Something about Ultrabooks

[SerialAceTU1]

I have noticed that all of the Ultrabooks does not have a dedicated GPU.

Is this what Intel wants in order to recognise a notebook as an Ultrabook,

or the chassis too thin to fit in the graphics card?

[79wjd]

A dGPU would affect battery life, require a more beefy cooling solution, and increase costs. So a little of everything. 

[Djole123]

Then it wouldn't be "ultra light, thin and silent"

[Speakerator]

Well, there are "Ultrabooks" with a dedicated GPU, even though they may not be allowed to call themselve "Ultrabook", if Intel's specification demands onboard graphic. For exaample, look at the Asus UX 303 LN, which is small an light, has most of the Ultrabook capabilities and a dedicated 840M:

 

 

 

 

[othertomperson]

6 minutes ago, Speakerator said:

Well, there are "Ultrabooks" with a dedicated GPU, even though they may not be allowed to call themselve "Ultrabook", if Intel's specification demands onboard graphic. For exaample, look at the Asus UX 303 LN, which is small an light, has most of the Ultrabook capabilities and a dedicated 840M:

 

Is there one with a good dedicated GPU?

 

I think the point of an ultrabook is always more about form and form factor than performance. Most normal non-ultrabook, non gaming laptop, laptops are shite. There's really no other way of putting it. Battery life is often good but their i3s are lacking, the screens are frankly awful in every respect -- resolution (usually 1366x768 still) colours are drab, colours are drab and viewing angles are narrow.

 

Gaming laptops are heavy and last a couple of hours if you are lucky. If you want something that is just nicer in every way than a standard laptop and will last you through 10 hours of word processing and look gorgeous doing it then an ultrabook makes a tonne of sense. This is basically the entire reason that Macbooks and Macbook Airs exist and why no one who has ever bought an ultrabook has ever given a flying fuck that it cannot run Crysis.

[Speakerator]

10 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Is there one with a good dedicated GPU?

 

I think the point of an ultrabook is always more about form and form factor than performance. Most normal non-ultrabook, non gaming laptop, laptops are shite. There's really no other way of putting it. Battery life is often good but their i3s are lacking, the screens are frankly awful in every respect -- resolution (usually 1366x768 still) colours are drab, colours are drab and viewing angles are narrow.

 

Gaming laptops are heavy and last a couple of hours if you are lucky. If you want something that is just nicer in every way than a standard laptop and will last you through 10 hours of word processing and look gorgeous doing it then an ultrabook makes a tonne of sense. This is basically the entire reason that Macbooks and Macbook Airs exist and why no one who has ever bought an ultrabook has ever given a flying fuck that it cannot run Crysis.

Well, you just answered your own question: graphical powerful laptops (gaming laptops) are big an heavy. Most inexpensive laptops are most suitable for Aunt Martha's office work. Ultrabooks are quite powerful for their size and have a decent battery life, which makes them perfect for students and on the go use. Sure, you can't heavily edit video or game in native resolution - but (as of now) thin, light, powerful and long-living is just not feasable

[manikyath]

34 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Is there one with a good dedicated GPU?

call yourself lucky, anything above an nvidia GT*40m in belgium is price times two...

[othertomperson]

25 minutes ago, Speakerator said:

Well, you just answered your own question: graphical powerful laptops (gaming laptops) are big an heavy. Most inexpensive laptops are most suitable for Aunt Martha's office work. Ultrabooks are quite powerful for their size and have a decent battery life, which makes them perfect for students and on the go use. Sure, you can't heavily edit video or game in native resolution - but (as of now) thin, light, powerful and long-living is just not feasable

Maybe. Although the GPU in those laptops is only being used when it needs to be, most of the time you are running on Integrated to save power, so there isn't really any reason that in low intensity applications a gaming GPU couldn't last as long as an ultrabook.

 

If AMD's performance per watt boasts regarding Polaris are accurate, the Mac Pro landscape could actually get quite interesting here. At the moment the high end Macbook Pros only have M370Xs. If a a GPU that were actually good could match the heat and power of that (or the 840M) then thin and light gaming ultrabooks could explode.

[GoodBytes]

Incorrect, they are ultrabooks with dedicated GPUs.

The 2 most popular ones are: Dell XPS 15 series, Razor series laptop and Surface Book, but that doesn't mean they are the only one, you have ASUS too, and other manufactures with competing products.

 

But, as consumer seek lowest price possible system, manufacture seek to maximize revenues, the consumer that wants a dedicated graphics, wants high performance (so that means more powerful CPUs and GPUs, which means more cooling, which means larger laptop), and those that want a dedicated GPU wants larger laptops, all comes down the market that you see here.

 

And yes, Intel has the monopoly of graphics solution for Intel powered system. Even if your laptop has a dedicated graphics, in most laptop, it all goes through the Intel graphics chip (special drivers are made, where the dedicated GPU output each rendered frame not to a display, but rather in to the system RAM where Intel graphics solution stores its frame buffer. It puts the rendered frame, and fools the Intel graphics solution that the job is already done, and it outputs it to the display. This also allows switchable graphics helping boosting battery life of laptops. Nvidia used to have this great idea of having 2 dedicated graphics solution, one super weak in comparison, for non gaming or graphically intensive tasks, and then you actual dedicated graphics. Sadly, because it requires more money (2 GPUs) that the manufacture needs to spend (meaning the system cost more to you), the consumer was not interested, and the idea fell out.

 

So now, you are forced to live with all the issues of the Intel integrated graphics, mostly thanks to its horrible drivers. They got really bad in the recent years (to a point that Microsoft had to send a team of devs to Intel to get their drivers ready for Windows 10, while Nvidia and AMD had 0 problem, let alone get the power saving feature of the Intel graphics working, as people were screaming on how "Windows 10 destroys their battery life", while in reality it was Intel), The big problem, is that Intel does not care. I doubt they even have anything but the outmost small team working on the graphics chip, with part of it outsourced on the cheap. Why? Because they have no competition, AND because they see that the graphics chip is a free solution that they offer, while in reality, they jacked up the price of all their CPUs for it, and making it the only choice.

[Dackzy]

1 hour ago, othertomperson said:

Is there one with a good dedicated GPU?

Like a 970m?

You can get the MSI gs40, but that is not really a ultrabook but it is 14 inch and has a weight of about 1.6kg with a run time of max 4-5 hours with normal use and the screen brightness turned down. There is also the Clevo P640 something with the same specs as the msi one it just has a weight of 1.8kg and can last about 2-3 hours max with normal use and the screen brightness turned down.

You are lucky if you even find a real ultrabook with a 940m, most will have intel HD 520.

 

[normsofGTAwars]

There are ultrabooks that have dedicated chips mostly the mid tier Nvidia cards some has the GTX970 or 960M
XPS 15 has a GTX 960M
Asus UX303UB has 940M
and more...(mostly Aorus and Razer)

[SerialAceTU1]

17 hours ago, Speakerator said:

Well, there are "Ultrabooks" with a dedicated GPU, even though they may not be allowed to call themselve "Ultrabook", if Intel's specification demands onboard graphic. For exaample, look at the Asus UX 303 LN, which is small an light, has most of the Ultrabook capabilities and a dedicated 840M:

 

 

 

 

There should be an updated version of it.

With a 6th Gen Core i and GT940M.

Anyone knows the name of the laptop model?

[Dackzy]

2 hours ago, SerialAceTU1 said:

There should be an updated version of it.

With a 6th Gen Core i and GT940M.

Anyone knows the name of the laptop model?

Don't get a Asus laptop their build quality has just been going down since the 2th gen i3/5/7. The same goes for the cooling solution.

[SerialAceTU1]

5 hours ago, Dackzy said:

Don't get a Asus laptop their build quality has just been going down since the 2th gen i3/5/7. The same goes for the cooling solution.

Nah I usually don't care about it.

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, SerialAceTU1 said:

Nah I usually don't care about it.

trust me you will when it starts to get up to 96 degrees and things stop working, because then you have to pay people like me money to fix it and that fix might last 1/2 year and then you need to do it again. I think it is better to get a quality build laptop that you don't have to get fixed over a cheaper laptop you will have to get fixed.

[SerialAceTU1]

On 5/4/2016 at 9:02 PM, GoodBytes said:

Incorrect, they are ultrabooks with dedicated GPUs.

The 2 most popular ones are: Dell XPS 15 series, Razor series laptop and Surface Book, but that doesn't mean they are the only one, you have ASUS too, and other manufactures with competing products.

 

But, as consumer seek lowest price possible system, manufacture seek to maximize revenues, the consumer that wants a dedicated graphics, wants high performance (so that means more powerful CPUs and GPUs, which means more cooling, which means larger laptop), and those that want a dedicated GPU wants larger laptops, all comes down the market that you see here.

 

And yes, Intel has the monopoly of graphics solution for Intel powered system. Even if your laptop has a dedicated graphics, in most laptop, it all goes through the Intel graphics chip (special drivers are made, where the dedicated GPU output each rendered frame not to a display, but rather in to the system RAM where Intel graphics solution stores its frame buffer. It puts the rendered frame, and fools the Intel graphics solution that the job is already done, and it outputs it to the display. This also allows switchable graphics helping boosting battery life of laptops. Nvidia used to have this great idea of having 2 dedicated graphics solution, one super weak in comparison, for non gaming or graphically intensive tasks, and then you actual dedicated graphics. Sadly, because it requires more money (2 GPUs) that the manufacture needs to spend (meaning the system cost more to you), the consumer was not interested, and the idea fell out.

 

So now, you are forced to live with all the issues of the Intel integrated graphics, mostly thanks to its horrible drivers. They got really bad in the recent years (to a point that Microsoft had to send a team of devs to Intel to get their drivers ready for Windows 10, while Nvidia and AMD had 0 problem, let alone get the power saving feature of the Intel graphics working, as people were screaming on how "Windows 10 destroys their battery life", while in reality it was Intel), The big problem, is that Intel does not care. I doubt they even have anything but the outmost small team working on the graphics chip, with part of it outsourced on the cheap. Why? Because they have no competition, AND because they see that the graphics chip is a free solution that they offer, while in reality, they jacked up the price of all their CPUs for it, and making it the only choice.

I didn't know about ultrabooks with dgpus.

just that they are so rare. (probably older models.)