Looking Ahead To AMD Ryzen Mobile On Linux

[VinceM]

https://www.techprincess.it/amd-pres...ryzen-5-2500u/ has some interesting slides. Unfortunately I can't really read Italian.
It seems as though HP and Lenovo will both use single channel RAM @2133 in their initial offering, while Acer will use dual channel @2133.
Lenovo's is 13" while the other two are 15".

Fingers crossed for ASUS putting together a dual channel 13" with 512GB storage . While maintaining affordability..

Seeing that Asus already has 17in laptop with desktop Ryzen and Freesync, my hopes are on them producing a 4K 15in Laptop with Freesync and dual channel DDR4 2400. That VP9 4K Decode on Ryzen mobile is going to rock!

[numacross]

Laptop manufacters: dual channel PLEASE.

According to AnandTech's preview there are 3 models known so far: two with dual and one with single channel (Lenovo). There's a lot of very nice information in that article. The changes in power subsystems look indeed worthy of calling this a "Zen 1.5"

[audi.rs4]

Anyway, I'm interested in Ryzen mobile but I'm a little wary about power consumption. AMD was never really known for having the most efficient designs, and although Ryzen CPUs seem to have better performance-per-watt than Intel, I don't care about having a more powerful CPU or GPU if it means my battery life gets shortened.

I would agree, in the past, (speaking before the Bulldozer days), AMD typically had more performance, but also typically consumed more power. And in going into mobile, that held true as well. Plus, it didn't help that it seemed most PCs with AMD, also shipped small batteries so there were no offerings of longer lasting AMDs, but I don't know every offering that existed so I don't know how accurate that is.

With the Zen architecture though, AMD has shown it can get great performance, while not remaining power hungry in comparison to Intel's offerings. Just look at the 6900k compared to the 1800X at launch. Even Intel's latest i9's seem more power hungry than Threadripper. This shows, AMD now has a efficient platform. It sounds like they have done all things right and in bringing this to mobile, will have a well performing CPU that is just as efficient as Intel in the mobile space, while offering a potentially better package with Vega graphics over Intel.

The other key will be the manufacturers, and how well they build the machines for cooling. As we have seen with Intel laptops from varying suppliers, the same chipset can have huge variances in performance, depending on the cooling in the laptop. We shall soon see, once reviewers get there hands on these new laptops.

[shmerl]

Didn't Intel plan to start using AMD for their integrated GPUs? Or that was a false rumor?

[GreatEmerald]

Meanwhile, Lenovo was a great company but they've been really slipping in quality lately. I have an i3 based laptop and if I weren't a Linux user it would've been the worst experience I ever had with a laptop. I had one of those EEE PCs with a 900MHz single-core Celeron and even that had a better user experience.

Hm? What's wrong with it? The 720s looks pretty nice to me (I don't care much about memory latency, no gaming), as do the 320s and 120s. I was just thinking about purchasing a laptop, and an AMD-based one would be pretty nice, especially considering that it has USB Type-C and DDR4 memory.

Razer is one of those companies that people like to talk trash about due to the glitz and price tags that they use, but I have yet to know an actual Razer user who was unhappy with their purchase (except sometimes mice). That being said, I don't care about the glitz and I don't like the price tag, so I'll never buy one, but I don't see anything inherently wrong with their products. Companies like Asus and MSI make very similar products and you don't hear anyone trash talking them.

Yea. I had a keyboard and mouse from Razer. The mouse wheel died last year, but considering it lasted 7 years... it's still pretty good in my book. The keyboard is still fine (I'm using it to write this right now).

[arbition]

Razer is one of those companies that people like to talk trash about due to the glitz and price tags that they use, but I have yet to know an actual Razer user who was unhappy with their purchase (except sometimes mice)

I bought a mechanical keyboard from them, and the enter key became unreliable pretty quickly. So add me for that.

[arbition]

Probably the best thing about these APUs is that there won't be any attempt to use some kind of optimus, PRIME or other kind of hybrid graphics solution. For me that'd be a big plus. So many laptops have nV graphics and I refuse to install the proprietary bundle, and nouveau is held back by nV themselves. It is just a shame that Intel graphics has been rock solid compared to AMD. But once again, that's only useful if there are no discrete graphics bundled with it.

[BillBroadley]

I've always liked the Intel NUC form factor. It's basically a very small, very quiet desktop that's reasonably priced... but had laptop parts inside it. Please someone build similar, but with the new AMD mobile chip. At a M.2 (or 2), 2 SO dimm slots, GigE, and wifi.

[nomadewolf]

Didn't Intel plan to start using AMD for their integrated GPUs? Or that was a false rumor?

Somewhat false rumour.
The thing is: Intel 'needs' to pay 'someone' for GPU technology so they can integrate GPU without being sued for patents...
And it seems that the contract with nvidia is/was coming to an end, so it'd make sense Intel would try to get a new contract. If you have into account that Intel and nvidia's relation has seen better days and that AMD already has a few cross licensing deals with Intel, it woudlnt be surprising for Intel to make a similar deal with AMD as the one they have/had with nvidia...

But this is just insurance against patent lawsuits. It wouldn't mean AMD would be willing to give up one of their advantages...

[schmidtbag]

Hm? What's wrong with it? The 720s looks pretty nice to me (I don't care much about memory latency, no gaming), as do the 320s and 120s. I was just thinking about purchasing a laptop, and an AMD-based one would be pretty nice, especially considering that it has USB Type-C and DDR4 memory.

A lot was wrong with it. It was so bad that if I were a Windows user, I'd have returned it after 2 hours of use, but thankfully installing Linux on it fixed many (but certainly not all) of the out-of-box issues with it. Currently my greatest gripes about it (that I didn't fix) are the tinny speakers, ~2h battery life, and the USB 3.0 ports cause stability issues if the device I plug into them draws roughly 1A.

The weird thing is I've seen cheaper newer Lenovos that were built much better, so I don't know why my model was so especially terrible.