AMD Announces Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile Processors, Previews EPYC Milan

[Jabberwocky]

I am willing to spend big bucks ($2500 or more) on a Zen3 laptop with GDDR5 RDNA2 that lighter than my current laptop. I'll be patient enough to check Linux support before ordering. So many people complaining on social media or forums about bad Linux support but they never check before buying. I hope that i don't have to wait more than 2 years for Rembrandt.

I've tested the waters with my relatively cheap Dell Latitude 5495 (Ryzen 5 Pro). Got it for ~$780 USD in South Africa with customs duties and tax. There was no option to not include Windows which I never used, so it could have lowered the cost. It came with M.2 drive so I just added an extra 8GB RAM. Dell gave official Linux support. Overall I am very happy with it, the keyboard is awesome and the build quality is extremely good considering the price.

My first choice was an expensive HP Spectre X360, but wasn't sure about Linux support and I needed a laptop urgently but could not get the X360 without importing it myself. I tried contacting distributors that do not sell to general public nobody supplied a Zen based model at the time.

I have noticed many people are going the WSL2 route just to get better hardware support. I believe in open source and hope that Zen3 and RDNA2 works as well as Zen+ and Vega worked. Having full hardware support in mainline kernels improves quality of life and productivity.

Edit: Added Rembrandt to avoid confusion with currently announced series.

[Mez']

i just ordered a new laptop with a 4700U inside.
Should I regret buying a CPU generation that will be old news in one month time?

[stiiixy]

So, I'd like an option post 3xxxG series. What are they?

[old_skull]

And in particular a device with dual-channel memory?

No kidding. After many months of "hunting" I finally gave up and decided to wait for 5800u. They're pretty The amount of soldered 8GB single channel crap dwarfs the ever-sold-out acceptable products in the 13-14 inch range.

[asriel]

I've tested the waters with my relatively cheap Dell Latitude 5495 (Ryzen 5 Pro). Got it for ~$780 USD in South Africa with customs duties and tax.

How long does it survive on battery? As I've seen the detail your model can have 40, 51 or 68 watt-hr options - so it is also important to know which battery you have. My Inspiron 5405 have 40 wh battery which is too small but Inspiron 5401 (almost same dell but intel-based) have same 40wh but lasts way longer (5hrs on amd vs 8 on intel)

[AdrianBc]

i just ordered a new laptop with a 4700U inside.
Should I regret buying a CPU generation that will be old news in one month time?

I do not think that you need to worry about that.

Better CPUs continue to appear all the time, so whatever you buy it will not stay the best for long.

Obviously, a 4700U would have been much more valuable one year ago, but it is still a decent CPU, which should be OK for many years.

While I have succeeded to upgrade my desktop to a 5900X, I am still using without problems a laptop with a Skylake from 2016.

Because it was the top model of Skylake in 2016, it still has completely acceptable performance today, even if, of course, I would never buy a new computer now, with this level of performance.

The same should be true for a 4700U in a few years.

In the worst case, if you will long for a better Cezanne CPU later this year, you can still attempt to sell the 4700U laptop, to recover a part of the expenses.

It is likely that Cezanne CPUs will be difficult to buy at least during the next few months, so having a new laptop right now can be worthwhile enough.

[AdrianBc]

I'd like a 5800U/5900HX based NUC clone.

NUC-like computers with AMD Renoir have multiplied a lot recently, e.g. from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock and a few others, but they are still somewhat hard to find, except maybe the ASUS PN50, which was the first model available.

It is likely that there will be even more NUC-like computers with AMD Cezanne, but they will probably not appear before the autumn, so if you want one, you might be able to get it only by the end of the year.

[torsionbar28]

I don't understand this statement. I'm pretty sure no EPYC models fit that range of TDP.

If you want a CPU in that range, I think that limits you to the 65 W Ryzen models, or else you have to go up to 105 W. As for official ECC support, get a Ryzen Pro, which means you'll probably have to buy the machine prebuilt (since they don't sell Pro CPUs in the retail channel DIY builders).

Which part don't you understand? You've just articulated all the reasons why the lack of EPYC 5000 is a problem, lol. The Opteron 3000 series was replaced by EPYC 3000 for the embedded market. EPYC 7000 replaced the Opteron 6000 for high end. There is no AMD replacement (yet) for the Opteron 4000 series at the middle tier.

Ryzen Pro... lol... find me a Ryzen Pro system that ships with ECC memory. They don't exist.

The Xeon E3 is eating up the market where EPYC 5000 should be competing. Intel sells a lot of Xeon E3's, proving there is indeed a market segment here for a Xeon competitor.

[Mez']

I do not think that you need to worry about that.

Better CPUs continue to appear all the time, so whatever you buy it will not stay the best for long.

Obviously, a 4700U would have been much more valuable one year ago, but it is still a decent CPU, which should be OK for many years.

While I have succeeded to upgrade my desktop to a 5900X, I am still using without problems a laptop with a Skylake from 2016.

Because it was the top model of Skylake in 2016, it still has completely acceptable performance today, even if, of course, I would never buy a new computer now, with this level of performance.

The same should be true for a 4700U in a few years.

In the worst case, if you will long for a better Cezanne CPU later this year, you can still attempt to sell the 4700U laptop, to recover a part of the expenses.

It is likely that Cezanne CPUs will be difficult to buy at least during the next few months, so having a new laptop right now can be worthwhile enough.

I really hope so.

I've had my current Asus laptop with a low end APU A4-3300M (already weak at the time of purchase) for 9 years. Fortunately it has a Radeon HD 6650M dedicated GPU and VA-API can take over to some extent. It was of a very good build quality and I'm sad to force it into retirement while still operational.
I certainly expect to squeeze 5-6 years out of the new one with a more beefy CPU at purchase time.

Even though better CPUs will come along, what's getting me worried is I didn't think I was buying this generation so close to the next one. Was hoping for another 6-12 months before update.
Actually, it might still be 6 months before System76, Tuxedo or Dell* come up with a Linux-based laptop 5000-based in my price range. In the meantime, the A4-3300M is agonizing way too much for me to wait for a possible other match in this very restricted market (AMD and Linux based laptops).


* I'm aware Lenovo might be the first on the Linux friendly front with a 5000, but I discard them nonetheless as I don't like their design, keyboard or touchpad

[Paradigm Shifter]

NUC-like computers with AMD Renoir have multiplied a lot recently, e.g. from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock and a few others, but they are still somewhat hard to find, except maybe the ASUS PN50, which was the first model available.

It is likely that there will be even more NUC-like computers with AMD Cezanne, but they will probably not appear before the autumn, so if you want one, you might be able to get it only by the end of the year.

Yes, I know. That was kind of my point. I can get the Asus NUC-clone here without too much trouble (although I can't get the top-end model) but the other manufacturers are absolutely useless.

It is frustrating enough that I was considering just buying the tiniest ITX case I could, an ITX board and a Ryzen Pro 4750G or something (which can be found in Akihabara if you poke around the right shop) with a picoPSU or similar. But even that has an enormous footprint compared to a NUC.