With this and the 5800X3D being manufactured again and Raptor Lake being spun up for yet another refresh, I wonder how long it will be before we see something like the Core 2 Quad Q6600 being resurrected along with the P35 chipset and DDR2.
I jest, but with much of a farce the industry has become lately, it does make me wonder how much further backwards we’re going to go.
That was my situation too initially. I first tried while using my Steam Deck and it kept running into errors during checkout. So I yeeted myself to my main desktop where it went through without a hitch.
Mobile always seems less stable than desktop when making purchases.
A laptop from 2015 probably has an Intel 4th or 5th gen CPU. If 8 GB of RAM is an issue, then you could upgrade it to 16 GB in theory, provided that it isn’t soldered down. That could keep it going for a bit longer if 8 GB is the only problem that keeps it from daily use. I’d say that 8 GB is about borderline these days. It’s still perfectly fine for basic web browsing but not much more.
Even though RAM prices are in the stratosphere, DDR3 prices aren’t as badly affected, so you could get 16 GB relatively cheaply. I’d look for 2x 8 GB DDR3L-1600 SO-DIMMs. Just ensure that the laptop can accept it.
Upgrading the hard drive to an SSD will make a huge difference for performance as well if that hasn’t been done already. Unfortunately, 2.5" SATA SSDs today are even more of a ripoff than M.2 SSDs at their current elevated prices because they aren’t really being produced anymore. At that point then yeah I agree with the sentiment that putting the money towards a new laptop will go much further.
I’ve found WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode to be very hit and miss for a few legacy devices unfortunately. They can see the SSID, but they simply won’t connect even though it’s supposed to be ‘backwards compatible’.
I’ve basically done what was mentioned here and went with 2 SSIDs on my network. One for modern devices that uses WPA3 exclusively and allows for all 3 bands along with Wi-Fi 7 features such as MLO. And a second one for legacy devices which uses WPA2 exclusively and only supports the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
Even then, Wi-Fi 6E devices are in an awkward middle ground. While they all support WPA3 and can use the modern SSID, they don’t support MLO so they can sometimes hang on to the 6 GHz band which drops off more quickly at a distance instead of switching to one of the other two bands when appropriate.
They’re apparently still releasing ‘new’ APUs which use RDNA2: The 10 and 100 series.
Not sure what AMD are thinking, but I’ve a feeling that this isn’t going to help them regain market share.
My 1080 Ti has been a legend and has carried my last two builds. That 11 GB of VRAM was huge back in 2017 and certainly helped it to remain relevant over the years, particularly since we’ve seen newer cards with much stronger GPUs and less VRAM struggle lately due to being VRAM limited.
I finally replaced it with a 9070 XT earlier this year, and while this thing buries it in performance and features, I’m questioning if it will see the same kind of longevity my 1080 Ti had since I’ve a feeling that its 16 GB of VRAM will eventually be what obsoletes it first.
The entire GPU market has gone to shit.
It’s unacceptable that there’s new cards for sale (if you can even find one) that cost more than I paid for my 1080 Ti 8 years ago and have essentially the same amount of VRAM (12 GB vs 11 GB).
I thought that maybe the 9070 XT would be at least a reasonable option if I could get it for MSRP. Of course that launch ended up being another farce.
At this point it looks like I’m going to be riding my 1080 Ti until the bitter end. Sure, newer cards will wipe the floor with it, but I can’t justify the current prices.
To add to this, below are the group policy and registry locations to change this setting to do the same as the comment above in order to allow for automation. Of course with the disclaimer that you should only use these if you know what you are doing.
Group policy
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Device Installation -> Prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata. Set the policy to enabled.
Registry (also works on Home edition)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Device Metadata. Create a REG_DWORD within called PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork and set the value to 1.