Laptops haven't changed much in past five years, why buy a new one?

@MrMogwai
I mean I'd love to see a receipt which shows you paid $1000 or less for that laptop, I'm doubting you there. Unless you bought it used. A quick price check shows that the top end model came in at $3,300, unless you had a 70% off coupon (never existed) then you bought it used some time later. If we are talking about used hardware, you can buy a used walmart 1070 laptop for <800 that will be faster than your laptop...
The P4000 was released Feb 2017 so your laptop didn't come with it and you've since spent more money on it and upgraded it... Since they are used for ~400 on ebay now, I can guess that you spent that much or so when you upgraded...
Sure intel's tech hasn't moved a ton, but your father in law's laptop has 2 more cores and probably gets vastly better battery life. Your cooling may help your laptop keep up a little bit, but with some tuning the 9750h can be quite a bit faster (I don't know much about the Nitro).

*on edit*
Figure I'd ping you instead of leaving this as a blind answer. I also have a Dell Vostro 7590 with a 9750h if you would like me to do some CPU benchmarks to compare your 4910 against.

 

Used, obviously, bought last year in total it was something like 400$ for 17R1, 150 for a screen, some 100 for RAM, and around 300 for HP Workstation P4000M.

Of course there are cooling differences, but with proper pads and paste and a use of a cooling stand, while working permanently as a desktop replacement it's fine.
As mentioned in my previous post, there are improvements. It's just it's not as revolutionary and as vast as we are led to believe.
As for benchmarks, here's one from my AW with stock clocks:
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/13771339

 

Right it's not earth shattering, and I blame Intel for stalling, but there have been improvements. If you edit video then a modern 6-8 core cpu would be much better than your 4910mq. Your price comparison is askew when comparing a new laptop to a used laptop that you upgraded yourself.

*on edit*
I guess also the fact that his medium range cheap laptop can keep up with an upgraded version of yesteryears high end also shows that things have indeed improved at least a little... I do see those Nitros on sale for $800 when looking at price history... And you upgrading also means that there are advantages that you didn't have initially...

*double edit, lol*
Just for fun I looked up the 880M that your alienware could have came with (highest end offering) and compared it to the P4000 that you upgraded to. Your P4000 is at least 2x faster in Fire Strike. A 1080 is almost 4 times faster in Fire Strike. The differences would be even larger in new benchmarks. So if there weren't any updates to today's laptops, you wouldn't have had to upgrade your P4000, right?

*last edit, I promise*
So just for fun, I ran 3dmark 11, a benchmark I probably haven't ran in 8 years...
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/13874747

Not sure it's a reasonable benchmark for anything, maybe single core speed? So the single core speed is a little faster than yours. And my low-mid range GPU is within a few percentage points of yours in that. In something more recent your GPU would blow mine away, but again in recent CPU tests I'm sure I'd have the edge... All in a laptop that was less expensive and half the weight of yours. No this is not a gaming laptop and I wouldn't want it strictly for that, but if I can load a game up every now and then to have fun, I'm ok with that...

I guess I lied to you, for some reason I ran it on my 51M.
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/13261660
Looks like there have been some increases...

 

Its not just intel stalling all the security "fixes" they issued has lowered the raw CPU benchmarks by up to 15%...

 

If you actually paid anywhere near $1,000 for that Alienware you got a hell of a deal as that was never remotely close to the going rate. As such it's a very bad comparison.

Alienware laptops START around $1,500. The 17 R1 doesn't come specced with a display over 60 hz as of today, for any price. Only the R2 and R3 even have high refresh rate displays as options. The cheapest config with a 144 Hz display is $1,580.

Also, what benchmarks? His CPU absolutely stomps yours. Quadro P4000 is also from 2017, it's not 5 years old, it's also much more expensive than a 1660 Max-Q. It's also more expensive and higher wattage than a 1660 TI, let alone a 1660 Max-Q. Quadro P4000 goes for over $600. It is more expensive than a RTX 2070, yet weaker than a GTX 1070. It's a terrible priced component.

From one generation to the next the gap may not have ever been huge, but the gap from 1st gen and 7th gen i7's is still fairly large, but the gap got much bigger after 8th gen.

A 7700HQ is about 47% faster than a 740QM.
My 9750H is about 160% faster than a 740QM and 77% faster than a 7700HQ.

And then 10th gen made the jump again, the i7-10875H is 275% faster than a i7-740MQ.

Exaggerating to this extreme weakens your argument rather than strengthens it. Similar to your description of a $2,000+ Alienware with a supposed $1,000 price tag earlier on. Prices drop over time, they do not halve within a month.

The benchmark you posted outright states:

On its download page. Despite that, I'll run it for fun on my $999 laptop. It's not a benchmark that should be being used, but I still strongly suspect that my laptop with a 1660 TI and 9750H will easily beat the score you posted.

EDIT: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/13879842

17,807

Your laptop scored 13,418 and you claim it beats your relatives $1,200 machines score by 2000-3000.

They got ripped off hard if that's true, as my $999 laptop beats yours by over 4,000.

That benchmark itself says a gaming laptop from 2013 averaged 2526. Scoring 17,807 on a budget gaming laptop from 2019 shows just how far technology has advanced.

 

Not exactly off topic, but since these laptops and mine which is 6 years old, don't you all think that the 11th generation i7 is a joke... mainly it makes it seem obsolete when it's not, so why aren't they doing i8 yet??? I know many non-savvy laptop owners aren't buying new laptops yet because they have the i7 and think it's fine and are waiting for the i8. Myself, XPS is still running great, plenty fast for my photoshop CS6 and 10 open web pages at the same time so I'm waiting too... I'll probably finally cave and buy a new one if they ever get a i8.... before 2030 ya think?
NOTE, I don't see any i8 on Dells website:
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/category/gamingpcs

 

Already replied on your same quote here... http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...w-with-tiger-lake.834236/page-4#post-11050878

And whats wrong with the numbers ? https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-letters-numbers-on-Intel-CPUs-mean

What next? You mean they should change the letters as well? Or make a new combination of numbers and letters?

 

Your missing my point... time to change the old i7 to i8. I kid you not, most folks I talk to that don't do forums such as friend, relatives, salesperson at Best Buy etc think i7 is old and outdated... I know better, but still think i8 would help sales. Kinda like cars... they change lineups, styles ever few years such as Corvettes, C1 (first generation) C8 (eighth generation). Each generation is a new look, more advanced tech. Customers look forward to that. And me? I'm being stubborn, I am keeping my 7 year old XPS until they get a i8 on one. Mine is running just fine thank you. I use it 6-8 hours a day running Photoshop CS6, with at least 10-12 websites open, youTube etc without any hiccups. I play no games.
BTW, I'm no newbie as I've been on this forum for 14 years.

 

Excuse me, I don't want to sound confrontational, but this post is like saying "if PC is so good why don't they make PC2?". The nomenclature is fairly easy, and what I'm finding irritating is that SELLERS are actually causing confusion with stating that the machine is i7. Which one? 940XM? 9750H? Which? What I can say is buyers beware, but the producers have FINALLY gotten to the stage where higher is better and it can be easily identified. Buyers beware on dodgy sellers.
If you need a visualisation of what i3, i5, i7 and i9 mean, you basically have certain tiers that are at least SUPPOSED to make things easier for the customer (I think anyone can attest that ancient (20 years ago and beyond) nomenclature wasn't exactly easy on the eye, but one is just a single Google query away from finding out what's what. I3 is the weakest and generally the most power efficient, i5 is an all rounder, i7 is a power hungry beast, while i9 is a new addition that is a true monster. It's similar to well, let's say I've got a Toyota Corolla 1994 Hatchback, why don't they make Honda Civic 2020 Hatchback 2. Some understanding of the lingo and devices themselves is important. I can however relate to the fact that you need to learn how it's nomenclature works, that 3 digit CPUs are 1st gen, that 4 digits is gens 2-9, and that the new fangled CPUs are gen 10 and 11, and that, at least in theory, the higher number the better (in most cases). But, as stated above, it's being a savvy consumer on any level and industry, be it laptops, groceries, whatever.
I get what you're going at, that a lift is necessary, but the lift is already there - you've got Intel i7 (which for the sale of comparison is your Corvette) with C1 being 940XM and 4940MX being your C4 in this case. A marketing lift such as going i8 or queekSeePeeU-1 would only add to the confusion.

 

They do make a civic hatchback, but you have to pay 40k cdn for it since it's the type R! But, what a hatchback it is!

 

Nice discussion here.

I still own a Dell XPS13 M1330 (Core2Duo T8300, nVidia 8400M GS, 2x2GB DDR2-667, Kingston A400 SSD, Win10x64). It's my favourite computing machine I own. Bought in 2008 new for $650, changed once the board under warranty. Tried to upgrade to 2x4GB DDR2-667, sees the 4GB modules as 2GB (Corsair Value Select VS2GSDSKIT800D2 instead of VS4GSDSKIT800D2).

From 2010 my daily driver was a Toshiba Qosmio X300-16D (17 inch TruBrite Screen, 2x4GB DDR3-1066MHz, 320GB 7200rpm + 128GB SSD SATA, Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme Processor X9100, 2x GeForce® 9800M GTS in SLi).

The back-up machine was a Dell XPS17 1730 which sadly lacks HDMI (Intel Core 2 Extreme, Sli, etc.). This has seen little use.

In the last three years, my daily driver is a Dell XPS 17 L702X. the back up is a Dell XPS 15 L502X. Both with everything upgraded (contemporary SSDs and hybrid HDDs, maximum amount of memory supported - 16 GB DDR3 1333Mhz respective 2133MHz - the 15 seems manufacturer unlocked).

One thing I always tried to upgrade in all my laptops is the wifi card. The newer gen 6 WiFi cards though don't come in mini PCI-e form factor anymore, so I guess that's a real limitation in running old machines.

But then, I'm the kind of guy still using a Samsung Galaxy S5 Active phone as they're the last phones to feature a removable battery. And Linksys WRT54G is still my favourite router.

 

Yep. There is still something to be said for the old iron.

 

The latest XPS13 CPU benchmarks about 20% faster than my 4 year old XPS13.
I think you make a very good point.

 

What XPS13 do you have? 20% faster in what? Again there are other benefits like the new screen ratio and faster ram speeds that are beneficial.

 

I guess he has a 4 year old i7 xps 13 and he used the i7 or i9 new xps 13.

 

I have a 9360 w/ i7 i8550U processor and 16GB of memory and the high resolution screen.
I bought it for $900 new

I compared the benchmarks to what's included in the new XPS 13 and the difference is small.

The biggest advantage for me would be the better aspect ratio of the new screen.

But if you compare the performance improvements with what was being achieved 10-20 years ago, or what's achieved w/ each new generation of mobile processor -- it's small.

 

I agree. It's like moving from the iPhone 6 to the 12. The overall performance increase is not a massive jump. Features like cameras are much improved but overall performance is not that much different.

 

So your XPS was released November 2017 which makes it 3 years old now, not 4. Your 8550U was also a HUGE step up from prior years in going from 2-4 cores in it's own right.

Just for fun lets compare specs:

Your i7-8550u:
Max Turbo Frequency 4.00 GHz
Processor Graphics Intel® UHD Graphics 620
Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency 1.15 GHz

The new Tiger Lake i7-1165G7
Max Turbo Frequency 4.70 GHz
Processor Graphics Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics
Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency 1.30 GHz

So just off of that the new stuff would be 17% faster just based on clock speed, not accounting for the large difference in IPC.

Based on Userbenchmark the i7-1165G7 is 60+% faster in all tasks.

Based on Notebookcheck.net's testing of the 9370 (same CPU as yours) vs the 9310 the here are some results:

Cinebench R15 Multi core
i7-8850U - 639
i7-1165G7 - 818
%difference = 28%

Cinebench R15 single core
i7-8850U - 165
i7-1165G7 - 218
%difference = 32%

PCMark 10
i7-8850U - 2994
i7-1165G7 - 4832
%difference = 61%

Firestrike Graphics score
i7-8850U - 1288
i7-1165G7 - 4170
%difference = 320%

3DMark 11 combined score
i7-8850U - 1755
i7-1165G7 - 4067
%difference = 232%

So it's faster in CPU only related tasks, and MUCH faster in GPU related tasks. You can actually play some low end games with the new XPS 13, you can't do that on yours.

I would call that a reasonable difference in 3 years, but that's my opinion.

 

Gaming is relevant for about 1 percent of the Computing population using an xps. Wrong knife for that gun fight.

 

But applications that can take advantage of the GPU (such as adobe premiere pro or any of the other heavy lifters) will benefit from the 300+% improvement in GPU power... Oh and we were talking about improvements, not what you choose to pick as an improvement and what you choose to leave out...

 

He sounds like a Microsoft office and social media user so he may not know any better in the benefits of gpu and new technology.

 

You really need to take a look at the Asus G14. It's really ahead of its time. Look at the Ryzen 9 4900HS Cinebench scores and you'll be blown away... it's desktop level performance out of a laptop...a 14" laptop mind you... I'm hopefully going to get one on black friday/cyber monday depending on the sale price... Last thing that had anywhere close to that performance of the Ryzen 9 CPU was my i7-6700k desktop at 4.3Ghz... I still could only manage 942multi in Cinebench R15... now the Ryzen 9 get's around 1800.... pretty insane of a jump if you ask me... my 9560 i5 only gets 440... Can't wait to feel that performance boost...editing 24MP photos with my 9560 is really starting to be a drag...

 

I had one and couldn't get accurate colors and calibrating a few times. The screen really sucks on the G14. Really not great for gaming either because the response time.... I edit hundreds of Nikon d850 and z7 46mp files and getting into more video as well. I have settled on a xps 17 as my mobile workstation.

 

I do mostly photo, video and graphic design on my computer as well. Mine is not a powerful as an xps but that does not slow me down. I do what I need to do every day.

 

I agree to some point, because for the most common tasks my new precision 5540 i7, samsung evo ssd, is not that much faster than other i5-i7 laptop I had in the last few years. I mean the SSDs really brought amazing speed, when it comes to opening files, browsing, watching movies, excel, word, etc not much difference in speed. The differences are noticed when you do heavy tasks such as gaming, video editing, running heavy programming tasks, multitasking.

 

Just bought a Clevo PC50DN2 (Intel Core i7-10875H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 SUPER Max-Q).

It was a huge jump from my Dell XPS 17 L702X (Intel Core i7-2670QM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 550M).
Even my previous gaming laptop Toshiba Qosmio X70-A (Intel Core i7-4700MQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M) is not much of a match.

Evolutionary elements:
- the video card - a real beast
- the form factor - metal chassis, 2Kg and almost 2 cm thick.
- the cooling - this laptop is in full load the coolest I've owned.

 

See my post above if you haven't. I do photo, video and graphics imaging. As I said, yes, the new stuff is faster, it's it exponentially faster like back in the early days of PC? NO. I can still do everything on my 2007 acer (besides gaming and 4K video) as I can do on a new system only a minute or two slower. If I was doing video editing 100 percent of the time and only at home, I would have a desktop beast built. My notebooks are for working on the move, travelling and creating while mobile. They work fine for me, no need to waste money on them at the moment, or in the near future. I am upgrading my acer for a laugh and nothing more. My 2 dells are singing along fine and I am making a living using them.

 

I get the OPs sentiment. I look at the new XPS line and it's mind boggling, that the premium priced laptop has such a measly cooling solution. The top of the top XPS 17 just has the vapur chamber cooling. Dell didn't change this for last four or five generations of XPS line. I didn't like the Frank Azor response, that the laptop is not a machine for gaming.
HP came out with similar cahssis ENVY 15 and the laptop has good cooling and is better priced. idk

 

Whether you like it or not, does not mean it's not correct. The XPS lineup is NOT for gaming. G series and Alienware IS. The xps is for creation like the macbook. Plain and simple. for someone who wants a small form factor for taking on location and editing their photos, videos and more.

 

Right, dell just needs an excuse for their sub par cooling/design. Great hardware, you just can't actually use it. Thankfully they started to remove the word "game" from their XPS after the 7590:


*glances at my Razer* yep, it utilizes its faster hardware and it's roughly the same form factor...

 

whatever makes you sleep at night bud!

 

HPs laptop is marketed for creators too. It just has much better cooling (and price). I don't want to argue and point out logical or technical mistakes or anything. If you have newer XPS, then you are better off. I had 9550 and since these had throttling issues, I am kinda sensitive about it now. Let me put it this way: XPS could have had better cooling installed. Razer does it as @custom90gt points out.
It just doesn't look good for Dell, when you compare. I know newer processors are more efficient. I really want the new XPS, but four generations with the same cooling?

 

I would run away from razer unfortunately. I LOVE their laptop designs. Understated greatly for gaming systems, but their customer service is abysmal as far as I have heard. Too bad too. They should be on top of their CS game because they are trying to be the premier gaming system company.

 

IF you're interested in better cooling take a look at the G14. IT's got 3 heatpipes for the GPU and 3 pipes for the CPU. 2 of them pass between each other and 1 for each are dedicated. There's also a single heatpipe for the VRM and memory cooling on the CPU/GPU...

 

Oh god, ASUS. that's worse than razer for customer service. No thanks.

 

The new Apple M1 laptops are bit of a game changer (if you are into that kind of thing).

 

I am not. I regret my recent iphone 11 purchases all ready, only 3 weeks in. They are the last apple devices coming into our home. We are moving from apple. Even my wife who loved her iphones all along is not happy with apple. Goto the smartphone/tablet page under ipad 6 and read whats happening to our devices.

I will stick with my Dell laptop.

 

Probably depends on your situation. I just surf and watch video on my mini, so spending $750 for a new one doesn't do much for me. I would like to get one with 8GB. If I can find an i3 version at a reduced price, that's probably a better value proposition for me.

 

After doing some research the M1 is not really that big of a deal when it comes to actual performance as they claim. (surprise, surprise.). The xps 13 beats it in single core, is only a miniscule amount slower in multicore and gets 3 hrs more useage time on battery in real world useage not apple reality distortion land. If you want real battery life get the new acer spin 7.

So, once again, apple marketing and their online lemmings create a false reality when it comes to the MJesus chip. They get their minions to go on youtube and start crowing and cawing about it, but in reality, a new intel chip is just as fast and gets better battery life. Oh, it does run iOS apps so thats something.......I guess.

 

My take was that it is pretty much the first ARM implementation that can compete with x86 and considering the MacBook Air is now passive cooled (no fans - love the naming irony). It is a game changer.

FWIW I would personally take the XPS 13 as well (primarily for the infinity edge screen and form factor) - but I can see Apple producing some really sleek designs in the future as they now have smaller motherboards, battery sizes and lower power consumption.

 

See my latest post in the apple section about the new Mjesus chip. It's nothing special at all. LOTS of issues, not as fast as apple claims, not as good battery life as apple claims, not all software works as apple claims. it's just another laptop imo. Nothing magical, nothing game changing...the Surface Pro X is a bigger game changer IMO. it has ARM, software that works, great battery life (better than the Mjesus by far) touchscreen, pen support LTE and more. Apple's marketing is better thats it!

 

Ha Patrick Moorehead is not having much fun is he!

Twitter rant aside - If MS can get the SQ1 chip to match the M1 I would be delighted as the Surface X form factor is excellent (and to be fair MS also has compatibility issues of its own on ARM).

 

Yes, they do. but it's only 64-bit apps now, and they have a fix coming the first quarter of the new year. Far less issues compared to the low hanging fruit. And if you noticed, it's not just Patrick having issues. It's about 5 or 6 people in that twitter feed having issues. he is just the originator of the thread. They have the SQ2, it's already getting way better battery life, and it's really fast using ARM apps (which are available now for it, compared to porting all the crap onto the mac), and you get the awesome screen, form factor, pen, touch better portability and WINDOWS!

As for battery life MBKHD got 10 hrs of real world usage out of his Mjesus macbook. Daniel Rubino just put up his review of the Dell XPS 13 and got over 13 hrs of the same type of real world usage from it. Using a video loop to pull 17-20 hrs out of the Mjesus chip is useless to get real world battery numbers, but hey, apple is famous for inflating numbers.

 

Two more quotes from Patrick just to keep some balance:

"You may be wondering why I didn’t drag the Surface Pro X through this. It’s very simple- Microsoft didn’t promise the world to everybody with the Surface Pro X like Apple has done with the MacBook Pro 13” M1."

"I am impressed with what Apple has done with the M1 chip but am disappointed the company made promises I don’t think it can keep, made claims it doesn’t explain during announcements, and that the Apple-chosen first reviewers didn’t find the warts I found in the first two hours of review."

Bottom line is that the M1 is better than the SQ2 (there is no debate there) - but its currently only being offered in last years packaging!

 

So I see on dell site, they have the new xps. I dont know much about processors by is the ryzen processor faster than the i7 and i9 quad core processors? If so, is there a reason why dell xps laptops don't have these processors?

 

Because synthetic benchmarks only tell part of the story. Dell feels the intel is an overall better chip than the ryzen. And judging by the data from the XPS 13 vs the Mjesus chip from Apple I tend to agree. The XPS 13 got 3 hours longer battery life during real world usage, has a faster single core speed, and is only behind in multicore by less than 200 points, meaning you are not going to notice a speed difference between the two. That's pretty remarkable considering apple stated that their chip was going to part the seas, shatter mountains and wipe your bum after you poo.

 

Lol this is 100% speculation on your part, you don't know how Dell feels about AMD vs Intel. My GUESS is Dell just likes to coast with their designs and that's why they haven't offered the faster more power efficient AMD offerings. That will likely change with the 5000 series when they go mobile. They will have to if they want to be competitive with everyone else.

 

hehehe. I would speculate Dell has long-term financial incentive programs with Intel and that these are top-secret.

AMD will run the same but they weren't so relevant when AMD had a weak lineup.

 

It was always going to take at least 1 year for the big players to switch to AMD from Intel (and longer for the premium packaging).

I also saw someone got Windows ARM running in a VM on the new apple M1 which in turn supports running i386 Windows Apps, which was impressive in its own right - but even more impressive is that it runs faster than than Windows on SQ2.

Now I think MS deserve some Apple payback for all the Office + Visual Studio support they have provided to OSX over the last decade and Apple should license the M1 for use in the Surface Pro M1 (yea thats not going to happen).

 

Sadly I don't think it's a huge secret that Intel has been trying to unfairly position themselves by providing large discounts for OEMs to use their products.