Hardware Discussion Thread

[NaturalViolence]

DatKid20 Wrote:A8-6410 vs Tegra K1. Which is better a APU? (I'm leaning heavily toward the A8-6410.)

They aren't even remotely comparable. One is a 5w-10w arm SoC for tablets/phones and the other is a 15w x86 cpu for laptops. I don't even have to look at the specs to tell you that the A8 is going to knock the K1s socks off in most benchmarks. But then again they're designed to do totally different things. Now I have to wonder, why are you even asking this?

[DatKid20]

I asked because they are in the same price bracket. But it doesn't even matter anymore because I found a i3-4030u in the same price bracket as well.

[christoph86]

Not sure how an A8 APU gets compared to a mobile processor SoC Tegra K1 , but it does bring up an interesting discussion for future specs. I don't know the current limitation on SoCs, but do they become the norm? You see the big leap in efficiency with the new NVIDIA Maxwell graphics cards, obviously that is the way most cards will be going, they have to. I see Android becoming a very powerful/mainstream system moving forward. In fact, I see desktops becoming a very niche market in the future. Is this a correct assumption? I assume big companies will move to 5-10 watt devices for most things they can in the near future. But from a gaming aspect, how good can some games graphically get on these devices? I assume pretty good, but would like your thoughts.

[DatKid20]

The A8 is a mobile processor as well and it is a low power APU. That is why it was compared.

Also the desktop industry is growing as always.

[NaturalViolence]

"I'm bored and I don't want to study for finals just yet. Let me check if anyone posted anything interesting on dolphin-emu (a rhetorical question I know, but I'm addicted to this place for some reason)."
"Oh look a new guy. This could be interesting. Well I could answer him but it would take awhile and I feel lazy right now. Plus I've already discussed this topic on this subforum before and DatKid frequents this thread a lot. He'll probably answer him before I could even finish"
*Goes back to watching fargo season 1 (amazing show btw)*
*refreshes thread*
"God damnit, every time"

Nitpicking: (Show Spoiler)

DatKid20 Wrote:I asked because they are in the same price bracket. But it doesn't even matter anymore because I found a i3-4030u in the same price bracket as well.

I'm wondering how you came to the conclusion that they're in the same price bracket since K1 SoCs aren't sold to consumers. They're only sold to OEMs and board manufacturers.

My best guess is that you are just comparing the prices of products that use them. Which is different than comparing the CPUs themselves. You can't do that since that wouldn't account for the price of the other components. If I stick a 4K screen on a laptop with a cheap cpu the laptop still has that same cheap cpu but now it's in the $2,000+ price bracket. And comparing that cpu with other cpus from similarly priced laptops from other brands wouldn't exactly be fair now would it? The CPU choice alone does not determine which price bracket the product falls into. After doing some research to try and figure out why you would be asking a question like this I'm guessing that you're comparing the new K1 based chromebooks with A8 based ultrathins/netbooks. As in you're planning on buying one of the other. In which case I would specify that you're comparing those products (or product groups), not the cpus. Particularly since K1 is going to be used in a lot of other stuff. There are even two different versions of it. Without specifying that you could be comparing a K1 tablet against an A8 nettop for all we know. Actually what would be even better would be to state up front why you're doing the comparison in the first place. As in why you want to know. It makes it easier to get to the real root of your question.

And regardless of whether the prices happen to be similar they are very different products designed for very different markets that you probably shouldn't be comparing in this way.

DatKid20 Wrote:The A8 is a mobile processor as well and it is a low power APU. That is why it was compared.

Well I suppose that depends on your definition of mobile processor. The most accurate definition (which you appear to be using) would be any cpu designed for any type of portable computing system. That ranges all the way from watches and smartphones up to laptops. But it would hardly be fair to compare a cpu from a smartwatch to a cpu in a laptop now would it?

Depending on context the industry uses the term "mobile processor" to refer to all mobile processors (the above definition), just laptops, just smartphones/tablets, or both. CPU manufacturers sometimes lump laptops in with smartphones/tablets into one "mobile" category but more often they separate them into "mobile" (laptops) and "ultra-mobile" (everything else). In which case the K1 would not meet the definition of a mobile processor and would not be grouped into the same category as the A8.

TLDR: Don't compare arm SoCs with AMD APUs for the purposes of making a product decision. The fact that the K1 can't run x86 code (and therefore windows) alone should nullify any comparison made unless it's a purely synthetic benchmarking comparison with no intent on actually buying anything.

DatKid20 Wrote:Also the desktop industry is growing as always.

Source? I can't find any data to support this claim. The desktop market has been in and continues to be in decline. It will likely level off somewhere between 10-15% market share within 10 years if industry analysts are to be believed.

I'll get to christoph86s post tomorrow. Seriously though if you're considering getting a chromebook for some reason, DON'T.

[AnyOldName3]

The gaming desktop market has been growing for at least a few years, and I've heard this in several places. I do't know about the mainstream market, though.

[DatKid20]

(12-15-2014, 12:30 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: The gaming desktop market has been growing for at least a few years, and I've heard this in several places. I do't know about the mainstream market, though.

This is what I was talking about. http://wccftech.com/report-pc-gaming-hardware-market-worth-215-billion-worldwide-2/

Also I was talking about a Tablet vs a Windows 8.1 Laptop.

[NaturalViolence]

Desktop sales and graphics card sales are two totally different things that should definitely not be lumped together here.

I did some digging and found the data that they're basing this on:
http://www.jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch/
http://www.jonpeddie.com/publications/pc_gaming_hardware_market_report/
http://www.jonpeddie.com/publications/console-gaming-hardware-market-study/

The data shows a gradual decline in graphics card sales and desktop sales over the last few years. And an increase in console sales. However it also shows that PC gamers are spending more money on both video games and graphics cards (buying more expensive models). Which is probably the main reason for the growing revenue figures that the article points to.

But I'm not sure why you would bring up graphics card sales since the guys question was about the desktop market. Particularly emphasizing how it was doing in competition against the mobile market. And you answered:

DatKid20 Wrote:Also the desktop industry is growing as always.

Which implies that the desktop market is growing. When in fact it is in a fairly rapid decline and has been for quite some time. Please be more careful with your choice of words in the future.

DatKid20 Wrote:Also I was talking about a Tablet vs a Windows 8.1 Laptop.

Then I must ask the obvious follow up question. Why do you want to compare the two?

christoph86 Wrote:I don't know the current limitation on SoCs, but do they become the norm?

I'm not fully sure what you're asking here so I'll try to answer all possible interpretations. SoCs used in mobile devices have significant limits for size and power consumption. SoC design in general is more limiting on system transistor count then more traditional designs. SoC designs will become the norm for all cpus including those used in desktops. In fact we're almost at that point already. Desktops themselves will likely become less popular but certainly aren't going anywhere.

christoph86 Wrote:You see the big leap in efficiency with the new NVIDIA Maxwell graphics cards, obviously that is the way most cards will be going, they have to.

What "way" are you referring to? How does maxwells improvements in energy efficiency relate to mobile SoCs?

christoph86 Wrote:I see Android becoming a very powerful/mainstream system moving forward.

It already is. However there are a lot of things that it will never be able to do as well as windows/mac osx/linux/unix can unless they completely remove everything that makes it great for mobile platforms. Which they obviously won't do.

christoph86 Wrote:In fact, I see desktops becoming a very niche market in the future. Is this a correct assumption?

No. Desktops are dramatically better in every way except portability. For some tasks they are so much better that they are basically a requirement in the corresponding industry. Desktops will always be the platform of choice for creating content.

Try doing some of the following common tasks on mobile platforms:
-typing a long word document
-creating a powerpoint
-creating spreadsheets
-editing images in advanced ways (photoshop/gimp stuff)
-editing music/audio in advanced ways
-editing videos in advanced ways
-3D modeling
-3D rendering
-programming
-and so on, basically any kind of content creation

They can be done. But with a massive drop in productivity and a very frustrating experience.

As for content consumption you can do it fairly well on mobile platforms but never anywhere near as well as a desktop. Some examples:
-playing advanced/modern video games (bigger screens, better audio, better input, more titles, better graphics, the list goes on and on for this one)
-watching a movie (bigger screens and better audio)
-looking at images (bigger screens with more comfortable viewing angles)
-reading (bigger screens with more comfortable viewing angles)
-listening to stuff (much better audio equipment available)

Mobile devices will allow you to do these things when you don't have a desktop around because you're on the go. But it won't allow you to do them as well as a desktop, so I would still recommend having one.

christoph86 Wrote:I assume big companies will move to 5-10 watt devices for most things they can in the near future.

That depends on what you're doing with it. Nobody is going to use a 10 watt device to do video editing for example, that's just stupid. Some desktops might be replaced with smaller/cheaper/lower power computers but they'll likely still be desktops running windows.

christoph86 Wrote:But from a gaming aspect, how good can some games graphically get on these devices? I assume pretty good, but would like your thoughts.

Depends on your definition of "pretty good". Desktops will always be about a decade ahead of phones for example. Phones still have a ways to go to catch up to 360/ps3 level graphics, which would still be considered absolutely horrid by desktop gaming standards. Tablets are generally around 8 years behind. Nettops/netbooks 6-8 years. Laptops 3-5 years. Desktops will always dominate the PC gaming market for a variety of reasons.

[teh_speleegn_polease]

(12-15-2014, 02:43 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Try doing some of the following common tasks on mobile platforms:
-typing a long word document
-creating a powerpoint
-creating spreadsheets
-editing images in advanced ways (photoshop/gimp stuff)
-editing music/audio in advanced ways
-editing videos in advanced ways
-3D modeling
-3D rendering
-programming
-and so on, basically any kind of content creation

I disagree with some of this.

-Typing a document: why the heck would doing this on a laptop be less productive than on a desktop? I guess desktop screens are bigger, thus in theory allowing you to, well, see more and better, but this hardly supports the argument that desktops are far superios to laptops. (Notice I'm saying laptops specifically, and I'm talking about good ones (no chromebooks or netbooks...), since tablets, phones etc. are indeed FAR inferior to any PC.)

-Creating a powerpoint: OK, if you're using a trackpad it can be annoying. Get a mouse for $10.

-Creating spreadsheets: Again, why?

-Advanced image editing: I suppose if you're doing some intensive editing, and your laptop isn't particularly high-end, it can be annoying. Also same argument about using a mouse as above, and the argument about screen size applies as well.

-Editing music: having never done that, I have no idea how processor-intensive that usually is. See either above (image editing) or below (video editing) as appropriate.

-Video editing: Here it's a question of performance, and hence price. To match the productivity of a decent high-end desktop, you'd need a super-high-end laptop with a $3000+ price tag. Also smaller screens actually probably matter more here.

-3D modeling/rendering: Speaking from experience, you are correct. You need every bit of performance for that, and laptops just don't cut it.

-programming: ...And we're back to "why?...". No, really, you're basically typing out a text document, except you're also using a debugger and compiler. Any decent laptop can handle that.

[DatKid20]

(12-15-2014, 02:43 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Depends on your definition of "pretty good". Desktops will always be about a decade ahead of phones for example. Phones still have a ways to go to catch up to 360/ps3 level graphics, which would still be considered absolutely horrid by desktop gaming standards. Tablets are generally around 8 years behind. Nettops/netbooks 6-8 years. Laptops 3-5 years. Desktops will always dominate the PC gaming market for a variety of reasons.

Laptops are only a year behind when it comes to graphics. The new gtx 980m is a beast.