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I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

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Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#361

Post by MR4D »

unethical_ban wrote: post #281
MR4D wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Last January I converted my old (2012) quad-core Intel desktop and gave it to my son for gaming. The only thing I had to do was add a 1-TB SSD and put in an RTX-3060 Ti, and it runs every game (Fortnite, CoD, etc) at 100+ FPS without any issues. I'm still amazed that a simple GPU change and the machine keeps up with his friends brand-new AMD box (not sure what chip, just that it was new in 2021). When the 12th…

What other metrics are there for a processor in gaming, if not (compute) power per core, as well as core count? Sure, a gaming computer doesn't need 8 cores as much as an encoder, but AMD's single core performance is right up there with Intel, for much less money. Disclaimer: AMD fanboy and stockholder

I was using power to mean electricity, not compute power. Thanks for noticing that ambiguity.

As for your comment about core usage in games, I'm still surprised how few cores it takes, even for modern games. Not my knowledge area at all, so all of that part of gaming and computing architecture is a bit opaque to me.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#362

Post by sam_lowry_ »

lproven wrote: post #153
zibzab wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only person who is just fine with the new keyboard? Obviously the ones on ideapad and whatnot are not in the same league, but the keyboard on T450s and T460s are pretty awesome.

I've been discussing just this with the folks in reddit /r/thinkpad recently. There are lots on your side, but I see lots of upvotes for the new-keyboard-haters too. For me, the 220/420/520 are the last good Thinkpads. I have all 3 and use them all regularly. Anything after that, IMHO the chiclet keyboards are unusable trash. They've got even worse since the ?30 generation and now are right down there with Dell and o…

I would not dismiss Dell so quickly. Screens in their 7000 series of the same era were much better. Keyboards were trash.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#363

Post by snapetom »

harha wrote: post #192

Laptops in the early 2010s kind of reached a level of being adequate enough for most use-cases that it's hard to really justify an upgrade. I feel, as I write this on my late 2013 MacBook Pro, that it's powerful enough for most normal activities, read, browse, video calls, work on not too large data sets, etc. Anything that needs to run longer than I keep the laptop open can run on a different device, many programs a…

My most used laptop is still my 2015 MBP, the last generation with that stupid touchbar. It does Docker great, which is mostly what I need. The fan whirls almost constantly when I do a docker start, but so far, no issues. I have a newer 27" iMac and work gave me a 2018 MBP, but that 2015 is still my preferred portable.

This last summer, I traveled to South America. Worried about potential theft and travel load, I loaded Kali Linux to my first gen MacBook Air (2012) for shits and giggles. I wanted something that can do the standard email/web, review and backup photos from SD cards, and VPN/SSH into work in case of absolute emergencies. It went great. Some people warn how Kali isn't the best machine for bare metal, every day use, but I had zero problems with it for my use case.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#364

Post by easton »

my_usernam3 wrote: post #312
easton wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, once you hit 5 years (or if you’re unlucky 3 years) it becomes just about impossible to get OEM parts from Dell or Lenovo and you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if you’re in enterprise. So either way you could end up in the same boat, except if framework comes up with a gen 2 it’s possible with enough consumer pressure they’ll make the parts cross compatible.

> you have to resort to cannibalizing broken ones off eBay or your parts bin if you’re in enterprise Except these graveyards are ENDLESS because of the amount they produced and companies threw away. My favorite is all the originally $150 docking stations that you can pick up for under $20 (or at least when I was in the lenovo t series game).

Fresh (or at least gently used) batteries are the reason I had to stop using my X220 though, as I bought like three different batteries (one OEM that was old stock, and two third-party) and none could keep it up for more than an hour. That's tough without OEM support.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#365

Post by amatecha »

Shorel wrote: post #351
maccard wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, definitely not true for all programmers. I guess with games, if you cannot get real time with instant compiles development experience with 120fps running 8k in debug mode, there is a room for improvement. Day to day that doesn't matter. I work on multiplayer games, and being able to run 8/12/16 clients on one machine at 10 fps at ultra low graphics is far more important than being able to run stupid resolution…

The 3090 is such an overpowered (and expensive) card, that another GPU doing half of what the 3090 can do is still damn right impressive. And in a Laptop!

Yeah that's actually a serious compliment to the M1 GPU if the 3090 is merely double the scores?! I expected it should be like 4x or more! That's awesome.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#366

Post by gruez »

300bps wrote: post #302
vxNsr wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know who works in VDI complains about latency. My wife’s whole company uses virtual desktops, and anytime she’s working from and I look over her shoulder I shudder, it’s incredibly noticeable.

I have no experience with that. I am connected to a virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a conference call with 11 people all of us have video turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop. Moving wind…

>I have no experience with that. I am connected to a virtual desktop right now that is in my employer's datacenter. I am at home on my personal desktop. On my company virtual desktop I am running Zoom and am on a conference call with 11 people all of us have video turned on and there is literally 0 latency that I can perceive. I have a local Logitech webcam that is perfectly accessible from my VDI desktop.

inpreceptable latency in teleconferencing doesn't tell you much. There's already so much latency built in (eg. the webcam itself, the encoder/decoder, the time it takes for your packets to travel over the internet to the relay server and then to the other attendants) that the extra latency added by VDI can be buried. On the other hand when you're doing any sort of interactive editing the latency is very noticeable, because there isn't much latency to start with.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#368

Post by zamadatix »

dijit wrote: post #347
terafo wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was. Now there's 12400F which offers just slightly lower performance(few percent slower) at almost half of the price. And there's 12600k which at the same price offers slightly better performance in gaming than 5600x, but in multithreaded workloads often outperforms 5800x.

that chip can suck down 150W of cooling (which is likely the cooling setup that benchmarks will be running with). Not going to argue semantics here, but the grandparents point was that cooling the intel chips tends to be where it falls down (thus, the real world may differ significantly), even if there are paper gains in game benchmarks. Offering a chip which takes double the cooling is just leaning into their point.

Game performance, and cooling in general outside of a very specific use case, isn't affected by what the marketing department of Intel says the 10 core AVX wattage of the 12600k is being compared to what the marketing department of AMD says the 6 core AVX wattage of the 5600X is.

When a single core is maxed out the real world measured difference is roughly 12 watts between the two and remember the 12600k is doing slightly more per second than the 5600X. If your gaming device of choice is a laptop that'd be interesting but both are desktop gaming CPUs. If 24/7 all core workload power efficiency is your concern I'd steer you away from either gaming optimized option.

I really like what AMD has done, my last 2 desktop CPUs have been a 3900X and a 5950X, but if I were to buy a entry level gaming CPU right now the 12600k would be very interesting regardless what the all core AVX thermals look like on a stock cooler.

Re: I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

#370

Post by throwawayay02 »

wyre wrote: post #352
cobaltoxide wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planned obsolescence is Apple's bread and butter.

This sentiment is thrown out a lot but Apple has some of the best LTS on their hardware in the business. 6 year old iPhones are still getting updates. Someone in this thread mentioned their laptop that Apple describes as vintage is still getting updates. Apple is still selling a 4 year old smart watch as new. I feel much better spending my money on Apple products trusting it will be supported for a long time than spe…

It's easier to bring the obsolescence bugging users to update. And you cannot disable the popups.
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