371–380 of 640 posts
One downside of Framework is they use DDR instead of LPDDR. This means you can upgrade or replace the RAM, but it also means memory is much slower and more power hungry. Its also probably worth putting the laptop in "efficiency" mode (15W sustained, 25W boost per Framework). The difference in performance should be fairly negligible compared to balanced mode for most tasks and it will use less energy.
A friend at grad school was asking me for advice -- he had an "in" at Intel -- make $250k and do nothing. A friend had promised a basically no-show position for him. My friend was debating between this $250k/yr no-show position at Intel (no growth) vs something elsewhere which was more demanding but would provide more growth. This isnt the only no-show position I've heard about at Intel. That is why Intel cannot catc…
How could Intel possibly benefit from that?
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A huge reason for the low power usage is the iPhone. Apple spent years incrementally improving efficiency and performance of their chips for phones. Intel and AMD were more desktop based so power efficiency wasnt the goal. When Apple's chips got so good they could transition into laptops, x86 wasn't in the same ballpark. Also the iPhone is the most lucrative product of all time (I think) and Apple poured a tonne of t…
I vaguely remember Intel tried to get into the low power / smartphone / table space at the time with their Atom line [0] in the late 00's, but due to core architecture issues they could never reach the efficiency of ARM based chips. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom
AMD kind of has, the "Max 395+" is (within 5% margin or so) pretty close to M4 Pro, on both performance and energy use. (it's in the 'Framework Desktop', for example, but not in their laptop lineup yet)
AMD/Intel hasn't surpassed Apple yet (there's no answer for the M4 Max / M3 Ultra, without exploding the energy use on the AMD/Intel side), but AMD does at least have a comparable and competitive offering.
Like a few other comments have mentioned, AMD's Strix Halo / AI Max 380 and above is the chip family that is closest to what Apple has done with the M series. It has integrated memory and decent GPU. A few iterations of this should be comparable to the M series (and should make local LLMs very feasible, if that is your jam.)
On Cinebench 2025 single threaded, M4 is roughly 4x more efficient and 50% faster than Strix Halo. These numbers can be verified by googling Notebookcheck. How many iterations to match Apple?
I considered getting a personal MBP (I have an M3 from work), but picked up a Framework 13 with the AMD 7 7840U. I have Pop!_OS on it, and while it isn't quite as impressive as the MBP, it is radically better than other Windows / Linux laptops I have used lately, battery life is quite good, ~5hr or so, not quite on par with the MBP but still good enough that I don't really have any complaints (and being able to up up…
Curious if the suspend / hibernate "just works" when you close the lid? I feel like I've tried several times to get this working in both Linux and Windows on various laptops and have never actually found a reliable solution (often resulting in having a hot and dead laptop in my backpack).
Windows laptops are still worse, but i appreciate Apple continuing to give me reasons to hate them
> using the Framework feels like using an older Intel based Mac Your memory served you wrong. Experience eith Intel based Macs was much worse than recent AMD chips.
Agree. My 2017 MBP cooked its own battery (spicy pillow) by 2021. My 2019 Thinkpad T495 (Ryzen 3600) does get hot under load, but it's still fine to type on.
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If I recall correctly Apple had to buy enormous numbers of CNC machines in order to build laptops that way. It was considered insane by the industry at the time.
Yup. The original article is gone, however there is the key excerpt in an old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24532257 Apple, unlike a lot, if not all large companies (who are run by MBA beancounter morons), holds insanely large amounts of cash. That is how they can go and buy up entire markets of vendors - CNC mills, TSMC's entire production capacity for a year or two, specialized drills, god knows w…
https://web.archive.org/web/20201108182313/http://atomicdeli...
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Someone has these two machines, and claims the x86 feels faster in his work. You don't own any of the machines but have "made" a comparison by copying data from the internet I assume. This is like explaining to someone who eats a sweet apple that the internet says the apple isn't sweet. MacBook Pro, 2TB, 32gb, 3200 EUR HP G1a, 2TB, 128gb, 3700 EUR If we don't compare laptops but mini-PCs, Evo X2, 2TB, 128gb, 2000 EUR…
Their point is that they’re comparing between SoCs that aren’t in the same class, not that it’s not fast. They’re not arguing against their subjective experience using it, they’re arguing against the comparison point as an objective metric. If you’re picking analogies, it’s like saying Audis are faster than Mercedes but comparing an R8 against an A class.
2. I'd say apples and oranges is subjective and depends on what is important to you. If you're interested in Vitamin C, apples to oranges is a valid comparison. My interest in comparing this is for running local coding LLMs - and it is difficult to get great results on 24/32gb of Nvidia VRAM (but by far the fastest option/$ if your model fits into a 5090). For models to work with you often need 128gb of RAM, therefor I'd compare a Mac Studio 128gb (cheapest option from Apple for a 128gb RAM machine) with a 395+ (cheapest (only?) option for x86/Linux). So what is apples to oranges to you, makes sense to many other people.
3. Why would you think a 395+ and an M4 Pro are in "a different class"?
Battery efficiency comes from a million little optimizations in the technology stack, most of which comes down to using the CPU as little as possible. As such the instruction set architecture and process node aren't usually that important when it comes to your battery life. If you fully load the CPU and calculate how much energy a AI340 needs to perform a fixed workload and compare that to a M1 you'll probably find s…
Hell, Apple CPU's are even optimized for Apple software GC calls like Retain/Release objects. It seems if you want optimal performance and power efficiency, you need to own both hardware and software. Looks like general purpose CPUs are on the losing train. Maybe Intel should invent desktop+mobile OS and design bespoke chips for those.
Wouldn't it be easier for Intel to heavily modify the linus kernel instead of writing their own stack?
They could even go as far as writing the sleep utilities for laptops, or even their own window manager to take advantage of the specific mods in the ISA?