Looking Ahead To AMD Ryzen Mobile On Linux

[schmidtbag]

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.

You have a very valid point, however, it is important to consider that not all architectures scale well. For example, in Intel's efforts to compete with ARM, the only way to keep up with the overall wattage was to cripple the performance to the point that ARM ended up being as fast or faster. x86 is just too complex to scale down to levels that are useful for phones or microcontrollers, unless you start stripping away instruction sets (at which point, might as well just go for ARM). Meanwhile, the inverse can also be said: try getting an ARM CPU to compete with an i3 and it will become much less efficient at doing so.

Zen's design strongly suggests it is meant to be modular and expandable. Its performance and value seems to have only got better as you scale up, so, I'm a bit wary how it will perform in a laptop environment where it is relatively crippled compared to desktop and server counterparts.

[GreatEmerald]

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.

Huh, that is pretty weird. Well, the speakers are a given. For the battery, maybe not all power management code is there yet, or something? The USB issue is the only one that would be a problem in my case, though. But yea, maybe you just got unlucky with a bad model or something...

Out of curiosity, what wifi card did you get? Their driver page ships drivers for 3 manufacturers, so it seems to be a lottery which one you get more than anything else.

[schmidtbag]

Huh, that is pretty weird. Well, the speakers are a given. For the battery, maybe not all power management code is there yet, or something? The USB issue is the only one that would be a problem in my case, though. But yea, maybe you just got unlucky with a bad model or something...

Nope, battery is just plain garbage. I think it was 4200mAh. I knew it was bad when I bought the laptop but it was replaceable so I wasn't too concerned about it. However, what I didn't know until later is the best battery I can get will maybe get me 4 hours. Such a battery costs around $100 and is pretty bulky, so I'm like "screw that".

Out of curiosity, what wifi card did you get? Their driver page ships drivers for 3 manufacturers, so it seems to be a lottery which one you get more than anything else.

I don't recall what it came with. The stock wifi worked but was weirdly slow and would randomly disconnect once in a while. So I bought some cheap M.2 adapter known for good Linux support and haven't had issues since. To my knowledge, the stock wifi works perfectly fine in Windows, so when given the opportunity I'll use it for someone else's PC.

Anyway I'm not saying to avoid Lenovo; I'd still prefer them over Toshiba, Acer, and some Dells. But, they are slipping in quality lately, so be wary of what you get. The laptop I got had almost no reviews (professional or store reviews) so it was kind of a gamble. Apparently I lost on that one. The performance and wattage of it is otherwise perfectly fine. The main reason I haven't replaced it is because nothing new will improve my overall daily user experience (other than, for example, having a keyboard that doesn't feel mushy or something less heavy).

[GreatEmerald]

Nope, battery is just plain garbage. I think it was 4200mAh. I knew it was bad when I bought the laptop but it was replaceable so I wasn't too concerned about it. However, what I didn't know until later is the best battery I can get will maybe get me 4 hours. Such a battery costs around $100 and is pretty bulky, so I'm like "screw that".

Oh, well, that makes sense.

I don't recall what it came with. The stock wifi worked but was weirdly slow and would randomly disconnect once in a while. So I bought some cheap M.2 adapter known for good Linux support and haven't had issues since. To my knowledge, the stock wifi works perfectly fine in Windows, so when given the opportunity I'll use it for someone else's PC.

Yea, that sounds like Realtek. I'm guessing that's the default choice. However, I also read that they have a wifi whitelist, cards that are not in it cause the UEFI to fail to boot. They do have an Intel and an Atheros card in a whitelist, andt hey are not expensive, so indeed replacing it is not that difficult, but still I'd rather have everything work right without having to break open the thing...

[shmerl]

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

Got it, thanks.