GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

AmpleApricots said:
I need a smidgen more CPU performance in my Ryzen 4650 Pro desktop. I was considering the cheaper route of just getting a 5800X3D, but losing the iGPU would kinda suck and I also need more RAM. Should I upgrade to AM5? Shouldn't I? Around my parts an AM5 socket board worth having without anything else would already cost as much as the 5800X3D and if I add the expenses for all the other parts I'd need I could get the 5800 and all the RAM I can carry. Feels kinda expensive for what it is, in the end.
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If you don't require the iGPU, the 5700x would be your best budget upgrade at $160-$170, IMO.
 
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I just got my M2 MB Pro, and man...why are x86 laptops such pieces of shit. Aside from a 12-core laptop CPU being significantly more powerful than my 8+8c i9 desktop CPU, the thing that jumps out, just from setting it up, is how every little bit of the UI had somebody thinking about how to make it work as nicely as possible. Windows, despite having made great strides, simply does not have this much investment in UI/UX. Second thing I noticed is the only PC I've ever owned that had a premium presentation (came in a nice box, care put into the BIOS & utilities, materials aren't shit, etc) is my NUC Dragon Canyon. Little things do matter. And finally, my ASUS TUF laptop - a premium gaming machine - for some reason cannot drive two 1080p monitors through dual USB-C, meaning one has to be plugged into the HDMI out, but of course the MB Pro can. I just don't get it. I don't want bits and pieces of my computer to be shitty to shave off a few bucks. I want the whole thing to be nice.
 
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The Ugly One said:
I don't want bits and pieces of my computer to be shitty to shave off a few bucks. I want the whole thing to be nice.
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It's why apple keeps winning with many people. x86 OEMs are somehow physically incapable of understanding this. This is also why them switching to ARM won't really change things. They'll still do retarded shit to save a buck on the production line and the end result will be a worse machine for the same price. They should follow the simple rule that if they have to put into a FAQ/Manual/Whatever why their machine *can't* do a certain thing people expect it to do, they should just implement the function instead. It might actually lead to customer retention, instead of people just buying whatever is cheapest because it's all shit anyways.

It's not the underlying hardware either. The underlying hardware can always do these things. Sometimes it's even just a simple matter of some traces on the PCB missing. Why the hell would you even do this
 
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AmpleApricots said:
It's not the underlying hardware either. The underlying hardware can always do these things. Sometimes it's even just a simple matter of some traces on the PCB missing. Why the hell would you even do this
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I thought it might be a power delivery issue, but the power supply is TWO hundred watts. If my MB Pro can do it on while sipping electricity like a fancy lady with a mint julep, there's no excuse for this gaming laptop.
 
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The Ugly One said:
TWO hundred watts
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Wow, that's insane for a laptop. No wonder it gets so hot for you! My Windows laptop "only" has a 110W charger, and it needs less than 65W since that's what the phone charger I use with it provides, and it can still run at full power and charge simultaneously. The M2 Max tops out at 79W, but I don't know whether that's peak or sustained. I suspect sustained is considerably less, since Apple have always preferred low noise over good cooling and the MBP has so much less vent area than my Windows laptop. 79W is still very much for a laptop, but considering it'll idle at 9W, that's still very far ahead of the competition. My 7840HS is the strongest contender for a M2 Max on the market, and it's so extremely far behind I get depressed. My idle wattage is 20W, more than double, for a processor that is only very slightly stronger in cinebench and fairly much weaker in geekbench. And with nowhere near the battery life or slimness of the MBP. And the MBP has twice as much L2 cache as my Lenovo has L3, and three times the L1 cache (which to be fair it needs, since ARM). I can run Linux on my laptop and get a comfy UI, but you don't need to resort to that on the MBP, it's just perfect out of the box.
So jealous of you.
 
The Ugly One said:
I just got my M2 MB Pro, and man...why are x86 laptops such pieces of shit. Aside from a 12-core laptop CPU being significantly more powerful than my 8+8c i9 desktop CPU, the thing that jumps out, just from setting it up, is how every little bit of the UI had somebody thinking about how to make it work as nicely as possible. Windows, despite having made great strides, simply does not have this much investment in UI/UX. Second thing I noticed is the only PC I've ever owned that had a premium presentation (came in a nice box, care put into the BIOS & utilities, materials aren't shit, etc) is my NUC Dragon Canyon. Little things do matter. And finally, my ASUS TUF laptop - a premium gaming machine - for some reason cannot drive two 1080p monitors through dual USB-C, meaning one has to be plugged into the HDMI out, but of course the MB Pro can. I just don't get it. I don't want bits and pieces of my computer to be shitty to shave off a few bucks. I want the whole thing to be nice.
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I was extremely skeptical about it until I took the plunge. It's crazy too because you always hear about how these laptop manufacturers are in such dire straits due to low margins etc and yet... they do basically nothing to appeal to the professional who's willing to drop $2k-$4k for something that isn't a piece of junk. I would love to be able to buy a non-apple laptop for this kind of money which had the same build quality, materials etc. I don't even like MacOS that much. But you literally can't.

And it wasn't even that long ago that the x86 OEMs did make machines that were decently built. Even after the chinks took over, Thinkpads were solid for years. Latitudes didn't look great but they were solid and never got super hot (and had chunky batteries). But lately it feels like all of them are just chasing the mythical "normie who only has $500 baseline to spend on a laptop (but is just going to end up financing a macbook air anyway)" segment and absolutely killing their margins.

Anyway, after being a lifelong apple hater, I've now been converted to a fanboy due to their laptops and it feelsweirdman.
 
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snov said:
Wow, that's insane for a laptop. No wonder it gets so hot for you! My Windows laptop "only" has a 110W charger, and it needs less than 65W since that's what the phone charger I use with it provides, and it can still run at full power and charge simultaneously. The M2 Max tops out at 79W, but I don't know whether that's peak or sustained. I suspect sustained is considerably less, since Apple have always preferred low noise over good cooling and the MBP has so much less vent area than my Windows laptop. 79W is still very much for a laptop, but considering it'll idle at 9W, that's still very far ahead of the competition. My 7840HS is the strongest contender for a M2 Max on the market, and it's so extremely far behind I get depressed. My idle wattage is 20W, more than double, for a processor that is only very slightly stronger in cinebench and fairly much weaker in geekbench. And with nowhere near the battery life or slimness of the MBP. And the MBP has twice as much L2 cache as my Lenovo has L3, and three times the L1 cache (which to be fair it needs, since ARM). I can run Linux on my laptop and get a comfy UI, but you don't need to resort to that on the MBP, it's just perfect out of the box.
So jealous of you.
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I have no idea how much power it draws. The TDP of the CPU is officially 15W, but that's at around 2 GHz, and it screams up to 4.2 GHz when plugged in & gaming. Under the square power law, that means it's probably jumping up to 60W. The GPU can draw 75W when at full load. So yeah, when really getting it going, it's an oven. The main memory bandwidth is where Apple Silicon is really crushing x86 right now. It's got as much bandwidth as a Zen 3 EPYC.

Fcret said:
I would love to be able to buy a non-apple laptop for this kind of money which had the same build quality, materials etc. I don't even like MacOS that much. But you literally can't.
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Betonhaus said:
Their hardware is pretty nice. It's a shame that I can't run an OS that I prefer on it, but I can still run my entire Microsoft suite of apps and services so I'd be okay with one.
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Once more, you can run Linux directly on it, and x86 Windows in a VM works perfectly fine too. You can even game that way, Parallels has good GPU acceleration.
 
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Fcret said:
Anyway, after being a lifelong apple hater, I've now been converted to a fanboy due to their laptops and it feelsweirdman.
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Me too kiwibro. If someone had told me 3 years ago that the only Windows machine I would have is a Windows Server VM for hosting the odd game server on I wouldn't have believed it. But here we are.
For me Windows 11 was that bridge too far. I can't stand it. And Linux is fine... until it isn't.

snov said:
Once more, you can run Linux directly on it, and x86 Windows in a VM works perfectly fine too. You can even game that way, Parallels has good GPU acceleration.
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Parallels is ok but requires an annual subscription. VMware Fusion is free and supposed to support GPU acceleration but I haven't really tested it.
 
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davids877 said:
Is there any Linux for it that's not created by absolute retards?
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You can apparently get Debian.
Not sure that's really an improvement, it apparently doesn't have bluetooth and GPU support yet, but those will come whenever Asahi troon upstreams his work.

It's Linux, you're going to have a really hard time finding a tranny-free distro, probably even if you go back to the 90s stuff.
 
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snov said:
You can apparently get Debian.
Not sure that's really an improvement, it apparently doesn't have bluetooth and GPU support yet, but those will come whenever Asahi troon upstreams his work.

It's Linux, you're going to have a really hard time finding a tranny-free distro, probably even if you go back to the 90s stuff.
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Maybe in a year or two we'd have rudimentary support for Debian+Cinnamon, or maybe even LMDE?
 
Betonhaus said:
Maybe in a year or two we'd have rudimentary support for Debian+Cinnamon, or maybe even LMDE?
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Pretty much all the major distros work and have instructions.

Support for Apple silicon laptops is based on the kernel and most of the changes have been upstreamed. At worst, you just install debian with a slightly less supported kernel and then build the troon kernel.

I'm not sure why this is a point of contention though - even on commodity x86 laptops, hardware support can often be hit-or-miss.
 
Running a Linux desktop on a Mac is like putting a slice of American cheese and ketchup on filet mignon.
 
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