Laptop CPU's, have we gone far since 2014 ?

[Fif23]

Hi there !
I have a little question that comes to mind, now that I have to buy a new charger and battery for my 2014 laptop.
It is an Asus UX32VD Zenbook, with an Intel I7 3517 and 10GB of RAM and a 1080p IPS display.
Used to be top dollar back in the day... Still works fine for what I use it for, google chrome, PDF reading, and VLC player at work.

Now, a battery and a charger will be about 100$ and I need advice, should I put down 100 bucks into maintaining this laptop, or do Iput down X cash and get something better ?

From quick googling, I see that only the latest Intel I7 are significantly faster (I7 7600) than mine, while the 2015-2018 ones are only 40% faster which will probably be insignificant for what I do.
Am I correct in assuming that the minimum worthwhile upgrade from what I have is I7 7600 ?
Anything else other than CPU's that happened to laptops since I bought mine ?


Anyway, any advice is helpful

 

[Durvelle27]

If it works for you I’d keep it and if keeping it I’d definitely change the RAM as 10GB single channel isn’t doing it any justice. Honestly your usage needs are very light in which even an i3 could handle just fine. Me personally I’d keep it change to 16GB of RAM.

 

[KLMR]

I don't know your sources, but a i5-8250u will almost double the raw performance for a fraction of the power. You have GPU improvements as well, maybe the performance has improved by 2,3,4 between and HD 4000 and current low power alternatives.
Ports (usb-c), some 4:3 laptops/tablets, etc.

For the uses you mention, you may look for ultrabooks or tablets.

Why buy 6xxx or 7xxxx series? I woudn't because of the patches, maybe someone in the forum may give you some good price/performance reasons.

 

[bug]

Just like on the desktop, laptop CPUs haven't become much faster since 2014. But they did receive faster IGPs, they sip less power and are also more granular in their power state switching.
So if you can afford it, I'd look into getting something more recent (like Skylake or newer). Also, in 2014 you probably got a HDD. You should be able to get a SSD (at reasonable prices) today.
My 2 cents.

 

[Valantar]

Hi there !
I have a little question that comes to mind, now that I have to buy a new charger and battery for my 2014 laptop.
It is an Asus UX32VD Zenbook, with an Intel I7 3517 and 10GB of RAM and a 1080p IPS display.
Used to be top dollar back in the day... Still works fine for what I use it for, google chrome, PDF reading, and VLC player at work.

Now, a battery and a charger will be about 100$ and I need advice, should I put down 100 bucks into maintaining this laptop, or do Iput down X cash and get something better ?

From quick googling, I see that only the latest Intel I7 are significantly faster (I7 7600) than mine, while the 2015-2018 ones are only 40% faster which will probably be insignificant for what I do.
Am I correct in assuming that the minimum worthwhile upgrade from what I have is I7 7600 ?
Anything else other than CPU's that happened to laptops since I bought mine ?


Anyway, any advice is helpful

i7-7600 is old hat - the current generation is the 8th, with either the i7-8550U or 8565U being the most common. These are far superior to the 7th generation due to moving from 2 cores and 4 threads (like yours) to 4 cores and 8 threads. For reference, I just moved from an i7-7600U-powered work laptop (Dell Latitude 12") to one with an i7-8650U (last week, in fact), and the difference is very noticeable even when only juggling browser tabs, Word documents, Powerpoints and .pdfs. While my old laptop tended to choke when I pushed it hard, this one has yet to show any weakness despite having a smaller fan and thus worse cooling.

That being said, for normal desktop usage the difference won't be night and day. If I were you, I would buy a new charger and battery, make the laptop last another couple of years, and see what is on the market by then. AMD has become competitive in the CPU market again these past few years, and while their current mobile offerings perform well, they have worse battery life than Intel - something that'll likely be sorted out in a generation or two. In other words, there'll be more choice and likely more bang for your buck in a few years, and $100 to tide you over until then sounds like a no-brainer.

 

[JalleR]

If you are using 100% CPU 60% of the time then it maybe would be worth upgrading, but if you don’t then NO.. And for what you are listing you will not notice the upgrade.

As mentioned before the 10GB memory does not help the performance especially not the iGPU, so you could get a Little performance boost on getting 2 Sticks of the same memory.

I would go for a new PSU and battery

 

[Keullo-e]

I wouldn't be that sure that 10GB would run in single channel. At least 4+4+2 ran nicely on triplechannel (X58), 8+8+4+4 ran nicely on dual (Z170/Kaby Lake) and 4+4+4+4+8+8 ran at quad (X99).

 

[danwat1234]

I'd keep your existing laptop. It turbo's to 3GHZ on 1 core that's decent. I'd wait for Intel Ice Lake that should finally bring IPC improvements and more power savings still. The ice lake laptop ought to be modern for a very very long time besides games, which an eGPU connected to a Thunderbolt 4.0 port would take care of that. TB4 isn't out yet.

 

[Durvelle27]

I wouldn't be that sure that 10GB would run in single channel. At least 4+4+2 ran nicely on triplechannel (X58), 8+8+4+4 ran nicely on dual (Z170/Kaby Lake) and 4+4+4+4+8+8 ran at quad (X99).

That is wrong

Firstly only 1366 Supports Triple Channel
Secondly only HEDT supports Quad Channel

this is a Laptop so it is indeed running in single channel as he's using mismatched size RAM. if he ran 2x8GB at 16GB he would than have dual channel which his IGPP would benefit greatly from

 

[Vario]

Your demands are pretty low: "work, google chrome, PDF reading, and VLC player" , so I would consider getting the charger and battery.
Sometimes laptops do not age well and things start to break, if you suspect that is the road your laptop is about to enter, then selling it and buying a new one would make sense instead of sinking more money in.

 

[Bill_Bright]

If it works for you I’d keep it

Agreed.

and if keeping it I’d definitely change the RAM as 10GB single channel

That may not be true. As seen here, the notebook has 2GB of "onboard" memory plus "2 x DIMM socket for expansion up to 4 GB SDRAM". Now that is confusing in itself because that suggests only 2GB more can be added. But if mis-worded and it means 2 x 4G sticks can be added, that second pair and last 8 might be in dual channel too.

I would like to see a Speccy report on it.

 

[Fif23]

Thanks for all the advice guys ! The laptop has one removable slot, and 2 onboard.
So I just stuck an 8gb in the slot and it works well !

 

[Bill_Bright]

Hmmm, I am glad that 8GB stick is working. It will be in single channel mode, but it is important to note more RAM is much better than faster RAM. While dual-channel does provide some performance gains, it is not near what all the marketing hype made it out to be. So I am back to my original advice, if your notebook is currently meeting your needs, just keep it.

 

[Durvelle27]

Agreed.

That may not be true. As seen here, the notebook has 2GB of "onboard" memory plus "2 x DIMM socket for expansion up to 4 GB SDRAM". Now that is confusing in itself because that suggests only 2GB more can be added. But if mis-worded and it means 2 x 4G sticks can be added, that second pair and last 8 might be in dual channel too.

I would like to see a Speccy report on it.

After doing some research of my own

Yes this model has 2GB onboard and actually a single DIM slot that only supports 8GB with a total max RAM of 10GB which is werid

It would still only be single channel though

So honestly since you are at the limit you can get a new battery and go on about life or if you really want to look into a new 8th Gen Ultrabook maybe even Ryzen

Edit: Single channel doesn’t affect day to day CPU performance but in apps that utilize a lot of GPU resources the single channel mode can cut upto 50% performance from the IGP

 

[FreedomEclipse]

maybe make a few QoL changes... faster 5Ghz wifi card and an SSD if it doesn't already have one. You if youre feeling brave you can switch out the battery. Id leave the charger if the old one works fine.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Yes this model has 2GB onboard and actually a single DIM slot that only supports 8GB with a total max RAM of 10GB which is werid

Where do you see that? I included a link to the specs that says 2 DIMM slots. How about you show us where you saw there is only one.

 

[Fif23]

I opened it to upgrade, theres one slot on mine... Also a review on youtube where you can see one slot with it being opened.
Re: Wifi I did swap the OEM card with an Intel n card, forgot the model, but it's "n" so it's reasonably OK.


Yes Sirs, I will go ahead and replace the battery for a fresh one while sniffing the market.

 

[danwat1234]

Buy aftermarket battery with good reviews, probably will be less than $30.

 

[Valantar]

That is wrong

you say, and then go about listing irrelevant facts and either missing or ignoring that the examples were indeed of mismatched sizes of RAM.

Platform and number of channels is irrelevant.

I've run several salvaged/dumpster dived Intel laptops with mismatched RAM, mostly 2+4GB (some 8+2 or 8+4), which has worked fine. IIRC they have been Sandy Bridge to Haswell or so. Usually the system reports the ram as dual channel for the amount matching the smaller stick, and the rest in single channel. Shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Durvelle27]

Where do you see that? I included a link to the specs that says 2 DIMM slots. How about you show us where you saw there is only one.

Every review and disassembly of the unit shows it only has one slot

OP even stated it only had one slot

Either there’s another revision with 2 Slots or ASUS botched the specs as all the reviews I’ve seen so far say one dim slot

 

[Keullo-e]

That is wrong

Firstly only 1366 Supports Triple Channel
Secondly only HEDT supports Quad Channel

this is a Laptop so it is indeed running in single channel as he's using mismatched size RAM. if he ran 2x8GB at 16GB he would than have dual channel which his IGPP would benefit greatly from

Did you even read my post? I ran triple channel with 2GB+4GB+4GB on X58 aka LGA1366, and quad with 4x4GB+2x8GB on X99 aka LGA2011-3 which is a HEDT platform. And with mismatched RAM modules.