AMD Spins The Radeon RX 500X Series For Laptops/Desktops

[franglais125]

This one. PC World sucks but annoyingly it's exclusive to them and there aren't exactly many Ryzens to choose from. I was initially going for the Ryzen 5 model but they dropped the price, making this one only £50 more. They've rated it at 15W TDP so you don't get the full benefit of Ryzen 7 but I gather that Vega 10 is still a significant step up from Vega 8. For the sake of £50, why not.

A 256GB SSD isn't enough for my wife so I did some investigating and ordered the parts needed to fit an additional 2.5" SATA HDD.

Unless you opt for a desktop Ryzen CPU, the only competitor to the Acer is the HP Envy x360 and while it benefits from a higher TDP of 25W, other aspects are quite poor, notably the build quality. It's also much more expensive. The Lenovo is on the way but it only has single channel RAM.

Thanks a bunch!!

[Chewi]

After fitting the hard drive from the old laptop (256GB ain't enough!), I was able to boot into OpenSUSE and try some more things. I was totally disheartened when I fired up Trine Enchanted Edition (Trine 2 engine) and it was totally unplayable even on the lowest settings at 720p. Surely it couldn't be that bad. I was running Mesa 18.0.0 but I looked up a Phoronix article for the latest situation and it said that Mesa 18.1 (git) might be beneficial. I then found forkbomb's TurboAMD repository with a Mesa build from the 9th. Well it was like night and day. I was able to take it all the way to 1080p with full detail and while I didn't check the FPS, it seemed very smooth and totally playable. What a difference! Minecraft also jumped from 30fps to 60fps (capped). Strangely Unigine Heaven scores about the same but perhaps there's still work to do.

[R41N3R]

R41N3R, I've been trying to PM you but it just shows up in my sent box as blank so I have no idea if it's working or not. Sorry if you got spammed.

I have my Acer now and it seems nice but I'm still wondering whether I made the right choice. I'm not fully set up yet, only tried Fedora 28 from a USB stick, but I tried running the Unigine Heaven benchmark via PTS and it didn't do too well. Maybe I was expecting too much?

I'd love to know what you get on your HP. I get 16.96 at 1440x900. I'd be extremely grateful if you could run this at the same resolution and send me the results. For contrast, the old Ivy Bridge laptop this one is replacing scores 6.37 at 1366x768.

I'd also like to know how much VRAM is allocated on your system? Mine is locked at 256MB with no option to change it in the BIOS but I gather more is available via GTT?

It's pretty quiet, which is probably thanks to it being rated at 15W TDP. I'd like to know if 25W TDP is that much more noisy. Obviously this is entirely subjective!

Yes, I got only empty messages, though I could partially read them via e-mail, which was strange. I will run some benchmarks as soon as I find time. I don't think that the HP Envy x360 is too noisy, you can hear the fans spinnging from time to time, but during idle it is not worse then my XPS 13 9343, just maybe more frequent. I would say that I'm critical too in this regard, for now the fan control is not perfect, but it works well so that I'm happy with my purchase.
The Acer seems like a good build, especially compared to the Lenovo IdeaPad 720S (sorry, the link is in German, but I couldn't find something better https://www.computerbase.de/2018-04/...-ridge-test/2/).

[R41N3R]

I started panicking a little but I'm telling myself I made the right choice. These Dells aren't available in the UK yet, who knows what the pricing will be here, and I can't see any reviews for them. They look nice but I suspect the price will reflect that.



I was recalling a comment from this review, which I suppose is more of a minor point. I wouldn't have spent £900 on it anyway.



As for the Acer Swift's memory, this review indicates that it has two banks. They're soldered on, which sucks, but you get what you pay for, I suppose.

Then either I have seen a test of another model or I my memory is fooling me. With dual channel it seems like a great notebook too.

[Chewi]

R41N3R, I've been trying to PM you but it just shows up in my sent box as blank so I have no idea if it's working or not. Sorry if you got spammed.

I have my Acer now and it seems nice but I'm still wondering whether I made the right choice. I'm not fully set up yet, only tried Fedora 28 from a USB stick, but I tried running the Unigine Heaven benchmark via PTS and it didn't do too well. Maybe I was expecting too much?

I'd love to know what you get on your HP. I get 16.96 at 1440x900. I'd be extremely grateful if you could run this at the same resolution and send me the results. For contrast, the old Ivy Bridge laptop this one is replacing scores 6.37 at 1366x768.

I'd also like to know how much VRAM is allocated on your system? Mine is locked at 256MB with no option to change it in the BIOS but I gather more is available via GTT?

It's pretty quiet, which is probably thanks to it being rated at 15W TDP. I'd like to know if 25W TDP is that much more noisy. Obviously this is entirely subjective!

[coder]

United States is not the universe or the whole world. However, many US citizen believe so.

Surely, a statement that can only improve the quality of any (unrelated) discussion.

[Decay]

This one. PC World sucks but annoyingly it's exclusive to them and there aren't exactly many Ryzens to choose from. I was initially going for the Ryzen 5 model but they dropped the price, making this one only £50 more. They've rated it at 15W TDP so you don't get the full benefit of Ryzen 7 but I gather that Vega 10 is still a significant step up from Vega 8. For the sake of £50, why not.

A 256GB SSD isn't enough for my wife so I did some investigating and ordered the parts needed to fit an additional 2.5" SATA HDD.

Unless you opt for a desktop Ryzen CPU, the only competitor to the Acer is the HP Envy x360 and while it benefits from a higher TDP of 25W, other aspects are quite poor, notably the build quality. It's also much more expensive. The Lenovo is on the way but it only has single channel RAM.

Indeed, the 13.3" Lenovo 720s only has single channel RAM, which makes it a lot less interesting, but still decent. However, this month the E485 and E585 Thinkpads should be getting out, and the Thinkpads A285 and A485 later this year. I'm especially exited for the A485. Main dealbreaker for me in the Acer Swift 3 is it's soldered 8GB memory, I'd like at least 16. Oh, and there's also the 17.3" Dell Inspiron 17 5000 with Ryzen Mobile.

[vegabook]

AMD has lost the gpu war. Gpu card manufacturers are not interested to produce enough Amd gpu cards. No way to get reasonable priced Gigabyte RX560 2GB in EU. I was forced to order GTX 1050 2GB, let us see if that arrives in a week or two. I sold my Ryzen 5 1600 and RX 560 PC and I am building a new one. Tough times for a PC builder.

Total bull. AMD cards are right up there with Nvidia when it comes to compute performance and even surpass them. That's why AMD cards trade at a higher premium than Nvidia: because they offer more compute for the price and miners snap them up in bulk. AMD has absolutely not "lost the GPU war" - the add in card makers simply can't get enough supply of the chips. They were until recently trading at 75% over list. now they're a "mere" 40% or so.

[Chewi]

There is Dell Inspiron 15 5000 also now with Ryzen 7 2700U (and other lower, from 3 up to that 7 ):

I started panicking a little but I'm telling myself I made the right choice. These Dells aren't available in the UK yet, who knows what the pricing will be here, and I can't see any reviews for them. They look nice but I suspect the price will reflect that.

I bought the HP Envy x360 and it's build quality is great, the reviews I have seen so far mention the same. The only downside is that the display should be brighter and the touch screen support is not yet available on Linux. If I remember right, the Acer Swift lacks dual channel memory, which is not a good base for the Vega.

I was recalling a comment from this review, which I suppose is more of a minor point. I wouldn't have spent £900 on it anyway.

Perhaps the worst physical aspect of the new design is its dual hinges. They feel weaker than the hinges of the Yoga 720 series and are more susceptible to movement when lifting and transporting the notebook. Stiffness is not distributed evenly throughout; the display tends to "fall" once it passes an angle of about 140 degrees or so. The hinges are just barely enough to prevent teetering whilst typing on a flat table and not much more. Otherwise, the lid itself is strong with minimal side-to-side twisting and light-moderate warping when applying pressure down its outer center.

As for the Acer Swift's memory, this review indicates that it has two banks. They're soldered on, which sucks, but you get what you pay for, I suppose.

[Hi-Angel]

There is Dell Inspiron 15 5000 also now with Ryzen 7 2700U (and other lower, from 3 up to that 7 ):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrick...nd-all-in-ones

Sorry for offtopic, but does anyone notice how Forbes' site looks totally like a typical scammers' site. If I did not know the famous journal "Forbes", and somebody referred me there — I'd be like "Omg, don't click anything! Did you download anything from there??".