Laptop Computers

Trying to find a new gaming laptop that hopefully will last a month or two longer than the garbage acer 5 I bought just 6 months ago.

New ASUS gaming laptops are looking really really sweet. I want the 17" screen...

Fucker said:

I grabbed a Mackbook Air M1 to replace my Dell XPS. XPS was an okay machine, but it always felt pokey and working it made the fans go like mad. The M1 is almost 2x faster in Cinebench R23 than my Dell, and it is faster than my 4790K dekstop by a lot...all while being fanless and sipping power. Macbook also has better screen and is a lot lighter and doesn't wreck the battery in 4 hours.

Demand must be huge. Ship date was supposed to be this week and slipped to who knows.

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I've been floating around getting an M1 MBA but want to be sure it'll run some old Windows games I'd like to play out of nostalgia.

Fairly sure EQ doesn't run through the CrossOver app right now and I'm guessing stuff like FFXI won't either.

Grizzlebeard said:

I've been floating around getting an M1 MBA but want to be sure it'll run some old Windows games I'd like to play out of nostalgia.

Fairly sure EQ doesn't run through the CrossOver app right now and I'm guessing stuff like FFXI won't either.

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I don't play games on it. I tried WoW and it ran acceptably enough considering Apple doesn't have a smoking fast GPU in anything. I could play it for hours without a complaint, though. I tried Shadow of the Tomb Raider through Rosetta 2 and it ran fine. Not amazing, but fine. My XPS had a GTX 1050 and it could pay games well enough but it was so loud and hot I never bothered. This is neither. I certainly wouldn't get one expecting to play games on it.

I did the thermal pad mod and now it doesn't throttle. Cost $15 and took just a few minutes. Easily reversed too. I used Final Cut Pro for an hour; the hottest it got was 75C during rendering.

Office 365 works fine on it. Affinity Photo has a native version for the M1 and it is pretty fleet footed. I bought Apple's education pack of apps that includes Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and some other stuff for $200 (they don't verify in the US). I have a bunch of video apps on my Windows PC and they all suck ass. Final Cut Pro is awesome and the M1's performance is amazing. Silky smooth and fast.

The CPU itself is fast and it makes using MacOS a breeze. Everything feels crisp and responsive in a way that makes every Windows laptop I have ever used look stupid. My XPS was only a few years old (quad core), and this wipes its ass with it in a HUGE way. It also wipes its ass with my 4790K which means it would also murder a 7700K. My 4790K would push a Noctua ND15 to its limits and sometimes over it. This laptop is faster and has no fan and doesn't throttle. Granted, the 7700K is an old CPU, but it is laughable that it requires a giant fan and this has a little stick of metal to cool it.

Oohh, the battery. My XPS could eat the battery in 5 hours just screwing around. This one keeps trucking all day long. I haven't gotten close to running it flat.

It has the usual excellent screen. It has an excellent full size keyboard and the trackpad is without equal in the Windows world.

Sound...also...is excellent. My XPS's sound was a full-on joke. This one has pleasing speakers that makes working a joy. I'm not an audiophile, but it is in a different dimension than the XPS.

Ah, yes. Safari. It fucking hauls ass on this thing. I did a bunch of benchmarking and it creams every other browser out there in every way. Firefox/Edge on Windows? Kind of a joke. Browsing on this thing is fast and noticeably crisp. The only thing that can keep up with it is my Ryzen 3700 with 32GB of ram.

Did I mention I got the weenie version of the Macbook Air M1? It has 8GB of ram and still manages to stomp all my other computers save for the Ryzen 3700.

I'm ready to go on the full power iteration of this M1 CPU. This has 4 big cores and 4 small cores. A big 8 core version of this thing would be amazing and would likely flatten my Ryzen 3700.

I got the gold version which looks ok and certainly is different. My next Apple will be space grey, though. All this in a thing that is small and weighs 2.8 lbs.

What're your thoughts on the 16GB upgrade vs the base 8GB? So many people are saying it's kind of redundant unless you're going to work this thing to death but in which case you should probably be looking at a Pro anyway.

I was looking at the gold version but sounds like you regret the colour. Bit too bling?

Grizzlebeard said:

What're your thoughts on the 16GB upgrade vs the base 8GB? So many people are saying it's kind of redundant unless you're going to work this thing to death but in which case you should probably be looking at a Pro anyway.

I was looking at the gold version but sounds like you regret the colour. Bit too bling?

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The only reason to get the 13 Pro over the Air is the better battery life and the built in fan....which the thermal pad mod does away with. 8GB is fine even with Final Cut Pro video work that isn't 4k/10 bit. I can't comment on other editing programs because I don't have them.

If you are doing any kind of dev work at all, 16GB is the only way to go.

Gold is fine. I also got a new Ipad Air in space grey and I LOVE that. I don't regret gold, I just don't love it. I'd take it over silver anyway.

Hooked the old laptop up to the TV, and loaded Xbox Game Pass for the wife. She wanted to play Ori and the Blind Forest. Happen to take a look at HW Monitor and the Haswell i7-4700MQ chip is hitting 98-99 degree C.



So now I'm thinking about taking it apart and trying to redo some thermal paste or something. Unsure what I'm able to do, and even looked at upgrading the processor with the 4900MQ just to give it another boost. The best thing to do would probably put all this time and energy into another laptop, or media PC, but yea...

Crone said:

Hooked the old laptop up to the TV, and loaded Xbox Game Pass for the wife. She wanted to play Ori and the Blind Forest. Happen to take a look at HW Monitor and the Haswell i7-4700MQ chip is hitting 98-99 degree C.

So now I'm thinking about taking it apart and trying to redo some thermal paste or something. Unsure what I'm able to do, and even looked at upgrading the processor with the 4900MQ just to give it another boost. The best thing to do would probably put all this time and energy into another laptop, or media PC, but yea...

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The cooling system can't handle what it has now. Why get something that will make it worse? The GPU will be the big limiter anyway.

Undervolting will give you the biggest gains assuming it isn't clogged with dust.

jooka said:

Amazon.com : laptop cooling pad

lots of options pending on size and what not

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Ha, funny you should mention that as it’s already on one and still hitting those temps. It very well could have been hitting these temps for a while now and I just never took a look at HW monitor.

The gpu doesn’t seem stressed at all at least according to utilization. It’s a Radeon 8970. From what I can tell, about equal to a nVidia 970?

I’ve kept it pretty clean but I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to try and blow it out some more.

Still loving my M1 Macbook Air.

I switched to Affinity Photo a few years ago because I got tired of Adobe's shit software.

Long story short, Affinity came out with a new version a few days ago. It includes a benchmark that you can run. Their own words:



Ok, so I ran it on my Ryzen 3700, Macbook Air M1, and new iPad Air.

For reference, my Ryzen 3700 has 32 GB of ram and an RTX 2070. The Macbook Air M1 has 8 GB ram and the small spec gpu. My iPad has 4gb RAM and 1/2 the heavy lifting cores..but same cores...as the M1.

In multicore vector operation, the M1 was 16% faster than my Ryzen 3700.
In multicore raster ops, the M1 was 36% faster than the Ryzen.

GPU scores depend on what GPU is in there, but the M1 scores pretty well in all regards.

In Affinity Photo my new ipad air is around 75% as fast overall as my Ryzen 3700. This tablet has 2 big cores and 2 little cores and wipes its ass with my 4790K.

Fucker said:

Still loving my M1 Macbook Air.

I switched to Affinity Photo a few years ago because I got tired of Adobe's shit software.

Long story short, Affinity came out with a new version a few days ago. It includes a benchmark that you can run. Their own words:

View attachment 333695

Ok, so I ran it on my Ryzen 3700, Macbook Air M1, and new iPad Air.

For reference, my Ryzen 3700 has 32 GB of ram and an RTX 2070. The Macbook Air M1 has 8 GB ram and the small spec gpu. My iPad has 4gb RAM and 1/2 the heavy lifting cores..but same cores...as the M1.

In multicore vector operation, the M1 was 16% faster than my Ryzen 3700.
In multicore raster ops, the M1 was 36% faster than the Ryzen.

GPU scores depend on what GPU is in there, but the M1 scores pretty well in all regards.

In Affinity Photo my new ipad air is around 75% as fast overall as my Ryzen 3700. This tablet has 2 big cores and 2 little cores and wipes its ass with my 4790K.

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After going back and fourth about a new laptop or new Desktop, I ended up with an iPad Air 3rd gen (2019), and the type case comes in tomorrow. Don't expect to do too much with it, but for fucking around in the hotel room I think it'll work out well. Probably will try GeForce Now game streaming on it eventually.