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OoohU posted:Yep you can just change the display option. But if you've got a 1660ti running it on less then 144hz is basically a waste of the card. If you're intending to do 60hz gaming just get a 1060 or something and save money. I mean gaming on battery is a non starter anyway, imo. What I meant was that when you go on battery to do work poo poo, you can set the display to 60hz to mitigate battery drain of 144hz, right?
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Nov 25, 2019 02:44
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Took a look at the XPS 13 2-in-1 at Costco that everyone is hot about and it looks pretty drat awesome. Thinner than I expected, folds very nicely over to tablet mode and the keyboard isn't nearly as bad as some of the reviews I read made it out to be. I'm definitely looking to snag one when it goes on sale.
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Nov 25, 2019 02:45
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:I mean gaming on battery is a non starter anyway, imo. Yeah, you can always force it through the control panels. Most laptops will set it for you automatically, since they, too, agree that gaming on battery is a wasted effort.
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Nov 25, 2019 05:10
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Another BF deal that looks pretty solid: BestBuy MSI G65 Stealth for $1400 15.6" 1920x1080 Wide View Angle (WVA) 240Hz 3ms display Intel Core i7-9750H Hexa-Core (12 Thread) Processor 32GB (2x 16GB) 2666MHz DDR4 RAM 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6 Graphics Card 802.11ac WiFi (2x2) + Bluetooth 5.0 Steel Series Per-Key RGB 84-Key Backlit Keyboard w/ Anti-Ghosting 4-Cell 82Whr battery Weight: 4.19 lbs The only thing that worries me is the "wide view angle" monitor instead of straight up saying if it's IPS or VA. Otherwise the G65 Stealth is a real good combo of portability, power, battery life, and build quality. It's main detractor in the past was usually price, since at MSRP you might as well get a Razer.
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Nov 25, 2019 05:14
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DrDork posted:Yeah, you can always force it through the control panels. Most laptops will set it for you automatically, since they, too, agree that gaming on battery is a wasted effort. I can always tell when I accidentally unplug my computer because my frame rate will instantly go from like 90 to around 15.
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Nov 25, 2019 05:46
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I can always tell when I accidentally unplug my computer because my frame rate will instantly go from like 90 to around 15. Anecdotally, and this is not the same thing that you're describing, but I was at work playing around with that cheap Acer I mentioned I recently bought. It was plugged into one of the emergency power outlets and the power did go out instantaneously (it may have been an intentional generator test) and I didn't realize that that was why the display brightness dipped. Well, it did that because the power interruption apparently made the laptop go on battery, even though it was plugged in and mains power went back up immediately, except the adapter was no longer supplying power. I didn't realize this until I got a critical battery warning; for whatever reason I had to unplug the adapter from the socket for it to start providing power again.
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Nov 25, 2019 06:19
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Hadlock posted:Redhat issues all of their developers Thinkpad laptops; if there is one laptop that has the best driver support it's gonna be a Thinkpad Confirmed/repeating this. I have a 6+ year old first generation Thinkpad Yoga bought during end-of-range clearance and it's still fully supported with updates. Heck I've dropped it during use while open onto carpet more than once (thanks booze!) and you'd never know. Only reason I'm considering replacing it sometime is 4 GB RAM and 128GB internal storage isn't really enough for me these days. But the darn thing won't even hiccup so my motivation has remained low. None of this ultra durability necessarily applies to their consumer line though. Pay for business/enterprise grade unless you want a gaming machine which is it's own category anyway. DancingShade fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 07:24
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Everyones Favorite Poster posted:Appreciate the advice, think i'll gonna opt for a t470 or t480 and if I decide I'd like to do some slightly heavier gaming later on just grab an external GPU. Just so you know, that probably isn't going to work out for you, external GPU setups have a huge performance hit, and just because you have Thunderbolt 3 does not mean that an external GPU setup will even work marginally well outside of the aforementioned performance hit. You're looking at getting a laptop plus spending 1k+ on an external GPU setup for very mediocre performance. If I were you I'd actually just get two laptops instead, it's a better solution than a Thinkpad plus an external GPU, IMO.
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Nov 25, 2019 07:46
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Just so you know, that probably isn't going to work out for you, external GPU setups have a huge performance hit, and just because you have Thunderbolt 3 does not mean that an external GPU setup will even work marginally well outside of the aforementioned performance hit. You're looking at getting a laptop plus spending 1k+ on an external GPU setup for very mediocre performance. If I were you I'd actually just get two laptops instead, it's a better solution than a Thinkpad plus an external GPU, IMO. To expand on this: Thunderbolt 3 is, at maximum, 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0. This might be workable, if 95% of the time in laptop motherboard designs, the Thunderbolt chip isn't also hung off the PCH, which, itself, is hung off of 4x DMI lanes (roughly analogous to 4x PCIe itself, with signalling differences), which means your graphics card is fighting everything else on your laptop for bandwidth. Keyboards? Mice? SD card reader? Storage? Ethernet/Wifi? Audio? All also hung off the PCH. And that's assuming you output directly to a monitor attached to the GPU, because sending the video signal back up the Thunderbolt link is gonna sap even more bandwidth. In short, the idea of eGPUs is sound.... but heavily limited by Intel's own stupidity in their design recommendations. SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 10:30
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Yeah from what I've read you can keep the e-GPU performance hit to a minimum (which is about 10-15%) by making sure to: -Use an external monitor, turn off your laptop screen so it's not sending video back -Don't use game streaming/recording software -Don't plug anything into the eGPU enclosure's USB ports if it has any (sometimes this is ok if they're just mice and keyboards, sometimes it isn't, maybe it depends on the enclosure?) -Don't use external SSDs or anything high bandwidth, make sure you run games from the internal SSD So if you basically have a setup where you have an e-GPU connected to your Xtreme Gaming Monitor and only have your gaming mouse and maybe keyboard plugged in, it can do ok. 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 is still the same as 8 lanes of PCIe 2.0, right? Even with the hit it still should be better performance than you would get from a laptop version of a full desktop GPU.
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Nov 25, 2019 10:59
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Bad eGPU performance these days isn’t about bandwidth, it’s about the overhead and latency hit from TB protocol encapsulation/translation. It does work but its just the wrong protocol for the application. Now that notebook GPUs are poised to get faster GPUs (iGPUs and dedicated) the concept really doesn’t have much of a purpose anymore, unless a new standard for external PCIe arrives to replace TB3 (not going to happen unless TB4 specifically addresses the issue). e: vvvv yep, LAN streaming would be a better solution and these days you can build a value machine for the price of an expensive eGPU case vvvv eames fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 12:08
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DrDork posted:Yeah, you can always force it through the control panels. Most laptops will set it for you automatically, since they, too, agree that gaming on battery is a wasted effort. Fwiw since this is the laptop thread after all..steam in home streaming is more and more solid every day. I run a gtx1060/6 on a amd2600x/16gb rig for stuff like game stream and Plex and even for games my laptop can run natively I'm trying to remember to stream it since it usually looks better and keeps poo poo cooler it seems Also slay the spire on iPad is muy bien E: for clarity we're talking Intel igpu laptops
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Nov 25, 2019 12:11
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Others have already mentioned it but yeah, it's a latency thing not bandwidth. Also from the testing I've seen you're looking at a 30% hit if you just play on a laptop connected to an enclosure, pretty bad for a setup that is going to be pretty drat expensive once you factor in a high end card to compensate for the performance hit plus an enclosure for like $300. I examined this option myself back when I was shopping for a laptop and pretty quickly dismissed it.
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Nov 25, 2019 12:36
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eames posted:Bad eGPU performance these days isn’t about bandwidth, it’s about the overhead and latency hit from TB protocol encapsulation/translation. I'm basing my information that yes, it really is bandwidth, off of a video that LTT did on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHwXOwTgYB0 That's not to say that the protocol itself is not also part of the problem, but that the mere act of sending video output back down the TB3 cable to the laptop imposes a performance penalty on top of everything implies that the lack of bandwidth is a bigger problem. Also, yes, TB4/USB4 are supposed to hook directly off the CPU's PCIE lanes as well as the chipset.
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Nov 25, 2019 13:24
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:Others have already mentioned it but yeah, it's a latency thing not bandwidth. Also from the testing I've seen you're looking at a 30% hit if you just play on a laptop connected to an enclosure, pretty bad for a setup that is going to be pretty drat expensive once you factor in a high end card to compensate for the performance hit plus an enclosure for like $300. I examined this option myself back when I was shopping for a laptop and pretty quickly dismissed it. Buying a high end video card or a laptop to game on inherently means you've opted out of economically efficient gaming imo. Nobody should be buying egpu to save money. You're either intrigued by the tech or need/want to preserve space. Egpu is basically either a niche we should be thankful is an option , or a luxury for fools easily parted from their $, imho But trying to sort thru the economics of PC gaming is like trying to figure out if it's smarter to haul manure in your Lincoln pickup or Cadillac pickup
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Nov 25, 2019 13:52
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Statutory Ape posted:Buying a high end video card or a laptop to game on inherently means you've opted out of economically efficient gaming imo. Nobody should be buying egpu to save money. You're either intrigued by the tech or need/want to preserve space. Or it means that the GPU market is epically hosed, see the bitcoin boom of 2016-2018. I bought my gaming laptop specifically because chips soldered to the mainboard mean that there aren't people running out and snapping up laptop parts to mine bitcoin off of them*, and therefore it was actually cheaper to buy a bang-for-buck gaming laptop than build a new system. But that was then and this is now, and there aren't any extenuating circumstances that would make Ape's statement incorrect. Just a weird, offhand note how hosed poo poo was a few years ago. * Though, I would not put it past someone out there to have set up a bitcoin farm with MXM boards.
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Nov 25, 2019 14:00
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I was obsessed with the idea of a thin laptop and egpu setup a few years ago but it all looks like a bag of hurt. Just buy a switch or build a gaming pc for $700.
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Nov 25, 2019 14:04
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SwissArmyDruid posted:I'm basing my information that yes, it really is bandwidth, off of a video that LTT did on it. Saturating the bus could very well cause latency to go up but yeah, let's just agree that it's a combination of bandwidth, latency and protocol constraints that makes TB3 unsuitable to eGPU use unless you are very, very desperate to make it work. Good to hear that TB4 might change that.
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Nov 25, 2019 15:03
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Are there any rumors on when Thinkpads will get Ice Lake CPUs? My T460 is due for a replacement finally but it seems the latest update was just to Comet Lake, WTF.
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Nov 25, 2019 15:14
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mobby_6kl posted:Are there any rumors on when Thinkpads will get Ice Lake CPUs? My T460 is due for a replacement finally but it seems the latest update was just to Comet Lake, WTF. Differences in CPUs generation, if there's no core number increase, is like >3% increase in instructions per cycle year over year. It's generally meaningless for the vast majority of usecases, and moving to 7nm won't meaningfully change that. I'd just buy now.
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Nov 25, 2019 15:20
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Cat Army 
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The Iron Rose posted:Differences in CPUs generation, if there's no core number increase, is like >3% increase in instructions per cycle year over year. It's generally meaningless for the vast majority of usecases, and moving to 7nm won't meaningfully change that. I'd just buy now. Ice Lake is 10nm and a ~20% IPC improvement plus a new iGPU. It's a mess because Intel can't seem to get decent 10nm yields beyond 4 cores and even then only at very limited clockspeeds, so they continue to push 14nm for anything "performance oriented". I suspect AMD's 7nm mobile CPUs will be a better option when they're out, assuming they can get power managment under control. Notebookcheck wrote good things about the T495 but Ice Lake should be a step above it in efficiency. eames fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Nov 25, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 15:24
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Yeah it seems like finally a worthwhile upgrade , overall performance is up, power is down, and GPU is way faster. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15092/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2in1-review-the-ice-lake-cometh/3 Ryzen would be ok too but I don't think those were available for us.
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Nov 25, 2019 16:31
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I'm pretty excited to be getting my Thinkpad X1 Extreme(Gen 2) this Friday. I hope the 1650 in it isn't too power hungry, and I'm still debating whether or not to install Linux(like Kubuntu) on it.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:28
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Delirious Wolf posted:I'm pretty excited to be getting my Thinkpad X1 Extreme(Gen 2) this Friday. I hope the 1650 in it isn't too power hungry, and I'm still debating whether or not to install Linux(like Kubuntu) on it. Depends what you mean by power hungry. Does it seriously degrade battery life when running? Yes, as does every other dGPU out there. Is it a hot chip that kicks the fans up to 11 when running under load? No, it does not, the fans in fact stay quieter at max load than I've seen some (poorly designed) gaming laptops idle at, and also quieter than my dumb Dell Latitude from work that sits at 25% CPU use 24/7 thanks to McAfee while reading emails. Linux works perfectly on it. If you pick up a second M.2 drive, you don't even have to bother with splitting a drive. If you do, try to grab one that's single-sided if available, as the actual connector was amazingly not designed to accommodate dual-sided M.2 drives, resulting in them bending a little to fit. Not the end of the world, but dumb and to be avoided if possible.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:58
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Sorry for what is going to be the next in line of "is this a good deal" posts y'all are going to get in the next week, but... is this a good deal? https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-008G1?Item=2WC-000J-008G1 AMD Ryzen 7 3700U 2.30 GHz 8 GB DDR4 256 GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Not a big HD but I have storage at home, and I'd probably be adding another 8GB of memory, but this is pretty decent for a high quality machine at under $600, right? I'm a pretty mobile user, so it's going to need to go to a lot of places, and I do want to play games on it but I'm not looking for anything top-of-the-line (my backlog is at least seven years long).
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Nov 25, 2019 20:02
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OzFactor posted:Sorry for what is going to be the next in line of "is this a good deal" posts y'all are going to get in the next week, but... is this a good deal? https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-008G1?Item=2WC-000J-008G1 I think it's pretty good, but that SSD is really small and will fill up very quickly. I've heard good things about Ryzen APU powered laptops.
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Nov 25, 2019 20:23
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OzFactor posted:Sorry for what is going to be the next in line of "is this a good deal" posts y'all are going to get in the next week, but... is this a good deal? https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-008G1?Item=2WC-000J-008G1 You should read the review for it here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-E595-laptop-review-AMD-laptop-better-than-its-Intel-counterpart.427304.0.html The big take aways are that the display, despite being IPS, is pretty trash. Fine for office work, and that's about it. The iGPU is certainly better than most iGPUs, but it's still struggling to keep up with a MX130/150 in many scenarios, meaning if you were planning on playing recent games, you should look elsewhere, but several-year-old games should be ok on moderate settings. Battery life at least is solid, and durability will be pretty good for that price point, though notably behind something like a T-series ThinkPad.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:57
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They make an X series with AMD, the X395. I'd look for a black friday sale on that before I'd recommend an E series.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:01
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P sure Asus has some slim laptops with mx150 and 8th gen i5 for same or less, which personally I would pull trigger on no hesitation compared to that E: Asus Vivobook S Ultra Thin Laptop, i5-8250U CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, GeForce MX150 15.6" FHD S510UN-MS52 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GHRHT8N/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_she3DbP3WF3GB I'm on mobile but that's one example that took 4 seconds
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Nov 25, 2019 22:07
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eames posted:Saturating the bus could very well cause latency to go up but yeah, let's just agree that it's a combination of bandwidth, latency and protocol constraints that makes TB3 unsuitable to eGPU use unless you are very, very desperate to make it work. I suspect that USB4 will really shrink the cost of eGPU + fix most of the shortcomings, as USB4 controllers will eventually be baked into the cpu directly TB3 enclosures are $250+ so you really need to have bucks laying around to do laptop + enclosure and be willing to eat the cost of the 15% performance hit If a USB4 enclosure costs $50 and you can toss a $250 GPU in there and get 90fps VR out the other end that's probably worth the 15% performance hit to get your primary laptop workstation weight down under 2lbs
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Nov 26, 2019 02:03
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Hadlock posted:I suspect that USB4 will really shrink the cost of eGPU + fix most of the shortcomings, as USB4 controllers will eventually be baked into the cpu directly Except you'll never get a $50 USB4 eGPU enclosure. TB3, while more expensive than USB3 to implement, isn't the bulk of the cost. I mean, you can get a TB3 PCIe card for <$60, while a comparable USB3 one runs you $30, so you're talking an actual cost delta of likely about $20 to use TB3. The other bits are that most eGPUs come with a PSU, a nice metal frame, and know they're being aimed at the "more money than sense" crowd. Even without the 15% penalty, it'll be a niche product: most people are just gonna either get a normal laptop and never bother with a eGPU because they have a desktop / console for gaming, or they're gonna get an actual gaming laptop straight up. USB4 might make them work better, but I doubt it'll do much for the cost.
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Nov 26, 2019 03:26
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I'm not following the logic of your first paragraph?
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Nov 26, 2019 04:01
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That the actual TB3 signaling hardware is not terribly more expensive than USB3. It's an extra  or two, but not anywhere near enough to drop a $250 product down to a $50 one, unfortunately.I guess it also doesn't really matter that USB4 will be built into mainstream CPUs, unlike TB3, since the cost of adding that hardware lies with the motherboard/laptop, not the eGPU enclosure. Though I suppose it would make it an option on a substantially larger number of laptops, and maybe that'd make for some extra sales, and then economy of scale might drop prices a bit? Anyhow, you're still not getting around a $50 PSU + $50 frame + $50 profit + $whatever else for a eGPU enclosure. They will forever remain kinda a silly option, useful only for a very few.
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Nov 26, 2019 04:15
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DrDork posted:You should read the review for it here: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-E595-laptop-review-AMD-laptop-better-than-its-Intel-counterpart.427304.0.html Thanks! I'll probably keep looking then, or at least wait until Friday to see what's out there. Dr. Fishopolis posted:They make an X series with AMD, the X395. I'd look for a black friday sale on that before I'd recommend an E series. Statutory Ape posted:P sure Asus has some slim laptops with mx150 and 8th gen i5 for same or less, which personally I would pull trigger on no hesitation compared to that Also thanks, but my main constraint is that I need a full numpad, yes, I'm picky and weird. I know that sort of necessarily means a bigger screen laptop, which kind of puts me in a higher pricing tier or I'm going to have to sacrifice something (like the dull display of the E595). I've been looking at Dell G3s but reading the last several pages puts me off that idea since I'm going to need durability.
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Nov 26, 2019 05:00
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Mu Zeta posted:I was obsessed with the idea of a thin laptop and egpu setup a few years ago but it all looks like a bag of hurt. Just buy a switch or build a gaming pc for $700. I've said this before but the only realistic use-case for eGPUs is in adding functionality to an existing system. Building a gaming system from the start around an eGPU is a dumb idea, but if you already have a laptop or NUC for work/productivity then adding an eGPU between the system and the monitor only adds some otherwise-absent gaming capability. OzFactor posted:Sorry for what is going to be the next in line of "is this a good deal" posts y'all are going to get in the next week, but... is this a good deal? https://www.newegg.com/p/2WC-000J-008G1?Item=2WC-000J-008G1 That looks fine for the price. I'm not sure about expansion, but if I were you I'd open it up immediately and see about RAM/storage options. It may or may not have some soldered RAM, and it may have 1-2 DIMM slots, so expand to 16 GB if possible. It may also have a 2.5" bay, so I'd throw in a cheap 2 TB FireCuda (~$60 on sale.) Note that game performance won't really be at the level you'd expect from a low-end nVidia dGPU, but it's better than an Intel iGPU at least.
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Nov 26, 2019 05:48
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Atomizer posted:I've said this before but the only realistic use-case for eGPUs is in adding functionality to an existing system. Building a gaming system from the start around an eGPU is a dumb idea, but if you already have a laptop or NUC for work/productivity then adding an eGPU between the system and the monitor only adds some otherwise-absent gaming capability.
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Nov 26, 2019 11:50
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My solution to the gaming laptop concept over the past several years was simply to load ancient classics like Dreamfall: The Longest Journey which ran great fullscreen even on the integrated intel graphics of my Thinkpad. Even so I haven't gamed on that machine except as a temporary substitute when my old gaming desktop was dying and I was sorting out a replacement. I realise this will probably sound uninteresting to someone looking to run the latest CoD release on their occasional evening off from mining/military service/whatever they do on oil rigs/etc. Maybe those folks are the intended market for an external GPU enclosure.
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Nov 26, 2019 12:13
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I am desperately hoping eGPUs reach better maturity within the next 21 months because if they do it will save us... almost $unlimited at work and also a lot of awkward questions about decisions which were made (with good process!!!) 3 years ago. Basically we have an $80,000 medical device which requires heavy real time 3D acceleration and is used for a few minutes per patient. Right now our options are to put a powerful workstation in each exam room at the cost of thousands, and we lack the space for a GPU accelerated system (we use optiplex micros, the 3D req came out of nowhere almost overnight) at the patient's side. So right now we run it on a powerful laptop, but there is a lot of back end work to put the data in the correct place when we're done and we're also talking huge multi gig 3D scan files. the laptop has died (thanks windows update!) and was a huge ordeal working with the vendor to recover the data that had not yet been merged to patient charts. So we are hoping that we can put a scanner on a cart with an eGPU, even $1500 for a 2080ti in an enclosure is a drop in the bucket. All they'd need to do is plug in the USB/TB4 cable, wheel it in, run a scan, and hand the scanner off to the next provider. Data right into the patient's chart, no need for local storage. I realize this is the laptop thread but I think eGPUs are only sold as gaming devices as a way to move some extra units, their primary and "its a miracle!" use cases are in places like healthcare.
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Nov 26, 2019 13:15
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mobby_6kl posted:Even then... you can basically get a whole refurbished corporate i5 pc for less then the cost of the enclosure, and stick the GPU in there. I've looked into this before and you must be really committed to only having one device to justify the trouble and expense. I've done this and it's probably better than you even think Especially when you can buy refurbs direct from Dell for cheap...with warranty
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Nov 26, 2019 13:42
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charity rereg posted:I realize this is the laptop thread but I think eGPUs are only sold as gaming devices as a way to move some extra units, their primary and "its a miracle!" use cases are in places like healthcare. Honestly, this sounds like a much better use-case for an eGPU than gaming is in most cases.
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Nov 26, 2019 15:06
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