BGA Venting Thread ;)

I am not advocating for their to not be a product that caters to that niche, however that niche is the mainstream. Instead of taking the form factor we have, which is more than suitable, and packing more I/O and/or more performance and longevity we are shrinking the chassis in which its housed then charging 3700 for the "base model" (see Razer Blade Pro). At least that is according to the review I just saw on youtube unless I hard incorrectly.

Like mentioned before there is always exceptions to the rule, and your example certainly falls into that.

The only factor that should be a concern is if you plan to carry everything in a small-medium backpack. Then 15.6 is more than likely for you. A murse, then grab yourself the W230ss or something to that nature. When I used a murse back in the day I decided to get an M11x R2 for school and games. It suited my needs perfectly, well, after fixing and modding it. Bought it used on ebay.

Lastly I am not asserting that people dont have constraints. However we are talking about the current mainstream offerings. Not the niche products that would obviously be an attraction for individuals within your example. For that I wouldnt bother with "Gaming laptop" and look into NUCs with an eGPU. As, if your someone with those types of disabilities then being easily mobile is already going to be more than simply unplug get up and go scenario.

The typical excuse is, that its too heavy to carry through college, which is patently false.

 

I could not agree more. There is zero reason to cater to this market because it is already the established ho-hum mainstream. It is not really a niche. That's a great way of putting it. +5 Rep.

There is already a plethora of options and the market is totally saturated with that filth while they are absolutely ignoring the needs/wants/wishes of people that expect a whole lot more and are willing to pay for it.

And, yes to the last part as well. It is patently false that they are "too heavy" in an honest sense. Battery life could be a problem where access to AC power outlets is limited, and so could not fitting with the right clique on campus. That's more important to some than the reason they are going to school. While there are always exceptions where an actual bonafide need for something extra thin and light might exist, for the greatest part this is merely a popular perception fabricated by fanboism and Facebook yuppies that are infatuated with ultrabook form factors. As long as the performance notebook industry is run by businessmen that are not passionate about the product they peddle they will continue to be manipulated to serve that juvenile crowd and things will continue on the downward spiral until the entire concept becomes extinct. We're borderline there already with this abundance of anemic soldered garbage with a "gamer" label wrongfully associated it, and the Kool-Aid drinkers are intoxicated with it.

 

@TheReciever @Mr. Fox

I think we are talking across each other. I actually am not talking about mainstream users but I understand that you are. I also share your irritation that seems to derive from the unfortunate notion on the part of major laptop manufacturers that because it is possible to make a small affordable laptop with somewhat reasonable performance they will make small expensive laptops and use deceptive marketing to falsely imply high performance.

But I was asking for notebook recommendations specifically for the smaller niche of users who have legitimate needs for an Ultrabook and who would also like to play the occasional game. Every now and then someone asks me for a recommendation and I like to have a a useful response. I was also in this niche though I decided against an Ultrabook.

I realize asking this question on the BGA venting thread is asking for a tirade against the BGA laptop consuming masses and those who market BGA laptops to them =P

So, +rep for you guys who actually answered the question, I think this is what we have so far:

@win32asmguy GS43VR $1500 from HIDevolution with 3 year warranty
@Philosobyte Gigabyte Aero 14 $1700 (I had a hard time finding this one when I was looking).

@TheReciever - were you making a recommendation for the ge40? It wasn't clear from the context. An <1" socketed option would be great - and yes it would be sad if they simply stopped trying to manufacture one .. =\

 

I finally took the time to figure out Multi-Quote. I meant to quote you earlier but didnt because I am not a fan of double posting, it removes spotlight from other threads that may need the exposure.

Anyways, thanks for the rep. Ill have to thank you for the interesting reads across the internet. I may still grab myself an m18x r1/r2 here in Korea. Seems they might sell for around 450-500 here which is reasonable so recently have been reading up on it to pass the time. Plus I have always wanted one lol

The irritation we endure is not exactly due to a single event, but from what I understand a few. Ill try to lay it out as best as I understand them, I am no expert here, in fact just looking at y410p SLI 755m Guide gives me a headache lol.

1. The Skylake generation is all soldered. This just doesnt make any sense, The y510p is relatively "thin" and still has a socketed CPU. The GE40 is less than an inch thick (fiance's primary laptop) and uses the 4702mq. Its irritating for me personally as I am generally not rolling in the cash the last couple of years but having at least socketed CPU's means the possibility for a cheaper entry if you buy in with a dual core CPU and upgrade with a Quad later when your budget allows for it. There is also those of us that will absolutely drop the cash for the refresh (2920xm --> 2960xm).

2. Look at the latest iteration of the Alienware lineup. They are now thinner, however they take more surface area. Its one of the weirdest trade offs that I have witnessed. I think for something like the Alienware 17, we dont need it thinner, we just want more out of it. Is there any particular reason why we cant just have a separate model SKU's that are more centered around pushing the thin envelope? Or is it by chance that we just want to keep pushing the thin selling point while still living off the memory of previous products? I mean the regular Joe that decides to go into the laptop scene more than likely knows about Alienware, and is very unlikely for them to look at the same laptop through the generations.

3. The recent change in nvidia "Notebook" GPU's. As far as I know you just cant upgrade to the new GPU's either, due to the cards being of a different form than previous iterations. This will also be a bit of a factor here. While there is a nice amount of performance gain, its the issue of this, and the fact that Skylake is also soldered. So there is no way up from what we had. Those of us on Haswell cant upgrade, and the limit is 980m for most of us, if we can upgrade to it. I think there was a number of MSi customers that were pretty jaded about this.

4. Lack of AMD competition. I dont think I need to elaborate on this lol.

Lets just keep in mind that it was just the premise in the hypothetical that I disagreed with, though as I mentioned in the same post, there were always exception to the rule.

As for the GE40, its not a laptop that is comparable to new offerings due to its soldered GPU (760m and later 850m) However is still socketed for its CPU while being less than an inch thick. I dont personally like the laptop that much since 14" is a bit small for me to use as a primary laptop, but its not mine lol. Its got a 512GB SSD and 16GB of 2133mhz RAM though.

I have absolutely no problem with ultrabook laptops that have plenty of kick to it, the problem I have is taking away my options in the mid-high end as a result of it. We went from 2920xm's that could hit 4.5-5.0Ghz to 6820hk's that seem to struggle around 4.0-4.3Ghz.

I feel I may be off point or rambling, so Ill stop here for now.

EDIT: On the note of "pre-overclocked" 6820hk's @ 4.0ghz. Its kind of a meh point. I reminds me of the FX-9590. Pre-overclocked for a fee, just means less overclock headroom to me. Are they pre-overclocked on 4 cores or just 1?

 

Not this thin notebook business again... I'm sorry to say, @Mr. Fox, but yes, ultra-high performance notebooks certainly are 'too heavy' for those not in their target market (like myself).

I think it's not fair and rather narrow-minded on your part to dismiss users of small notebooks as wimpy or 'not strong enough' when some people actually do carry their notebooks on their backs almost every day of the week, for several hours a day, and use their notebooks in severely inconvenient or cramped places like lecture theatre tables, too-small hostel rooms, onboard flights, in military bunks, etc. Even the shift from a 15.6" thin notebook (like the P650RP) to a 13-14" one like the AW13 R3 or MSI GS43VR makes a big difference.

I am in the army. I already have to carry a bloody heavy field pack full of field rations and water on my back when I go for field training. When I go back home on weekends or travel around to friends' places, the last thing I want is my back aching again because I'm carrying some behemoth like the P870DM. With all due respect to that machine, it needs its heft due to its immense performance. However, not everyone wants to lug a 4-5 kg block of metal and plastic around and I concede that we will compromise on performance for our comfort and health of our backs. I don't expect a well-cooled GTX 1080 in a small form-factor notebook, and anyone else in this market would do wisely to think as such.

The target market for the P870DM, P775DM and GT83VR is very, very different from the target market of the GS43VR, AW13, Aero 14, P640R, W230S, Aorus X3 and Razer Blade. Some notebooks in the latter market are certainly overpriced. But several others are worth every penny and cent paid for it. Yes, they're BGA, but they are infinitely more portable than a P870DM. As I said earlier, this is a trade-off that many of us are willing to accept for the diminutive size, and it isn't fair for those in the desktop replacement market to complain about the small form factor market.

 

There is a difference between desiring socketed options and expecting everyone to be rolling with p870dm's I would imagine.

 

@TheReciever - All excellent points! +rep from me as I can't find a single one I disagree with and there are quite a few good ones in there.

My mistake in making this sound hypothetical, but it isn't really as I was faced with this dilemma. I solved it by making my work laptop the ultrabook and my gaming laptop is a thicker higher performance (though BGA) variety. Both those together fit under the seat in front of me on the airplane in a backpack. I would have a harder time doing that with two thick laptops (which is not a fun idea to begin with), and there is no way I will check luggage with laptops in it (last flight I was on there was no room overhead - only what I could put under the seat).

Yes, I totally agree. I don't like seeing "pre overclocked" unless this is a service I specifically asked for if I did not know how to overclock =P

The 6820HK does indeed overclock pretty well, but nothing compared to how a 6700K OCs ...

 

@SRSR333

The discussion on this thread can tend towards extremes sometimes, but please read the responses when I probed further.

My conclusion from this is that there is general agreement from @Mr. Fox , @TheReciever and myself for a certain set of people who are constrained to size and weight limits for various reasons the BGA offerings are certainly viable. I was actually trying to figure out more specifically where the line is for different people (everyone has one). One fairly universal line is the new $3700 RBP which on paper has a 1080 and is < 1". I would be surprised if anyone who reads these forums would rush out and buy one. I really like the suggestion from @win32asmguy for the GS43VR $1500 from HIDevolution with 3 year warranty. In my mind for a BGA Ultrabook you have to question going over $1500 - $2000 (and some people - @Papusan - question going over $600 =D).

The problem is that the BGA tech has crossed a line where it never should exist for example with the newer generation of thick, heavy and expensive BGA laptops (or as @TheReciever pointed out some are becoming wider instead of thicker which is really strange tradeoff ... expensive BGA surfboards?).

This is a serious buzzkil for anyone on the enthusiast side, people trying to save money or people in remote locations who have to maintain and repair systems themselves (or people faced with all of the above).

My take on it is that manufactures are lazy. Once they know how to do something that is cheaper and easier they will do it everywhere they can especially if they think no one will notice. But there are people who notice these things (this thread is for them!) and raising loud objections that get to the manufacturers is pretty much the only counter measure we have!

 

there ware thinkpads with socket and mxm type b under 14"

also the W110ER being smaller than a macbook pro retina packing the same 650M and a much more potent cooling system

 

Well, if we are going to complain about "not fair" in this BGA venting thread, let's get that part right, too. What is not fair is the lack of options for those with higher standards. My chief complaint about the small form factor market is not its existence, only that it affects me personally due to the lack of acceptable alternatives. I count one 17-inch and one 15-inch available for purchase as acceptable. So, tell me if you think that is fair and who is getting screwed on that deal. It's definitely not the BGA-lover.

As I have said many times, and will continue to say, I have always hated BGA but never said anything until my lifestyle started to be corrupted by this filth. The lack of options is the problem. Otherwise, BGA doesn't bother me and I view it as being irrelevant and having no value to me. And, like most folks, me is what matters most at the end of the day. Not because I am arrogant or mean, just because I'm not spending money on trash or accepting BGA based on the absence of better options among the status quo. It's rare to see a BGA-lover taking sides with a BGA-hater, so I think it's silly to expect the opposite to be true. We operate on different wave lengths and have differing priorities, but I think I've demonstrated that I understand the basis for the difference. When we drag "fairness" into the discussion is takes on an element of silliness that doesn't do either side any good.

We can always find an angle to claim things are not fair, and the closest thing to accurate in that regard is the severely limited options available for enthusiasts today. By all means, enjoy being part of the mainstream. And, I mean that... not being facetious.

 

I definitely see @Mr. Fox point - this has gone beyond "live and let live" when BGA production encroaches on the high performance arena where it is not a justifiable solution.

And here I don't mean high performance with size and weight constraints. For people meeting constraints I personally think the focus should be on acceptable performance.

 

Thats an excellent use case, I dont tend to fly smaller planes, as flying from Korea to the USA doesnt actually have smaller planes to begin with. I can be more obnoxious when it comes to my overhead luggage though. As they are designed to have a certain amount of space per seat and are usually outlined as such. If someone else decided to take up the whole section, guess what? Ill be playing Tetris with your crap since you couldnt afford me any space. I have a murse and a backpack, murse has the camera and documents (passports and travel documents), backpack had the 3 laptops. I am pretty passive in other scenarios but my laptop is directly connected to my well being (finishing my BS of IT, then later other projects). Unless of course it simply is painful to lift luggage to the overhead compartments, then I most certainly agree, getting a lighter form factor is definitely something to inquire into.

Most certainly agree. I absolutely have no problem with ultrabook form factors, its when they are used to replace options that used to have versatility in terms of its components. I dont see anyone else using this term but to me, its basically Anti-consumer. This isnt us asking about the possibility of socketed systems in the future as an interest, but questioning why after 5 generations (?) we are losing a feature that was the expected norm. Not to mention, but the keyboards look terrible to type on. The life of the PC shouldnt be set in stone when your walking out the door with it as a new purchase when your spending the kind of cash they are asking for, thats just my personal opinion, the problem is lack of options as a result. Did we ever get a successor to the P150SM?

I remember seeing laptops with desktop processor's and thinking thats crazy! cool, but crazy! (for me) since I always thought to be able to get a mq or xm chip. Now thats basically the only option for me in the future after I retire the y510p w/ eGPU

Exactly my thoughts

 

Clearly @Mr. Fox has misunderstood my comment. I was talking about his comment about performance laptops 'not being too heavy' and those who claim otherwise being 'wimpy', and telling us to suck it. He isn't even in what he calls the 'mainstream' market, so I couldn't see why he was saying this. I could very well say the exact same thing in reverse, and say that 'haha too bad you're already in the minority, and if you really think Intel and co. are going to listen to your lonesome rants on a single forum, you must be really deluded; just suck it and use what you get, or get a desktop' and leave it at that, but that would be very impertinent and taking this issue nowhere.

Furthermore, you call me a BGA-lover, a 'mainstream user'. I neither like nor dislike BGA. Surface mount is what has enabled our smartphones and tablets to get as small but powerful as they have gotten today. On the other hand, scaling up surface-mount to high-performance components is wasteful. Mid-range, small-form factor notebooks used to come with sockets (like my own). They don't, now because Intel killed rPGA. This is a compromise that most users in this market sector have accepted. Those who haven't either got themselves a desktop (more common), or got a higher-performance, weightier notebook (quite rare). I don't know if you guys understand this, but this sector has also been screwed over by Intel. What can we say? As I said earlier, this is not something that can be stirred by a handful of users in an enthusiast forum. We also don't want to move up the performance spectrum just to get back our socketed CPU (which isn't even rPGA anymore—it's a desktop LGA socket and chipset that wouldn't fit in smaller machines) because we don't need it and don't want it.

I understand the concerns of the posters in this thread, and the high performance sector needs its options. It is a real pity, as @FredSRichardson said, that BGA components are finding their way into chassis where they ought to have no place in. The key issue in the first place was the elimination of the rPGA socket. Whatever Intel's reasons, this was quite unnecessary when seen from a consumer point of view, and very wasteful.

Do we have the power to rally over the huge majority of users who honestly don't give two flying hoots about what's inside their laptops in the first place, let alone whether or not they can change out those components? Realistically speaking—I think it's possible, but it's an incredibly steep uphill battle. We managed to get back our overclockable drivers after nVidia pulled a fast one on notebook users. Can we do the same with Intel, which is significantly bigger and less close to its consumers than nVidia is? I sure as hell hope so.

It'll be a fine day for all of us if we see something like a Core i7-8700MQ again with rPGA. A standardisation and miniaturisation of the currently massively fragmented MXM GPU market would be icing on the cake. I hope to see at least the latter occur with HBM2.

I hope I've made my stand clear.

 

Well all of these machines have there practical usage for all the time. I am planning to get an alienware 13 with the oled screen for traveling. On a plane, bus you can't get the best battery life with a monster laptop which i will always love them. I had a Arous 17 inch machine great machine but too many problems overheating, terrible wireless card, so so battery. My friend has an HP Omen 2015 and that thing really really is bad overheats terribly when gaming and can barely game at all anyway. These things are a hit and miss and they still have a very long way to go but as a secondary 17inch bga with a 4k screen for video editing on the go if your professional or photography all depends what you do.

 

You're clear about the reasons you want an AW13 for the purposes stated and those are legit reasons where such a need exists.

Neither of those other two notebooks mentioned are truly high performance machines. They are essentially mainstream gamer toys, and even at that they are poorly executed (as you clearly noted). Poor execution can easily give people that are new to the concept of high performance notebooks a really bad taste in their mouth. Without knowing what a well appointed high performance notebook actually looks and runs like, they can form erroneous opinions on the matter... happens all the time.

 

I fly domestic JetBlue quite a lot. Last flight I got stuck with row 7. The crew was gate checking carryons long before I got on the plane. Needless to say I was quite happy to have my laptops safely under the seat in front of me. No way will I ever rely on overhead space for those. There is no way to guarantee overhead luggage space will be avsilable.


Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

@SRSR333 - I don't think the situation is that dire. You can figure out what the market is like for high performance gaming laptops by looking at the number of >1.4" laptops there are over $2000. There are quite a few. At some point consumers have to question what they are getting for that money. That is in terms of performance, ability to upgrade and ability to repair. At this point I would expect lga sockets on those laptops.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

Yes your completely right. I really don't like them too much to begin with, they have terrible heat problems and the performance is utter crap, it couldn't barely play any Triple AAA games it struggled badly the Omen, and BGA really really is a crude joke. I miss the days of extreme wonderful amazing high performance notebooks. It's all trends that the top manufacturers are following, and you know most just care for profits than anything else which is such a shame they are trying in a sense but even there so called high performance notebooks still are terrible bga processors.

 

On a side-note I saw, where the new generation AW machines use more surface area but thinner, it's actually due to component layout (and to a degree, use of integrated/BGA GPU and CPU).

General consensus now seems to be to occupy as much of the palm rests with battery as possible and remaining space for the motherboard/drives/etc which can be made quite small. Specifically on the motherboard side, there's less use for stacking components which means the overall height shrinks but layout may expand as a result. Comparatively, the heatsinks and battery now occupy the majority of the space in thin machines and even on thick machines, much of the thickness is entirely down to heatsinks only.

Most people also forget, that the Alienware machines tend to have comparatively large batteries. The current AW15 has a 99Wh battery (largest legal limit to fly with) which is certainly useful if you're moving around a lot.

On the AW13, it was a bit of an aberration. I think it's largest failing is most people didn't understand the implications of it using a ULV cpu. The idea of combining a ULV + dGPU was interesting, but perhaps a bit too far ahead of itself. The current one has gone back to the proper quad-core and paired with a 1060 and so doesn't have the same downsides as the previous generation.

One thing I do like on it is that OLED panel though. God damn it looks good. Next step is a 120/144hz OLED panel.

Lets be honest here, the typical 6700HQ/1060 or 1070 combo is about all many need for gaming, but we are getting absolutely screwed when it comes to display technology. 60hz is everywhere still, IPS backlight bleeding on nearly all LG panels, Mobile G-Sync actually being Freesync but we have to pay for it, garbage resolution scaling from Windows even though OSX and Linux DWMs have had it down pat for nearly a decade.

Most businesses will stick with what's safe and go for profits unfortunately. It's hard to "fight the good fight" when you have no money.

This is why I've suggested multiple times that an Indiegogo or Kickstarter partnership with somebody like Clevo would be a good idea as it side-steps much of the financial uncertainty of developing a risky/niche product.

 

Regarding the 6700HQ for gaming, I thought this post was particularly ineresting from the 16L13 thread:

 

Aaaaand I just had my first BGA casualty today. I was plugging in my phone to transfer pictures over, and it was having weird USB issues saying device not recognzed, then it wouldn't even recognize my external keyboard and mouse. Finally got those working again and I was just surfing and the whole thing died. Power light comes on, no noise, nothing else and no way to turn it back off. Tried holding power button, disconnecting main battery and CMOS, also drives and RAM. It is dead. I'm guessing the mobo went. All it does is the power light comes on and nothing else ever happens, and cant even turn it back off. I may try to plug it in and turn it on and see if by some random miracle it comes back, but I am worried it will burn something up so I will only try for a little while only if I can monitor it.

It will be interesting to see if the warranty is honored since I had repasted, I shall find out I guess. I am going to throw away that USB cord that I was using, it seemed like that is when this all started, maybe it shorted something out on the mobo since it was less than 15 mins later and it died.

And I had all evening and all day tomorrow to play games

 

@Porter - which BGA system died on you? Bare in mind - any computer can die. The main adavantage of the socketed system is that you may be able to save on parts (i.e. replace CPU, GPU or mobo but not necessarily have to replace all three).

 

Yeah I know, I was just venting. I like my BGA and socked systems equally It was a P35X v6 with a 1070 in it. Its been a great system after I repasted it, the factory liquid goo they had was trying to bridge about a 1-2mm gap. I may have issues with warranty since it is obvious I removed that crap and repasted with ICD, and used pads on the vram to bridge that awful gap. I am sure the issue had something to do with that USB problems I had but I may have to argue with them about it. I gamed hundreds of hours on it and never had any issues.

 

Interesting, I actually read through the reviews:
Tornado F5: http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/e...i7-6700k-gtx-1070-mxm/#competinggaminglaptops
P650RS-G: http://www.gaminglaptopsjunky.com/clevo-p650rs-g-review-gtx-1070-i7-hq/

I think the reviewer actually mixed up a few of the numbers. For example, the Metro:LL benchmark has the F5 at 116FPS, but right below that, the average result for 1080p/NBC-Ultra setting is 97fps. The P650 scored 97fps as well at the same setting type according to the reviewer. The 116FPS number appears to have been taken from either the 1080p/medium or 1440p/high graph instead of the matching 1080p/ultra one.

Similarly, looking at the Total War result is completely confusing. The summary says "DX12 is slower than DX11", but then all but one of the graphs say it's faster? Confusing. Assuming the numbers are flipped around, the DX12 does show the CPU bottlenecking most. But it's hardly a practical use case when the DX11 modes are both faster and nearer in performance.

Other examples are TalosPrinciple running identically on Vulkan and DX11 and Battlefront being identical. Also worthy of note, is the Fallout4 framerates are significantly worse on the F5 which should definitely not happen.

I'm not saying the bottlenecking isn't there, it seems to be around 5-7% across the board and non-existant in some (presumably where the GPU is bottlenecked). But it pays to fact check since that particular quoted graph seems to have been drawn wrong (using the reviewers own data).

Probably the biggest jump I can see in CPU performance is actually Hitman.

Ouch, sounds to me like it had a short and fed 5V back the wrong way. Happens a lot with crap usb cables. All of the important stuff is probably fine, but dead 5V rail is a new motherboard either way.

I should hope so, but depends on the reseller and how much they like you. Mine doesn't mind if I re-paste or change parts as they understand what I do for a living. We also have laws here to prevent cases like that of not honouring a warranty for unrelated repairs (or damage for that matter).

Given it's a Gigabyte system I now read, they probably don't care, although I'd recommend repasting with standard paste and removing the thermal pads so at least that won't even be an investigation path for them. Once you've handed over their machine as long as it *looks* standard, 90% of the time they'll just replace it. But if it looks like it's been modified then that can give them cause to question the warranty replacement and they're already got your laptop at that point.

 

@Stooj Thanks for the heads up about the paste, I hadn't really thought of that. Like you said the pads make it super obvious, so putting some normal paste back on may help me stay covered.

I'm updating some games on my old desktop with a 3770k, 8GB mem, and a 750ti, you know I am desperate if I'm using a desktop. 1st world problems I know...

 

Ooof! 750Ti. A mighty card for it's time but it hasn't aged well. Even my HTPC got upgraded from the 750Ti to a 1060.....first world problems

 

Yes, I agree that these differences look pretty small (less than 10%) and all frame rates are over 60. I would be interested to see the results for 4K - Whitcher 3 on my P650RS-G rig can't go over 30FPS with Witcher 3 at 4K. I realize you probably need a gtx1080 for that.

 

Definitely CPU isn't gonna help you at all there. My desktop 980Ti (bit higher than the mobile 1070) rig gets hammered by Witcher3. I run it at 1080p but stack the mods on + ReShade (my own with some basic sharpening, SSAA and minor contrast tweaks) and I average ~60fps with drops to 50 or so. Not so bad on a G-Sync panel though.

It's a fantastic looking game though.

 

The performance difference is great, because I can leave my work VM's, Photoshop, multiple copies of IntelliJ, a dev webserver + database, Chrome with 50+ tabs running and still launch a game and get great framerates. I can even be running a compile in the background (on four threads) and the 6700K will still be just fine running a game and other applications. I suppose if you use your computer like a game console it may work fine, but the 6700HQ + GTX 1070 really struggled doing the same workload, compared to the 6700K + GTX 1070.

 

@win32asmguy that is an awesome system! =)

 

As cool as that might sound, do you really need it to do all that at once?

 

I know I would like to be able to do that!

That is the kind of thing I would do with my DTR laptops for work. My current work Ultrabook is not quite up to the task...

 

Yeap. Yeap. @FredSRichardson describes a normal day in the life of a software developer. Now, I don't do the gaming portion, but this is standard operating procedure. Multiple VMs, may have an instance or two of VIm, Visual Studio or Eclipse. Compiling. Running a web server or two, and checking javascript, angular, or jQuery for issues. Running DB queries against multiple instances of SQL Server, etc., etc., etc.

 

Well, it was really @win32asmguy that described very well this type of usage (and based on his handle I think he needs to run masm on a Windows95 VM =P).

I just end up running more and more stuff because I can

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

And if you have the power then it's not a problem

 

Once you get used to the power its hard to go back =D
I manage to do a lot of work using remote servers these days which is great if you have bandwidth.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

I work for a software development consulting company, so many of my projects have been crazy over engineered by previous teams. Each of these apps likes to do indexing and such that takes longer than windows to boot up. I could shut them all down I guess but lots of times tracing bugs in these systems you have to jump between all apps quickly.

 

So what you mean (in systems admin terms) is that your projects haven't been optimized properly?

The amount of business software I find that has stupendous system requirements only because they're developed by people who don't care about speed is astounding. Basically I've learned that if it's connected to a database, expect it to do things in the slowest/dumbest manner possible! The recent Spotify SQLite/Vacuum issue generating excessive drive writes is a big name recent one derived solely from somebody not understanding the implications of their code.

But yes, sometimes brute force is the solution, and previously my P750DM was perfect for that. Now I've got bigass servers I can offload that to remotely and for most things which are properly multithreaded, a few 16-core Xeons make the 6700K look like a childs toy

EDIT: I should probably also add, that games to a large degree suffer from the same problems now. Increased complexity, lower focus on engine optimization and development and lack of expertise in the field all lead to software that just doesn't run as well as it can.

 

Sorry to go a little bit off-topic here, but do you think the developers who write slow code need to take a course on performance optimization? Or do you think that this slow code can be avoided by simply following general programming practices? I'm currently a computer science student, so I would like to know

 

Well, it's my belief that Engineers are inherently lazy (this applies to me personally as well) and if we see a fast way of implementing something we might pick that and (possibly unknowingly) take the performance hit. The idea being that when you go back and profile the system you can figure out where the bottlenecks are and optimize those specifically. A major caveat is that if the whole system is poorly designed and has inherent bottlenecks then everyone is hosed - from my limited experience, avoiding that seems to require a deep understand of the problem area. Engineers also tend to develop a toolbox of known tricks (like optimal data structures and algorithms or known optimal numerical recipes) that they can grow over time and draw from as needed.

 

Not necessarily off-topic, but perhaps tangential since it often applies to performance and particularly in games. If I see a game actually utilising a quad-core CPU to it's fullest I often think:

1. WOW, they actually made an engine which uses multiple threads and shares the load (which is not an easy task actually). Great! But often this is coupled with....
2. Why are all 4 cores at 90% usage...what could they possible be doing?

I would say the biggest issues are just inexperience combined with the increasing complexity of projects. Games now often require dozens, if not hundreds of people involved in development which leaves little time or resources to really hammer out optimisations. Most of the time things are segmented and farmed off to teams (or even middle-ware) and as long as the whole thing comes together "good enough" it's not worth the effort to go any further.

This is why I'm a big proponent of independent game engine development (not as in indie but that's good to, but as in separate to a game). Things like Unity/UE4 are the way forward because it lets engine developers be good at what they do, and game developers/artists/etc be good at what they do. More chances that each person becomes a true "expert" in their field instead of a jack of all trades. Many big name companies (EA and Ubisoft for example) do this internally. Other games where both the engine and game are developed by the same team often suffer as a result.

That's not to say you can't take a good engine and absolutely destroy it in implementation by a 3rd party. Batman Arkham Knight is a prime example of this.

Of course there are general "good" and "bad" ways to do things which can apply to many systems but when it comes down to specific languages or packages it's really hard to "be an expert" in all of them. To top it off, most education systems are damn near useless and 90% outdated before you even start your course, never-mind finish it. Most of these things apply to any software development really.

Now I'm definitely not saying engineers are lazy or bad, but 99% of the time they're paid to do a job and have little personal investment in the outcome other than their salary or paycheck. As long as "it works" at the end they aren't going to spend hours trying to get little bits of performance about it. I find this to be particularly accurate with more mundane corporate work. Games development is usually a little different since it's entertainment in nature and most of the developers actually care to some degree.

If you're particularly interested in optimisation I HIGHLY recommend checking out the game called "TIS-100" and it's successor "Shenzhen I/O" (early access). It can be both super satisfying (optimising and making your code faster or more efficient) or super frustrating (can't think of how to optimise it).
It's a assembly-like programming game with a high emphasis on optimising your extremely limited coding space. You're basically given an input, what needs to be output and some space to write a program to do it. Typically the task itself is actually very simple. Most people can do the first 5-6 in their first go. But the key is the leaderboards which measure how many CPU cycles you use as well as instruction counts and compares it to others. Then you discover that the first way you did it is probably twice as complex as it should be. TIS-100 taught me more useful stuff about programming than any of the programming courses I took getting my BA.

Shoot me a PM, I actually have a spare copy (steam key) of TIS-100 if you like

 

The most important metric for most of our clients is feature count, time to MVP, and to fix bugs. When we plan our next work phase usually the last thing on the list is optimization. Our clients primarily choose what work we do.... We tell them that performance can be addressed by buying larger cloud instances to an effect. Its sad but writing optimised code is not really "in" right now.

 

i think it has to do with formal training, and not understanding the tools in play. @win32asmguy stated, there's such a rush for the quick solution, people write code without developing an understanding of what the tools can do.

I'm going to give a quick example. I was hired to take over a gig in which performance of some database queries were unacceptable. In the first query/code I examined, it was a single row lookup within a database table with > 2MM rows. The code I looked at literally did a SELECT * FROM table into an array. Then used a while loop to look for the correct data. I think the developer's sample data had about a total of 20 rows

Now I don't know what understanding the original author had of the underlying tools, but needless to say, whoever was writing that code had no clue how to use a database nor a SQL where clause.

So, I'm sure there is a lot of inefficient or non-optimized code out there that falls into this kind of category.

 

Yikes, that's a good (or bad) example of what it's like being subjected to someone else's learning curve...

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

Good or bad, its still my line of work (consulting) so I am just thankful that high performance laptops are still available as an option.

 

@win32asmguy - I hope you don't end up cleaning up a lot of code! I've landed that chore a few too many times...

 

Hi @Mr. Fox

Can you expand a bit on the engineering defects you see in the P750DM2-G

 

I believe he is referring to the unified heatsink.

 

A unwanted design!!

 

precisely... Tethered CPU to GPU is no bueno.