… which is by you’ll never see it. I mean, I’d love it, I want it. I’ll be surprised to see it. The Surface could be a gaming laptop.
Could 'e’GPUs be part of the monitor? And share a case and power cable?
Sure, absolutely. TB3 can pass displayport too.
Anecdotal, but that feature is what sold my friend on the laptop. Enthusiasts care.
I think that’s still a generation or two of Intel processors away. You do realize that the low-voltage processors going into these ultrabooks are half to 2/3 the performance of a desktop 2011 Ivy Bridge (or even Sandy) right?
Yes, that’s more than adequate for just about everything that’s not high-end gaming. But you will still need that CPU.
You’re thinking of the core M, which is fairly slow and passively cooled. The new macbook uses it, as do several other ultrabooks that approach tablet weights/sizes. The core i3/i5/i7 CPUs still exist, and plenty of more standard weight/size ultrabooks use them, like the incredible dell XPS13.
No, I’m not thinking of the Core M. The i3/i5/i7s in the ultrabooks are all clocked low (i7-5500U is at 2.4), and are dual core.
The i7 5500U’s single threaded performance is 5-20% off that of an stock Sandy Bridge 2500 (benchmark dependent), and obviously multi-core benchmarks are in favor of the quad-core.
This is why I say a generation or two away - single threaded performance increase / clock are still needed, and TDP reductions to fit a quad-core where only dual-cores currently fit.
Hey I haven’t seen a double post in ages!
Quad core performance is mostly irrelevant. Very, very few apps can take advantage of more than two cores in a meaningful way. And last time I checked not many people were doing hardcore video editing and encoding on a tablet or ultrabook…
It’s exactly relevant for the topic under discussion, which is ultra-portables with a dock (inc. high powered external GPUs) replacing a high powered desktop system.
And as I just noted, the processors that can fit into one are still a generation (or two) away from catching up to the single-threaded performance of a high performance desktop part from 4 year ago.
That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want such a setup, with all needed storage offloaded to a NAS. But I think it’s still a year or two (or three) premature.
At which configuration (price) does the XPS 13 become incredible?
Virtually no games can use quad core effectively, either. I agree that clock speed and throughput on single core matters a shitload, and two cores are generally utilized. But four core? Not needed, except in super rare circumstances.
In USD: $1099 if you’re OK w/ the non-touch FHD display (limited viewing angles) or $1399 for the nice QHD touch screen.
Both of those builds have an i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.
I’d wait for skylake at this point though. It’s so close.
That $1,399 model is available from the Microsoft Store for $1,299, btw. Was just checking it out at the Bellevue store on Thursday.
Hey, you’re right. But even better, if you enter the code SAVE100 online at the Microsoft Store, it knocks the price to $1,199. Good deal.
Yeah, the MS store configuration is what I’d choose. The non-high DPI screen version gets a ridiculously strong battery life. I mean ridicuiously.
Some Skylake performance numbers:
Y-Series: Up to 17% faster CPU, up to 41% faster Intel HD graphics, up to 1.4 hours longer battery life
U-Series: Up to 10% faster CPU, up to 34% faster Intel HD graphics, up to 1.4 hours longer battery life
H-Series: Up to 11% faster CPU, up to 16% faster Intel HD graphics, up to 80% lower silicon power
S-Series: Up to 11% faster CPU, up to 28% faster Intel HD graphics, 22% lower TDP (thermal design power)
The i3 SP3 uses the Y-series, i5 and i7 uses the U-series of Haswell. These numbers above are comparison to Broadwell.
Yeah, the usual 10% IPC improvement alongside much more significant power usage and GPU performance gains. Looks about right.
I was thinking at 10 percent perf improvement how many gens until you could notice a perf improvement?
Say initial perf (zero gen) at 100, each gen is 10% faster than the last.
1st gen 110
2nd gen 121
3rd gen 133
So maybe at 3rd gen after your initial purchase you would notice it, since 20% speed improvement is the threshold for most people to notice any difference at all?