What Do You Guys Feel about Recent Years Computer Performance Increases?

FabMan on 02/03/2024 - 22:35
Last edited 02/03/2024 - 22:35

So I am looking at getting a laptop as my current one is now 8 years old, what I find funny for at least the RAM and VRAM situation, I'm only going to double it, and that doesn't seem like a big increase. When I think of other improvements, they don't seem that great either. My thoughts:

2016 - I currently have:
ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501
i7 6700HQ
16GB RAM
512GB SSD 2,200MB/s + 1TB internal HDD
GTX 960M 4GB VRAM
IPS 4K Pentile
+ Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1, USB C, 802.11ac, BT4.0

2024 - I'm considering:
Lenovo Slim 5 for $2,099
Ryzen 7 7840HS
32GB RAM
512 GB SSD 7,163MB/s
RTX 4060 8GB VRAM
OLED 2880 x 1800 120Hz (very nice)
+ USB 3.2, USB C x 2, Wi-Fi 6E

I'm concerned that outside of gaming, I'm not going to notice that much of a difference. Am I being concerned about nothing, or do I have to accept less than exceptional performance improvements?

As a comparison, my 2008 laptop had a Core 2 Duo T7300, 2GB of RAM, and 256MB of VRAM, a 1280 x 800 screen, 200GB 5400 rpm HDD, and was as thick as a phone book (yes I'm old). When I replaced it in 2016, it felt like an amazing upgrade.

Computing

Comments

  • FoxJump on 02/03/2024 - 22:40
    +4

    Yep i agree.
    i'm happy with my intel nuc with an i5-7260U processor.
    my usage has not changed in the years, and it's spiffy enough, so zero motivation to replace it.

    In fact, i recently re-applied thermal paste and it only required taking out of 6 screws. Easy Peasy.
    no point updating unless your laptop is broken, failing, or you just want a new toy.

  • Hybroid on 02/03/2024 - 22:53

    what I find funny for at least the RAM and VRAM situation, I'm only going to double it, and that doesn't seem like a big increase

    There's a lot more to the specs than just 4/8/16/32 GB figures. You can have 2 sets of 16GB RAM with completely different performance profiles, especially megatransfers. Likewise GDDR5 to 6 is a big jump. There's ~100% CPU performance increase between those 2 i.e. double the performance.

    Whether those performance improvements matter depends on your usage profile. It will for heavy applications, not so much for browsing.

    • FabMan on 02/03/2024 - 23:50

      Oh I know about RAM speed increasing, but 8 years ago upgrading to the 2016 laptop had a massive gain in RAM speeds as well as RAM size, it got both. 256GB to 4GB VRAM is a 1600% difference, a 2GB to 16GB system RAM is a 800% difference, while from 2016 to 2024 it is only 200% for both. I just didn't want to spend so long researching speed values on those. The 2008 laptop GPU used DDR2, while the 2016 GPU used GDDR4, so that was a big increase in speed along with RAM size.

      I'm willing to bet the biggest reason why my 2016 laptop felt so speedy compared to my 2008 one was the SSD over a HDD, instead of the CPU and RAM performance increase. Not that the other specs weren't nice, but I'm not sure I will notice nearly any difference if I do upgrade to the Lenovo.

    • Namesareapain on 03/03/2024 - 19:25

      No, not only do CPUs not use GDDR5 or GDDR6, but RAM speed does not give even close to a 2x CPU performance increase.

      • Hybroid on 03/03/2024 - 19:27

        Context is important for reading comprehension.

        The context was i7 6700HQ vs Ryzen 7 7840HS from OP's post…

  • ihfree on 02/03/2024 - 23:04
    +2

    I'm concerned that outside of gaming, I'm not going to notice that much of a difference

    We're already past good enough for normal usage. The main benefit outside of gaming, assuming you don't run heavier workloads, would be platform related. Speed wise, I don't feel there's a significant difference between a 8th gen intel laptop and a MBA M1. The MBA being fanless has been a good quality of life upgrade.

    If you're running a heavier workload you'd notice much more of a difference. For example: photo/video editing, development, ai, etc.

    For normal use, even a low end laptop like a T7300 would feel a lot better with a ram upgrade and SSD.

    • FabMan on 03/03/2024 - 00:06

      I'm learning GODOT and Blender which is driving my interest to upgrade right now, I'm having to frame limit my current laptop as running at 100% GPU makes it sound high pitched despite dust being cleaned out. I also can't watch YouTube 4K without stutter, thing is, the Lenovo Slim 5 isn't 4K, so I'll be missing out there on the upgrade.

      • ihfree on 03/03/2024 - 00:22
        +1

        sound high pitched

        One of my focuses with recent PC builds has been reduced system noise. My old PC used to insanely loud when all the fans spun up. My new system is quiet under normal use and reasonably quiet when gaming.

        I think efficiency is one area where PCs have benefited. My current laptops are silent or silent most of the time. Even running workloads that made an Intel MBP go crazy and lag are no issue on an Apple Silicon MBP.

        For heavier tasks, I’d be seriously considering a desktop with a smaller laptop for portable tasks if feasible.

  • CascadeHush on 02/03/2024 - 23:45
    +4

    Dreadful. Outside of gaming or things like video compression, computers are no more usable or responsive than 15 years ago and I have no idea why. I presume it’s mostly OS Bloat sucking up performance quicker than the hardware can improve.

    • ihfree on 03/03/2024 - 09:37

      Tried a different, non bloated OS?

      Or even clean up of an existing install?

      • CascadeHush on 03/03/2024 - 12:45
        +1

        I remember being blown away by the 486, the Pentium, the Core 2 Duo. Those were real improvements in performance for real world computer usage. We haven't had anything like that since.

        • rumblytangara on 03/03/2024 - 14:23

          You forgot SSDs.

          NVMe (or even SATA) SSDs paired with any non-crippled CPU from the past five years and enough RAM to account for software bloat pretty much blows away any non-specialist computing requirements.

          What are you doing on the machine that incurs notable delays?

          My 7 year old 16 core machine doesn't bottleneck on anything, there's the occasional delay on poorly designed software that loads the kitchen sink. But that isn't the fault of the hardware.

          • CascadeHush on 03/03/2024 - 18:27
            -1

            @rumblytangara: You’ve only proved my point that a 7 year old machine is just as good as a new one

            • rumblytangara on 03/03/2024 - 19:14

              @CascadeHush: I guess you've proved the point that you have a primary school level of reading comprehension.

          • kiitos on 04/03/2024 - 09:55

            @rumblytangara: What are the specs of that machine?

            • rumblytangara on 04/03/2024 - 10:57

              @kiitos:

              What are the specs of that machine?

              Do specs beyond "entry level crap" matter anymore?

              It's nothing special- a first gen Ryzen desktop with 16GB RAM and a bunch of SSDs. Spec wise, I suspect my laptop is more powerful (besides not having discrete graphics).

              I have similar aged USFF machines using quad core Intels that are in daily use by school aged kids, and because they are SSD-based they are also totally fine.

              Unless someone is gaming, transcoding, or doing some seriously heavy computational lifting, specs beyond 'okay' just don't matter anymore. And from the sounds of it, OP isn't doing anything special. People who need serious performance laptops are usually well aware of why.

  • Drakesy on 03/03/2024 - 00:06
    +2

    Negligible at best
    Sitting here on my 2016 lenovo carbon x1

  • Mumbles on 03/03/2024 - 00:54
    +1

    I actually did similar laptop upgrade path as OP.

    My Core2Duo laptop with 4GB RAM lasted till 2020 running on the lightest operating system, Lubuntu 16.04LTS 32-bit. I had to upgrade to a laptop with i5-2520m, 6GB RAM, Nvidia NVS4200. The Core2Duo was loading web pages very slowly, the CPU was running at 100% load, fans were running loud at full speed just to view Facebook and news websites. So anything was better than a Core2Duo trying to run modern web browsers (Firefox, Chrome).

    The second geneation CPUs like my i5-2520m still web browse perfectly fine. The CPU load barely reaches 30% load when watching YouTube videos which barely increases the fans on my Dell Latitude business laptop. Windows 10 and web browsers love the video drivers (Intel HD 3000 and Nvidia NVS 4200m driver version November 2019).

    As long as I don't encounter driver incompatibility issues with my Web browser or Windows 10 operating system I'm in no rush to upgrade hardware.

    The issue I had with the Core2Duo is that once the Web browser stopped using the hardware video acceleration (ie. Blacklisted as unstable driver) the CPU had to do so much more heavy lifting which is insane for a dual core processor.

    If you aren't consistently using 50-80% CPU load for any of your apps then your CPU isn't a bottleneck so I don't imagine you'll notice much of an upgrade. There are other benefits though such as faster boot up times, lower electricity consumption, less troubleshooting.

  • AustriaBargain on 03/03/2024 - 03:51
    -4

    Improvements have been amazing. When the M series Apple Silicon Macs came out it instantly halved the value of all the old Intel Macs. Even the base M1 Air stacks up very well to the old i9 Macs.

    • FabMan on 03/03/2024 - 09:14

      For pure performance, there are plenty of Intel and AMD laptop CPU's that are faster than the M Series. However, it is the power usage and battery life that lets the M series shine. So going by what others are saying, unless I'm using intensive tasks, I won't benefit from faster CPU's, but I could benefit from better battery life.

  • rumblytangara on 03/03/2024 - 10:11
    +1

    I'm concerned that outside of gaming, I'm not going to notice that much of a difference. Am I being concerned about nothing, or do I have to accept less than exceptional performance improvements?

    Outside of gaming, and very niche computing loads, non-shite computers five years or older are totally fine for average usage today.

    Am I being concerned about nothing, or do I have to accept less than exceptional performance improvements?

    "Exceptional performance" was pretty much reached with the advent of the i-series CPUs and the widespread adoption of SSDs. What are you doing that is outside of web browsing or running Word/Excel?

  • GordonD on 03/03/2024 - 10:29
    +2

    I'm concerned that outside of gaming, I'm not going to notice that much of a difference.

    Outside of gaming you won't see any difference.

    All the day to day things people do with computers can be done with a very modest CPU.

    I went from a Ryzen 3200G to a 5600G when they were cheap. And because, supposedly, I could configure it as 45W so I got both more power and lower power consumption, ie slower fan and quieter. Its not noticeably better at anything. If I go to an 8000G it'll only be if I can get a 35W 8000GE.

    The only noticeable improvements I've seen in recent years wasn't from ever faster CPUs, but from going from a HDD to a SATA SSD then to a gen 3 M.2 NVMe SSD.

    • GordonD on 04/03/2024 - 17:47

      I tell a lie.

      The other noticeable improvement I've seen in recent years was going from what was a pretty slow 4G internet connection to a 250 Mb/s 5G connection.

  • freefall101 on 03/03/2024 - 19:50
    +1

    I switched from a an 8th gen lightweight laptop to a 13th gen workstation at work and it was amazing. That said, I already knew I needed it.

    The basics of what we do don’t change much with hardware, so there’s not much to improve. Most things a computer does happens near instantaneously and exactly as we want, there’s less and less to improve.

    Graphics, on the other hand, have so far to go. AI has a long way to go. Large data processing and large calculations. Really what I want is a better web browser than hardware.

  • conan2000 on 09/03/2024 - 07:19
    +1

    My laptop is now 6 years old, and I doubt I'll replace it in the foreseeable future unless it dies. Only difference is it has dropped from a 10hr+ battery life to 2-3hrs, which is fine for my day-to-day. It performs just as well (probably better than) my 6 month old work laptop.

    If you use laptops for gaming, or video/photo editing then it's worth keeping more current. But most of my laptop usage is web browsing/office, so really depends on your use case whether it's worth it or not.

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