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So I recently switched from a brand new top of the line Ideapad Yoga to an older Thinkpad from 2012. Sure, it's kind of thick. 1.2" thick actually. But it has a

So I recently switched from a brand new top of the line Ideapad Yoga to an older Thinkpad from 2012. Sure, it's kind of thick. 1.2" thick actually. But it has a 3.8GHz processor that can actually sit at 3.8GHz for a very long time because of the giant fans and fat copper heat pipes, and it has 8GB of ram upgradeable to 16, and a decent solid state drive. It looks like a giant hunking black thing, and I love it. Doesn't look expensive, so it won't get stolen, and it cost me $250, so even if it does it won't be the end of the world. I think there'll be a minor trend of people keeping the same laptops they have, or buying older laptops to save money, now that improvements have stagnated. Processors are literally getting slower - I challenge you to find a laptop today that is faster than my X230T. Sure, manufacturers might claim a higher clock speed, but with modern horrible thermal management they can only sit there for brief amounts of time. The X230T can literally sit all day at 3.8GHz, and fairly quietly too. Sure you can go 0.6GHz faster, with the Alienware 18 with a 4.4GHz processor, but that costs six thousand dollars, is as thick as six laptops stacked on top of each other, and is twenty two inches measured diagonally. Oh yeah, and people found that because of heat problems the processor wasn't able to reach the clock speeds claimed. This review [0] shows that it only got to 3.2GHz, which is substantially slower than my $250 laptop. Oh yeah, and that laptop easily goes over 100F on the outside of the case in normal use, so not only will your legs be crushed by the 12 pound 22" monstrosity they'll also be burned if you dare put it on your lap. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.102566.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.1...

ddorian43 9y ago
Please link to your laptop.
- Danihan 9y ago
  I think it's basically this, but he might have a tablet version. http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M-2-90GHz-16GB-240GB-SSD-Windows10-/162547315338?hash=item25d893328a:g:MV4AAOSwiOFZOmEw http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M...
Sorreah 9y ago
I got an equivalent Haswell processor on my 13inch and have never ever experienced CPU throttling even while gaming. It's very very rare for non-ultrabooks to throttle and usually when it happens is because some manufacturers intend it for whatever marketing reasons and not due to heat really building up. You likely wouldn't benefit from a 7700 in a laptop in real life tasks but to suggest that all new laptops with high end processors throttle enough that your old one ends up performing better is an outlandish exaggeration. Not to mention that the GHz race has been over for some time now and clockspeed isn't all that matters.
- owenversteeg 9y ago
  Post-Ivy Bridge mobile Intel processors can't maintain the same maximum all-core clock speed as their predecessors. If you're looking for proof, take a look at Intel's marketing materials for the processors: they start marketing the Turbo Boost clock speed as the "Turbo Boost (single core)". That's because the processor won't let you Turbo Boost the entire processor to the maximum clock speed, only one core. For even more proof, to dissipate power you need a lot of copper and some giant fans. The X230T has a substantial amount of its very thick (1.2") body dedicated to heat pipes, fans, and copper fins. A handful of things I work with are very closely related to heat (Peltier elements, batteries, and motors) so I often look at things with a thermal camera to see how heat is dissipated throughout the laptop. In the X230T I was very impressed: Lenovo's engineers did a fantastic job. The laptop is capable of a substantial amount of heat dissipation. Meanwhile in my previous, fancy, new Yoga Pro laptop with the fanciest processor you can put in it, the thermal management is crap. There's a tiny little fan maybe 5mm thick that sits in a strange place and doesn't seem too effective at anything except making noise. The same goes for every other recent laptop I've seen: most of them seem deadly afraid of making the laptop too heavy or too thick, so they sacrifice heat management. For the equivalent Haswell processor, maximum TDP is 55 watts vs approximately 40 watts for mine. So your laptop, which is almost undoubtedly thinner and with worse thermal management, has to dissipate almost 50% more heat. And don't go thinking there might be some revolution in heat management that lets yours dissipate more heat in a similar space, because "copper plus fans" has been the formula for the past 30 years. (With the exception of water cooling and peltier elements, which are most certainly not in your laptop.) Furthermore, if your processor is putting out 55 watts of heat, _more than_ 55 watts have to go in somewhere. So that's also draining your battery. Standard batteries are around 45ish watt hours in recent laptops, so assuming the rest of your laptop (screen, RAM, motherboard, Wifi, hard drive, etc etc) literally drains zero power you'd have less than 45 minutes of battery power at maximum load. Does that sound like something that would freak out a consumer? Yep. So even if the laptop was thermally capable, this maximum power mode is always limited so the consumer doesn't freak out about getting a battery life measured in minutes. Meanwhile, my Thinkpad, which has a 55 watt hour battery, lasts about an hour and change at maximum power. Did this freak out some people? Maybe. But 2012 Lenovo said "yep, we want to give our consumers maximum power, and if they drain their battery that's their problem." Personally I love it. If I want to limit performance I can just put it in energy saving mode. But most of the time I keep it at maximum, because I like it and in a world with good RAM and a nice SSD the CPU starts to become a bottleneck reasonably often.

ddorian43 9y ago

Please link to your laptop.

Danihan 9y ago
I think it's basically this, but he might have a tablet version. http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M-2-90GHz-16GB-240GB-SSD-Windows10-/162547315338?hash=item25d893328a:g:MV4AAOSwiOFZOmEw http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M...

Sorreah 9y ago

I got an equivalent Haswell processor on my 13inch and have never ever experienced CPU throttling even while gaming. It's very very rare for non-ultrabooks to throttle and usually when it happens is because some manufacturers intend it for whatever marketing reasons and not due to heat really building up. You likely wouldn't benefit from a 7700 in a laptop in real life tasks but to suggest that all new laptops with high end processors throttle enough that your old one ends up performing better is an outlandish exaggeration. Not to mention that the GHz race has been over for some time now and clockspeed isn't all that matters.

owenversteeg 9y ago
Post-Ivy Bridge mobile Intel processors can't maintain the same maximum all-core clock speed as their predecessors. If you're looking for proof, take a look at Intel's marketing materials for the processors: they start marketing the Turbo Boost clock speed as the "Turbo Boost (single core)". That's because the processor won't let you Turbo Boost the entire processor to the maximum clock speed, only one core. For even more proof, to dissipate power you need a lot of copper and some giant fans. The X230T has a substantial amount of its very thick (1.2") body dedicated to heat pipes, fans, and copper fins. A handful of things I work with are very closely related to heat (Peltier elements, batteries, and motors) so I often look at things with a thermal camera to see how heat is dissipated throughout the laptop. In the X230T I was very impressed: Lenovo's engineers did a fantastic job. The laptop is capable of a substantial amount of heat dissipation. Meanwhile in my previous, fancy, new Yoga Pro laptop with the fanciest processor you can put in it, the thermal management is crap. There's a tiny little fan maybe 5mm thick that sits in a strange place and doesn't seem too effective at anything except making noise. The same goes for every other recent laptop I've seen: most of them seem deadly afraid of making the laptop too heavy or too thick, so they sacrifice heat management. For the equivalent Haswell processor, maximum TDP is 55 watts vs approximately 40 watts for mine. So your laptop, which is almost undoubtedly thinner and with worse thermal management, has to dissipate almost 50% more heat. And don't go thinking there might be some revolution in heat management that lets yours dissipate more heat in a similar space, because "copper plus fans" has been the formula for the past 30 years. (With the exception of water cooling and peltier elements, which are most certainly not in your laptop.) Furthermore, if your processor is putting out 55 watts of heat, _more than_ 55 watts have to go in somewhere. So that's also draining your battery. Standard batteries are around 45ish watt hours in recent laptops, so assuming the rest of your laptop (screen, RAM, motherboard, Wifi, hard drive, etc etc) literally drains zero power you'd have less than 45 minutes of battery power at maximum load. Does that sound like something that would freak out a consumer? Yep. So even if the laptop was thermally capable, this maximum power mode is always limited so the consumer doesn't freak out about getting a battery life measured in minutes. Meanwhile, my Thinkpad, which has a 55 watt hour battery, lasts about an hour and change at maximum power. Did this freak out some people? Maybe. But 2012 Lenovo said "yep, we want to give our consumers maximum power, and if they drain their battery that's their problem." Personally I love it. If I want to limit performance I can just put it in energy saving mode. But most of the time I keep it at maximum, because I like it and in a world with good RAM and a nice SSD the CPU starts to become a bottleneck reasonably often.