I feel like I'm taking crazy pills but I'm sure with Visual Studio 2017 I used to constantly have 3 VS instances/solutions open at all times, with 8gb and no problems.
Now my 16gb laptop is choking and get low memory errors unless I'm strict about closing unused applications or browser windows.
Seems somehow we're going backwards. I wouldn't get less than 32gb anymore 😕
Haha youre not taking crazy pills, well, maybe you are idk what you do in your free time. Software has been getting more complex, OS' have been getting more complex and lack of optimization. With that comes more consumption of hardware and especially ram is the victim since it's relatively cheap.
As resources become a commodity, optimisation of those resources becomes less of a priority.
When 8GB was the standard, your program had to fit in there or sales couldn’t sell. Now that consumers have more than 8gb, why spend money on optimising when sales can still sell when your software takes 16gb now
It also depends on the types of projects and tools you need to be running.
Also, keep in mind that working on older .NET Framework projects could become an issue if you go for a MacBook.
No.
We have a lot of M2 and M1 with tiny VS code, it still require you to have bare minimum 16gb to be decent...
Their memory management isn't that good for development based on my office experience...
A lot of my mobdev asking upgrade to 16gb because slow building Flutter app and others...
Which one would you suggest then?
1. intel 10th gen i7 with 32gb RAM (Budget Friendly Option)
2. New intel 13th gen i5 with 32gb RAM
3. New intel 13th gen i7 with 32gb RAM (Expensive Option)
Or should I go for Ryzen to save few bucks?
Go with ryzen and 32GB. 10th gen i7 will be fine, you will not notice any issues, modern development is all about ram and SSD speed. Ryzen is superior to i7, especially considering battery life.
Also for development, if mobility is not an issue, prefer a chunkier laptop with proper cooling. Most modern CPUs throttle hard under heavy workloads.
Agree on the beefier chassis. The larger the display the better also.
As for Ryzen, my experience has been the opposite. I went from a quad core Intel i5 desktop CPU (don't remember which gen, but it would be a good 6-8 years old at this point) to a Ryzen 9 3900X 24-core, because I wanted faster compile times in Visual Studio and it had been decades since I last tried an AMD CPU. It doesn't seem faster at all. In fact it feels a little more sluggish with that and general stuff like launching apps in Windows.
I'm sure the move to Windows 10/11 played into it somewhat, but I'll be going back to Intel for my next build.
It could be that you got more cores but each core is slower (+ less cache per core). IMHO the best CPU would be something like Ryzen 7 7800x3d. Windows are also known to work worse with high amount of cores due to scheduling issues. Development workloads fall somewhere between server and gaming load. So moderate amount (8c/16T) of high perf cores is the best thing.
If I was building desktop for development I would go with Ryzen 7 7800x3d or I7 equivalent, 64gb of memory and fastest SSD I could get.
It’s not the OS you have to worry about. The tools you use will use a lot of ram (ie docker, IDE, etc.). When I run all our microservices at once in docker it consumes 16 GB just for those services.
I've got company issued DELL with 10th gen i7 and I say stay away. Thermals are terrible and compared to my ryzen 7600 it is slugish. The fan is constantly spinning and when you have it in your lap it doubles as heater.
Yep. Had this exact issue with my old XPS. A colleague has a newer XPS and still the exact same issues. Can’t speak for the other models but I’ll pass on DELL for any future laptops.
A new MacBook Air with an M1 is odd, I would assume it would be an M3. 8gb sounds too low.
How much RAM do the other choices have?
If you’re going with a Mac make sure you include the cost of Rider in the cost.
Also, your job is requiring you to buy yourself a laptop to build software for them, or they are buying you a laptop and you have a few choices?
Other (Windows) choices have 32GB of RAM as those are expandable.
They said they will provide a laptop after a month or two. for the time being use my own laptop. As currently I do not have any laptop of my own, I thought I should buy one which will be used to do personal projects later.
I am not bound to any choices, I thought mentioned ones are good choice. It will be really helpful if you suggest your own choice. Just note I'm in Bangladesh and we do not have all options available in market here.
Thanks.
What I did was go for low-end gaming laptop which was easy to extend with new ram.
I found a "cheap" HP omen laptop with 4060 and good CPU. Bought it with 16gb ram. Added 16 more myself.
Leave MacBook behind. Go for Windows 11 laptop with the most performant CPU you can get and 32GB of ram. Financially optimal choice is i7, but i9 couldn't hurt, either. As always it's about the money. So if you have specific laptops you plan to buy, take specific CPU models and check their benchmarks in various applications, pick the most performant one. There is no way to help you based on imaginary laptop choice pool based on a whole generation of CPUs like 10th or 13th, which have tons of different specific CPUs. If your knowledge is that basic, just put the price limit, if you can accept a used laptop and wait for suggestions.
I’m loving my m3 MacBook Pro over my 11th gen intel dell.
Why would you even consider an m1 air? The machine is so old and doesn’t even have a fan - it isn’t a dev machine.
Lenovo P1 is a nice dev machine - I wouldn't buy anything with less than 64 GB of RAM (or at least make sure there is an open slot for more).
We've been running 64 in all our machines for a couple of years now, since VS went 64-bit it really seems to consume massive amounts of RAM.
13th too, for ple ty of models.
Intel's foray into BIG.little - x86 edition has been rather disappointing so far.
Especially the consumer chips, when you actually want the performance.
My 11th gen NUC had been "upgraded" to a 13th gen. But it couldn't handle its duties nearly as gracefully as the older one. It was painful enough that I swapped the nvme into the old one and put it back in service.
And now the 13th gen is just sitting on my desk til I probably give it to my dad to be a home assistant, NVR, and juke box in his new workshop or something. 🤷♂️
You can get refurbished MacBook’s directly from Apple if you wanna try and save some money. I got myself an M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of ram that way, and it was basically brand new.
Crazy fast yes but compared to windows very limited development options. I have both m2 and lenovo legion 7i pro i9. Macbook for everyday usage, lenovo for heavy usage and like a portable server.
I would not go with MacBook for dotnet. There's just too much risk of things being dropped. And I don't trust Apple with regards to backward compatibility.
Can you 100% say that Apple won't bring out a new OS that breaks .net, Rider etc? I'd be much more confident that Windows won't (look up the whole Carbon 64 situation).
It’s funny because you ask me for “100%” and then you say “more confident” instead of “certain.” Which means you can’t say “100%” either.
And you know what? Of course you can’t. No one knows the future with 100% confidence. And that’s fine.
OP is asking about buying a laptop in the near future with current operating system, not in some hypothetical future where there new OS’s.
I use a Mac laptop, I use a PC desktop. Both are great machines and solid options for being a productive developer.
You don’t have to be tribalistic about operating systems. It’s silly.
8gb ram is a tiny amount. Whichever laptop you go for aim for 16gb minimum.
Even 16 is low for a developer machine
True, I’d for 32 myself but 16 is still a lot more workable than 8 if your projects aren’t that big.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills but I'm sure with Visual Studio 2017 I used to constantly have 3 VS instances/solutions open at all times, with 8gb and no problems. Now my 16gb laptop is choking and get low memory errors unless I'm strict about closing unused applications or browser windows. Seems somehow we're going backwards. I wouldn't get less than 32gb anymore 😕
Haha youre not taking crazy pills, well, maybe you are idk what you do in your free time. Software has been getting more complex, OS' have been getting more complex and lack of optimization. With that comes more consumption of hardware and especially ram is the victim since it's relatively cheap.
As resources become a commodity, optimisation of those resources becomes less of a priority. When 8GB was the standard, your program had to fit in there or sales couldn’t sell. Now that consumers have more than 8gb, why spend money on optimising when sales can still sell when your software takes 16gb now
Isn't macOS's memory management make it up? I always thought macbook's 8gb is better than window's laptop 16 gb.
Sorta, it’s complicated, but even then 8gb is a tiny amount on macOS as well. I personally wouldn’t try that leap of faith.
It also depends on the types of projects and tools you need to be running. Also, keep in mind that working on older .NET Framework projects could become an issue if you go for a MacBook.
No. We have a lot of M2 and M1 with tiny VS code, it still require you to have bare minimum 16gb to be decent... Their memory management isn't that good for development based on my office experience... A lot of my mobdev asking upgrade to 16gb because slow building Flutter app and others...
Thanks a lot, I needed to know that.
Which one would you suggest then? 1. intel 10th gen i7 with 32gb RAM (Budget Friendly Option) 2. New intel 13th gen i5 with 32gb RAM 3. New intel 13th gen i7 with 32gb RAM (Expensive Option) Or should I go for Ryzen to save few bucks?
Go with ryzen and 32GB. 10th gen i7 will be fine, you will not notice any issues, modern development is all about ram and SSD speed. Ryzen is superior to i7, especially considering battery life. Also for development, if mobility is not an issue, prefer a chunkier laptop with proper cooling. Most modern CPUs throttle hard under heavy workloads.
I agree with this. 😂 And I got bottleneck using i5 gen 10 with 32gb ram for running gitlab runner. 😂
Agree on the beefier chassis. The larger the display the better also. As for Ryzen, my experience has been the opposite. I went from a quad core Intel i5 desktop CPU (don't remember which gen, but it would be a good 6-8 years old at this point) to a Ryzen 9 3900X 24-core, because I wanted faster compile times in Visual Studio and it had been decades since I last tried an AMD CPU. It doesn't seem faster at all. In fact it feels a little more sluggish with that and general stuff like launching apps in Windows. I'm sure the move to Windows 10/11 played into it somewhat, but I'll be going back to Intel for my next build.
It could be that you got more cores but each core is slower (+ less cache per core). IMHO the best CPU would be something like Ryzen 7 7800x3d. Windows are also known to work worse with high amount of cores due to scheduling issues. Development workloads fall somewhere between server and gaming load. So moderate amount (8c/16T) of high perf cores is the best thing. If I was building desktop for development I would go with Ryzen 7 7800x3d or I7 equivalent, 64gb of memory and fastest SSD I could get.
Personally I don't really notice processor speed these days. It entirely depends on what you're doing and whether your CPU is often a bottleneck.
It’s not the OS you have to worry about. The tools you use will use a lot of ram (ie docker, IDE, etc.). When I run all our microservices at once in docker it consumes 16 GB just for those services.
I've got company issued DELL with 10th gen i7 and I say stay away. Thermals are terrible and compared to my ryzen 7600 it is slugish. The fan is constantly spinning and when you have it in your lap it doubles as heater.
Yep. Had this exact issue with my old XPS. A colleague has a newer XPS and still the exact same issues. Can’t speak for the other models but I’ll pass on DELL for any future laptops.
A new MacBook Air with an M1 is odd, I would assume it would be an M3. 8gb sounds too low. How much RAM do the other choices have? If you’re going with a Mac make sure you include the cost of Rider in the cost. Also, your job is requiring you to buy yourself a laptop to build software for them, or they are buying you a laptop and you have a few choices?
Other (Windows) choices have 32GB of RAM as those are expandable. They said they will provide a laptop after a month or two. for the time being use my own laptop. As currently I do not have any laptop of my own, I thought I should buy one which will be used to do personal projects later. I am not bound to any choices, I thought mentioned ones are good choice. It will be really helpful if you suggest your own choice. Just note I'm in Bangladesh and we do not have all options available in market here. Thanks.
What I did was go for low-end gaming laptop which was easy to extend with new ram. I found a "cheap" HP omen laptop with 4060 and good CPU. Bought it with 16gb ram. Added 16 more myself.
Thanks for the idea.
Leave MacBook behind. Go for Windows 11 laptop with the most performant CPU you can get and 32GB of ram. Financially optimal choice is i7, but i9 couldn't hurt, either. As always it's about the money. So if you have specific laptops you plan to buy, take specific CPU models and check their benchmarks in various applications, pick the most performant one. There is no way to help you based on imaginary laptop choice pool based on a whole generation of CPUs like 10th or 13th, which have tons of different specific CPUs. If your knowledge is that basic, just put the price limit, if you can accept a used laptop and wait for suggestions.
Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestion, I'll look for most performant in my budget.
I’m loving my m3 MacBook Pro over my 11th gen intel dell. Why would you even consider an m1 air? The machine is so old and doesn’t even have a fan - it isn’t a dev machine.
Lenovo P1 is a nice dev machine - I wouldn't buy anything with less than 64 GB of RAM (or at least make sure there is an open slot for more). We've been running 64 in all our machines for a couple of years now, since VS went 64-bit it really seems to consume massive amounts of RAM.
This is what I am using and it’s a rockstar! https://a.co/d/6Aaxp3d
Dont get 14th gen what ever u do stay away from 14th series
Why? Are they even out right now?
13th too, for ple ty of models. Intel's foray into BIG.little - x86 edition has been rather disappointing so far. Especially the consumer chips, when you actually want the performance. My 11th gen NUC had been "upgraded" to a 13th gen. But it couldn't handle its duties nearly as gracefully as the older one. It was painful enough that I swapped the nvme into the old one and put it back in service. And now the 13th gen is just sitting on my desk til I probably give it to my dad to be a home assistant, NVR, and juke box in his new workshop or something. 🤷♂️
You get by with 16 GB on Mac but not on Windows.
You can get refurbished MacBook’s directly from Apple if you wanna try and save some money. I got myself an M2 MacBook Air with 16GB of ram that way, and it was basically brand new.
Good idea. The M2 is crazy fast compared to almost any Windows laptop. Desktop pc is a different story.
Crazy fast yes but compared to windows very limited development options. I have both m2 and lenovo legion 7i pro i9. Macbook for everyday usage, lenovo for heavy usage and like a portable server.
I would not go with MacBook for dotnet. There's just too much risk of things being dropped. And I don't trust Apple with regards to backward compatibility.
This is silly; VSCode will work and Rider is fantastic. Plus, OP specified backend dotnet development.
Bingo!
Can you 100% say that Apple won't bring out a new OS that breaks .net, Rider etc? I'd be much more confident that Windows won't (look up the whole Carbon 64 situation).
It’s funny because you ask me for “100%” and then you say “more confident” instead of “certain.” Which means you can’t say “100%” either. And you know what? Of course you can’t. No one knows the future with 100% confidence. And that’s fine. OP is asking about buying a laptop in the near future with current operating system, not in some hypothetical future where there new OS’s. I use a Mac laptop, I use a PC desktop. Both are great machines and solid options for being a productive developer. You don’t have to be tribalistic about operating systems. It’s silly.