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Slider posted:The only tweaks I still run in throttlestop is CPU core adjustment of -0.125mV and cap all cores @ 4.5Ghz. Seem to remember I used to undervolt the p-cache as well but that didn''t have much of an impact so dropped it. I also still have the E-cores disabled in BIOS but honestly it makes little difference, minor power/heat savings. Based on what I've seen on twitch it seems like getting anything above stable 240 FPS for Apex is a pipe dream so maybe I'll just try and do that. After messing around a bit today I was able at times to get it up to 300 FPS at 1440p but eventually it'd dip a bit. One thing I don't really understand is why it seems like my frames get worse on 1080p at low settings than 1440p, I read somewhere that doing this might throttle the CPU but I'm not the most tech savvy and have no idea if that's true or makes sense. I might just need to experiment more on that. TrixR4kids fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Mar 10, 2025 |
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Mar 10, 2025 08:02
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The Vivobook S14 just went on sale for $450 on Best Buy. Ordered it, thought anyone else in the market for a solid cheap laptop might be interested. 1920x1200 OLED, Lunar Lake, 16GB memory, super long battery life. Hardware Canucks highly recommended it at the usual sale price of $650. Their biggest complaint was how easily fingerprints show up on the body. For this price I'm willing to wipe the palmrests every once in a while and slap some stickers on the outside.
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Mar 10, 2025 13:46
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That does seem like a very nice price for a Lunar Lake machine with an OLED. E: Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:The Vivobook S14 just went on sale for $450 on Best Buy. Ordered it, thought anyone else in the market for a solid cheap laptop might be interested. drat you. I got out of work 2 hours early and drove past a Best Buy and grabbed one of these. Initial impressions: -@450USD, this feels exceptionally well built with a metal (metalized) exterior. It does attract smudges and grease big time though. I don't think I'm particularly greasy (at the moment anyways) and there are three distinct smudges where my palms rest and in the middle of the trackpad. -The keyboard is perfectly...nice. The keys have a solid feel and don't wriggle around too much like some cheap chicklet keys. Pressure is nice. It took basically no adjustment period to be able to type fluently on it. -The touchpad material is not super luxurious; I've definitely felt nicer ones, but it works well enough. -There's no fingerprint reader, which is a bummer, but I kinda figured there wasn't since it wasn't mentioned anywhere. -HDR content looks really good. This is my first computer with an OLED display and HDR compatibility. I've noticed a bit of screen flickering at very low brightness levels (mostly on white backgrounds). The Asus software has a nifty feature that all but eliminates this flickering and allows the display to get really dim, but you need to turn off HDR in Windows to enable this function. So it's a bit of a catch-22. Windows defaults to disabling HDR on battery, but I disabled that function for now because I paid for HDR, I want it. Content still looks good with HDR disabled in windows due to the inherent benefits of an OLED display, so I guess it's up to the user to decide between HDR and less flicker-prone very low brightness. -The speakers aren't as bad as I was worried they would be. Definitely better than the ones on my couple years old Thinkpad and Acer Chromebook, maybe even at the level of the 4-speaker arrangement on my Lenovo Yoga 7i. I recommend firing up a lot of music and other content and spending time in the Dolby Atmos software tuning the EQ until it sounds good enough. They're definitely not great speakers, but considering the limited size for drivers and, again, at 450USD they're good enough. If Asus had put these same speakers facing upwards towards the user instead of downfiring, which does muffle the highs when on your lap, they'd be so much better as they seem to have decently sized enclosures (for the limited space of the machine) and amplification. -I was surprised at how warm the bottom of the machine got while plugged in and set to normal/balanced profile. There was a noticeable hotspot right where the SOC is on the mainboard, but HWInfo showed CPU temps in the mid 40's-low 50's. That could have been due to Windows just doing a bunch of stuff. Right now on battery in its most efficient mode, it is basically room temperature on the bottom and the fans are off. HWInfo reports a SOC power draw between 2-4 watts while streaming 1080p content, and sub 2 watts while browsing less intensive sites (like the forums). I'm starting to think the efficiency claims of Lunar Lake may be well deserved. -Windows update sucks. The entire first boot while it installed updates took so long, I probably could have installed 3 different Linux distros and got them up and running. Then the Asus software found even more drivers and a BIOS update. -I felt like a complete idiot for a while because I could not figure out how to change the keyboard backlight color. I looked all over the MyAsus app and there just seemed to be....no option to change the color. It has every other option known to man including how much memory you want to dedicate to the iGPU, but I could not find a setting to change the backlight color. The setting does exist in Windows under Settings->Personalization->Dynamic Lighting. Under the Effects tab, you can pick a color. I haven't had time to really test the battery life, I only just unplugged it from the charger about 30 minutes ago, but Windows is still reporting 100% charge. E2: Okay, probably not accurate, but I've never seen this sort of runtime estimate from a Windows laptop. Had to install a ton more updates on battery too. Ugh.  Initial verdict, a dang steal for the price and an immensely usable and enjoyable machine. E3: The 7 core Arc iGPU is surprisingly capable. Tried it out with Cyberpunk 2077 and swapped in a XeSS 2.0 dll which is turning out to be a really good upscaler. The game is perfectly playable, if not quite 60fps perfect, without having to completely disable all the eye candy. Even XeSS 1.3 that comes with the game looks really good. XeSS 2.0 supports frame generation and can be enabled with DLSS swapper, but this also disable Vsync and I was seeing a bunch of weird artifacting and screen tearing, even with the game approaching 85fps at times, it just didn't look all that good. Mental Hospitality fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Mar 12, 2025 |
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Mar 10, 2025 13:59
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Pirate Radar posted:Looking at getting a Framework 13 after not having a laptop for a while (change in work responsibilities is making one more important); after poking through people's comments over the last few months ITT there's one thing I saw mentioned elsewhere that didn't come up, which is noise. In other reviews of the 13 I saw people talking about the fan noise getting excessive when doing something particularly demanding, does that match SHSC experiences with them? Trip report: I did order one; shipping is very quick since I live in Taiwan where their factory is so it came within 48hrs. Got the chance to test the "you can fix it yourself" idea immediately when the display they sent didn't work. Got in touch with their support, walked through the expected "yes it's the display, no I didn't gently caress it up when I was putting it together" steps with them, and they agreed to send a replacement. So their support process was helpful and straightforward but it's usually better not to need that with a new product.
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Mar 14, 2025 07:47
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Do gaming laptops that aren't Nvidia not really exist? I really want a laptop that's got enough kick to play games like my desktop does. Don't have to be as good or powerful. Just the same games. But I'm the weirdo running Linux on my primary desktop. And as far as I can tell, even with nvidia's new open source driver, they don't like Linux laptops. I'm considering either going back to windows again, or trying to find a radeon laptop that's equivalent.
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Mar 16, 2025 05:46
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Frozen Peach posted:Do gaming laptops that aren't Nvidia not really exist? I really want a laptop that's got enough kick to play games like my desktop does. Don't have to be as good or powerful. Just the same games. I believe Asus has a couple machines in their TUF lineup that have RX 7000 series dgpu's, but outside of APU's, Nvidia has a pretty strong hold over the gaming market. AMD just launched their Ryzen AI Max chips which have quite a bit of graphical processing power, but it's so new that they're not really out in the market in great numbers. E: What are you currently working with on your desktop hardware wise?
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Mar 16, 2025 06:18
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Mental Hospitality posted:I believe Asus has a couple machines in their TUF lineup that have RX 7000 series dgpu's, but outside of APU's, Nvidia has a pretty strong hold over the gaming market. My current desktop is about 5 years old now.  I'm actually building a new desktop and moving this one to my garage as an arcade machine. It's pretty much a beast, but the CPU is starting to show its age.
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Mar 16, 2025 06:27
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I'm not sure the AI Max chips will be able to keep up with what you want, and generally the AMD laptop GPUs aren't as common or as performant. Asus has a bunch, and if you look used you can find the 6000 line pretty easy from a couple years back. Keep in mind those don't exactly translate to desktop. Laptop GPUs will be slower. I might also push back on "Nvidia won't work with Linux" it will depend on what your doing and I'm not saying everything will be seamless but I think a bunch of people run Linux with Nvidia GPUs.....
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Mar 16, 2025 14:36
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Lockback posted:I might also push back on "Nvidia won't work with Linux" it will depend on what your doing and I'm not saying everything will be seamless but I think a bunch of people run Linux with Nvidia GPUs..... If you don't already know how to make Linux work with NVidia, don't bother trying to learn. Unless you're a coder looking for a new hobby project, at least.
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Mar 16, 2025 14:43
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Eric the Mauve posted:If you don't already know how to make Linux work with NVidia, don't bother trying to learn. Unless you're a coder looking for a new hobby project, at least. wtf this is stupid lol Getting Nvidia working on my Razer laptop with Optimus was as simple as installing the driver It’s the same on my desktop but that’s an even simpler configuration with just the one GPU I’ve been running Linux full-time for gaming and other stuff on my machines for the last year and a half-ish with Nvidia stuff. I know what the issues have been and nothing would remotely make me say anything like “don’t bother if you’re not a coder.” Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Mar 16, 2025 |
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Mar 16, 2025 14:44
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It's certainly possible that I am worse at software than even your average non-coder. OK, it's probable. OK, it's near certain. I had a bad time, but I am the guy from xkcd that starts out upgrading his graphics card and ends up treading water three miles from land with sharks circling.
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Mar 16, 2025 15:04
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imo some of that is just Linux in general, where if you move past whatever guardrails there are in a user-friendly distro you wind up in unfriendly territory. The biggest issue with Linux on modern laptops is going to be dealing with manufacturer-specific power management, RGB, and fan control. For example, the GPU in my Razer was neutered to 100W max instead of 150W until I found a GitHub project that let me set the power mode properly and who knows how well that software will hold up 3 years from now. However, that kind of support does exist for Razer, Asus, and (iirc) Lenovo. I’m not gonna lie though I wish AMD hadn’t exited the laptop GPU market for the last gen so I could’ve bought something with the equivalent of a 7900 XTX. Maybe next year.
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Mar 16, 2025 15:11
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I recently bought an Asus ProArt PX13 open box from Best Buy after not having a personal laptop for 5 or so years while trying to make an iPad work as a substitute. Procreate is wonderful but that OS is so annoyingly limited. I'm running Bazzite on it and the Nvidia stuff seems to be working just fine. I wish I could disable system wide touch screen gestures so I could use them in Krita, but I'll live.
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Mar 16, 2025 16:18
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Tiny Timbs posted:I’ve been running Linux full-time for gaming and other stuff on my machines for the last year and a half-ish with Nvidia stuff. I know what the issues have been and nothing would remotely make me say anything like “don’t bother if you’re not a coder.” For me there was some faff getting it set up right because there's a lot of online guides to "how to set up Steam and NVidia" that aren't datestamped and that don't remotely match how it's done now, but the right answer isn't difficult - just difficult to distinguish from the many outdated answers.
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Mar 17, 2025 00:00
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It’s pretty rare that I have to fuss with environment variables to get a game to recognize the dGPU these days. iirc the two examples that come to mind are both Flatpaks: Warzone 2100 and BAR. You’re definitely still going to have this issue with AMD iGpU/dGPU setups, though, and I think it still happens on Windows occasionally.
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Mar 17, 2025 01:09
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Main reason for wanting full amd is because I've been burned by nvidia enough times in the past. It's not that I don't know my way around getting it to work. It's just always been more of a hassle when something goes wrong to fix. My current laptop is an ASUS TUF F15, and like, it's fine, but so far both times I've installed linux on it I didn't last long. I'm not sure if it's the ASUS TUF line that's bad, or the Nvidia, but I constantly have video card issues with it on Linux. Either it'd work fine on the built in display, but the second I plugged HDMI in it would break, or HDMI would work but not Looking at the MSI Katana 15 currently. (https://www.bestbuy.com/site/msi-ka...p?skuId=6575345) All the radeon graphics cards in laptops I've seen available are indeed just more ASUS TUF and I don't think I want to go down that hole again.
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Mar 17, 2025 03:28
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My mum's looking for an ultraportable laptop (or tablet) to take with her while travelling to conferences. It'd mainly be used for editing/displaying powerpoint slides and word documents preferably through the office365 desktop apps as she uses plugins not supported in the web version. If it has enough grunt to support dragon naturally speaking that'd be a bonus. She's most familiar with windows so was hoping to stick with a windows device that's 13" or smaller and preferably under 1.5kg (an m1 macbook air at 1.3kg is light enough while an m4 pro at 1.6kg is too heavy). Also hoping to keep it under $1500AU with an absolute max of $2000AU. The tablet form factor would be preferable since it would allow elevating the display closer to eye level while keeping the keyboard on the desk but I haven't found anything that runs windows and within budget so far. The surface pro 2 looks like it'd be great except once you add a wireless keyboard it's over the max budget. The laptop form factor is a bit more promising, the surface laptop go is under the max though over the target (especially the 16GB ram version) and there's a few options in the Lenovo ThinkPad L series that look ok. e: except they're 13.3" so slightly oversize, probably not a dealbreaker as long as the weight is manageable. Wondering if there's any recommendations or any others I've missed? Didn't see much else apart from chromebooks that meet the size criteria. ephphatha fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Mar 17, 2025 |
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Mar 17, 2025 13:01
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I think you've touched on the main ones. An XPS 13 would also be an option, it's slightly bigger than 13" but light enough. I mean, if she can cruise around on a MBA that's basically ideal for her. For her use case I don't see why MacOS would be an issue assuming the plugins are supported.
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Mar 17, 2025 14:13
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Has Dell fully flushed the xps13 from their system yet or what's going on with that They announced a while back they were dropping the xps product line and everyone gave them poo poo about it and that's the last i heard
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Mar 18, 2025 00:40
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Hadlock posted:Has Dell fully flushed the xps13 from their system yet or what's going on with that i figured they just renamed it i admit i didnt look into it. i dont think id buy one again despite the fact my 9360 (which i still have and use for certain basic browsing tasks) has lasted me a long time.
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Mar 18, 2025 01:08
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Hadlock posted:Has Dell fully flushed the xps13 from their system yet or what's going on with that It's still being sold as XPS13, I assume the name change will be models going forward.
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Mar 18, 2025 01:55
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Worf posted:i figured they just renamed it Dell got in a pissing contest with... themselves? Over letting the bios just do regular sleep mode and mine would wake up and bake the battery to death while running at 100% cpu in my luggage. i still have my 2017 era XPS 15 but I don't think I've powered it on in over a year. it's well built but I don't think I'd ever buy one again
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Mar 18, 2025 01:59
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Hadlock posted:Dell got in a pissing contest with... themselves? Over letting the bios just do regular sleep mode and mine would wake up and bake the battery to death while running at 100% cpu in my luggage. i still have my 2017 era XPS 15 but I don't think I've powered it on in over a year. it's well built but I don't think I'd ever buy one again i forgot i even had an xps 15, which is also about as many months as it lasted before imploding. i dont see myself going away from thinkpads at this point, unless they decide to make them complete poo poo. xps line is just not price competitive with other options. like yeah i guess i like the metal body compared to whatever this thinkpad is made out of, but i also paid 70% more for the xps 13 even with whatever better price i got because of black friday. probably close to double for the xps 15.
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Mar 18, 2025 05:03
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I tested the XPS 14 with a (30 watt) RTX 4050 in it and it cost $2,700, Dell is deeply unserious and banking on business professionals or office purchases, it’s insane
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Mar 18, 2025 05:13
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change my name posted:I tested the XPS 14 with a (30 watt) RTX 4050 in it and it cost $2,700, Dell is deeply unserious and banking on business professionals or office purchases, it’s insane back in the day my company issued me a dell latitude 7480 (i think that was the model) i actually thought it was pretty great. i actually liked it more than my xps 13, and it is what influenced me to get a thinkpad instead for the next one. no idea what the MSRP would have been on it, but probably more than what I paid for my P14. it was pretty decently specced for the time.
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Mar 18, 2025 05:24
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XPS is usually overpriced to gouge corporate accounts, but they do occasionally have sales and in general XPS's are decent for what they are. You just don't see them recommended much because on any given day a Thinkpad, a Legion slim or even some of the Asus lines can give you better value for the money. I think latitudes have cratered in quality. They were really good even a couple years ago. Now I think they are kind cruddy.
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Mar 18, 2025 14:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDVC3hfs7Ck Moving all the ports to the sides and making the overall design more gaudy looking is uh, probably not for the best
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Mar 19, 2025 00:18
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i blame gamers
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Mar 19, 2025 00:42
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That's a bit disappointing because the Legion Pro series started as a gamer-spec laptop with minimal gamer aesthetic, in stark contrast to the Dell garbage. Not sure what the best option now is for the office drone who needs a powerful laptop but not a Quadro.
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Mar 19, 2025 04:20
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~Coxy posted:That's a bit disappointing because the Legion Pro series started as a gamer-spec laptop with minimal gamer aesthetic, in stark contrast to the Dell garbage. idk if its the "best" option, but this is exactly why i bought my xps 15 back in the day. in current times, the xps 16 comes with up to an RTX 4070. i think it probably depends on exactly how powerful we're talking
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Mar 19, 2025 12:46
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~Coxy posted:Not sure what the best option now is for the office drone who needs a powerful laptop but not a Quadro. Isn't the best option a Legion and just turn the various RGB lights off?
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Mar 19, 2025 13:54
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Asus Zephyrus G16 still has a very understated look due to having a ProArt twin. They can cost a little more than similarly spec'd gaming machines and do trade some GPU wattage for a thinner build, but they also have a great metal chassis, OLED, good speakers...
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Mar 19, 2025 14:09
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G16s also go on sale almost as often as Legions, they are a very good pick. I usually lean towards them more for portability and battery. The G14 also isn't bad, the various lights and whatever are all turnoff-able and most of the time they are only on the top-end models you don't actually buy anyway. When you turn off the bling they look a lot like the old school intel macbooks which is a very good design, imo.
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Mar 19, 2025 14:24
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Lockback posted:XPS is usually overpriced to gouge corporate accounts, but they do occasionally have sales and in general XPS's are decent for what they are. You just don't see them recommended much because on any given day a Thinkpad, a Legion slim or even some of the Asus lines can give you better value for the money. Dell also gives discounts in the neighborhood of 40% to large corporate buyers. I'd say latitude quality was good even last year. They have been mostly the same for a few years up to that point. I have a stack of them and they are built identical in and out. The new Dell Pro Plus and Premium, eeeh. Just started testing the Plus 14 and the Premium 13 but both are kinda glitchy so far. The plus is aluminum over most of it but has a flimsy plastic bottom plate which feels and looks silly.
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Mar 20, 2025 22:06
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Lockback posted:G16s also go on sale almost as often as Legions, they are a very good pick. I usually lean towards them more for portability and battery. The 4070 model is down to $1,380 new at Best Buy right now and $1,100 open-box, that's a crazy deal. Speaking of, I have one and since Windows sucks and I'm terrified of my laptop waking up in the case, I always use Hibernate instead of Sleep mode. Lately, though, my laptop has been waking up of its own accord in the middle of the night, updating, and then remaining on. Is there any way to stop this from happening apart from staying on top of Windows updates and doing them during the day? I've started leaving it open so the screen doesn't heat up just in case it wakes up.
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Mar 20, 2025 22:10
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change my name posted:The 4070 model is down to $1,380 new at Best Buy right now and $1,100 open-box, that's a crazy deal. i deleted windows
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Mar 20, 2025 22:12
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Is there any reason not to do a full shut down? Boot up times nowadays are so quick.
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Mar 20, 2025 22:20
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change my name posted:The 4070 model is down to $1,380 new at Best Buy right now and $1,100 open-box, that's a crazy deal. Microsoft pushed for this alternate sleep mode so they could do poo poo like this, because Apple has it, even though nobody was asking for it. And then dell patched out " good sleep mode" your bios might still support good sleep mode in dunno probably not if it was built after 2017
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Mar 20, 2025 22:37
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Hadlock posted:Microsoft pushed for this alternate sleep mode so they could do poo poo like this, because Apple has it, even though nobody was asking for it. And then dell patched out " good sleep mode" your bios might still support good sleep mode in dunno probably not if it was built after 2017 Yeah this is so annoying. I remember my Thinkpad T520 being able to sleep and resume pretty much insantly, and stay suspended for like a week. But no, they had to gently caress with it. Also apparently my corpo overlords decided to stick with the X1 Yoga G9 even though G10 is finally aviable. Ahh.
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Mar 21, 2025 00:46
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We recently ordered and issued a new Latitude 7350 to a user. By week 2 it had a swollen battery. That was almost 3 weeks ago and Dell is no closer to replacing the battery.
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Mar 21, 2025 06:35
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