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Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

zach.codes

131–140 of 192 posts

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#131

If you only can buy this or a M2 MBP, which one would you get?

M2 because my days of enjoying tinkering with the OS are over. I enjoy higher level activities on my computer to be honest. Programming, gaming, checking email without working about 1-15 second random hangs :)

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#133
post #93

The idea is nice, but I guess not until the scale is up and production cost come down a bit that the Framework laptop will become more appeal to me. By the time I want to upgrade my laptop, the hardware (CPU/RAM/GPU) would be updated so much that buying a new laptop will be cheaper and more powerful. There is no reason to swap parts.

The point of this laptop is that you can upgrade the cpu/gpu. But I would wait a couple of generations for this.

I am a gen 1 batch 2 supporter and I stopped using mine after a year when the M2 Air came out. Mine is unusable since it throttles to 200Mhz under load and is difficult for it to recover. That load being normal software development or any game. It now sits running BOINC tasks at 80% CPU because it will throttle if I set it to 100% CPU.

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#134
post #39

I'm happy to help answer questions folks have on the product. We (without intending to) ended up being among the first to ship a Ryzen 7040 U-series laptop, which means Linux support is early and depends on having the right kernel version. As others have noted in the comments, we were in a similar place when we were one of the earlier ones on both 12th Gen Intel Core and 13th Gen Intel Core, and both matured rapidly.…

How was the experience from not being acknowledge by AMD, because you were not big enough, to going to be the first once shipping their new flagship laptop CPU after all their other customers moved their timeline out? I imagine their willingness to support you did increase in the last few months?

Eagerly awaiting my batch to ship. Very happy that I see a great team being in charge of this product.

Also thanks for being proactive in supporting the Linux community.

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#135
post #99

After switching from an 11th gen Intel Dell XPS, to a M1 Macbook, I resist returning to PC laptops (even though I prefer Windows) until someone confirms that newer Ryzen and Intel chips are comparable in terms of "perceived performance" to Apple silicon. The whole laptop simply becomes syrupy on battery. Even if I go high performance mode in Windows settings, the whole device is just so laggy compared to a Macbook. A…

I'm on a 6850U Ryzen Windows machine and it's really smooth. Previously I too was using an 11th gen XPS 13 but on Linux, where battery was approximately 2 hours long. This machine feels both smooth, cool and for my usages there's no slowdowns on battery either (usually running few browser windows, a VM that's not taxed too hard and an IDE).

and how many hours of battery you get on this ryzen?

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#136
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insert key seems to be fn-f10 now. I have to say I don't really ever use it? What do people use it for, if I may ask? I configure everything to use vim-style editing, so maybe that's why. I can't really speak on the display stuff, but I fell like I saw something related to that in the BIOS. Haven't had issues with sleep either, but maybe because I've only been using the machine for 2 days. About the battery, I re…

> What do people use it for, if I may ask? I configure everything to use vim-style editing, so maybe that's why. To toggle overwrite mode in word processors, and funnily enough, in vim. It's muscle memory now. Pres "i" to start writing, use insert to toggle between "REPLACE/INSERT" mode.

If I accidentally enable overwrite mode I suppose this would be useful to disable it quickly

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#137
post #11

I wonder what kind of battery-life Framework users get? I've recently gotten an Elitebook 845 G10 which runs on a Ryzen 7 Pro 7840HS, and battery life was at first shit. The issue was with the BIOS being bugged and not allowing ASPM. After manually activating, I now get around 12-15 hours on a 50Wh battery, depending on use of course. Results still preliminary though, more testing needs to be done. Btw, I chose the E…

Does the fingerprint reader work? I've never had one work in Linux. Can you login with it?

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#138
post #11

I wonder what kind of battery-life Framework users get? I've recently gotten an Elitebook 845 G10 which runs on a Ryzen 7 Pro 7840HS, and battery life was at first shit. The issue was with the BIOS being bugged and not allowing ASPM. After manually activating, I now get around 12-15 hours on a 50Wh battery, depending on use of course. Results still preliminary though, more testing needs to be done. Btw, I chose the E…

Does the fingerprint reader work? I've never had one work in Linux. Can you login with it?

Yes it worked out of the box with fprint https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/fprint

I use it for login and sudo. The placement of the reader could be better. On my old ThinkPad it was right next to the keyboard, on the Elitebook it is below it for some reason.

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#139
post #26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do repairability, upgradability, configurability have zero value?

I feel like they either have zero or infinite value. On pure "which laptop would I pick to do a task" it's almost never going to be a Framework. It's objectively a worse laptop for almost all daily tasks. The issue is that repairability and upgradability are, unless you regularly break your computer, at most a once a year occurrence. On that day, you have a better laptop with the Framework (maybe). The other 364, you…

> ..the Framework's battery management is so abysmal that I have to keep it shut down at all times it's not in active use/charging, and even fully shut down, it'll still so deeply discharge the battery after a week that the bios loses power and unsyncs the hardware clock.

I'm not sure, but this sounds like it might be the design flaw that was in the first generation where the RTC battery did not charge via the main battery but from the plugin charger. Louis Rossman mentioned this in a recent video[0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/6Sw06swtgY0?t=584&si=ia34VzC9N50HdOOL

Re: Framework 13 AMD 7040 Series: A Developer's First Impressions

#140

Power management is where the framework laptops really suffer under Linux. I truly prefer Linux as an OS but my framework goes unused in favor of my MacBook Air because the former simply can’t hold a charge for more than a few days of standby or a few hours of use. I believe it’s the WiFi firmware which is known to have bad power management support on Linux.

I have a Lenovo X1 running Windows and it dies after a day or so of sleep too, sometimes sooner. As the other poster says, I think this is mostly due to modern chipsets getting rid of S3 and having "modern standby" instead.
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