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from the renewed-interest-in-Compaq-Portable-computers dept.
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, means we have screwed ourselves out of performance.
Over the last few days we’ve seen outcry about Apple’s new MacBook Pro, which offers an optional top-end i9 processor, and how its performance is throttled to the point of parody as the laptop heats up over time.
Sparked by a video from YouTuber Dave Lee, who demonstrates that the only way to get Apple’s quoted performance from the MacBook Pro is by keeping it in a refrigerator, the outcry has been brutal.
Thousands of comments on the video say things like “Wow if it cant even maintain stock speeds that's pretty sad” and “Apple should offer a fridge that goes with the Macbook i9,” but the sobering reality is that this practice is normal across laptops—we’re just starting to see it more often.
[...] If Pro users really were Apple’s target market, the company could redesign these laptops to use the older, thicker MacBook Pro form factor from 2015. With that available space, and improvements in processor design, it would be able to better cool the same hardware and squeeze out more performance—but it’ll never happen. Thicker laptops would mean admitting failure.
Thinner and lighter is great, and if we’re honest, we’re all sucked in by the allure. The unfortunate reality for those of us that need these machines for work is that it’s just not good enough, and we’d welcome thicker machines in exchange for hardware that isn’t constrained by heat. Apple insists these new MacBooks are for ‘pro users,’ and while it has some of the best-in-class hardware design out there today, it simply doesn’t hold up if you push them hard enough.
The MacBook Pro isn’t designed for pro users at all, it’s a slick marketing machine designed to sell to the wealthy ‘prosumer’ that wouldn’t notice anyway. That much has been clear since the introduction of the Touch Bar and death of the SD slot—and it’s making a ton of money anyway.
Source: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmkve/thinner-and-lighter-laptops-have-screwed-us-all
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @06:54PM (4 children)
Don't put up Dell together with Apple. Their top of the line ultrabook XPS 13 is very serviceable because it was designed to be that way. The only non-removable components are CPU and RAM. The SSD is standard M.2 (in contrast to super-proprietary Apple ones), the WiFi is standard M.2 and there is no white-listing in the BIOS so you can replace that easily (looking at you Lenovo...). The battery is also replaceable, not strictly user-replaceable, but still better than Apple land. The chassis is metal and the cooling solution appropriate - it's dead silent when idling. There is no Core i9 version, yet.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:47PM (3 children)
Good point. But I think the more general and valid complaint is that even if the laptop works well, the smaller size makes cooling dissipation harder and means your CPU is probably a lot slower than what you could get with a mobile workstation. I'm a software developer and my work laptop is thin and light with a 12 inch screen. A "compile and unit test the world" takes half an hour on my machine, my colleague that screamed until he got a desktop finishes the same task in just under 20 minutes. I don't have cause to compile and unit test everything that often, but over the course of a year the productivity difference between him and me will be notable for that alone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:16PM (2 children)
Of course that is the case. You're comparing a at most 35W TDP laptop part with a full blown 80/95/1XXW desktop part. I compile Unreal Engine 4 for a living and the difference between a laptop with a "U" series Intel processor and my work Ryzen 2700X is staggering. It is a nice middle point between a desktop and a full blown Xeon-based workstation with the latter being a few times more expensive.
Desktops also allow for way faster storage since top of the line M.2 NVMe SSDs take up to 10W while working and that heat has to go somewhere - mine stopped throttling after being equipped with a radiator. Most standard NVMe SSDs in ultrabooks run modified firmware limiting throughput just to stop insane battery drainage. The difference between SATA and NVMe for UE4 compilation is measurable and the entire OS feels just "snappier", but that might just be me. This is caused by supporting multiple hardware execution queues with reduced protocol overhead resulting in decreased latencies.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:45PM (1 child)
I used the wrong example there with a desktop. I suspect there is also a very large difference between something like a Microsoft Surface Pro and a mobile workstation, just because a wider and thicker laptop has more room for cooling. Obviously it won't be nearly as big as the difference between either laptop and a good desktop. But it will still be noticeable.
My previous work laptop had a Core i5-3230M and my new one has a Core i7-6600U. The latter is three years newer and somewhat higher ranking in the Intel CPU hierarchy, but it's got a 15 Watt TDP vs the 35 Watt TDP part it replaces. My sense is that my new laptop is only faster because it has a better SSD. Build times between the new and old machines are almost identical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:38PM
The Skylake (6000-series) U model hierarchy is really bad. i3, i5 and i7 are all dual core parts. Only with Coffee Lake-U (8000-series) Intel is finally offering true quad cores at 28W TDP which is what some dual-cores from previous generations were at.