Laptop OEMs – make a proper high-end AMD laptop • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by robdachshund » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

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.

You do realize AMD has surpassed intel right? Their chips are cheaper, a much better value, and in this case, 4xxx mobile is looking to beat the pants off of intel.

Intel sat around for too long because they weren't forced to compete. Now they are stuck at 14nm with no end in sight. Meanwhile amd is on 7nm and looking at 5nm.

With amd you get a better deal, more cores, higher clock speed, better power consumption, and a better gpu with the 4xxx mobile line.

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

#152

Post by znpy » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #124

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'm surprised you find that guests can plug into the main corporate LAN. That's a sign of totally incompetent security (unless it's a lab network or something firewalled away from the regular enterprise network). Wired Ethernet access should be locked down to only authorized devices.

You can do 802.11x cert-based authentication on wired LAN too.

Don't dismiss other people's technical choices because you ignore the existence of certain technical possibility.

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

#153

Post by wyoh » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #42

Good timing! ASUS are showing off a pile of their ROG-branded gaming laptops at CES, which have 7nm, 8 core, 16T Ryzen 4000-line CPUs with RTX2060 (mobile) graphics cards, with fast screens, all in a 14" form factor. Certainly not workstations but still, considerably more powerful More at LTT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGUESEq75ZI

> with RTX2060 (mobile) graphics cards

wish they had chosen a more Linux friendly card. Going full AMD would have been nice.

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

#154

Post by jdashg » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 12:44 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #87

IgorPartola wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only Macs have really made high-DPI work properly, and especially having multiple monitors with very different DPI.

Mac makes most apps "just work", but it has issues: Any scaling besides the default makes it impossible to do 1:1 device pixel rendering from within an app.

Windows has the complete solution for non-integer pixel ratios. For instance, on this machine, my browser's window.devicePixelRatio is `1.7647058823529411`. For my 4k screen, this means apps should be rendering into 3840x2160 pixels, but scale it /as if/ it were a 2176x1224 display. (2160/devicePixelRatio = 1224.0)

This allows Windows apps to handle non-integer scaling, whereas on Mac this causes apps to get "fuzzy", since they would e.g. render into a 2176x1224 screenbuffer which is upscaled to 4k by the OS compositor.

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

#155

Post by errantspark » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #39

jotm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me neither, but I look at eGPU enclosures regularly. I don't even need the GPU power, but a desktop card is miles ahead of a laptop if well cooled and overclocked. Will consume a lot of power though, and it definitely doesn't look like a portable solution.

Overclocking is something I never cared about, the prospect of being forced to buy new hardware was never appealing to me.

It's not rocket science. I've run a 30% overclock on a machine with 80% daily uptime on air and saw it BSOD like twice over 4 years. Also as some other people in this thread have mentioned, modern CPUs will overclock themselves, and if you undervolt you can get quite a lot of headroom, especially if you get lucky with binning. With that headroom and some hackery (Throttlestop is often all you need) you can get modern chips to hold all core turbos indefinitely. YMMV but I've managed to hold a stable 35% increase in sustained processing power without running too close to the thermal limits.

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

#156

Post by strbean » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

disintegore wrote: post #127

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IT professionals usually buy the hardware, and they're typically somewhat familiar with the market. As far as CPUs go, their options are "does this person need an i5 or an i7". When buying server hardware they'll gloss over the selection of Xeon systems their budget can accommodate. You rarely get consequences for buying Intel/Cisco/etc, no matter how overpriced and otherwise maladapted their products may be.

So Intel ~= IBM? Things make so much sense after realizing this.

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

#157

Post by uyuioi » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

wilhil wrote: post #150

Intel have a great partner program - I'm a small OEM (as one arm to the company), less than 100 units a month - but, still a nice number... Intel give me advanced warranties, presales support, partner centre, certain privileged information including roadmaps and samples... I couldn't imagine better. AMD - I'm struggling to get them to return a call despite numerous chase messages for over 3 months now. I want to sell…

This sums up a lot of older business models. Where a call to a whine and dine salesman is needed. Such a dead and dull way of doing business. In the age of on demand, make a website where OEMs can just sign up and get things done. Outside of a certain monthly sales figure. Then send in the suits.

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

#158

Post by TheOperator » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 2:02 AM UTC

llampx wrote: post #129

TheOperator wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why?

well I made two claims but 1: Because Intel 14nm was more efficient than AMD 12nm. i'm not make this prediction with high confidence. 2: Independant of the competition 7nm should offer insane enough battery life in a 13" form factor to be "good enough".

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

#159

Post by TheOperator » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

valleyer wrote: post #29

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…

Aren't AMD processors (and virtually every processor with speculative execution) vulnerable to Spectre?

Some of Intels design decisions made them uniquely vulnerable to Spectre and it's not simply a matter of them being a "bigger target" if that's what you're driving at. Yes though every CPU has theoretical Spectre vulnerabilities.

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

#160

Post by TheOperator » Wed, Jan 08, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

Aozi wrote: post #77

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…

I really don't understand why there are so few QHD screens on laptops. It's always either a 1080p or 4k, while a good QHD screen would still give higher resolution while not completely murdering my battery.

Marketing mostly. QHD screens seem superior to 4K in a laptop form factor at this point.

For that matter I see HD as generally superior to QHD in phones and think Apple has it right.