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Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

blog.basilgohar.com

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Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#101

Post by slantyyz »

intsunny wrote: post #13

I'm convinced there is a conspiracy that prevents laptop manufacturers from shipping AMD chips on 13" high end laptops. Almost every (every?) AMD laptop I find is some 14-15" clunker with a garbage screen. I've had to put off buying a new macbook because of the shitty keyboard situation and all laptops (mac/pc) because it appears Intel's newest CPUs are still vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre. A highend 13" AMD based Li…

This might not be so true after CES is done.

I was watching Linus Tech Tips[1] video yesterday, and Asus had a new array of nice laptops (albeit, gaming laptops) that were AMD based, including a 13" one with decent AMD CPUs

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUESEq75ZI

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#102

Post by acephal »

basilgohar wrote: post #68
kstenerud wrote: post #55

"There needs to be display options well above FHD/1080p." With a 13 inch screen, 1920x1080 is at the pixel density (150) where someone with 20/20 vision won't notice pixellation from a distance of 24 inches. Even with a 15 inch display (density = 128) you're still pretty damn close. Realistically, it would make no difference in usability to go beyond 2560xwhatever in resolution on a laptop, and even that's already ge…

Pixelation is not the only factor that makes a high-res display worth it. Smoother fonts, scaling, and overall sharper graphics are all perceptible even if you are not consciously aware of individual pixels. All of this contributes to, or helps alleviate, eye strain and fatigue.

Fonts are so god damn crispy at 4k you have a "awwww maaaan" reaction to going back down, particularly when using an aesthetically pleasing font like Fira Code Retina with ligatures

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#103

Post by lightedman »

tssva wrote: post #75
stuaxo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skipped on these as the one I was going to get had single channel RAM, have they fixed this ?

The T495 is available with dual channel memory. 8GB of soldered on ram is available on all models and the 3500u and 3700u models are available with 16GB soldered on. You can then add an additional 8GB or 16GB in the sodimm slot. If you want to save some money quality 3rd party sodimms are available for a fraction of the price Lenovo wants and it takes about 5 minutes to install one. This is what I chose to do.

The problem with that is you'd need to match to the soldered-on memory specs to gain all performance benefits, as opposed to just buying a matched set and plugging it in yourself. You're also stuck with whatever highest common clock speed all the RAM would support instead of whatever the maximum the memory controller would allow.

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#104

Post by rsynnott »

basilgohar wrote: post #97
rsynnott wrote: post #74

They did: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15213/the-microsoft-surface-l... Spoiler alert; it does _not_ show the AMD chip in a good light. Will be interesting to see if Zen 2 does better.

It was not the best of comparisons [0]. tl;dr they had different memory and the AMD hardware was older generation (nothing better available, it's true) compared to the Intel. There were other differences too. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21976211

Sure, as I say it'll be interesting to see if Zen 2 improves things. However, as things stand today, it's not surprising that AMD high end laptops are rare, because they're not very good when they are made. Zen 2 could absolutely change that, of course, if AMD's claims work out.

(AFAIK the memory difference was because the AMD chip used didn't support LPDDR4.)

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#105

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fortran77 wrote: post #80
DCKing wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really no conspiracy. Hardware builders just have other requirements. If AMD"s laptop chips were really better so far (this is actually very debatable), they were by a slim margin for some use cases. Not enough to offset existing business agreements with Intel, the more mature Intel laptop platform (it's more than a CPU, but also motherboards and wireless chipsets) and Intel's more mature - and already existi…

Users don't want to switch, either. I won't take a chance on an AMD machine to save a couple of dollars. Maybe I'm being rational, maybe I'm not, but I'm sure I'm not the only consumer who feels this way. I want to buy the "happy path" when I'm getting a product.

I think most consumers are not very knowledgeable of chip manufacturers. A business guy buys Dell/lenovo, couldn't care less what chip is inside.

At most they might check if it has a graphics card, or number of cores

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#106

Post by jszymborski »

I just bought a Thinkpad T495 with a Ryzen Pro 3500U, and but for the display, I think it hits the points made in the blog. Cooling is good, it's far from a clunker and comes in an even slimmer model (T495s), and the battery life so far has been a revelation (knock on wood) compared to the Dell XPS 15 9650 it replaces.

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#107

Post by DanTheManPR »

IgorPartola wrote: post #71
deaps wrote: post #70

Reading through the comments proves different strokes for different folks. It took me quite a while to find a laptop I'm completely happy with. I ended up with a (late-2019) Razer Blade Stealth (with gtx1650). I do run the internal screen at 1080p (at 100%) and I couldn't imagine running it at 4k. My older 13" macbook has higher resolution, but you end up having to scale it anyway (In reality, I think it's actually d…

TIL that in 2019 people still have DPI problems with their software.

Do you not? My work laptop has very high DPI, and I hate all the scaling issues I encounter with all the corporate software I have to use. To the point that I much prefer to plug it into a 1080p monitor.

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#109

Post by TheOperator »

intsunny wrote: post #13

I'm convinced there is a conspiracy that prevents laptop manufacturers from shipping AMD chips on 13" high end laptops. Almost every (every?) AMD laptop I find is some 14-15" clunker with a garbage screen. I've had to put off buying a new macbook because of the shitty keyboard situation and all laptops (mac/pc) because it appears Intel's newest CPUs are still vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre. A highend 13" AMD based Li…

Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Intel literally has a more power-efficient SoC? I wouldn't be surprised to see more 13" AMD laptops with the 7nm die shrink next generation but even then I don't see AMD being more efficient than Intel 10nm.

Re: Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop

#110

Post by evadne »

bb88 wrote: post #3

Thunderbolt-3 is the way of the future. People are building thunderbolt 3 external chassis with a gaming card and extra storage in lieu of having a desktop computer and a laptop computer.

In that sense, it is not a very good version of the future. https://egpu.io is a good resource to get started on this. The 4-lane (sometimes only 2-lane) configuration of Thunderbolt 3 controllers, the overhead of the protocol and Intel’s insistence to reserve DisplayPort and USB bandwidth has made TB3 slower — 22Gbps maximum in a 32Gbps port hosting graphic cards that are usually electrically connected at 128Gbps (PCIe 3.0 x16).

I am going back the other way now, after having used an external enclosure for years.

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