A laptop's central processing unit (CPU) has advanced power-saving features and produces less heat, than one intended purely for desktop use. Typically laptop CPU have two processor cores, although 4-core models are also available. For low price and mainstream performance, there is no longer a significant performance difference between laptop and desktop CPUs, but at the high end the fastest 4-to-8-core desktop CPUs still substantially outperform the fastest 4-core laptop processors, at the expense of massively higher power utilization and heat generation — the fastest laptop processors top out at 56 watts of heat, while the fastest desktop processors top out at 150 watts.
There have been a wide range of CPUs designed for laptops available from both Intel, AMD and other manufacturers. On non-x86 architectures, Motorola and IBM produced the chips for the former PowerPC-based Apple laptops (iBook and PowerBook). Many laptops have removable CPUs, although this has become less common in the past few years as the trend has been to increasingly thin and light models. In other laptops the CPU is soldered on the motherboard and is non-replaceable, this is nearly universal in ultrabooks, for example.
In the past, some laptops have used a desktop processor instead of the laptop version and have high performance gains at the cost of greater weight, heat and limited battery life. The practice is largely extinct as of 2013. Unlike their desktop counterparts, laptop CPUs are nearly impossible to overclock. A thermal operating mode of laptops is very close to its limits and there is almost no headroom for an overclocking related operating temperature increase. A possibility to improve a cooling system of a laptop to allow overclocking is extremely rare.
Graphical processing unit[edit]
On most laptops a graphical processing unit (GPU) is integrated into the CPU to conserve power and space. This was introduced by Intel with the Core i-series of mobile processors in 2010, and similar APU processors by AMD later that year. Prior to that, lower-end machines tended to use graphics processors integrated to the system chipset, while higher end machines had a separate graphics processor. In the past, laptops lacking a separate graphics processor were limited in their utility for gaming and professional applications involving 3D graphics, but the capabilities of CPU-integrated graphics has converged with the low-end of dedicated graphics processors in the past few years. Higher-end laptops intended for gaming or professional 3D work still come with dedicated, in some cases even dual, graphics processors on the motherboard or as an internal expansion card. Since 2011, these almost always involve switchable graphics so that when there is not demand for the higher performance dedicated graphics processor, the more power-efficient integrated graphics processor will be used. Nvidia Optimus is an example of this sort of system of switchable graphics.
Memory[edit]
Most laptops use SO-DIMM (small outline dual in-line memory module) memory modules, as they are about half the size of desktop DIMMs.[25] They may be accessible from the bottom of the laptop for ease of upgrading, or placed in locations not intended for user replacement. Most laptops have two memory slots, although some of the lowest-end models will have only one, and some high end models (usually mobile engineering workstations, and a few high-end models intended for gaming) have four slots. Most mid-range laptops are factory equipped with 4–6 GB of RAM. Netbooks are commonly equipped with only 1–2 GB of RAM and generally only expandable to 2 GB, if at all. Because of the limitation of DDR3 SO-DIMM to a maximum of 8 GB per module, this means most laptops can only be expanded to a total of 16 GB of memory, until systems using DDR4 memory start becoming available. Laptops may have memory soldered to the motherboard to conserve space, which allows the laptop to have a thinner chassis design. Soldered memory cannot be upgraded.
Internal storage[edit]
Traditionally laptops had a hard disk drive (HDD) as a main non-volatile storage, but it proved inefficient for use in mobile devices due to a high power consumption, heat production and a presence of moving parts, which can cause damage to both the drive itself and the data stored, when a laptop is unstable physically, e.g. during its use while transporting it or after its accidental drop. With the advent of flash memory technology, most mid- to high-end laptops opted to a more compact, power efficient and fast solid-state drives (SSD), which eliminated a hazard of drive and data corruption caused by a laptop's physical impacts.[27] A solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the most effective upgrades to make in a laptop and an excellent choice for a primary system disk. With their superior read and write speeds, they can instantly make operating systems more responsive. Boot up and shut down times are significantly shorter as compared to mechanical disks, and applications will typically open much faster.[28] In most low-end laptops, however, HDDs are still dominating, due to their significantly lower cost.
Most laptops use 2.5-inch drives, which are a smaller version of a 3.5-inch desktop drive form factor. 2.5-inch HDDs are more compact, power efficient and produce less heat, while at the same time have a smaller capacity and a slower data transfer rate. For SSDs, however, these miniaturization-related trade-offs are nonexistent, because SSDs were designed to have a very small footprint. Some very compact laptops support even smaller 1.8-inch HDDs. SSDs feature a traditional 2.5- or 1.8-inch or a laptop-specific mSATA or M.2 card's form factor. SSDs have a higher data transfer rate, lower power consumption, lower failure rate, and a larger capacity[29][30][31][32] compared to HDDs. However, HDDs have a significantly lower cost. The largest current capacity of a hard drive is 10TB, while the largest capacity of a SSD is 16TB.
Most laptops can contain a single 2.5-inch drive, but a small number of laptops with a screen wider than 17 inches can house two drives. Some laptops support a hybrid mode, combining a 2.5-inch drive, typically a spacious HDD for data, with a mSATA or M.2 drive, typically having less capacity, but is a significantly faster SSD. The operating system partition would be located on the SSD, to increase laptop I/O performance. Another way to increase performance is to use a smaller SSD of 16-32 GB as a cache drive in a compatible OS.
Some laptops may have very limited drive upgradeability when the SSD used has a non-standard shape and/or requires a proprietary daughter card.[33] Some laptops have very limited space on the installed SSD, instead relying on availability of cloud storage services for storing of user data. Chromebooks are a prominent example of this approach. A variety of external HDDs or NAS data storage servers with support of RAID technology can be attached to virtually any laptop over such interfaces as USB, FireWire, eSATA, or Thunderbolt or over a wired or wireless network to further increase space for the storage of data. Many laptops also incorporate a card reader which allows for use of memory cards, such as those used for digital cameras, which are typically SD or microSD cards. This enables a user to download digital pictures from an SD card onto a laptop, thus enabling them to delete the SD card's contents to free up space for taking new pictures.
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