why are laptop CPUs slower?

Vishera

Member

​

Joined

Jul 7, 2013

• Oct 11, 2013

• #1

i have seen a laptop capable of pulling off 2.5GHz and i think that's the fastest i've seen for stock speed. why do laptops perform at a lower rate as far as CPU GHz? is it because laptops are smaller, or something else? just trying to get a better understanding on this, any insight is appreciated

 

Theocnoob

Member

​

Joined

Dec 1, 2007

Location

Near Toronto Canada

• Oct 11, 2013

• #2

Small heatsink, low TDP. Cpu can't generate as much heat or draw as much power so it has to run slower.

 

manu2b

Member

​

Joined

Feb 6, 2011

• Oct 11, 2013

• #3

^Well summed up.

 

ATMINSIDE

Sim Racing Aficionado Co-Owner

​

Joined

Jun 28, 2012

• Oct 11, 2013

• #4

Don't have room to dissipate all the heat of a desktop CPU, so they slow the processor down so that it makes less heat.

 

ShrimpBrime

~MadHatDeLidder~

​

Joined

Apr 19, 2012

• Oct 11, 2013

• #5

Yea, it's soldered onto the PCB. don't need to melt it off.

 

ATMINSIDE

Sim Racing Aficionado Co-Owner

​

Joined

Jun 28, 2012

• Oct 11, 2013

• #6

ShrimpBrime said:

Yea, it's soldered onto the PCB. don't need to melt it off.

Click to expand...

Not all. My Dell XPS M1730 was a socket CPU. I actually swapped it out for a faster one

 

ShrimpBrime

~MadHatDeLidder~

​

Joined

Apr 19, 2012

• Oct 11, 2013

• #7

Yea that's true too. Always an exception

XPS man... that takes me back a few

 

ATMINSIDE

Sim Racing Aficionado Co-Owner

​

Joined

Jun 28, 2012

• Oct 11, 2013

• #8

ShrimpBrime said:

Yea that's true too. Always an exception

XPS man... that takes me back a few

Click to expand...

Yeah, no joke. Core2Duo at 3.2GHz was pretty boss 4 years ago!

 

OP

Vishera

Member

​

Joined

Jul 7, 2013

• Oct 13, 2013

• Thread Starter
• #9

it's quite surprising how far computers have come, and how far they'll continue to go. in a matter of 20 years (if i remember correctly) computers went from a black DOS screen to a CPU clocked at over 5GHz, liquid cooling, and 3 way SLI with GTX 780. it seems there is no limit to how far the technology grows

 

magellan

Member

​

Joined

Jul 20, 2002

• Oct 20, 2013

• #10

Vishera said:

it's quite surprising how far computers have come, and how far they'll continue to go. in a matter of 20 years (if i remember correctly) computers went from a black DOS screen to a CPU clocked at over 5GHz, liquid cooling, and 3 way SLI with GTX 780. it seems there is no limit to how far the technology grows

Click to expand...

One of my former supervisors used to talk about card readers for IBM mainframes and how a popular prank was to drop a fake stack of punched cards pretending it was someone's actual stack. The collated stack of cards literally comprised someone's computer program and had to be loaded in order. Back then programmers didn't get any output from their program until after it had been run and that output came out on a dot matrix printer, which probably encouraged programmers to write it right the first time.