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> All Chromebook Plus laptops come with the the following guaranteed hardware specs: > CPU: Intel Core i3 12th Gen or above, or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 series or abov

> All Chromebook Plus laptops come with the the following guaranteed hardware specs: > CPU: Intel Core i3 12th Gen or above, or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 series or above > RAM: 8GB+ > Storage: 128GB+ > Webcamera: 1080p+ with Temporal Noise Reduction > Display: Full HD IPS or better display It feels a little weird and sad that an i3 is the bar to make something "plus" in performance.

deleted 3y ago
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creshal 3y ago
> It feels a little weird and sad that an i3 is the bar to make something "plus" in performance. Compared to the Celerons found on some Chromebooks, it still counts. …but there were already plenty of i3 (or even i5, or even R7) Chromebooks with 8 or 16 GB RAM on the market, even at the price point. I don't know what the news is supposed to be here.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  The news is that those models with an i3+ and 8GB of ram will be branded differently to 'help inform the customer of enhanced performance and abilities'. They are trying to shed the image of all chromebooks being thought of by the $159 one that the school gave their kid.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    Indeed, I’m reading the comments on this post because my only experience of Chromebooks is with the cart of them that my students use at school. And that experience has been such a wonderful one that I literally threw one into the trashcan in frustration one day trying to get it to work.
agloe_dreams 3y ago
In fairness, a 12th Gen i3 is not massively far from an M1. The iX branding has become a little silly lately as a user who is not hardcore pushing the system could not possibly tell the difference between a 1215u and a 1235u.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  >a 12th Gen i3 is not massively far from an M1 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4746vs4754vs4765vs4104/Intel-i3-12300-vs-Intel-i3-1215U-vs-Intel-i5-1235U-vs-Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MHz https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4746vs4754vs4765vs4104/... 1215U (accounting for the overwhelming majority of "12th gen i3" laptops) is about 75% of the performance of the lowest-tier M1, so I suppose that's in the ballpark. Performance-per-watt is still night and day, though, with both i3 laptop chips ranging from 15W base to 55W turbo, and M1 ranging from 7W to <30W.
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    75% of an M1 is pretty damn good as when the M1 first came out it was the fastest laptop single core performance in the world.
- mnemoni_c 3y ago
  i3 is probably still associated with "can barely hold 3+ apps open" era but thats not the case for many years now
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    That seems more like a memory/hard drive issue. Ever since the Core 2 product line, intel’s CPUs have all been fine for stuff like office use (browsing, editing files, reading email). Well other than atoms obviously.
    - zxexz 3y ago
      I still use a core 2 duo some days. For basic web browsing (albeit with a pihole on the network) and shelling, it works fine. I think it’s the longest running machine I have. A Thinkpad X200 - not wiped in 13 years (since installing Arch). Truly a frankenstein’s monster of a machine now. Hardware mods are so easy on this thing - I switched to an SSD probably 10 years ago, some RAM upgrades. Upgraded Wi-Fi card a few times (mostly based off mainline kernel driver support). Touchpad a couple times, keyboard at least the same. Keeping Arch running on this machine without wiping everything is the only think keeping my Linux skills sharp in the era of company-issued macs.
matthewaveryusa 3y ago
The price point of the i3 ~100 dollars, and the fact that most applications will not be CPU bound by an i3 are the driving factors. The clock speed is one thing, but the instruction sets really provide everything that's needed that would otherwise peg your cpu (notably quick sync, but also aesni, avx2.) It's a testament to bad software (minus games) if the thing you're running can't be handled by an i3 with ease.
- deleted 3y ago
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- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >The price point of the i3 ~100 dollars Where? The article mentions $399.
  - mstkllah 3y ago
    They mean the CPU itself, not the whole laptop.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Sorry, from the context I understood "the i3 model"
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willcipriano 3y ago
12th gen i3 is more than enough for typical chromebook workloads. This thing will fly for every day tasks that you'd do on a chromebook or cheap computer (browser, learning to code, emulators)
tomjen3 3y ago
Yeah, not to mention that RAM. You are going to be using this likely to run multiple heavy-duty webapps, and Chrome will chew RAM in that scenario.
Jyaif 3y ago
"i3" (or for that matter, "i5", "i7"...) means nothing in terms of performance. The generation matters a lot. For example an i3-12100 is faster than a i7-9700F https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-12100&id=4687 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-12100... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9700F+%40+3.00GHz&id=3465 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9700F...
- happycube 3y ago
  Yup. And pre-8th gen most consumer i5/i7 laptops were basically dual-core i3's.
lm28469 3y ago
> It feels a little weird and sad that an i3 is the bar to make something "plus" in performance It doesn't seem that far from an apple m1 in benchmark I can find for the i3 12100 which is the low tier of i3s

deleted 3y ago

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creshal 3y ago

> It feels a little weird and sad that an i3 is the bar to make something "plus" in performance. Compared to the Celerons found on some Chromebooks, it still counts. …but there were already plenty of i3 (or even i5, or even R7) Chromebooks with 8 or 16 GB RAM on the market, even at the price point. I don't know what the news is supposed to be here.

agloe_dreams 3y ago
The news is that those models with an i3+ and 8GB of ram will be branded differently to 'help inform the customer of enhanced performance and abilities'. They are trying to shed the image of all chromebooks being thought of by the $159 one that the school gave their kid.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  Indeed, I’m reading the comments on this post because my only experience of Chromebooks is with the cart of them that my students use at school. And that experience has been such a wonderful one that I literally threw one into the trashcan in frustration one day trying to get it to work.

agloe_dreams 3y ago

In fairness, a 12th Gen i3 is not massively far from an M1. The iX branding has become a little silly lately as a user who is not hardcore pushing the system could not possibly tell the difference between a 1215u and a 1235u.

LordDragonfang 3y ago
>a 12th Gen i3 is not massively far from an M1 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4746vs4754vs4765vs4104/Intel-i3-12300-vs-Intel-i3-1215U-vs-Intel-i5-1235U-vs-Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MHz https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4746vs4754vs4765vs4104/... 1215U (accounting for the overwhelming majority of "12th gen i3" laptops) is about 75% of the performance of the lowest-tier M1, so I suppose that's in the ballpark. Performance-per-watt is still night and day, though, with both i3 laptop chips ranging from 15W base to 55W turbo, and M1 ranging from 7W to <30W.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  75% of an M1 is pretty damn good as when the M1 first came out it was the fastest laptop single core performance in the world.
mnemoni_c 3y ago
i3 is probably still associated with "can barely hold 3+ apps open" era but thats not the case for many years now
- bee_rider 3y ago
  That seems more like a memory/hard drive issue. Ever since the Core 2 product line, intel’s CPUs have all been fine for stuff like office use (browsing, editing files, reading email). Well other than atoms obviously.
  - zxexz 3y ago
    I still use a core 2 duo some days. For basic web browsing (albeit with a pihole on the network) and shelling, it works fine. I think it’s the longest running machine I have. A Thinkpad X200 - not wiped in 13 years (since installing Arch). Truly a frankenstein’s monster of a machine now. Hardware mods are so easy on this thing - I switched to an SSD probably 10 years ago, some RAM upgrades. Upgraded Wi-Fi card a few times (mostly based off mainline kernel driver support). Touchpad a couple times, keyboard at least the same. Keeping Arch running on this machine without wiping everything is the only think keeping my Linux skills sharp in the era of company-issued macs.

matthewaveryusa 3y ago

The price point of the i3 ~100 dollars, and the fact that most applications will not be CPU bound by an i3 are the driving factors. The clock speed is one thing, but the instruction sets really provide everything that's needed that would otherwise peg your cpu (notably quick sync, but also aesni, avx2.) It's a testament to bad software (minus games) if the thing you're running can't be handled by an i3 with ease.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>The price point of the i3 ~100 dollars Where? The article mentions $399.
- mstkllah 3y ago
  They mean the CPU itself, not the whole laptop.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Sorry, from the context I understood "the i3 model"

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

willcipriano 3y ago

12th gen i3 is more than enough for typical chromebook workloads. This thing will fly for every day tasks that you'd do on a chromebook or cheap computer (browser, learning to code, emulators)

tomjen3 3y ago

Yeah, not to mention that RAM. You are going to be using this likely to run multiple heavy-duty webapps, and Chrome will chew RAM in that scenario.

Jyaif 3y ago

"i3" (or for that matter, "i5", "i7"...) means nothing in terms of performance. The generation matters a lot. For example an i3-12100 is faster than a i7-9700F https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-12100&id=4687 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-12100... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9700F+%40+3.00GHz&id=3465 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-9700F...

happycube 3y ago
Yup. And pre-8th gen most consumer i5/i7 laptops were basically dual-core i3's.

lm28469 3y ago

> It feels a little weird and sad that an i3 is the bar to make something "plus" in performance It doesn't seem that far from an apple m1 in benchmark I can find for the i3 12100 which is the low tier of i3s