I know SSD's and newer CPU's are a price drain, but what gives with the lack of dedicated GPU and extremely expensive price point?
Am I out of touch? Are there laptops of yesteryear with dedicated GPU's that are still (somewhat) future proof?
Laptops are getting so expensive and so few of them have GPU's.
spacejames on 05/03/2017 - 18:58
Comments
You are out of touch.
This is the truth. The mass market has moved to thin-and-light ultrabooks, tablets and smartphones. The average laptop's most power-intensive task is streaming HD video these days, a task that's easily handled by modern integrated GPUs.
There are plenty of laptops with dedicated graphics available. However, laptops with discrete GPUs are a niche market these days. The only people that need discrete GPUs are creative professionals, CAD/manufacturing professionals, and gamers…and to be frank, the underpowered GPUs in the creative professional's laptop of choice (MacBook Pro) are evidence of just how few people actually need such processing power.
It's the 'Iron Triangle effect':
- Value for money
- Portability
- GPU strength
You can only pick two…
Sometimes it'll actually work out cheaper to get a portable/cheap device for mobility, and add a beefy desktop for gaming. Instead of the alternative; combining the best of both worlds, and discovering the total cost of a 'gaming grade' laptop is more expensive than two separate devices.
Hence the reason for my current setup: I've got a touchscreen Chromebook for the 8hrs of battery life and low cost, and then I've got an Alienware desktop for Steam gaming. The combined cost was less then $1600 new, which wouldn't get a high enough gaming laptop to be gaming on, just a mid-range model.
Over the years integrated graphics has come a long long way. They can now compete with some graphics cards with the advantage of using way less power.
Also, the biggest market that most laptop compaines compete for is the classic note taking student or Microsoft office using professional.
High demand applications like video editing software and 3d graphic rendering softwares just arnt being used on laptops. Most people who use these softwares do so at a desktop computer.
If you do use high intensive applications like these, I would strongly advise spending your money on a desktop computer. No matter how much money you sink into a laptop, nothing can beat the massive fans and power supplies that bigger desktop computers have.
So yeah, first and foremost, laptops need to be portable and have a long battery life, these qualities just do not work well with dedicated graphics cards.
gpus are more expensive than CPUs for sure.
I read you can install extenal GPUs in laptops too using thunderbolt and pcie now.
have a look at this:
http://www.banggood.com/EXP-GDC-Laptop-External-PCI-E-Graphi…
No longer needed TBH. Nvidia has phased out the 'M' series of mobile discrete GPU chips. All the 1080s and 1070s chips on the laptops are the same as their desktop counterparts.
@OP,
There are plenty of options. However, laptops with gaming GPUs have always been dearer than the ones intended for office/casual users. The intel onboard graphics have become decent and they perfectly suit the needs of the latter demographic. However, for relatively inexpensive gaming laptops, suggest checking out the Metabox series. They are very popular here and quite a few of my colleagues use them for gaming and other relatively "heavy lifting" tasks.
iirc they are restricted in their clocks and power limits via BIOS however, so they may be desktop equivalents but they're limited to notebook power due to heat/cooling requirements. There is no way most notebooks will have enough cooling power to cover a desktop gpu and a cpu
They typically have a bit of undervolting/underclocking + very minor differences in architecture. So not exactly a facsimile replication of their desktop counterpart. :)
The rationale behind Nvidia's decision to remove the M-series was because the 10xx architecture has seriously reduced TDP, which may allow good notebook cooling designs to actually deal with the heat produced.
So now the real world performance of a mobile 1080 should be ~10-15% lesser than a Desktop 1080. This is a far cry from the previous gen where the gap between the M versions and the desktop variants was substantial. See below slide:
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/nvidia…That said, the mobile laptops are viable gaming platforms, now more than ever, as you're getting closer to a gaming desktop (vs laptops of yester year).
There is no way most notebooks will have enough cooling power to cover a desktop gpu and a cpu
Not yet. Maybe fingers crossed for 1180? :)
@gearhead: Haha, always dreaming of the next model being what we hope!
They're starting to get into desktop replacement size once you go to the decent cooling levels i think, at which point the cost is a lot more than a desktop so is a bit silly from a lot of aspects, but if you don't have somewhere to have a monitor + keybaord etc sitting all the time then they definitely make sense.
I'm bit of a tinkerer though so the time i spent owning a gaming laptop was a nightmare, being able to only change the ram killed me lol
There is always hope! ;)
My primary rig is always going to be my big-ass multi-monitor gaming/performance Desktop. :) Tinker-town.
However, I do feel like I definitely need a meatier laptop for when I'm on the go. The price, however, is really turning me off. However, when you think about it, a Desktop with a high end CPU, a high refresh rate monitor with Gsync/freesync, a 1080/1070, 32 gigs of RAM, and a couple of SSDs is still going to cost about 4k. Which is very close to what a similar laptop would cost.
PS: My backup plan is to try and get work to not buy a $5.3K+ MBP for me, and get me an Alienware instead (unlikely they'll do metaboxes as not an "approved supplier") with the works for over 1K cheaper. Win-Win!
Haven't they always been expensive?
Laptop prices have been creeping up over the years due to the following:
- Weakening AU dollar in relative to USD
- Inflation
- Intel having a monopoly in the market and high end laptops all switching to Intel instead of AMD. Less competition
Back in 2014, it was possible to buy a Toshiba Satellite L50 with a Haswell Core-i5 and a middle end Nvidia GT740M for $799 (normal price). It was able to play games (2014-era) with average performance.
Nowadays, if you want a middle end laptop with Nvidia 940MX and a Core i5, the starting price is $1000 and that only too, gives you average performance.
Intel having a monopoly in the market and high end laptops all switching to Intel instead of AMD. Less competition
I love AMD, my next build will probably be a Ryzen, but let's be honest - AMD never has never had any significant share of the laptop market.
Back in 2014, it was possible to buy a Toshiba Satellite L50 with a Haswell Core-i5 and a middle end Nvidia GT740M for $799 (normal price). It was able to play games (2014-era) with average performance.
Yes, but back then the AUD was at or near parity with USD, so $799 back then is actually the same as $1000 these days. Also, back then, laptops were bulky, expensive, plasticky and look like toys compared to today's stuff.
They have always been expensive and IMO if you want them to last you need to spend good money on them. I would spent around 2-2.5k on a laptop and expect it to last 5+ years. Dell XPS 15 is a good laptop if you have the money, it has the dedicated GPU and a good one at that, plus very nice screen and touchpad. The Lenovo Thinkpad especially the T and X series are mostly aimed at businesses and only the cheap consumer grade ones have dedicated GPU, I wouldn't buy one of those. My recommendation would be XPS 15 or if you don't need dedicated graphics I would go for Lenovo X1 Yoga/Carbon.
I feel like retailers still feel like they can hustle the customer when it comes to laptop prices.
Desktop prices are still through the roof and then they try and justify the same for their lower powered laptop equivalents it's bullshit but most customers just bend over and take it because well "what else can I do" mentality lives and reigns hard.
For the performance you are getting and the mobility laptop prices should be much much less but until the market says so we will still see skyrocket laptop prices until we kick it off.
I think build quality in terms of material used as well as the design, brand name, and the SSD and CPU.
I don't think laptops have ever been future proof. Desktops appeared to be a little future proof in that short window after quad cores came out and people built a rig to run Crysis. Things stagnated for a few years and although you COULD upgrade your GPU you could also just coast along for a good 3 or 4 years. Then there was a mass release of AAA titles and people really had to upgrade to get the most of them. Now we're in another 3 year cycle - again though focused mostly on GPU (with SSD speeds taking a second place as they're really advancing like moore's law).
Current laptops have pretty amazing GPUs compared to the past, not to mention massive SSDs (which a lot of desktops still don't have!) and massive RAM (8-16GB as standard!) You can also plug in external GPUs a'la Alienware though it becomes a little silly and expensive. And they're cheap, maybe cheaper than ever, for more than ever. It depends on what you want. But $3k during a discounted Dell sale is about the sweet spot. Less for less gaming.
I'll wrap up by saying that if you need to stay current in technology (as I do for work) then timelines are a little irrelevant and you just need to budget appropriately in the same way you would for anything else. I put aside $100 a month purely for PC/laptop upgrades. This lets me upgrade every 2 years or so depending on what's out there (usually including selling off whatever old stuff I have and/or maybe putting a little extra in). I do the same strictly with my phone for 2 year upgrades. You just need to do the same.
Future proofing a laptop is hard, need to spend a lot of money. Either buy an old laptop with good specs, have it serviced (thermal paste doesn't last forever) and put in an SSD. Otherwise just forgo the dedicated GPU and grab something with a good onboard. Check the rankings, there are some in the mid range: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark…
I dont see what the OP is seeing at all.
The market is split. If you want portability, battery, then your choice is an Ultrabook or something like it.
If you want GPU power as a DTR then you have a decent choice of $2k Nvidia 1060 powered laptops. I personally would go lower with a 1050 laptop if thats enough but IMO its never been cheaper for this amount of power.
Again people like the OP arent researching.
Future proof technology is an oxymoron with the likes of Microsoft Works … if you're old enough to remember. Word Perfect anyone?
What are you on about, plenty of lenovo laptops / HP / Dell that are all with dedicated graphics cards
Not sure what you mean about expensive either
For the tablets with Intel graphics, you do realise the latest intel graphics solutions can play most games on low to medium settings anyway?
Its also done to ensure battery life is reasonable / lasts, heat becomes an issue in a laptop thats 6mm thick, so they use discrete intel chips to ensure heat / battery life stays within acceptable tolerances
Gaming laptops are between 1600 and 2000 for a decent one
All laptops have GPU's its just the difference between something that will run a game or something thats for general office usage