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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

#131

Post by llampx »

roel_v wrote: post #35
jiggawatts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're the "nonexistent" market of IT consultants with high incomes that need a high-end laptop. As a third-party to my clients, I cannot rely on the availability of external monitors, keyboards, docking stations, or WiFi. I lug around a heavy Clevo laptop with a 17" 4K screen, 2x RJ-45 ports, quad-core 4 GHz CPU, and 64 GB of memory. These are my minimum requirements, and practically nothing meets it any more! Clevo…

I've thought about making (well, more about 'having' it to be honest) a 'semi-portable' computer for people like us. Basically a briefcase that when folded open would 'swing out' two screens. Maybe you would fold it over so that the rest of the case (where the mobo etc are are in) would work as a stand for the monitors. You wouldn't be able to use it on a couch or plane but it would give you a vastly superior experie…

What happens when you get called in to a meeting? Do you take your luggable and dominate the conference room table with it? Or carry around a second laptop or iPad?

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

#132

Post by klingonopera »

TheOperator wrote: post #111
fortran77 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll forever be baffled at people treating one of the biggest semiconductor companies in the world which has historically released products which easily outlast the rest of the components in the system as some fly-by-night alternative to Intel. This sentiment also caused my family to get a Pentium4 over the superior Athlon64 years back and I'm still salty.

...and the Athlon XP in early P4 days (Willamette and Northwood).

...and the Athlon in P3 days, but that was a closer call.

...and (IIRC?) the K6 in P2 days, but that was before my time.

In retrospect, AMD's fallout past the Athlon64- and prior to the Ryzen-era is actually the odd one out in the company's history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_microprocessors

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

#133

Post by zrm »

c256 wrote: post #40
valleyer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was confused by this: "I've had to put off buying ... all laptops (mac/pc) because it appears Intel's newest CPUs are still vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre. ... A highend 13" AMD based Linux friendly laptop would be utterly amazeballs."

There are a couple of these MDS vulnerabilities that also exist on AMD, but the vast majority are Intel-specific. Thanks not to say that people won’t find some on AMD, but a) they haven’t yet, b) there are at least some that are much less likely on AMD than Intel, and c) the greater number of cores and channels is likely to make practical problems even less likely. Some of this also applies to ARM.

Spectre is basically a new variant in the longstanding category of timing attacks on hardware. There are things hardware vendors may be able to do to limit the impact, but it's just something software developers are going to have to learn to live with, like cache timing attacks. You mostly fix it by making the software different, not the hardware, because the performance benefits of having caches or speculative execution are too large to abandon in general.

Intel's trouble is that they're doing that kind of speculation across more security boundaries, which not only makes the attack more powerful (e.g. reading memory from the kernel/hypervisor or another process/VM instead of the active one), it also makes the mitigations more expensive. The benefits of speculative execution in those specific cases aren't worth the cost, but CPUs have a long lead time, so they're still selling silicon where that isn't fixed.

And then losing more performance to the mitigations than they gain from the speculative execution while enabling a greater attack scope for any software that doesn't implement the mitigations properly (or at all).

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

#134

Post by iagovar »

sct202 wrote: post #116
iagovar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be small manufacturers in the US. In Spain I know this two guys: https://www.mountain.es/en and https://slimbook.es/en/ and I've been pretty happy with their products.

Most small laptop manufacturers sell Clevo based laptops with some customization, so there's a limit to what they can customize on the Clevo base model.

I'm not sure with Slimbook,it could be, but Mountain seems to be more custom than that.

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

#137

Post by Vrondi »

feanaro wrote: post #17
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…

I would appreciate a high-end 15" AMD "clunker" with an amazing screen, though. Preferably a ThinkPad. But such a thing is nowhere in sight either, no? I can't work with laptops smaller than 15".

They announced yesterday a bunch of Ryzen 4000 laptop chip news, and a version of Dell's G5 15 Special Edition laptop is planned with one of these.

https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/06/dell-g5-15-se-amd-ryzen/

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

#138

Post by Vrondi »

jszymborski wrote: post #106

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.

How do you find the power for intense tasks compares to that XPS 15?

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

#139

Post by tracker1 »

slantyyz wrote: post #101
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

About the only big shortcoming is good Thunderbolt support with AMD. I think that will gain parity eventually, but will probably be in the USB4 timeframe over the next couple years.

I watched the same videos, and will be looking at laptops over the next few months, so may well go the AMD route myself.

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

#140

Post by Vrondi »

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.

Adobe Apps on Windows are terrible for this. All screen recording apps on Windows have problems if your internal monitor and external monitor have different scaling as well.
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