Tech Enthusiast

I am not sure you will get a GPU that can actually push 4k@120 with the next gen tho. Sadly my 2080ti even gets as low as 70fps on some games with 1440p, let alone 4k. Sure, I could turn down some settings, but damn... id rather have the eye candy haha.

That is one GPU that competes in one bracket out of all the possible price brackets. It is a start, don't get me wrong. The 5700 came as a pleasant surprise! Yet, I don't think that is even remotely enough, unless you only shop in exactly that price and performance bracket. So you might be happy about it. I am not. Neither the 5700, nor the 5700X are my preferred performance bracket, so I got nothing out of the good start myself.

Well, if the same GPU is still inferior to the competition, we can call it innovation, but not enough innovation. If my last software was a calculator that could add and substract and my next calculator can multiply and divide... that is innovation for ME. But noone would care, if other people sell calculators that can do square roots, brackets, exponentials etc.

I agree with the premise that a new GPU should never be "on par" with currently available GPUs, but straight out better. Turing is nearing 2 years old now. If AMD can match it in September, NVidia will just laugh and launch a slight upgrade / refresh, or just lower prices for the luls. That's not gonna be enough. AMD has to push NVidia, not trail behind all the time. For competition, we need actual progress, not the same product we already have with a red sticker on it, two years later.

I am praying for this release to rock and competition to return to GPUs. Not as crazy as they wipe the floor with Intel right now (because that only means reversed roles), but they need to hit NVidia with a solid product for once. Sadly, my expectations are slim for now. AMD always overpromises on their GPU segment. They keep touting how great their next product will be and what we get is mostly "okish", but certainly not great and only competitive in segments NVidia allows them to be.

Im with you on that one. Tiers are not dictated by an artificial price limit, but by what is available on the market. A 1080 is no longer high-end, because even the lower end current gen GPUs offer similar performance. And while a 1080 is enough for most 1080p gamers, it hardly makes 4k@60 viable, let alone with amazing settings. So no, it is not more than a mid tier GPU.

Because the relative performance graphs are still accurate. No one forces you to read their blog posts, if you don't like them. There simply is no faster way to check relative performance of all the products out there. You simply won't find a review of "insert my current gpu" vs "all the GPUs i consider for an upgrade". Once you settle on one that fits your cost / performance needs, you can go ahead and double check with reviews if it really is good for you. But the first glance on userbenchmark can save plenty of hours of research and no one else offers this sadly.

Same Old, same ol'. Whenever a new console hits the market, they are optimized enough to "beat" a similarly priced PC, if you just factor in gaming and ignore all the other things a PC can do. And about a year later, it breaks even,... then we get another 6-7 years of constant console bashing due to being bad value for the performance. We all seen that, and we will all see it again (and again and again probably). The good thing about a new console generation is usually that PCs are not bottle necked for a few years, which in turn pushes NVidia to make better GPUs for a while. Over the past years graphics have mostly been stagnant, due to games having to keep kind of parity with consoles,... so they made the PC graphics look just as bad. So, just ignoring the usual console vs PC bashing,... as a PC gamer, I can finally look forward to getting prettier games for a while, so that makes me happy. Since I am using the PC for so many other tasks anyways, I won't ever exchange it for a console tho. But I may add a console either way, because,... well... why not. Just 500 bucks and you don't have to depend on PC Bluetooth and streaming for the couch experience for a while.

Not a huge deal in my book. Never understood why people insist on buying new CPUs and use them on Boards that were not designed to use all the fancy features to their full potential. AM4 has been here forever. Just move on to AM5 or whatever. The more time they need to spend supporting old stuff, the less time they spend on making the new stuff amazing. Id rather see AMD crush Intel some more and beat them a little more, while Intel is on the ground and helpless. When (not a matter of "if" in my book) Intel returns to the competitive market, AMD better have a solid market share and following.

I went the same tune, but was to lazy to write it all up,... since honestly it is hard to argue with apple marketing. They say it is great, people think it is mandatory and the future. Just how it works sadly. Amazing write up, thank you. The bottom line for me is: USB3 will not bottleneck even "those" use-cases AND the laptop in question would melt after seconds, if the workflow would actually go full blast on the bandwidth.

Look, because you ignore all the drawbacks, does not mean they are not there. TB does cost money and it is a security hole. You may ignore that or don't agree on the importance, but that does not make them vanish. They are both there and valid facts. Thinking Apple is giving them for free is also kind of funny. Without TB, it would be cheaper. No company will put in expenses for free, just because. And going by your comment about "a 2k device should have it", well... a 2k device should also have adequate cooling to use the included components. Apple products don`t offer that,... after just 2min of going full blast, the CPUs usually throttle below base. So they have TB, yes. But they will melt, long before they can saturate even USB3. Or even use half of their theoretical performance. My MacBook Air will actually shut down after a few minutes of using its full performance. It will reach 105 degree celsius and just shut down. What kind of heavy workload does that need? Well,... installing a 10gb game will be enough. There is no way in hell these machines can saturate USB3, let alone TB. But good thing they added it for marketing, right? So you are fine with a bottleneck that affects everyone using their device, but a bottleneck that affects one in tens of thousands is unacceptable? Do you not see the irony there?

So a machine that can't even run all those things at once is used to show a use case that "the other" tech is limited? Kind of funny actually. You are acting like people saturate 10gbit connections, just because one USB3 could in theory do that. You seem to totally ignore that you usually run far below those saturated connections. Especially with the stuff you mention that all needs connecting. You could do all you currently do on every USB3 as well, without noticing a difference. Apart maybe from data transfer to that external storage, if it has TB as well. Also: If that is the future, count me out. Ill stick with the past in that case. Going backwards at full speed should not be the future, no matter how hard apple marketing claims it to be. Why would anyone even consider that setup, with all the drawbacks on every front, INCLUDING price?

To make use of TB, the connected devices also need TB licensing. This usually doubles the price, 50% if you are lucky. I just don't get why everyone should pay all the extra money, for something very few people actually use. It's not like a common laptop with TB would have the raw power to even saturate all that stuff at once. Let alone finding a use case that does indeed saturate enough stuff at once to bottleneck USB3. We are really talking constructed use cases here to make TB sound useful. Again: It is an amazing thing to have and does work amazingly well for what it is. Just like a 2000 horse power car is amazing for what it is, yet very few people would actually see the benefit, while everyone will see the added fuel cost. If and once TB comes without drawbacks and extra cost, I will be the first to happily use it or even search for it on my devices. Until then, I am fine with "only" using the 1000 horse power car for my groceries shopping. That saved fuel will get my cats a few extra snacks!

Ok, let me try it with your own words then: Thunderbolts usefulness is stupidly overrated. You need half a dozen external devices to notice a difference vs USB3 and you would also need a main device that is capable of nothing but thunderbolt to begin with. Look: There are people that want it and those can buy devices with it. There are people that don't need it, and they have devices that don't cost extra for the licensing and don't have the potential security issue. I just don't understand why you insist on this feature to be present everywhere, even tho most people don't even need it AND it has obvious drawbacks as well. If we would be talking about a feature that would NOT increase prices and would NOT have a security issue, then sure, everything should have it. No amount of arguing will make TB such a feature tho. It is amazing, no doubt! But it comes with drawbacks. Why would anyone take drawbacks, if the gain is not something they need or even want? What's so hard about understanding this? Nothing that comes with drawbacks should be demanded on every device. That's just silly. There will always be people not willing to take the drawback, just as there are always people not willing to not have feature X. So,... just have devices for both groups and be done with it.

If something I don't need is a potential security flaw, I am happy to not have it. Every option on a portable device comes with drawbacks. Always. You could shove in a dGPU in every ultrabook. So, does that mean you should? No! You could shove in VGA ports and everything that came after them. So, should every laptop have them? Hell no. It is always a tradeoff. You get X, you sacrifice something else. Be it space for bigger batteries, height, weight, security, price or whatever else. There are devices that say the tradeoff for their customers is worth it. Microsoft disagrees. So people that want TB buy something else. People that don't buy Surface devices. No idea why you think every laptop needs every option. Just be happy to have options. Other people would argue that every portable with TB is a security bomb and should not exist. Just imagine if they would succeed in their war against TB and you could not buy any device with it anymore. Would suck, would it not?

To be fair, the missing security kind of is the point of the tech. With security, this tech would not exist. It is less of a tech with security flaws,.. more like a tech that has a tradeoff that may or may not be relevant to you.

Where did I do that? I said how I do it, not that everyone should or needs to. Getting a single device that even remotely equals those is way more expensive btw. There are Alienware Laptops upwards of 16k for business customers that try the one device route. I know a company trying that and it sure is fun to watch them carry their suitcases to work. As per your other example: So because YOU want that port, everyone else that does not need it should cope up with the sercurity flaws? Why not... you know... pick a device that offers what YOU need, instead of changing a device that is perfect for everyone else?

In the same boat here. Maybe that is why I don't understand the need for a port that tries to fix bad buying decisions. Where I need a powerhouse for work, I place a desktop with a quadro and AMD threadrippers or epyc. When I go out to customers, I carry a Surface (or any other suitable ultrabook / tablet, depending on my needs at the time). When I get home, i obiuously game on a desktop with an RTX 2080ti power and an 9900K. Just thinking about trying to fit those three VERY different use-cases into a single device and fixing the shortcomings with a dongle and connector life,... hell no.

Just because something is possible, does not mean it should be done or is a good idea tho. If you need it for ease of mind, just ignore the surface line.

Apple is doing a lot of things that they make sound cool, but are actually useless or done better everywhere else. They do nail the marketing tho. So many people fall for the fancy names and stuff like "This new iPhone is the FASTEST we have EVER made!",... yeah no kidding.

PC Enthusiasts also don't try to run every device there is from their tablet tho. You seem to argue that TB can connect everything to a single device,... that does not have anything itself. Yes, that seems to be true. But who in the world would do that? That sounds like a fancy tech demo to show it is possible, but why would anyone want to do it in a real setting? If you need several screens, a keyboard, a mouse, some external drives and SD card reader.... how about buying a device that fits the job and not go out of your way to try and make your calculator connect to enough external things at once? I just don't see the reasoning behind this idea. In the past 12 years I have been in about 75 IT companies raging from 4 to 5000 people. And while some have used laptops they carry to work every day, they always claimed the situation to be "temporary" only until they have the money to get real machines in the office. Some had people mainly working on external customers, which obviously did have laptops for that. But I remember only 3 not having a full desktop setup anyways. Getting a full-blown Desktop + Laptop is a business expense companies just write off from taxes, while plugging in your tablet do "work" is a rarity at best.

No one claims TB is not amazing. Just like a 2000 horse power car would be amazing for buying groceries. The question is: What does TB offer that warrants the security issues? Who would actually notice TBs strong points? What kind of setup is required for TB to shine, that USB can't do just as well. You can always construct a use case, no doubt. But how many people would be actually using that use case in a real environment, outside a forum for bragging rights? Again. We all agree TB is amazing. We just don't seem to agree on whether it is actually needed for anything reasonable. If you can do all you need to do without the added security issue, why would you want it anways? And if a certain percentage of customers don't need something with a security issue, isn't it the best thing to do... to not include it? We don't know how many people refuse to buy a surface due to this, but we can have a very good guess at how many people actually need the small difference between what USB 3 can do and what only TB can do. From all I gathered up to now, the group of people really NEEDING TB seems quite small. Like 1/10.000 people small, or even smaller. Even if it was 1/1000 "big" (and that would certainly stretch it a lot), the argument to screw over the 999 people, so the 1 guy can connect a crazy 5k multi monitor setup to his tablet would certainly be a bad idea. Don't we agree on that?

So, I will just assume you did not actually turn on noise reduction, but just installed and selected a mic. If noise from half a dozen sources, all topping 80-95dB can get filtered at once and some people claim it just does not work... I sense user error tbh.

So, what are the real use cases for TB then? I don't even know if my devices ever had it,.. nor have I missed it, or even had a reason to look up if I have it. Just connecting external stuff? What kind of external things need TB and are not fine with USB? If I get a build in and known security issue and the tradeoff is something I don't even need or miss, that sure sounds like a bad deal. I fully understand and support MS stance on this, unless someone can point out a reason why there absolutely must be TB for reason X. As others have pointed out, there are enough docks that can connect screens, mice, keyboards all without using TB. Then there is the question of how many people actually do use that setup (or should for that matter,... why not have a desktop right there and a laptop when out in the wild?)

Desktops are usually sitting in your house, or workplaces that are usually locked. The risk of someone putting a TB device in there to manipulate whatever is pretty slim. Laptops on the other hand are carried everywhere. Hell, I see people leaving those on the desk in a restaurant, if they go to the rest rooms. Everyone could go to the table, insert a stick and go ham with the open doors. There are always tradeoffs and situations that make those tradeoffs worse or less bad. Desktops with tb certainly are at a slimmer risk, even tho it is indeed the same vulnerability.