Ask HN: Best (not crippled) laptop configuration for AI/ML/RL?
We are seeing gaming laptops with RTX 3080 graphic cards these days being sold for just $2k, only for those being crippled and performing like RTX 3060s under stress. We are also seeing 11th gen, octa-core Intel CPUs trying to compete with AMD Ryzen processors, again being crippled from working into pretty thin laptops. It is very difficult to get unbiased reviews by top magazines and reputed influencers, though. Any reliable comparison chart out there? I suspect the best compromise for office & AI/ML/RL in mid 2021, in terms of efficiency and value for money, is a 10th gen Intel hexa core laptop with 32 GB RAM and an RTX 3060 6 GB graphic card? This would cost $1.5k and make the most of its inner limitations. Any help with actual benchmarks? Thanks!
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If you want a laptop to actually run AI/ML/RL workloads that would benefit from a graphics card, you're better off optimizing your search for decent specs, no dedicated GPU, portability and good battery life, and spending the money on a powerful desktop setup instead. Your workflow can look like this:
1 - design experiments on laptop or use laptop to remote into desktop with GPU 2 - scale experiments on desktop with GPU till you reach a point where it's maxed out 3 - use Google co-lab with GPU or Paperspace or other similar services (usually offer a free tier for experimentation) 4 - scale on cloud if you really want to parallelize
If you have no choice but to buy only a laptop due to budget, I still think you'd be better off purchasing a laptop without a dedicated GPU and going for points 3/4 above. Seriously, the gains from using an RTX on a laptop are just not worth the cost.
The benefit of using colab or other types of cloud services, is that your investment is low to 0 and will allow you to determine if you actually should invest in your own dedicated hardware.
The advantage of these resellers is that they're more responsive to non- standard requests if you really know what you want and are willing to pay for it. In Origin's case, I remember a time where you could have a liquid cooled Xbox 360 or PS3 built right into your desktop computer! I don't know how much things have changed since then, but, with regards to purchasing monstrously powerful laptops, you have as much say as your wallet does.
I got a Serval I thoroughly enjoy. Even with a 2070 and a Ryzen 3950. I'm not sure as to whether they've got any more up to date AMD offerings slated for the 5xxx line of Ryzen's and 3xxx Nvidia cards; but if they deliver the same build quality, come upgrade time, I know who I'll be looking into for purchasing from. Had no issues with my blowtorch yet.
Bonus point: the cats are more than content to sleep behind or beside it instead of on the keyboard.
Power supply for this thing is like 2 bricks with cords.
Just to reiterate, its shocking how much better the M1 chip is.