4 controversial laptop trends that should never have made it mainstream

[Custom90gt]

The thing we forget when it comes to the 980 desktop in a laptop vs a 3080 desktop in a laptop is that the 980 used ~180 watts max (average is less than that, and reference was 165W), that's the same amount that a 3060ti uses.  It's a far cry from the 300+ watts that a 3080 uses.  It's just not feasible.

[ryan]

yeah I totally agree

 

also there is no perfect laptop, you go thin and light you get heat you get thick n heavy well you get thick and heavy, thats why i went with the omen 16 its in between screen wise as well as size. but unusually good temps as a whole, however mine overheats while benchmarking might have to rma

[toastofman]

4 hours ago, Custom90gt said:

The thing we forget when it comes to the 980 desktop in a laptop vs a 3080 desktop in a laptop is that the 980 used ~180 watts max (average is less than that, and reference was 165W), that's the same amount that a 3060ti uses.  It's a far cry from the 300+ watts that a 3080 uses.  It's just not feasible.

 

Lord a mercy, that laptop would have to be 50% heatsink and fan.

[luisxd]

Limited ports on a laptop is a killer for me, I use a laptop because it's a AIO solution, I don't like carrying docks or anything else.

[electrosoft]

On 2/19/2022 at 1:20 AM, seanwee said:

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.

 

I think it is also an issue of TDPs being constrained to match thin and light chassis and to help offset overall heat issues of a shared cooling architecture keeping mobile CPUs as cool as possible so they can at least boost as much as possible (which is usually not much). I wish there were options even for 200w+ mobile GPUs and let the OEMs decide what they want to do with it and how.

 

TIM is a key issue but when the heatsink on some systems themselves aren't beefy enough you end up just soaking it faster and the heat can't be dissipated fast enough. The extreme example of this is Apple Macbooks when testing liquid metal on the lower and mid range of loads it provided lower overall temps as the anemic heatsink could keep up with the enhanced heat transfer but once placed under meaningful sustained loads it eventually throttled around the same point it just got there a tad slower.

 

I agree it is good to see certain manufacturers like Asus and others finally creating secure, specialized heatsink pairings to use liquid metal now to eek out as much cooling as possible.

[electrosoft]

On 2/19/2022 at 8:40 AM, Custom90gt said:

The thing we forget when it comes to the 980 desktop in a laptop vs a 3080 desktop in a laptop is that the 980 used ~180 watts max (average is less than that, and reference was 165W), that's the same amount that a 3060ti uses.  It's a far cry from the 300+ watts that a 3080 uses.  It's just not feasible.

 

On 2/19/2022 at 12:44 PM, toastofman said:

 

Lord a mercy, that laptop would have to be 50% heatsink and fan.

 

You end up needing something like a P870TM1 with its monster sized GPU vapor chamber. Absolutely a beast but beautiful.

 

 

[Hertzian56]

I mean I guess, if you look at a 980m that was a 110-115w at the time, a 1650m beats it afa synthetic benchmarks and is 50w. It also beats the 1060m. So there's definitely progress and possibly with better cooling to get close. To go from that to a 3080m is a HUGE leap though. Yeah I don't think they could ever get to the parity of the 980m/1080m as the desktop versions.

 

https://benchmarks.ul.com/compare/best-gpus?amount=0&sortBy=SCORE&reverseOrder=true&types=MOBILE&minRating=0

[Reciever]

3 hours ago, electrosoft said:

 

 

You end up needing something like a P870TM1 with its monster sized GPU vapor chamber. Absolutely a beast but beautiful.

 

 

Thats what I might do on my next system but I wont be buying anything for a while yet.

[aldarxt]

On 2/16/2022 at 12:15 AM, 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.

Is what M$FT does not care about

Is what NVIDIA does not care about

Is what Apple does not care about and the list goes on to here E-Waste Recycling in China: A Health Disaster in the Making?  Just so we have to buy new equiptment when we buy a PC so the stock price goes up!!!

[Eban]

On 2/22/2022 at 1:34 AM, electrosoft said:

 

 

You end up needing something like a P870TM1 with its monster sized GPU vapor chamber. Absolutely a beast but beautiful.

 

 

I just went looking for that (out of curiosity).....Man that is beatiful           I honestly dont know much about clevo, except their naming convention is incompressible.    Does anyone know a good link for info on clevo laptops?  naming, specs etc for a newbie. Now Im really interested.

 

EDIT : oh thin and light 

Am I wrong to like THICK chicks 

 

[seanwee]

On 2/22/2022 at 12:32 AM, electrosoft said:

 

I think it is also an issue of TDPs being constrained to match thin and light chassis and to help offset overall heat issues of a shared cooling architecture keeping mobile CPUs as cool as possible so they can at least boost as much as possible (which is usually not much). I wish there were options even for 200w+ mobile GPUs and let the OEMs decide what they want to do with it and how.

 

TIM is a key issue but when the heatsink on some systems themselves aren't beefy enough you end up just soaking it faster and the heat can't be dissipated fast enough. The extreme example of this is Apple Macbooks when testing liquid metal on the lower and mid range of loads it provided lower overall temps as the anemic heatsink could keep up with the enhanced heat transfer but once placed under meaningful sustained loads it eventually throttled around the same point it just got there a tad slower.

 

I agree it is good to see certain manufacturers like Asus and others finally creating secure, specialized heatsink pairings to use liquid metal now to eek out as much cooling as possible.

I mentioned before in NBR that laptops like the GE76 can easily handle a 200w+ gpu, quite a few users have shunt modded it and the thermals stayed in the mid 70s. Its just a matter of nvidia constraining the tdps oems can set i think.

 

On the topic of heatsinks, aside from apple jokebooks, 13/14 inch gaming laptops and budget 2 heatpipe gaming laptops, all gaming laptops i've seen can handle an 8 core intel cpu pumping out 110w+ as long as they have properly applied LM

[Tenoroon]

On 2/22/2022 at 4:49 AM, Eban said:

I just went looking for that (out of curiosity).....Man that is beatiful           I honestly dont know much about clevo, except their naming convention is incompressible.    Does anyone know a good link for info on clevo laptops?  naming, specs etc for a newbie. Now Im really interested.

 

EDIT : oh thin and light 

Am I wrong to like THICK chicks 

 

In this thread I briefly went over all of the Clevo models, this should be able to help you understand a bit more.

[RandomIdiot]

I've always loathed 16:9 screens. If I want to watch a movie, I'll turn on my TV thank you very much.

Not having a number pad is also a red flag for me

[Eban]

14 hours ago, Tenoroon said:

In this thread I briefly went over all of the Clevo models, this should be able to help you understand a bit more.

 

oh man. Thats PERFECT!!

thank you...makes a lot more sense now

 

EDIT:  now Im looking on feebay and Eurocom...and have a much better idea what Im looking at. Life saver!

[toastofman]

On 2/24/2022 at 9:03 PM, Tenoroon said:

In this thread I briefly went over all of the Clevo models, this should be able to help you understand a bit more.

 

You're a damn hero, Tenoroon.  Had no idea myself and honestly was afraid to ask.

[Papusan]

 

Max-Q tech should never ever have seen the light. If the OEM have to create thin and light laptop design, then use a cheaper and less powerful GPU. None of the mobile GPU's should have been in Max-Q design. Max-Q is here only to milk out more money out from your wallet. The buyers will always be the loosers.

“It’s Max-Q all over again” – More cores do not always mean more performance videocardz.com

 

This story repeats itself with almost every launch of the NVIDIA laptop GPU. Some power-limited GeForce mobile GPUs are not able to compete with lower-tier SKUs that are not power restricted. This is confirmed by some initial tests performed by Notebookcheck feature MSI Stealth GS66 gaming laptop with GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 105W GPU. That’s significantly less power than the Vector GP66 model from the same company featuring 150W graphics. However, as discovered, the RTX 3070 Ti with 105W TGP is also slower than RTX 3070 150W.

 

2. Misleading specifications and branding
All of the major CPU and GPU manufacturers have done this to some degree. Nvidia, after aligning its desktop and mobile parts with the release of the 1000-series GPUs, has gone back to its old ways with the release of the GeForce RTX 3000-series GPUs, where the desktop and mobile parts have different core counts entirely, resulting in vast performance differences. With the likes of the GeForce GTX 1000 and RTX 2000 families, the biggest differences between desktop and mobile GPUs were the clock speed and thermal envelope. 

 

[Ishayin]

Wow, so much I agree with here – amazing to finally come across other people who aren't fans of the switch to 16:9 screens. Feels like looking through a letterbox!

 

One other thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is keyboards – I really can't stand those island/chiclet style ones most laptops come with nowadays. I find them really uncomfortable and unpleasant to type on between the stiff buttons and hard edges / gaps between the keys.

[Hertzian56]

Agree on the cheap keyboards, it's weird going between my precision which has a better (but not mechanical or typical desktop type) keyboard and the flat/low profile keys one on my main laptop. This precision m4600 came out in around 2011 or before and the keyboard is going strong, and while the cheapo keyboard on this 2020 gateway is still fine, I think if I used it for gaming or did more than here and there typing it would be on it's way to toast fairly shortly. I use a controller, it's just more comfortable to me allows me to sit back, it's a device specifically for gaming so it's tested for longevity(official MS xbone controller lasted 3 years of daily gaming so far no problems $40 well spent), I can use it wired or wireless etc 

 

They also have moved in a lot of places to a very difficult to impossible to replace a keyboard, in the case of an old omen 17 1070 a few keys stopped altogether and several would only register when pressed very hard, to replace the keyboard required removing pretty much everything AND breaking some plastic mounting brackets, ugh. At least an external can be used but what a pain if you actually go somewhere, one more thing to haul and it takes away a usb port too.

[VEGGIM]

On 2/15/2022 at 10:10 PM, 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. 

technically we would still have mxm and socketed laptop cpu's if intel and amd didn't stop making them/ stop being supported. Mxm past 2000 series isnt really supported officially and the socket g3 was the last socketed cpu that was mobile. The desktop Cpu's have different p states than the mobile chips do. So those would have to be made again. The only thing which i dont like about past laptops was opening them up was a pain, since it wasnt as simple as opening the back. 

Soldored ram was done as when you get laptops where size is really constrained. it gets tough to do so. especially with bezels getting thinner, allowing for bigger screens at a lesser size. Wifi, i do not get at all. 

Problem is that even if it does get revived again, it will die quickly unless some big oem or intel/amd set some mobo standard like we have itx/eatx/atx. 

Forgot to mention another thing, older laptops with upgradable comopnents could still effectively lock you out with bios updates. cuz compared to desktop mobo's not every mxm gpu is compatible from the getgo, you need a bios upgrade that supports the new gpu generation. 

Look at the 51m for example. Newer 51m wasn't necessarily upgradable due to the older ones not supporting the newer cpus or gpus.

[solidus1983]

On 3/1/2022 at 1:09 PM, Ishatix said:

Wow, so much I agree with here – amazing to finally come across other people who aren't fans of the switch to 16:9 screens. Feels like looking through a letterbox!

 

One other thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is keyboards – I really can't stand those island/chiclet style ones most laptops come with nowadays. I find them really uncomfortable and unpleasant to type on between the stiff buttons and hard edges / gaps between the keys.

 

16:10 should be the norm, 16:9 to me is low end but a screen is a screen.

 

Also i wish they made a 1 keyboard layout fits all, as even US and UK keyboards cause me hassle. I am in UK but perfer US keyboards over anything as the spacing and placement is just right.

[GeekBear80]

A trend that really must die is the GPU chaos with all confusion related to TDPs and so on and so forth. It is also pretty fascinating to see the complete and utter chaos that is the "GeForce 3000 series" where laptop A with a "higher end" GeForce 3080 is slower than laptop B with a 3070 due to the TDP/power budget. The same goes for the whole situation with "mobile 3080" and "desktop 3080". It is pretty evident that the naming has to change and logic being implemented - one way would be as follows:

 

1000 series. Entry level cards, laptops use 1000M series and desktops use 1000D.

 

2000 series. Mid-range cards, M and D designations as above.

 

3000 series. High-end cards.

 

4000 series. Top of the line, desktop cards.

 

TDP should be added to the name of the card and a 150 W model in the 3000 series in a laptop would be something like "RTX 3080M-150". As it is now, getting a laptop with nVidia GPU is a matter of researching TDPs of different models and then find something with a high TDP, a recent GPU and decent benchmarks and hope for the best. It is also interesting that "3000 series" cover a lot of different bases to such an extent that BOTH mid-range AND high end are included together with the TDP chaos.

 

This chaos has to end.

 

Another laptop issue is the whole separation between "gaming laptops", "business laptops" and "UltraBooks" where it seems very problematic to combine the styling of a "business laptop" with the performance of a "gaming laptop". If I want high performance and generous warranties I am in trouble since I am now trying to combine two different categories. This is because if I buy a "business laptop", I tend to have to make do with Iris XE/Vega since dGPU is "for gaming" and if I buy an "UltraBook" I can get a dGPU but the inefficient cooling hamper its performance. 

 

It is also interesting to note that we also have "consumer laptops" in the mix where the "interesting" situation arises that you can buy a model with stylus and 4K screen with touch (Dell Inspiron 7306/7506 for example) but when moving up toward "business" (Latitude for example) you have to kiss goodbye to those features. You can't even get the XPS with a similar stylus integration as the aforementioned Inspirons either. 

 

The more I look at it, the more I realize that the industry really has to get their act together and start to merge the artificial "categories" in order to create high performance laptops where it is possible to get 4K (aka high pixel density), dGPU, efficient cooling, 2-in-1 AND garaged stylus paired with repair friendliness in ONE package together with "business grade" warranty.

 

Another issue is the quality standards of the "consumer premium" lines such as the XPS where it is evident that you pay extra to get a "premium" laptop and yet are playing the "XPS lottery" with Killer WiFi, keyboard and touchpad issues further down the line. 

 

When I look at it my conclusion is that an upgradeable laptop with XPS styling, efficient cooling, 2-in-1 form factor with Inspiron 7306/7506 stylus garage and a 4K screen together with dGPU paired with similar warranty/service options as the Latitude is what I would like. A thicker chassis is perfectly fine (reference would be a MacBook Pro 2011 13 inch) if need be for efficient cooling, aiming at quiet operation and lower temperatures. 

 

 

[win32asmguy]

6 hours ago, GeekBear80 said:

Another laptop issue is the whole separation between "gaming laptops", "business laptops" and "UltraBooks" where it seems very problematic to combine the styling of a "business laptop" with the performance of a "gaming laptop". If I want high performance and generous warranties I am in trouble since I am now trying to combine two different categories. This is because if I buy a "business laptop", I tend to have to make do with Iris XE/Vega since dGPU is "for gaming" and if I buy an "UltraBook" I can get a dGPU but the inefficient cooling hamper its performance.

Dell added RTX 3080 options to their Precision 7560/7760 late last year. They are thicker business machines that are very well built, modular and easily repairable. They have conservative TDP's which is probably a turn off for people looking for max performance, although because of that they are not very noisy or hot.

[VEGGIM]

On 3/13/2022 at 4:56 PM, GeekBear80 said:

A trend that really must die is the GPU chaos with all confusion related to TDPs and so on and so forth. It is also pretty fascinating to see the complete and utter chaos that is the "GeForce 3000 series" where laptop A with a "higher end" GeForce 3080 is slower than laptop B with a 3070 due to the TDP/power budget. The same goes for the whole situation with "mobile 3080" and "desktop 3080". It is pretty evident that the naming has to change and logic being implemented - one way would be as follows:

 

1000 series. Entry level cards, laptops use 1000M series and desktops use 1000D.

 

2000 series. Mid-range cards, M and D designations as above.

 

3000 series. High-end cards.

 

4000 series. Top of the line, desktop cards.

 

TDP should be added to the name of the card and a 150 W model in the 3000 series in a laptop would be something like "RTX 3080M-150". As it is now, getting a laptop with nVidia GPU is a matter of researching TDPs of different models and then find something with a high TDP, a recent GPU and decent benchmarks and hope for the best. It is also interesting that "3000 series" cover a lot of different bases to such an extent that BOTH mid-range AND high end are included together with the TDP chaos.

 

This chaos has to end.

 

Another laptop issue is the whole separation between "gaming laptops", "business laptops" and "UltraBooks" where it seems very problematic to combine the styling of a "business laptop" with the performance of a "gaming laptop". If I want high performance and generous warranties I am in trouble since I am now trying to combine two different categories. This is because if I buy a "business laptop", I tend to have to make do with Iris XE/Vega since dGPU is "for gaming" and if I buy an "UltraBook" I can get a dGPU but the inefficient cooling hamper its performance. 

 

It is also interesting to note that we also have "consumer laptops" in the mix where the "interesting" situation arises that you can buy a model with stylus and 4K screen with touch (Dell Inspiron 7306/7506 for example) but when moving up toward "business" (Latitude for example) you have to kiss goodbye to those features. You can't even get the XPS with a similar stylus integration as the aforementioned Inspirons either. 

 

The more I look at it, the more I realize that the industry really has to get their act together and start to merge the artificial "categories" in order to create high performance laptops where it is possible to get 4K (aka high pixel density), dGPU, efficient cooling, 2-in-1 AND garaged stylus paired with repair friendliness in ONE package together with "business grade" warranty.

 

Another issue is the quality standards of the "consumer premium" lines such as the XPS where it is evident that you pay extra to get a "premium" laptop and yet are playing the "XPS lottery" with Killer WiFi, keyboard and touchpad issues further down the line. 

 

When I look at it my conclusion is that an upgradeable laptop with XPS styling, efficient cooling, 2-in-1 form factor with Inspiron 7306/7506 stylus garage and a 4K screen together with dGPU paired with similar warranty/service options as the Latitude is what I would like. A thicker chassis is perfectly fine (reference would be a MacBook Pro 2011 13 inch) if need be for efficient cooling, aiming at quiet operation and lower temperatures. 

 

 

for thicker chassis basically anything thats as large as an ethernet port. since that is how large they are. around 1 inch in height. Most laptops will sometimes have the body curved. the back is more thicker, while the front gets more thinner.

[GeekBear80]

On 3/13/2022 at 9:07 PM, win32asmguy said:

Dell added RTX 3080 options to their Precision 7560/7760 late last year. They are thicker business machines that are very well built, modular and easily repairable. They have conservative TDP's which is probably a turn off for people looking for max performance, although because of that they are not very noisy or hot.

 

I have been looking at those Precisions; the only thing I miss personally is 2-in-1 functionality since I like that flexibility, though. Conservative TDP isn't a turn off to me since I am very much in favor of efficient cooling and quiet operation. It is better to have sustainable performance rather than something that boost high for a short period and then throttles heavily (such as boosting to 3.5-4 GHz for one minute and then goes down to 1 GHz or something after that due to overheating). 

[Papusan]

The diseased thin and sllim laptop trend strikes again. It comes with a huge drawback. Design over functionality. Why go for worlds thinnest design over functionality for an gaming laptop? Make it so damn thin that you can't offer better performing graphics cards and on top have to opt for the most castrated version of cards match  the thread topic as hand in glove.  

 

"The new Alienware x14" offers the latest technology and stable gaming performance, but the slim chassis requires some compromises. A thicker chassis would have probably been better for many most customers.

 

Alienware x14 Review - The world's thinnest gaming notebook requires compromises

 

The marketing phrase “world’s thinnest gaming notebook” sounds good, but we are pretty sure a slightly thicker chassis would have resulted in a better product.