about in the sweet spot), though it's not unreasonable as the per core power draw is somewhat on par with the desktop variants.

 

Letting the 4070 go down to 35W TGP is criminal considering the memory power draw will be a significant portion of that. Maybe they are trying to sort of "cheat" their way for more efficiency in the ultra low power segment by using super low power/core? For context, to get my Quadro A4000 mobile (same as 3070 mobile) down to 60W power draw, my core clock speeds need to be at 215 MHz, which likely means that to hit that 35W TGP, the memory will be significantly downclocked.

[zhongze12345]

On 6/13/2022 at 2:49 PM, aldarxt said:

I'd like to know what the hospitals are going to mount on their COWs, rollable desks with docking stations that their laptops plug into they push into a patients room so they know who is alive or dead.

 The mxm type of laptop was durable enough for this job but these new slims dont seem up to the task. What could the hospitals be planning to do? I know, ROBOTS

The 7x60 generation of Precisions are quite good, albeit flimsy compared to the Mx700/Mx800 series. Thinking about it makes me miss my M4800 so much. Hopefully I will have enough time this summer to buy one used and max it out, though unfortunately I might be out of state the whole summer for research internships 😟