Hi and welcome. Here on my desk, I have two very different yet very similar machines – a
Windows 10 desktop and a laptop PC. While I have Dell equipment here most of other
manufacturers have their own line-ups so don’t forget to consider them as well.
Most of us have been running our Office 365 suite and tools on desktops until recent events
forced us to work from home and as a result in most cases driving the move to laptop PCs.
Now that we are slowly moving back to normal and are coming back to office some of us,
especially heavy users, and I will explain this term a bit later, are thinking of
going back to a good old desktop PC. The aim of this video is twofold – to
show you that you might be just fine to continue using a laptop and on the other
hand that you are losing performance and time by not switching to a desktop PC.
Let’s start right off with benchmarks. It is not necessarily a test to fit us all but it will give
us some in my opinion quite interesting data. I ran PC Mark 10 software and its Express
benchmark suite which gives me Essentials, consisting of App Start-Up, Video Conferencing and
Web Browsing scores and Productivity, consisting of Spreadsheets and Writing score.
So basically, imitating your standard Office 365 package and tools.
The results speak for themselves, laptop running on battery runs a bit slower than
on mains and more importantly – laptop on mains power in comparison to desktop runs
at similar speed so pick your favourite and you are all set. Well, I wish it was that simple…
Now that we’ve seen the benchmark results, I would like to explain to you how it all works,
and how laptop manages to keep up with the desktop. Naturally
this will be followed by breaking the illusion. First things first, the main component of your PC,
desktop or laptop, for number crunching and data processing is your processor, let’s call it CPU
for short. It does your Excel calculations, lets you quickly re-arrange data in Word, helps you run
your Power Point presentations smoothly, handles your video calls… you get the picture. It’s the
workhorse of your system. So, let’s break down how we can measure its performance.
Let’s take the systems I have here as an example, if I press Ctrl + Alt + Del, go to Task Manager,
Performance tab and have a look at my CPU I can straightaway see 3 important stats – CPU name,
base speed and physical cores along with threads. Let me explain.
CPU name will allow you to pull it’s specifications from manufacturer’s site,
and this will be important shortly. Base speed – well, let’s call it cruising speed of your CPU,
it can run close to this speed for hours even when pegged at 100%, especially important metric
for heavy users. Physical cores and threads – this is a bit more complicated so bear with.
Physical cores are a physical subdivision of you CPU etched on its silicon,
so let’s call them workers for short; they can split the tasks and make things run
smoother and faster by dividing the jobs. Threads or logical cores on the other hand
is a smart code allowing one worker to be a bit more effective, imagine a person wielding
two tools instead of one. Effectiveness here naturally is only a portion of a real worker,
but it helps, nonetheless. You probably see where I am heading with this,
desktop PC can cruise faster, has more workers to tackle the tasks,
yet the laptop is not too far behind. How come? Let me circle back to another metric,
these are Intel site grabs – desktop’s Intel i7 CPU is advertised as Max Turbo of 4.7
and the laptop’s Intel i7 is hitting close second of 4.2Ghz. To break it down a little
that would be the mentioned sprint or max speed if you will, these machines cannot run at these
speeds for long, only in short bursts. They’re pretty close to each other though, right?
Now we know we have 4 heavy lifters on the laptop PC with some magic sauce making it look like 8 and
we have desktop with full blown 8 worker CPU along with the fact that laptop can do speed bursts of
4.2 and desktop – 4.7Ghz and that laptop can cruise at 2.1 while desktop 3 GHz for prolonged
amount of time let’s see what we can do with it. Let me show you where the rubber hits the road
here. I have prime95 ready to rock, this tool will peg my CPUs at 100%,
including all their workers and run them until I stop it. I also have another tool running
in the background that will give us a visual representation of CPU’s actual speed, temperature
and usage. I promise, we are nearly there. When I hit OK on the laptop, watch the three
graphs. The workload is loaded, the speed spikes to tackle it as soon as possible but it’s short
lived due to the spike in temperature which automatically adjusts the speed by dropping it
down. Don’t worry too much about the temperature numbers just yet, this is a measurement of
inside of the laptop covered by a heat dissipation device, just as it is in desktop counterpart,
so it won’t burn you as it is. If I do the same on the desktop PC,
we can see similar results. The temperature does not spike as much though, so the speed stays
quite high, just as advertised. Once again, the temperature reading here is to show you
what affects the speed. Cooling solution here is larger in size so it is naturally more effective.
Remember the graphs? I also mentioned lower laptop performance on the battery.
Have a look at this, when I unplug the power cable from the laptop, the speed drops once again.
Note desktop PC is still going strong. In a nutshell, the benchmark results I
have started this video with would be your daily usage scenario,
small jumps in CPU usage by us requesting for things to be done on our computers. Desktop
or laptop doesn’t matter. You also know how to check this by simply running the Task Manager.
Since these are usually short bursts – CPUs can run at maximum speed and perform close. Remember,
peak desktop speed here is 4.7 and laptop 4.2GHz. Worker count won’t matter too much here,
if you have 4 or more cores you are good to go. The moment we throw a more complex calculation,
one that needs all the resources and CPU usage is spiking at 100% for prolonged periods of time
the difference between desktop and laptop is now down to cruise speeds
and in most cases worker count matters. Laptop is losing here fast and hard.
Keep in mind the temperature metric. Remember laptop and desktop being pegged at 100%?
In these situations while laptop can handle occasional heat dump it is just not built
for it. I haven’t even mentioned the fan noise, it is very noticeable on a laptop.
Having said all that there, there are beefier laptops the likes of Dell Precision line-up
that can handle much more heat and perform faster. If the size and price doesn’t worry you
and you need max punch on the go it might be just the tool for you.
I will leave the rest to you. You have the tools, knowledge and you know what you need to achieve. I
will leave form over function debate to you. As usual, thank you for watching, questions
and comments are more than welcome. You have a good day, till next time.