Is it just me, or have low-end laptops barely improved in the last few years?

[DarkBlade2117]

34 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

most consumers don't know the difference they just know as i7 is better than a i5. 

Which isn't true for laptops... An i7-6500U isn't better than a HQ i5...

[PSUGuru]

I bought a Lenovo ideapad for 300$. It's very nice.

 

Specs:

CPU: I3-6100U with HD 520 graphics

RAM: 4GB DDR3L 1866 (going to get a 16gb DDR4 2133 kit)

Storage: 1TB 7200RPM

1366x768 resolution

 

It only had 4 1/2 hours of battery life if you're browsing the internet. If you're gaming something somewhat intensive (Like Hearts of Iron 4) It'll only last 1 /12 to 2 hours.

 

Other than that, 300$ is a steal for what this Laptop offers.

[Droidbot]

1 hour ago, RadiatingLight said:

Didn't know that.

anyway, an i5 HQ is way better than an i7 U, but people don't think so.

Well they're close to a desktop i3 when turboing

Which is nice

[mrchow19910319]

I think low end laptop's margin is fairly low. 

Think about it this way, you can sell me item A at a price of $500. And it can make $100 profit for you.

Then there is this item B that sell at a price of $2000 and you can make $500 profit. 

Which one would you sell?? 

 

Just my guess. 

 

[Spork829]

9 hours ago, Droidbot said:

What i7? Arrandale (1st gen) IPC and iGPU sucks

3537U

[Spork829]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I think low end laptop's margin is fairly low. 

Think about it this way, you can sell me item A at a price of $500. And it can make $100 profit for you.

Then there is this item B that sell at a price of $2000 and you can make $500 profit. 

Which one would you sell?? 

 

Just my guess. 

 

Right, and I think they assume most people at my price point just need something for basic tasks and can just buy a Chromebook, which is probably accurate.

[alexcheetah]

The low end laptop market is dying, everyone is buying tablets and phones instead, the only advancement will come from the highend market. 

[mrchow19910319]

3 hours ago, Spork829 said:

Right, and I think they assume most people at my price point just need something for basic tasks and can just buy a Chromebook, which is probably accurate.

I don't know anything about chromebook and I did not see any of my friends using it..... I know they are light weight, has their own chrome OS, but I think we are not quite there yet when it comes to "store everything to the cloud ". 

[Spork829]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I don't know anything about chromebook and I did not see any of my friends using it..... I know they are light weight, has their own chrome OS, but I think we are not quite there yet when it comes to "store everything to the cloud ". 

For people that don't have much to begin with, they're good little laptops for someone like a student that just needs to take notes on it.

[Droidbot]

6 hours ago, Spork829 said:

3537U

U series are dual core trash

HQ series are quad core beasts

[mrchow19910319]

1 hour ago, Spork829 said:

For people that don't have much to begin with, they're good little laptops for someone like a student that just needs to take notes on it.

Agree. 

[Spork829]

1 hour ago, Droidbot said:

U series are dual core trash

HQ series are quad core beasts

Still a great deal at the price I'm looking at, but yeah I'd only probably go for an HQ.

[Droidbot]

32 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

Still a great deal at the price I'm looking at, but yeah I'd only probably go for an HQ.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-W530-Laptop-i7-3720QM-2-6GHz-8GB-RAM-250GB-HDD-15-6-LCD-Win10-/292035860844?hash=item43feb1996c:g:DHUAAOSw44BYk5bV

 

$400 for an i7 quad, 8GB RAM, and a Quadro card

[Spork829]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-W530-Laptop-i7-3720QM-2-6GHz-8GB-RAM-250GB-HDD-15-6-LCD-Win10-/292035860844?hash=item43feb1996c:g:DHUAAOSw44BYk5bV

 

$400 for an i7 quad, 8GB RAM, and a Quadro card

Oooooo

[Droidbot]

2 minutes ago, Spork829 said:

Oooooo

or if you want something small with some serious grunt:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-EliteBook-2570p-2-9-i7-8GB-500GB-HD-Webcam-Fingerprint-Win-7-Pro-Warranty-/322425655358?hash=item4b1211103e:g:QcYAAOSw2gxYpfyT

 

Okay, it's a dual-core. But for the $200 you save when compared to the Lenovo, you can invest it into an i7 quad.

Yes, this thing HAS A CPU SOCKET. You can rip out the stock dual-core i7 and drop in an i7 quad. 

And it's 12.5".  And you can do external GPU. And you can do dual SSDs. It's a nice freaking machine. It runs hot as hell under load though, but doesn't get super duper loud unless you push it

(totally biased asf because I own one) 

[Spork829]

1 hour ago, Droidbot said:

or if you want something small with some serious grunt:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-EliteBook-2570p-2-9-i7-8GB-500GB-HD-Webcam-Fingerprint-Win-7-Pro-Warranty-/322425655358?hash=item4b1211103e:g:QcYAAOSw2gxYpfyT

 

Okay, it's a dual-core. But for the $200 you save when compared to the Lenovo, you can invest it into an i7 quad.

Yes, this thing HAS A CPU SOCKET. You can rip out the stock dual-core i7 and drop in an i7 quad. 

And it's 12.5".  And you can do external GPU. And you can do dual SSDs. It's a nice freaking machine. It runs hot as hell under load though, but doesn't get super duper loud unless you push it

(totally biased asf because I own one) 

That's actually even more up my alley as I would like for it to be small. Cool thank you

[D2ultima]

On 2/24/2017 at 4:18 AM, Droidbot said:

Well they're close to a desktop i3 when turboing

Which is nice

But they don't hold turbo... 15W limit, which includes the iGPU's power draw.

15 hours ago, Droidbot said:

U series are dual core trash

HQ series are quad core beasts

I dunno about "beasts"... they're all pretty slow in general. I think only the 7700HQ is half-decent for an entry-level chip at 3.4GHz in recent times. 6700HQ is a resounding 3.1GHz. I'm considering 4-core boosts; 1-core and 2-core boosts mean nothing for gamers.

 

Also if people are wondering about mobile intel CPUs that aren't intel atom class, there's a CPU guide in my signature~

It's not updated for Kaby Lake yet, but Kaby Lake is mostly speed bumps so it's not a  priority to add yet.

[Droidbot]

8 hours ago, D2ultima said:

But they don't hold turbo... 15W limit, which includes the iGPU's power draw.

I dunno about "beasts"... they're all pretty slow in general. I think only the 7700HQ is half-decent for an entry-level chip at 3.4GHz in recent times. 6700HQ is a resounding 3.1GHz. I'm considering 4-core boosts; 1-core and 2-core boosts mean nothing for gamers.

 

Also if people are wondering about mobile intel CPUs that aren't intel atom class, there's a CPU guide in my signature~

It's not updated for Kaby Lake yet, but Kaby Lake is mostly speed bumps so it's not a  priority to add yet.

they're beasts for the laptop class I guess, but let's be honest if you're looking for super high performance you get yourself a Clevo machine with a 7700K desktop chip. or an XM chip with the turbo bins unlocked, but those mofos draw up to 68W

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

they're beasts for the laptop class I guess, but let's be honest if you're looking for super high performance you get yourself a Clevo machine with a 7700K desktop chip. or an XM chip with the turbo bins unlocked, but those mofos draw up to 68W

68W is nothing compared to a 3.2GHz 82W Pentium 4 Northwood inside a laptop (the copper heatsinks for it are large+heavy, and the fans are at least double the normal thickness)

[Droidbot]

Just now, Dabombinable said:

68W is nothing compared to a 3.2GHz 82W Pentium 4 Northwood inside a laptop (the copper heatsinks for it are large+heavy, and the fans are at least double the normal thickness)

P4s used to run so freaking hot it was insane..

 

Some of the Clevo machines I've seen have delidded 7700K's out of the box with a 5.1Ghz OC.. 

That's gotta consume some power..

[Dabombinable]

Just now, Droidbot said:

P4s used to run so freaking hot it was insane..

 

Some of the Clevo machines I've seen have delidded 7700K's out of the box with a 5.1Ghz OC.. 

That's gotta consume some power..

Not really.

[D2ultima]

32 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

they're beasts for the laptop class I guess, but let's be honest if you're looking for super high performance you get yourself a Clevo machine with a 7700K desktop chip. or an XM chip with the turbo bins unlocked, but those mofos draw up to 68W

XM don't exist anymore. And they were 58W rated... but TDP rating means nothing. Give them the same voltage and clockspeed and QM/MQ and XM/MX draw the same power.

 

Also, they're still not beasts for the laptop class. I guess Kaby Lake might be better; Skylake was awful and Haswell/Broadwell never held their clocks under load. It bothered me to see desktop CPUs improve (4790K --> 4.2GHz stock, 6700K --> 4GHz stock, 7700K --> 4.4GHz stock) and laptop CPUs go behind (4xxxHQ never hold turbo, 6700HQ --> 3.1GHz, 6820HK 3.2GHz, 6920HQ 3.4GHz & 2 x cost of 6700K).

[Droidbot]

27 minutes ago, D2ultima said:

XM don't exist anymore. And they were 58W rated... but TDP rating means nothing. Give them the same voltage and clockspeed and QM/MQ and XM/MX draw the same power.

 

Also, they're still not beasts for the laptop class. I guess Kaby Lake might be better; Skylake was awful and Haswell/Broadwell never held their clocks under load. It bothered me to see desktop CPUs improve (4790K --> 4.2GHz stock, 6700K --> 4GHz stock, 7700K --> 4.4GHz stock) and laptop CPUs go behind (4xxxHQ never hold turbo, 6700HQ --> 3.1GHz, 6820HK 3.2GHz, 6920HQ 3.4GHz & 2 x cost of 6700K).

Old IVB/Haswell XMs could be pushed to 68W under turbo in the Dell Latitude E6430/E6440 with a simple couple commands in UEFI. And having an invalid power adapter. People got their standard 3720QMs to 4Ghz with some BIOS tweaking. Solid machines. But the default cooling sucked, so people started getting their hands on the dGPU model's heatsink and putting it in the iGPU model. 

 

High end laptop performance is definitely not improving, we're just seeing improvements for people buying U and Y (CoreM) series based machines. 

U series are actually quite competent mobile processors now, but they're still fucking dualcores...

But hey, at least Intel gave us a quad-core i5 mobile processor, huh guys? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[D2ultima]

1 hour ago, Droidbot said:

Old IVB/Haswell XMs could be pushed to 68W under turbo in the Dell Latitude E6430/E6440 with a simple couple commands in UEFI. And having an invalid power adapter. People got their standard 3720QMs to 4Ghz with some BIOS tweaking. Solid machines. But the default cooling sucked, so people started getting their hands on the dGPU model's heatsink and putting it in the iGPU model. 

 

High end laptop performance is definitely not improving, we're just seeing improvements for people buying U and Y (CoreM) series based machines. 

U series are actually quite competent mobile processors now, but they're still fucking dualcores...

But hey, at least Intel gave us a quad-core i5 mobile processor, huh guys? 

you do realize I wrote the mobile intel CPU guide, and my 4800MQ has easily pulled over 80W right?

 

Dell's 68W limit in their latitudes and the M17x R4 is an artificial limit. The M18x R1 and M18x R2 and AW18 don't have such a limit; they can pull upwards of 130W when heavily overclocked.

 

I know for certain that mobile intel chips are getting worse. I'm saying that Kaby Lake may not be as bad (functionally) but they're still rather... meh I guess?

 

[Droidbot]

1 hour ago, D2ultima said:

you do realize I wrote the mobile intel CPU guide, and my 4800MQ has easily pulled over 80W right?

 

Dell's 68W limit in their latitudes and the M17x R4 is an artificial limit. The M18x R1 and M18x R2 and AW18 don't have such a limit; they can pull upwards of 130W when heavily overclocked.

 

I know for certain that mobile intel chips are getting worse. I'm saying that Kaby Lake may not be as bad (functionally) but they're still rather... meh I guess?

 

Holy lord.. meanwhile I have to powerlimit my 2570p because the default cooling sucks, gonna mod it with some copper shims on heatsink and heatpipe to get a decent temp drop for when I install a 3720QM or similar IVB CPU.

 

Nothing beats the meme of 'Skylake and Kaby Lake; can you tell the difference?'