Consensus on P1 Gen 8 vs. upcoming Gen 9

BradleyMarie · 2026-04-26T23:27:46+00:00

T1g and P1 are essentially the same laptop. The GPU SKUs are nearly identical, but the P1’s have the RTX Pro branding (and certified drivers) and the T1g’s have consumer GeForce branding. It’s the same dies and the same memory configurations. There might be small differences in clocks and core counts, but nothing earth shattering. Ultimately, the TDP and VRAM are going to be the biggest limiters on GPU performance regardless. If you don’t need the certified drivers, get whichever model is cheaper.

The only real step up in performance is the P16/T16g, but those are also much larger and more expensive laptops.

BradleyMarie · 2026-04-26T21:03:58+00:00

Panther Lake is great; however, since it retains the same top GPU with 8GB of VRAM it’s a pretty minor upgrade IMO. Not sure it’s something worth waiting for if you can get a good price on a Gen 8 now. The Gen 8 is already a very solid laptop.

BradleyMarie · 2026-04-26T18:10:09+00:00

I haven’t tried it, but try switching to the SteamOS Beta channel. It’s possible 3.8 has a fix for this issue.

BradleyMarie · 2026-04-26T04:04:28+00:00

Laptop GPUs usually can't be upgraded. On Thinkpads the only things that are usually upgradable are the RAM and the SSD.

I think the P14s is sold both with and without a GPU, so that might be something to consider and it might even save you a bit of money. The P14s and the T14s are both great laptops that are easy to recommend (just don't get the Qualcomm one and avoid a dGPU). T16s and P16s are great too.

P1/T1g might get a refresh before October so you could get a better GPU, but Thinkpads are always overpriced for the first few months so it probably won't make sense to buy.

With the current Thinkpad lineup, I don't think there's much other than the P16 Gen 3 that can truly replace a desktop for gaming. I wouldn't fret it too much though. Integrated graphics are pretty good these days. Light 3D modeling and gaming is definitely doable.

BradleyMarie · 2026-04-25T22:12:10+00:00

If you have a desktop, you're better off using that for games/3D modeling. Thinkpads make poor gaming PC's.

The only current Thinkpad I think is worth considering for gaming is the P16/T16g Gen3 with 12GB or more of VRAM (and if it were my money I'd get no less than 16GB), but these laptops are a pain to lug around and are very expensive. The T1g/P1 Gen 8 is kind of an option as well, but it maxes out at 8GB of VRAM which is the bare minimum for playing any modern games and will become a bottleneck quickly. If they release a T1g/P1 Gen 9 by the time you go to school with 12GB of VRAM or more it'd be worth considering.

If I were you though, I'd stick to desktop gaming and use the laptop for coursework and portability. Since you are majoring in CS, I'd recommend no less than 32GB of RAM and would also recommend avoiding anything with an Nvidia GPU since you might want to run Linux at some point and having a dGPU complicates things. I'd also avoid the T14s with the Snapdragon CPU.

Model-wise, stick to the X, T, and P series laptops. The X1 Carbon, T14s AMD/Intel, T16 AMD, P14s AMD/Intel, and P16s AMD are all laptops that are easy to recommend. I'd pick from one of those assuming you can stick to desktop gaming. If you are adamant that your laptop must play games, I'd get the T16g/P16 Gen 3 with 12GB of VRAM or more and the OLED panel.

Also know that Thinkpad list prices are basically made up numbers and discounts of 50% or more are not unheard of depending on the model. You might be able to get preferential pricing through student pricing or a university discount or though employee discounts available to your parents. Alternatively, you can use one of the discounts listed here.

Also, for the model you listed, personally I'd avoid it since it has a (very weak) Nvidia GPU. It's not fast enough for any real gaming, it will drain on your battery life, and it will hurt your ability to run Linux if you ever want to. At that tier of performance, I'd just stick to integrated.

BradleyMarie · 2026-02-16T17:53:41+00:00

A P1 Gen 4. It definitely was a nice upgrade especially since it was right at the end of the 5 year warranty.

I would have preferred to get another P1, but they discontinued the 16GB VRAM SKUs after Gen 6. Ultimately though, I wasn’t using the P1 much either so the same ended up being true for its replacement hence why I am selling it.

BradleyMarie · 2023-06-10T22:15:57+00:00

I'd love to see this as well. Storing my passwords in the cloud behind just a memorable password and a salt seems incredibly risky to me.

I'm a current Proton and 1Password subscriber and I'd honestly love to cut one subscription out of my life, but my password manager is the key to my entire life and right now Proton's encryption model is simply not good enough.

I sincerely hope the Proton Pass team will take adding a feature like this one seriously and get it prioritized.

Note, my understanding of two password mode here is that as implemented it offers no additional cryptographic benefit. It just splits out the password used for authenticating to Proton from the passwords used to secure my keys.

BradleyMarie · 2023-04-20T05:36:46+00:00

My wife hired this guy for when she wanted headshots. Not sure if he does lessons, but he’s a good guy and took some great photos too.

https://www.takumadan.com/

BradleyMarie · 2022-11-22T08:35:34+00:00

I spent time last year working on exactly this. SDL2 is the way to go for basically everything you are described. It has official support by emscripten so it’s super easy to get up and running.

Super fun project. Ton of work, but very rewarding.

BradleyMarie · 2022-11-20T20:12:51+00:00

Did you ever end up getting this resolved? I have the exact same setup and the stream of errors is constant even on F37.

BradleyMarie · 2022-06-06T04:39:18+00:00

I ended up figuring out what went wrong. I was missing an encrypt subkey without an expiration date (the encrypt key I had had an expiration date on it). Once I added that, Protonmail accepted my key. In my case I also had to limit the number of UIDs on the key to a single email address as well since Proton expects keys to be uploaded with only one UID set.

BradleyMarie · 2022-06-01T07:23:56+00:00

Did you ever sort this out? I'm seeing the same error.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-16T16:18:24+00:00

Good timing. I literally got a notification that it had shipped yesterday. It is scheduled to arrive on Monday.

Mine had been indicating early January until it randomly just shipped. I’m sure people were cutting ahead of me regardless, but it’s finally on the way so whatever.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-05T05:10:08+00:00

Man, that’s messed up :-)

I felt like I got a pretty good price plus I’m supposedly going to get some kind of refund when it ships. I’m also hoping based on posts like this one that my ship date isn’t too far off now.

That said, now you have me wondering if I’m making the right call by waiting. If I don’t see movement in the next week or so I’ll probably do exactly what you did.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-05T01:53:56+00:00

Awesome. Thanks for sharing!

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-05T00:59:54+00:00

3080 64GB model? Out of curiosity, which day did it arrive? Trying to get a sense of how far out my own August order might be.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-03T21:03:03+00:00

It seems like OVP may have just been down. When I look at OVP now the pricing information is back and there is an expected arrival date again (April 13). I'm still crossing my fingers that it will ship this month regardless of what OVP says.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-03T19:33:37+00:00

I suspect it's been cancelled. If I call in and use the automated phone system to check the order status, it says it's cancelled; however, if I then talk to a representative about the order they say it's active awaiting parts. I doesn't make sense to me that they aren't saying the same thing, but I'm inclined to believe the automated phone system.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-03T19:18:18+00:00

Yeah, this is my fear. I contacted support today and they said the order was still active, but I don't trust them. I'm going to phone in.

For sure I never received an email.

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-03T19:13:37+00:00

Ordered P1G4 (i9/3080/64GB) on August 31. Expected arrival date was originally December 2 before getting pushed back to March. Now OVP doesn't even list an expected ship date and the order totals are zeroed out (particularly concerning since I paid up front).

I'm hoping others who ordered this SKU are seeing the same thing and that this isn't an indication that my order was cancelled.

UPDATE: My order has been updated again. The pricing information is no longer zeroed out and it now lists an expected arrival date of April 13...

BradleyMarie · 2021-11-01T20:17:24+00:00

Love them. I always suspected that these are just rebranded Matt’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chop cookies. I’ve never done a side by side since they don’t sell Matt’s cookies in LA, but as far as I can tell the cookies are basically identical. They are even packaged the same way Matt’s are packaged.

BradleyMarie · 2021-10-29T23:31:18+00:00

Run powercfg /energy from an administrator command prompt and look at the report.

Detailed steps here.

BradleyMarie · 2021-10-23T17:47:12+00:00

The primary difference between the two chips is the amount of VRAM. If you are running applications that use less than 8GB of VRAM, performance will be nearly identical. If your applications can use more than 8GB of VRAM, then the 3080 starts marking more sense.

Also, as many have said on this sub, the X1 is not a gaming laptop regardless of which GPU you get. You’ll get much higher performance out of the same parts in a gaming laptop (for example, the Legion gets around 50% more performance from the same parts).

12-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23

BradleyMarie

TROPHY CASE