Greetings. I am looking for an advice about a new laptop. Mostly for work, gaming is not planned.
I am located in Europe, so Framework is definitely a nice option.
Right now I am using Linux (Ubuntu with XFCE) on a 10 year old Dell, which is working fine for most of the time, but my i5-3340M is starting to show it’s age, despite the 16GB RAM and the SATA SSD I have tried to help it with.
The RAM is holding up, but after the 60% and up utilization (multiply browsers with tabs) the frequent 100% usage of the CPU is getting in my way.
So, the price of the aforementioned Framework with integrated graphics is roughly the same as a similar gaming laptop with Ryzen 7 6800H + dedicated GPU (3060 /3070, depending on the models, mostly Asus).
I think you’re comparing two classes of machines that may be priced the same, but are aimed at different audiences.
The Framework laptop is kind of a ultraportable machine, so it’s using a lower power CPU, no iGPU and an okay battery. While the other generic machine is a gaming laptop that’s probably going to have worse battery life, be heavier, hotter and louder (generally).
So, if you plan on just doing generic tasks the Framework laptop is a great choice in my opinion. Especially because you seem to care about your stuff so they last long. And that thing, being fully repairable, is gonna last you even longer than your actual laptop did.
On the other hand, if you’re gonna need to do more, like gaming or video editing, (just two intensive workloads off the top of my head) a gaming laptop is in order. Mostly for gaming though since the iGPU in Intel CPUs is a decent accelerator for video editing.
All of this not taking into account weight and battery life. A gaming laptop, even with a MUX switch for the dedicated GPU, is not gonna beat the Framework when it comes to battery life just because the dedicated GPU, even in standy mode, is gonna use some power. Also the CPU won’t be tuned for efficiency but performance (although you could overcome that with some tuning). Weight wise the Framework is gonna be lighter for sure, even just becaue there’s less cooling needed in it.
I don’t know where to steer you directly because I don’t know if your workload is held back by the machine you currently have or because you just browse the web and do more “office work” type of stuff.
I am not sure if it falls under the “office” category, but the web browsing is part of the thing I need the multiply tabs per multiply browsers for. And it is my main concern, as it seems to scale rather quickly after I pass over that 60% of memory utilization. I’ve noticed, that FIrefox is nicer than Chrome in that aspect, handling multiply windows with 20+ tabs each well, but when I include Chrome in the equation with 30+ tabs in one window things start to fall apart rather quickly. I’ve seen all sorts of instability in the system.
Also no video editing is on the horizon yet. And even if this is ever comes up that Thunderbolt 4 support should steer me nicely in an eGPU, right?
Well I think that all the instabilities you’re seeing on your system are due to the age of it. I didn’t try opening over 20 tabs but around 20 my 3630QM laptop on Chrome using Windows 10 didn’t struggle too much (I’m using 2x8GB 1600Mhz CL9 RAM on it). I bet that i7 is gonna smash through those tabs no problem. Also Google Chrome should pause tabs, further reducing the load on the system. Make sure it’s working properly.
Sure an external GPU will do the trick if you’re gonna need one in the future. But you’re gonna be limited by the bandwith offered by Thunderbolt 4. So a 3060 might just the best you could use without giving up performance just on bandwith alone.
Chrome + Windows, imho, is a terrible combination. When I was on WIndows (some 5-6 years ago), switching to FIrefox improved the experience. And when I went Linux I couldn’t believe my eyes. Firefox with 40+ tabs was no problem (still isn’t), as long as I wasn’t touching the Chromium. But this is for another topic.
I am afraid that, just as I was reading more and steering towards the i7-1260 now you are making me turn the wheel towards the middle again.
Perhaps I should add, that I haven’t owned a desktop in over 15 years and it’s safe to say that I have no experience with discrete GPUs. Then maybe that’s why this choice is so hard for me…
