Problems with the patch.

[gilesgoat]

I still truly believe all this story of 'power management where the user has no control' is absolute bullshit.

I understand the 'yes you are running on a battery you are going to drain it out', fine, no mystery here, it's a battery with limited capacity.

However that you do not SIMPLY with a flick of a button, me, user and owner of the laptop/gpu in it to say "ok I don't care if the battery runs out in 2 hours, let me flick this switch and go full performance" I think that's total bullshit.

That then the drivers or what also do 'not sure what kind of euristic thing' to try to optimise power consumption I still want a switch to say 'forget it if I want so' not have an OS/driver do 'stuff behind the scenes'.

MORE reasons for me to hate laptops !

I really HATE laptops, I am NOT a laptop person, the only times I ever used laptops was to fix on-site customer deep problems and those were not happy times.

Yes it's a battery, yes it will drain out by use, yes that's why it's a laptop not a desktop, yes if for 40 mins I want 'all the perfomance I can get' I want to be able to have it without having to go and pray Nvidia 'in strange forums' to let me do it.

This is getting really 'corporate management over user freedom of use'.

I don't like it, I really don't.

[Whiteball]

People are the real issue.
The bottom line is that 'gaming' laptops should come with a big caveat sticker on the lid stating 'not as good as a £1000 desktop'.

It used to be that people understood that laptops where not as good at gaming as desktops and even if something was considered 'a gaming laptop' it still would not quite match the top end desktops.

You could argue that it is the companies selling them and their spiel, but at the end of the day we don't take a companies word exactly as spoken/written for most other things so why should/do we for 'gaming' laptops...

And yes, while there are some very capable laptops out there that 'run everything else ok' I don't believe people should really expect them to run absolutely everything.
Companies are trying to sell you a product. They will try to mitigate evey possible scenario even if it means resorting to 'black magic' under the hood.
The average end user doesn't care - until of course something doesn't work and then it's always someone else's fault anyway.

It's not just power management though. The problem is they often have a discrete graphics chip along with the CPU/GPU combo chip.
The CPU/GPU chip is often lacking the performance or some fetaures and if that chip is selected (often automagically) you will get problems.

[gilesgoat]

People are the real issue.
The bottom line is that 'gaming' laptops should come with a big caveat sticker on the lid stating 'not as good as a £1000 desktop'.
*SNIP*

.. I want to make a golden plate with that written on ..

MARKETING IS THE REAL ISSUE !!

"I am selling you this giving you a sort of false promise / twisted truth, buy it is good for you ( me )" ...

Also that's another point "Laptops of a certain kind ARE NOT CHEAP AT ALL" ..

Don't make me start then on "power saving" and "all that LED RGB lighting" .. and/or even with things like "freesynch/g-synch" that is a kind of "workaround because that thing does not work as it should" ...

FRAKING LAPTOP MARKET ...

It's a laptop .. the KB is shit .. it's too small .. the display is shit .. when it isn't something else is .. it's all small ...

But as long as it has something that says "Gaming PRO/ROG Laptop" and such and has some "cool black and red vibe" or such .. "It supposedly runs games slick as fuck because they say so".

Now understanding "there are power limitations", of course, it's a thing running on a battery, I did in my time write "industrial SW of some kind" where the rule was "save every mA you can as long as it's ok to be done" and that's one thing IF that is what you want, at the cost of "this SW runs fast only when it absolutely has to".

But then you want high frame rate and "super graphics" .. all time .. and then you go into stuff like "freesynch" "because there's no fraking way you can do it" unless .. you use more battery ...

And then there's EVEN MORE PERVERSION like that Linus complaining "this new laptop does not have this weird FastSometing connector" to "kinda bring out PCIe lanes on a cable" .. to connect .. "a semi crappy external GPU in a box with external power brick source" .. for "better gaming" .. and still can't have the power of a 'real thing' ..

I am feeling like this :



Anyway enough rant all I am saying is that :

1. you should know what running stuff on a battery means

2. you should have a simple way to choose what you want to do with your laptop/battery life

3. if your laptop CAN NOT REALLY DO what you'd like it to do you should be CLEARLY informed about that

Overall at the age of well past 40 you'll find out that :

1. you need a much bigger monitor

2. the keyboard is too small your hands are too big

3. it's nice to be home in your room with a proper monitor, a proper desktop machine, a proper keyboard

4. in 3, you can watch more pr0n and do more other things while you are there

5. you'll love your 'retro' machine and desktop more

Oh yes I love my Model M I really do, I love my 40 inches Philips I really do, I wish I'd have a Y-MP in my room but getting there, working on it, really ...

Ah the times when were running '386 with some Radeon 9600 and we had 8 mbytes of ram and working with X-11 .. that was still working better than certain windows things ..

.. I still have that machine .. it still works ...

[Lurker of Stars]

However that you do not SIMPLY with a flick of a button, me, user and owner of the laptop/gpu in it to say "ok I don't care if the battery runs out in 2 hours, let me flick this switch and go full performance" I think that's total bullshit.

That then the drivers or what also do 'not sure what kind of euristic thing' to try to optimise power consumption I still want a switch to say 'forget it if I want so' not have an OS/driver do 'stuff behind the scenes'.

The point I was getting at there is that you do have the option to disable (or at least neuter) GPU power management on a laptop. Just set the power settings globally in your driver settings app to "always use the main GPU" and "prefer performance".