
Ask HN: Am I using bad hardware or has software become inefficient? - Memosyne
Does your laptop not get hot when running Chrome? Do your fans not start roaring when running Windows 10? Does WebGL not make your laptop really hot? Why does it seem like everyone is okay with CPU&#x2F;GPU usage being maximized? Why do certain language servers keep running when everything else is idle?<p>I work with 3D graphics in C&#x2F;C++ and it makes my computer a little warm. I open a SPA in Chrome and all of a sudden it feels like I&#x27;m training a neural network for Google. Now, I&#x27;m no computer expert but something definitely seems amiss here. Is my hardware at fault or is the software just that inefficient? Could it be the spectre security mitigation? Things definitely weren&#x27;t this bad a couple of years ago...<p>Edit: I&#x27;m not just ranting; I&#x27;m actually wondering if its time to upgrade my computer. If anyone has a laptop recommendation that doesn&#x27;t suffer from the aforementioned problems please let me know.
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thoughtpeddler
I completely agree with you. I'm constantly trying to figure out why CPU usage
is high and fans are spinning on my brand-new 16" MacBook Pro. Whether it be
Chrome, Zoom, or even Apple's own processes and daemons, my machine is getting
cooked all the time.

Even the simple act of connecting to an external display (2560×1440, mind you)
gets my machine an extra 20° warmer. These could be platform-specific issues
(i.e. Apple hasn't done a good job with thermal management, GPU drivers, or
both), but something has gone awry.

After fast internal SSDs became mainstream around 2015, that was the last
major boost I've seen to the overall computing experience. For example,
open/save dialog boxes loaded much faster, and other common actions were a lot
zippier. Apart from that, there's been no perceptible improvement whatsoever
in terms of "daily computing". My CPU and RAM resources have increased
dramatically as I've upgraded laptops over the years, but I can hear my fans
more often than before doing the same exact workflows.

I'm just as shocked as you and want answers.

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petee
For the last couple decades, all I've seen is people push the notion _"
computers are so fast now, why bother being efficient. There is plenty of
power, don't worry about it"_, I didn't realize anybody cared about efficiency
anymore except hardware engineers

And FWIW you probably _are_ training a neural network for google :P

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Nextgrid
Software has indeed become inefficient, both from a compute resources point of
view but also bandwidth and information density.

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brudgers
Have you tried a different browser?

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Memosyne
Yeah, I use Firefox and it's fantastic for simple documents. However, Chrome
is still the most popular browser so I have to wonder how it got that way. If
it turns out that Chrome actually is the better browser and my hardware is the
problem then ideally I'd like to know (even if I never change due to
philosophical reasons).

p.s. I use Linux with a simple WM. I have gone through great lengths to ensure
that my system uses very few resources. I just want to know why/how everyone
else is tolerating these inefficiencies.

