Why are Windows PCs pretty much as expensive as Macs these days?

[maflynn]

Gaming is different from LLM though.

You're hung up on the word gaming. Ignore that and look at the specs of the laptop

Laptop specs:
CPU: I9-14900HX
GPU: RTX 4090
Ram: 32GB
Storage: 2TB

The question isn't how bad a gaming laptop can be on LLMS, rather can a top of the line spec'd out laptop can compete against a MBP with LLMS

You see the word "gaming" and you instantly shut down any talk on it being able to perform other computer tasks, and ignore the fact that LLMs largely use Cuda cores which the 4090 has. Gaming laptops are not specially built PCs that don't do anything other then gaming, typically they are insanely spec'ed out computers that can do more things then most thinkpads and dells.

RTX4090 vLLM Benchmark: Best GPU for LLMs Below 8B on Hugging Face
Top NVIDIA GPUs for LLM Inference

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I'm hung up on the word gaming because it's not a good laptop otherwise. It's slow, loud, has bright LEDs, and dumps plenty of power on a screen refresh rate that's borderline useless for non-gaming tasks. These are massive problems if you're trying to use it in an office setting, but perfectly acceptable - and in fact wanted behaviors - for a gaming laptop. It even has Wifi 7 and 2.5G ethernet, which are must-haves if you want low latency networking, but mostly useless for most people.

If you want a solid comparison, try comparing a Dell or Lenovo workstation class laptop. I don't actually know if they'll perform any better, but they won't be dumping power - and heat - into over-driving the display or an RGB keyboard.

 

[Technerd108]

I'm hung up on the word gaming because it's not a good laptop otherwise. It's slow, loud, has bright LEDs, and dumps plenty of power on a screen refresh rate that's borderline useless for non-gaming tasks. These are massive problems if you're trying to use it in an office setting, but perfectly acceptable - and in fact wanted behaviors - for a gaming laptop. It even has Wifi 7 and 2.5G ethernet, which are must-haves if you want low latency networking, but mostly useless for most people.

If you want a solid comparison, try comparing a Dell or Lenovo workstation class laptop. I don't actually know if they'll perform any better, but they won't be dumping power - and heat - into over-driving the display or an RGB keyboard.

There are a lot of very sophisticated looking gaming laptops like Razor or some Asus ROG models that unless you look closely you wouldn't even know it is a gaming laptop.

You also have cheaper or more affordable gaming laptops that often bling the RGB leds everywhere. They may have aggressive graphics and other design elements catered to gamers. Asus Rog designs can vary from pretty sophisticated like their 14" amd gaming laptops to the decked out rgb ROG laptops. There is a wide range of designs but to get something that looks more business appropriate generally costs more.

If you get past looks and fan noise as Maflynn already posted these laptops are comparable to business class workstations. The GPU will be better on gaming laptops and they will look vastly different but the capability is almost identical yet gaming laptops are much cheaper than business class workstations. Their brute power in cpu, GPU, and RAM and focus on performance in all components will translate into a very snappy machine for multiple use cases.

The big problem is when you unplug them. For most gamers or graphic designers battery life is not as important as performance. Most people that buy these laptops understand their limitations.

As far as wasted resources you can go through the laptop programs like Omen, armorycrate etc. and just use certain elements or uninstall the program. But that is more a software issue than hardware. You can buy something like a Razor and it uses little resources for those type of programs previously discussed.

I think on the Apple side the MBP 14/16 would be a good comparison to a workstation/gaming laptop and the big difference is battery life and fan noise. Obviously MacOS is not a gaming platform despite any efforts to change that with m series chips. But as a workstation or graphics focused or a musician the MBP is probably the best you can get right now. You actually have very low fan noise and low coil whine even under heavy load if any on the MBP with long battery life.

 

[maflynn]

It's slow, loud, has bright LEDs, and dumps plenty of power on a screen refresh rate that's borderline useless for non-gaming tasks.

• Slow: Please provide details on how a I9-14900HX/RTX 4090 is slow.
• Loud: Gaming laptops do tend to have a louder audio footprint, due to the fans
• Bright LEDs: Clearly you have not seen gaming laptops recently, particularly Razer, the keyboards are the only thing that has LEDs and those can be turned off, or adjusted.
• Dumps plenty of power on a screen refresh rate: That's not where the power is going too, and most allow you to change the screen refresh rate
• Borderline non-gaming tasks: Don't tell Apple that because they use promotion, i.e., refresh rates > 60Hz

Here's two gaming laptops the razer which is what've been talking about, and the Lenovo Legion
Where are the bright LEDs? Where is the non-professional design?

For years, the design of the razer and been likened to that of a Macbook for its sleek design, Lenovo, the makers of business laptop Thinkpads have a similar low key design. Both of these laptops can be seen in a boardroom meeting and no one would be the wiser that they're "gaming" laptops.

 

[maflynn]

The big problem is when you unplug them. For most gamers or graphic designers battery life is not as important as performance. Most people that buy these laptops understand their limitations.

Yeah, and the performance difference between these laptops on battery and that of the MacBook Pros are startling.

Even for workstation class laptops, once you go on battery, you will only get a percentage of performance. Even the workstation class GPUs draw more power then what the battery alone can provide.

Fan noise, workstation class laptops have fans and can be just as loud - at least the Lenovo class workstation that I'm familiar with,

 

[salamanderjuice]

Yeah, and the performance difference between these laptops on battery and that of the MacBook Pros are startling.

Even for workstation class laptops, once you go on battery, you will only get a percentage of performance. Even the workstation class GPUs draw more power then what the battery alone can provide.

Fan noise, workstation class laptops have fans and can be just as loud - at least the Lenovo class workstation that I'm familiar with,

I still feel like it's a nothing burger. How often do you really need to go 100% performance on battery? I have had to run intensive models in meetings, so I can understand needing a powerful laptop to do so, but somewhere where's there's no outlets??

I do still think there was something up with the LM Studio test in that video. Hardware Canucks did a similar test with the 5090 HX 370 Razer 16 and that beat the MBP. Yes, it's a different card/CPU but it's not THAT much faster.