AMD Radeon 890M "RDNA3.5" Graphics Run Well With Latest Open-Source Linux Driver
So there's a couple caveats to be aware of but can be worked around and needing to run the latest upstream Linux/Mesa stable code but once going, it's a performant and power efficient experience on the graphics side.
The Radeon 890M graphics with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 has 16 graphics cores and a graphics frequency of 2.9GHz. Up to four displays can be driven by the Radeon 890M, permitting enough outputs from the laptop design. The Radeon 890M supports DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1.
From a few laptops with integrated graphics I compared the OpenGL and Vulkan performance in a few benchmarks. More will come as was hurrying to finish this article in time for launch day. From all the laptops on Mesa Git and Linux 6.10 atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS:
Around 25% higher performance over the RDNA3 graphics with the Ryzen 7 7840U within the Framework 13 laptop. Very nice uplift and even larger than the RDNA2 to RDNA3 with the 6850U to 7840U. In these benchmarks just widening the lead over the Arc Graphics found in the Core Ultra 7 155H Meteor Lake laptop. Granted, the Intel Lunar Lake laptops are expected to begin shipping later this quarter with Xe2 graphics... It will be very interesting to see RDNA3.5 / Radeon 890M integrated graphics up against Lunar Lake Xe2 graphics as well as the overall Zen 5 vs. Lunar Lake CPU performance.
While it was exciting enough to see a 25% advantage for the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's RDNA3.5 graphics over RDNA3 with Ryzen 7 7840U, it's even more exciting when looking at the SoC power consumption. During these graphics tests, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 was pulling 14 Watts on average with a 33 Watt peak, compared to the Ryzen 7 7840U pulling 27 Watts on average and a peak of 47 Watts. The Core Ultra 7 155H had a 25 Watt average and 41 Watt peak. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 was practically sipping power in comparison to the other modern SoCs and at a level seen back during the Zen 3/3+ days with the 5850U/6850U while delivering much greater performance compared to those aging laptop parts.
So for an initial preview look, the Radeon 890M "RDNA3.5" graphics under Linux are looking very promising. There are a few hiccups and Linux users will need to make sure they upgrade their Linux kernel, Mesa, and linux-firmware files accordingly. But once running the performance and power efficiency of the RDNA3.5 graphics are looking quite exciting. Stay tuned for much more tests in the days ahead, especially with this just being my analysis for having my hands on the Zenbook S16 for less than one week while burning through many tests and then also consolidating the content in time for the Sunday morning embargo lift... So apologies for this brief article today, stay tuned.
Continue reading with this morning's embargo lift the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU benchmarks in more than 100 workloads.
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