Conversation

Apple’s 600 euro laptop from 2026: 8 GB RAM (shared with GPU)
My 100 euro ThinkPad from 2009: 8 GB of actual RAM

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@SuperDicq your 100€ thinkpad from 2009 has a dedicated gpu?
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@SuperDicq and it's only 6x slower?
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@sun I don’t think it really matters how many dance dance revolutions you have

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@snacks My specific one does not but there are ones that do yes

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@SuperDicq in that case you preallocate ram to the gpu and will usually have less available than the shared memory you've been pointing out tho
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@snacks @SuperDicq I think the default for these old intel iGPUs is something like 128MB of RAM.
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@phnt @SuperDicq yeah, the shared memory doesn't need to be preallocated, so every bit of those 128mb you don't use is wasted compared to the apple one
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@mischievoustomato @SuperDicq I don't know but it's way better than an old thinkpad's
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@sun @SuperDicq yeah that stinkpad would probably only really serve as a... prop?
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@phnt @SuperDicq don't get me wrong, i'd prob prefer the thinkpad because running anything but macos on the apple device is gonna be a pain and the thinkpad is good enough at which point i stop caring with laptops
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@snacks @SuperDicq Clevo laptops might not be a bad choice these days since I don't think they are built badly and I think they are still expandable with ram and storage. That old Thinkpad of @SuperDicq would be unusable for what I need.

And new ChinkPads aren't as great as they used to be. The last good one was t480.
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@phnt @SuperDicq i have a t420 and my only complaint is that it's heavy and the display sucks
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@SuperDicq you upgraded that ram at some point right? was there really 8gb ram think pads in 2009? :D

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@engel Yeah, it came from the factory with 4GB, but you can upgrade it to 8GB.

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@SuperDicq The RAM is shared with the integrated graphics, but it really doesn't use much.

Some models have dedicated graphics with separate VRAM, but no free driver that includes VBIOS init exists for radeon GPUs.
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@snacks @SuperDicq @phnt I don't think coreboot (GNUboot) preallocates RAM - I believe the free i915 driver can properly share memory.
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@Suiseiseki @SuperDicq highest amount of memory you can set aside for the integrated graphics is 256mb on sandy bridge thinkpads. More will be allocated if needed.

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@vincep @SuperDicq I'm not referring to the proprietary BIOS, I'm referring to GNUbooted ThinkPads (pre sandy bridge).
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@Suiseiseki @SuperDicq right, sandy/ivy are supported by libreboot.

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@vincep @SuperDicq Liebreboot supports sandy and ivy bridge by including the proprietary software required.
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