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I feel like you're being overly charitable to laptop manufacturers. If such manufacturers always considered the thermal limits of their products when advertisin

I feel like you're being overly charitable to laptop manufacturers. If such manufacturers always considered the thermal limits of their products when advertising their performance, then I don't think many people would complain. Since that isn't the case, however, many people get a laptop that isn't capable of performing the tasks it's advertised for. The excuse of "well, we didn't think you'd really need that much power" doesn't really cut it, when said power was strongly advertised on the box.

mjg59 4y ago
Oh yeah the fact that a given laptop has a given CPU certainly doesn't mean that it's going to run at the same speed as another laptop with the same CPU, and it's unfortunate that manufacturers don't tend to give users the tools needed to figure out whether the thermal limitations are going to affect them. But review benchmarks do generally show the performance distinctions fairly clearly?
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  I'm sure there are benchmarks out there that comprehensively cover thermal behavior of laptops, but many sadly don't. I've had many laptops with great benchmarks that completely fall apart under prolonged load (>1 hour) Usually because the benchmark was 10-30 mins, during which the other components didn't heat up enough for throttling to occur. I don't think the average laptop user should need to concern themselves with acquiring the necessary knowledge to discern good laptop benchmarks.
  - wtallis 4y ago
    > I don't think the average laptop user should need to concern themselves with acquiring the necessary knowledge to discern good laptop benchmarks. They don't. The average laptop user doesn't have sustained workloads that keep the system running at 100% capacity for over an hour, so they don't need and shouldn't want benchmarks reflecting such a use case. They're genuinely better served by benchmarks reflecting workloads that come in shorter bursts.

mjg59 4y ago

Oh yeah the fact that a given laptop has a given CPU certainly doesn't mean that it's going to run at the same speed as another laptop with the same CPU, and it's unfortunate that manufacturers don't tend to give users the tools needed to figure out whether the thermal limitations are going to affect them. But review benchmarks do generally show the performance distinctions fairly clearly?

Last5Digits 4y ago
I'm sure there are benchmarks out there that comprehensively cover thermal behavior of laptops, but many sadly don't. I've had many laptops with great benchmarks that completely fall apart under prolonged load (>1 hour) Usually because the benchmark was 10-30 mins, during which the other components didn't heat up enough for throttling to occur. I don't think the average laptop user should need to concern themselves with acquiring the necessary knowledge to discern good laptop benchmarks.
- wtallis 4y ago
  > I don't think the average laptop user should need to concern themselves with acquiring the necessary knowledge to discern good laptop benchmarks. They don't. The average laptop user doesn't have sustained workloads that keep the system running at 100% capacity for over an hour, so they don't need and shouldn't want benchmarks reflecting such a use case. They're genuinely better served by benchmarks reflecting workloads that come in shorter bursts.