I'm on a 7200u (i5, 15W) and I could really use the extra oomph (rounding things, it'd be 40% extra performance assuming a cubed increase in power consumption vs performance improvement -- which is pretty close to what I've seen in practice) of it being 45W.

Been looking at the newer gaming notebooks, and I'm waiting the "real world confrontation" of 10th generation i7s (specially those that have AVX512) vs Renoir (lots of cores, AVX2 on a single instruction and (not as much as desktop) lots of cache), since I run some numeric heavy code and it's not quite clear how they'll stand up to each other.

Why do I run this on a notebook and not a desktop? Because I'm always on the move, and I can pack the notebook and go anywhere I have to and be able to work with or without internet connection (which is sometimes the case).

You might be interested in the ThinkPad P1 (Gen 2). It has the option of not including a dedicated GPU, which will save a considerable amount on battery power, while still packing in a 6-core i7 H-series processor.

But I am also interested in the upcoming processor generations.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was willing to wait a bit more to see that standoff: What will get me more bang out of the processor, the "super" architecture of Zen 2, or the coveted AVX512?

The P1 comes with a 9th gen i7, I assume they'd eventually get a gen 3 with 10th gen i7 and then I'll be able to compare.

> What will get me more bang out of the processor, the "super" architecture of Zen 2, or the coveted AVX512?

Bychance, have you seen the article from puget systems on how to use MKL with Ryzen[1]? It explores some of the different trade-offs between AMD and Intel for numeric computing.

[1] https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AM...

Yeah, I'd seen that, great link! Waiting to see something like that with the mobile processors.

> 45W will get your laptop pretty warm and noisy and will drain your battery.

So put it on a stand and plug it in? Problem solved.

> isn't a desktop more suitable

Some people need to carry their computer around, so the laptop has to be a compromise between stationary computing power and portability. The MacBook Pro strikes this balance quite well all around. Of course there are bigger and heavier laptops, if you require even more performance and are not limited by portability.

> isn't a desktop more suitable

No it isn't any more suitable, because you can put your laptop on a stand and plug it in to achieve the same thing.

It's not the same thing by far: Laptops have much worse heat dissipation than desktops, they overheat, and your high-powered CPU gets throttled down.