As someone with a penchant for high-performance laptops: Can we keep the big, thick designs with overkill cooling for suboptimal ambient situations please?
I'd be shocked if they go away just because you can cram more cooling into a thicker package and despite whatever improvements NVidia may have on offer I suspect the 1080 model's either going to be a lot louder or more heavily throttled in a 20mm chassis than in a 40mm one. At the same time, as someone who wants something that doesn't look like a brick and only get a few hours of on battery runtime when web surfing; I hope that this initiative does get thinner laptops with midrange GPUs into mainstreamish products instead of just pricy halo items like the XPS15 and Razer Blade.
I can't wait for those monstrosities to die. A 10lb laptop with 30 minutes of battery life is about as practical as a mini ITX computer with a carrying handle that cost 1/3rd the price.
Don't forget this is putting the same parts (~100w GPU + ~35w CPU) into a much smaller chassis with much less room for battery, so compared to a thicker/bigger laptop with, again, literally the same parts, these will get less battery life. There is nothing magic about the thickness of the chassis that makes ultrabooks last longer, it's the slower much lower TDP parts typically found in them (~35w GPU + 15W CPU).
That's fine by me. I don't have a thick, 5kg laptop to use on the go, I have a thick, 5kg laptop so I can drop it onto a desk at my destination, plug a 2kg brick into the wall and then do things at full blast for hours.
Note: I also have a lovely thin lightweight laptop for more laptopy things.
And before the mini-ITX cabal shows up: mini-ITX requires me to also carry around a keyboard, mouse, screen, and power strip, or have one at the destination. In comparison, a 5kg, 40mm thick laptop is one hell of a lot more portable.
OEM's have decided that you can have any thickness as long as it is less than 20mm and deliver requires yearly happiness reviews which only have "like" and 5/5 rating buttons.
Very true, I don't know what is the status in US but in India HQ series are hard to find and when you do find one, it has a disproportionate price increase, and even then it gets a stepmotherly treatment from the manufacturer -- at least that is the case with lenovo.
Seeing as there's a single slot desktop 1070 that's only about 20mm thick, I can definitely see this being doable with a lower tdp binned gpu. This is good news. I'm getting tired of anemic igpu in ultrabooks. If you're lucky you can find an ultrabook with a crappy old 940m which is an utter joke. This is a step in the right direction.
"We're undervolting and throttling to cram them into thinner designs. Get marketing on the line... we need a catchy phrase to make this sound like Apple-esque magic."
"m-m-m-m-MAX-Q!" *thunder echoes in the background*
They downclock it but keep the name so the buyer gets defrauded. That 1080 will perform more like a 1070 mobile than a 1080 mobile. it should be called 1073 or something lol. They just copy Intel and their cTDP, same nasty practice and nobody stops them.
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ZeDestructor - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
As someone with a penchant for high-performance laptops: Can we keep the big, thick designs with overkill cooling for suboptimal ambient situations please?DanNeely - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
I'd be shocked if they go away just because you can cram more cooling into a thicker package and despite whatever improvements NVidia may have on offer I suspect the 1080 model's either going to be a lot louder or more heavily throttled in a 20mm chassis than in a 40mm one. At the same time, as someone who wants something that doesn't look like a brick and only get a few hours of on battery runtime when web surfing; I hope that this initiative does get thinner laptops with midrange GPUs into mainstreamish products instead of just pricy halo items like the XPS15 and Razer Blade.Samus - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
I can't wait for those monstrosities to die. A 10lb laptop with 30 minutes of battery life is about as practical as a mini ITX computer with a carrying handle that cost 1/3rd the price.extide - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Don't forget this is putting the same parts (~100w GPU + ~35w CPU) into a much smaller chassis with much less room for battery, so compared to a thicker/bigger laptop with, again, literally the same parts, these will get less battery life. There is nothing magic about the thickness of the chassis that makes ultrabooks last longer, it's the slower much lower TDP parts typically found in them (~35w GPU + 15W CPU).extide - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
...and many ultrabooks don't even have a dGPU, in which case you are comparing a ~135w laptop to a 15w one, that's almost a difference of 10x!ZeDestructor - Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - link
That's fine by me. I don't have a thick, 5kg laptop to use on the go, I have a thick, 5kg laptop so I can drop it onto a desk at my destination, plug a 2kg brick into the wall and then do things at full blast for hours.Note: I also have a lovely thin lightweight laptop for more laptopy things.
And before the mini-ITX cabal shows up: mini-ITX requires me to also carry around a keyboard, mouse, screen, and power strip, or have one at the destination. In comparison, a 5kg, 40mm thick laptop is one hell of a lot more portable.
zepi - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
OEM's have decided that you can have any thickness as long as it is less than 20mm and deliver requires yearly happiness reviews which only have "like" and 5/5 rating buttons.drajitshnew - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Very true, I don't know what is the status in US but in India HQ series are hard to find and when you do find one, it has a disproportionate price increase, and even then it gets a stepmotherly treatment from the manufacturer -- at least that is the case with lenovo.Freakie - Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - link
Desktop Replacements are still a thing, you shouldn't worry.Ej24 - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Seeing as there's a single slot desktop 1070 that's only about 20mm thick, I can definitely see this being doable with a lower tdp binned gpu. This is good news. I'm getting tired of anemic igpu in ultrabooks. If you're lucky you can find an ultrabook with a crappy old 940m which is an utter joke. This is a step in the right direction.vortmax2 - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
Surface temps will be interesting to see in action.Alexvrb - Tuesday, May 30, 2017 - link
"We're undervolting and throttling to cram them into thinner designs. Get marketing on the line... we need a catchy phrase to make this sound like Apple-esque magic.""m-m-m-m-MAX-Q!" *thunder echoes in the background*
jjj - Wednesday, May 31, 2017 - link
This should be illegal, or maybe it is.They downclock it but keep the name so the buyer gets defrauded.
That 1080 will perform more like a 1070 mobile than a 1080 mobile. it should be called 1073 or something lol.
They just copy Intel and their cTDP, same nasty practice and nobody stops them.