[throw20102010]

It might be misleading, but it's not uncommon. Apple MacBook Pros have thermal throttled at high loads for the past several years. It has throttled for so long that reviewers were surprised that the latest version seems to be using a decent thermal paste and throttles much less.

So if Apple got away with it for years on computers that mostly sold for over $2k, then I think the RPi foundation will probably get away with it on a $35 board.

[the_pwner224]

If Apple can get away with it then the RPi will also get away with it, but it is still a highly deceptive and fraudulent practice.

I spent $2000 on a XPS 15 and peripherals two years ago; if I had known about the thermal throttling I would not have purchased it. Dell literally robbed me of a thousand dollars - had I known that all the 'ultrabook'-style laptops had throttling issues, I would have bought a cheaper and sturdier and higher-specced gaming laptop which beats the XPS in every category except battery life and Thunderbolt. Instead, I spent more and got a substantially worse product.

Collectively laptop manufacturers have defrauded people to the tune of hundreds of millions (even billions?) of dollars. That's not OK.

[dangus]

All portable laptops throttle. What we are vaguely talking about is a firmware bug in the 2018 MacBook Pro i9 that was patched within the first week of release.

It's only a problem if throttling takes them below the advertised base clock under normal conditions. There is absolutely nothing deceptive about this.

A gaming laptop is not really a laptop at all by comparison. They still get less than 4 hours of battery life under load, they're an inch or more thick, they're heavy. Many of them do not fit in backpacks. Gaming laptops are essentially designed for plugged in operation.

I'm a little confused at what's "sturdier" about a gaming laptop as well. Did you break your XPS 15 physically? Gaming laptops have tons of flex and plastic-ness, see MSI.

What benchmark did Dell promise you exactly? Dell didn't rob you of anything. Your own unrealistic expectations did.

[the_pwner224]

> All portable laptops throttle.

> It's only a problem if throttling takes them below the advertised base clock under normal conditions.

Seems like a bit of a contradiction?

Dell said that my laptop would have an i7-7700HQ at 2.8 GHz + turbo to 3.something, and a GTX 1050m.

The laptop Dell sent me behaved like this under load: it goes to the max turbo speed, overheats within a few seconds to a minute, and then throttles to 800 MHz.

It's like if someone advertised a car as having a 280 HP engine, but the engine controller limited it to 100 HP because it had an inadequate cooling system and would overheat at any more load. It is deceptive.

With the laptop, underclocking can fix the CPU throttling - mine can now sustain the max turbo speed forever at 70 degrees. But that's like buying the 100 HP car and modding it to get to 280 - you were sold a faulty product. In the case of the laptop it's fixable in software so that's not as big of a deal, but how many normal people do you think would be willing to mess with their CPU voltages? Or even be aware of the throttling?

Even after underclocking the CPU, I cannot use it at the same time as the discrete graphics card. If I do, the combined heat makes the CPU once again go to 800 MHZ.

Expecting to be able to use the hardware my computer was advertised as having is not having unrealistic expectations.

> I'm a little confused at what's "sturdier" about a gaming laptop as well.

In my experience most gaming laptops are made of metal or thick plastic and seem more durable. I actually had a MSI laptop, it was a tank - like the revered Thinkpads, but better. Dropped it from a few feet and it only got a scratch on the surface.

> A gaming laptop is not really a laptop at all by comparison. They still get less than 4 hours of battery life under load, they're an inch or more thick, they're heavy. Many of them do not fit in backpacks. Gaming laptops are essentially designed for plugged in operation.

That's why I got the XPS 15. Had I known that its performance was a fraction of what was advertised I would have ignored this whole category of deceptive laptops and bought a gaming laptop, even though they have all these downsides.

[girvo]

Whereas I am aware of thermal throttling issues across most thin-and-light laptops, and kept that in mind when purchasing it. I was not defrauded. Perhaps though, I'm more sensitive to it, as I used to write my own throttling scripts for my weird AMD APU "netbook" years ago.

[dangus]

Just to clarify here, all laptops of reasonably small size throttle. Throttling below base clock is the only problem, and it was only a temporary one that was patched out with new firmware on 2018 MacBook Pros.

[qplex]

I guess the reasonable size is relative.

None of my laptops do this.

The thermal design is basically broken if the CPU overheats and has to throttle to prevent a fire.