What's the deal with notebook hardware, size, and pricing?

I am relatively new to the whole notebook world, but I find it kind of astonishing that with all the advancements made in technology, it is still rather difficult to find an extremely powerful and properly sized and priced 14.1" or 15.4" notebook. Sure you got the M15X or the M860TU but one is way too overpriced and the other is too bulky for a 15.4" notebook and still rather pricey.

Am I the only one surprised and expecting so much from these companies? I mean notebooks have been around for years now, I think the manufacturers, chip makers, etc. have had ample time to get their act together and produce such power in a feasible design with a more realistic price.

 

Power is a relative term. The typical units produced today outperform by a wide margin their 5 year old counterparts. However, demands have increased by perhaps a greater margin especially in the performance graphics/gaming arena. Many laptops have become desktop replacements.

If you want performance in terms of portability, there are many units that fill that bill. Five and six hour runtimes on battery power alone are not unheard of.

Have you seen the turkey day sales? I saw a toshiba satellite for $299.

 

Yeah I see what you mean, but I suppose I am using power in the context of GPUs. You can't get above a 9700M GTS without increasing the size of your notebook and the price dramatically. Now, of course it's because the notebook needs to be cooled adequately to support a more demanding GPU but my point is Nvidia, ATI, and Intel could be using their resources to create smaller and cooler chips - it's definitely not beyond them.

 

It's not beyond them and it'll have to come in the form of constant change in design and engineering.

I liken today's graphics chip world to the evolution of automotive muscle. The late sixties muscle car mantra was cubic inches - pure power, big motors with big thirst at the expense of handling and efficiency. Kinda like today's GPU's. We now pair up one power hungry chip with guess what, another power hungry chip.

It took a fuel crisis and emissions concerns to force the development of motors that equal the HP of yesterday's cars at half the fuel consumption and waste produced ie heat and pollutants.

What will force chip makers? Competition and consumer demand I expect.

 

Check the link in my sig. GPUs in the high end have exponentially higher power consumption compared with medium and low end. Power is lost as heat hence why you won't be able to get a high end GPU in something thin and light. GPU companies have been switching to smaller and smaller processes which has helped tremendously but they also are increasing transistor count. It isn't feasible to release a new product that doesn't perform better than an old one, even if it consumes 1/2 as much power. Hence they ramp up the power to slightly less than the previous generation and advertise how much more powerful it is in terms of processing power.

 

Very nice chart!

 

This will continue until the next milestone is reached - a fairly radical change in design and development.

The ramp up for power is a market driven demand and just as the drive for leading edge technology developed for say, the space shuttle or automotive racing, spun off to benefit the mass consumer, so has the chip industry in the middle market, the true market.

But IMO, I believe we're reaching a peak in the current gpu architecture. Surprisingly, the 7950gtx is still considered a first class card despite it's age. Equal performance at half the power requirement also equates to twice the power at the same. Within the next 20 years, I expect we'll see that the limiting factor is electrical conductivity through metals.

 

Not the only one, but probably in the minority. Have you ever tried designing a notebook? Doing the analysis on the thermal issues alone is daunting, and I've just read a little bit about it.

 

Yes they could, but the high-end notebook market is very small. The companies will not sink hundreds of millions of dollars into developing technology that is not feasibly going to return the investments.

Shrinking the power of desktop cards into a case the size of a notebook costs a lot of time and money, right now a plateau has been reached by Nvidia for sure. There's a reason why the 98M-GTX could only manage 16 more SPs than the GT.

 

Well, that is why I am studying a field that is unrelated to the tech industry

I'm sure it's difficult, no doubt about that, but they can do it if they work harder. The problem is that consumers settle for whatever these companies produce, rather than setting an agenda for them by showing them enough interest in the type of notebooks I'm describing.

 

Necessity is the mother of invention. I believe the reason why not a lot of effort is put into constantly making a chip smaller is the cost. Companies like to ride a product line for as long as they can as it's most profitable for them.
Every time a new manufacturing process comes out, fabs have to be redone, and it's really quite expensive. For instance, Intel's chipsets always use the last generation manufacturing process, whereas the processors use the newest, that way Intel can continue to use their old fabs to produce chips without upgrading them costing millions and millions of dollars.

 

MXM Chip (With CD for size) (8600M GT):



9800 GTX (Also with CD to illustrate size):



The fact that the cards are as small and as fast as they are is already amazing.

 

Main limiting factor: money.
They are greedy, love to push existing products for as long as possible and thus making more money.
Upgrades can be expensive and it's a financial loss for them (at least in the beginning).

It can be done, they just don't want to be bothered.
$$$ is their priority (man I do hate money and what it's doing to humanity).

 

^ ever thought about living in a monastery?

 

I agree, money has to be it.

 

I said it was the main limiting factor ... not the only one.

As for living in a monastery ... please.
Given the fact I'm not religious and completely against all religious (idiotic) aspects, it would end badly.

I was merely saying that money is presenting a rather sizable obstacle in technological development.