Can Lakefield Save Intel? - Samsung Galaxy Book S
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2021-05-05
·
1,527 words · ~7 min read
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♪ It was all a meme ♪ ♪ I used to diss Intel through the screen ♪
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♪ Until it started looking really bad for blue team ♪ - Because it is.
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Yeah, things aren't looking super great for Intel right now. On desktop, they're getting hammered by AMD.
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And in thin and light laptops, there's ARM to contend with. Apple will be ditching Intel
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for their own ARM-powered machines in a couple of years. And even Microsoft has been flirting with ARM
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in the form of Qualcomm-powered devices, like the Surface Pro X and Galaxy Book S.
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But that's why this machine is so exciting for Intel.
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It's the Galaxy Book S. The Intel version,
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not the Qualcomm version. That's right, this is the first notebook on the market,
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powered by an Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid Technology processor.
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(sighs) see, this is what I'm talking about. Intel just called it Lakefield. Just called it Lakefield.
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Anyways, Lakefield is targeting ARM head-on
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and it has five Cores, which is weird, but also might be awesome.
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As I mentioned, there are two Galaxy Book Ss. The first one was powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx,
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which is essentially a Snapdragon 855 modified for desktop use,
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and was announced at Samsung's 2019 Unpacked event,
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one year ago. Like other Windows laptops with ARM-based Qualcomm processors,
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the Galaxy Book S sported some killer features like a super thin and light body,
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built-in LTE connectivity, and ridiculously long battery life.
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23 hours of video playback? Why would you even...
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can we settle down please? But it was delayed into 2020,
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long enough for Microsoft to release their own ARM-powered Surface Pro X
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featuring the Snapdragon SQ1, which is basically an even further modified 8cx.
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I reviewed that device last year and the story there was similar to the one being told by reviewers
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of the first Galaxy Book S. It's very pretty,
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and can stay awake a long time, but being an ARM-powered laptop,
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it has a fatal flaw. It's an ARM-powered laptop.
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See, ARM architecture isn't better than x86 architecture
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across the board. There are trade offs. ARM uses a much smaller instruction set,
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which leads to greater power efficiency, but doesn't lead to the type of unlimited power
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that you can get with fully loaded Intel or AMD processors.
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And then there's the fact that our most popular desktop operating systems,
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Windows and macOS, are built for x86 processors.
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So a lot of 64-bit programs just can't run on ARM chips.
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Now companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are trying to fix this with compatibility layers
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that allow x86 apps to run on ARM. But the experience varies from pretty dang good,
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as seen in Microsoft's Edge browser, to pretty dang sucky,
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as seen by anyone who tries to use Photoshop on ARM,
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or run Cinebench. As new and cool as it is,
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ARM just hasn't got enough sick gains to do bicep curls with the big boys.
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And that is where Intel may smell (sniffs)
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opportunity. Because this,
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the second Galaxy Book S, uses the exact same design as the first one.
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It's got a 13.3 inch touch display, a super thin 11 millimeter body
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that only weighs about two pounds. There's two USB-C ports,
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one on each side, plus a headphone jack, which the Surface Pro X lacked.
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Thank you, Samsung. The trackpad is as large as it can be
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and is generally smooth and responsive. And the keyboard is,
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that's not very good. It's got a mushy bottom, very little travel,
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and I think we got an international version of it because it's got some weird keys on there.
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Like what, what is this, what how do I, what do,
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what do I do with that? But the difference with this version of the Galaxy Book S,
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is that instead of an ARM-powered Qualcomm processor, it's running an Intel Core processor with Intel Hybrid it's
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it's running a Lakefield processor. A Core i5-L16G7.
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And it's the first one of its kind. Here's why that's important.
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Lakefield is Intel's answer to ARM.
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Part of the reason ARM processors are so power efficient is because they use what ARM calls
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a big.LITTLE design, in which low power cores handle less demanding tasks
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with more heavy operations being handled by high power cores.
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Lakefield adopts this same strategy, pairing one powerful Sunny Cove Core,
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with four smaller Tremont Cores. So,
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can this odd number of cores, even the odds against ARM?
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Well, while this design does give the Intel-powered
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Galaxy Book S very impressive battery life, Samsung says it gets 17 hours of video playback,
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it doesn't stretch the notebook's 42-watt hour battery, as much as the Qualcomm version with 25 hours.
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But neither of those reflect real world use anyways. And we ended up getting around 11 or 12 hours
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with this thing. Which is still really impressive, if not as impressive as the sick merch you can get
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from lttstore.com (laughs) The other major plus
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for this version of the Galaxy Book S is, as I alluded to before,
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it's ability to run x86 apps natively. I actually got a Cinebench result for this thing.
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And, yeah, it's pretty lackluster, getting crushed by the HP Envy X360
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that has similar battery life. But it's a result.
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Whereas our Surface Pro X wouldn't even launch the app.
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Photoshop! I used the Galaxy Book S to edit a thumbnail in Photoshop.
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And while some of the more demanding functions like Content-Aware Fill chugged a bit,
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it was mostly fine. Just fine.
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And in terms of general use, I didn't really notice anything too concerning
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while I was using this thing as my work laptop. It's paltry eight gigs of RAM wasn't quite enough
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to keep the content in all my browser tabs and messaging apps fully all the time
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and general system navigation was definitely slower than my regular work laptop
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with its Core i7. But unlike a Windows on ARM machine,
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I wasn't holding my breath every time I launched an app. At the very least,
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I knew it would probably run. So, sign me up for the Intel-powered Galaxy Book S.
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Lemme just go and add it to my cart and ah!
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950 bucks? No! Yeah, if you wanna try one of these machines out
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for yourself, know that you will be stepping very clearly into the
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early adopter role. The Galaxy Book S very much belongs to that category of devices
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that companies design, not so much to appeal to the average Joe or Karen,
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but to the average Bezos or Beyonce. There's some other downsides here too.
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The Lakefield version doesn't come with LTE, although it can connect to slower forms of broadband.
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And the five-Core L16G7 has less raw horsepower
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than the eight-Core higher clock Snapdragon 8cx.
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But if you've got some money to spend on a ridiculous, thin and light notebook
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that will run Photoshop, the Galaxy Book S is here for you.
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Now, it just remains to be seen whether it will pave the way for more
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better Lakefield devices in the future, because Intel's future
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will be in the video description below. This is,, this is is a very unusual thing today.
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- Thanks for watching this video, guys. Hey, if you wanna watch something else,
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we did a review of a much more powerful laptop.
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The ASUS StudioBook One. It's kind of a completely different category.
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If this is like, this is like your small and fast Ninja,
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that one's like you're heavy tank. Probably.
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I actually don't know. I don't know what laptop that is.
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But go check it out.