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AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

phoronix.com

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Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#31

Post by SecretDreams »

opencl wrote: post #13
SecretDreams wrote: post #3

I would have liked to see some discussions on cost and comparisons to dGPUs in the laptop space. I can see it's beating the Intel laptops, but that is expected based on specs. Maybe I'm missing something?

The Strix Halo GPU is roughly around RTX 4060 (laptop version) performance. Phoronix just doesn't do much mobile dGPU testing in general to have any data to compare with there.

It makes sense, just leaves the article feeling kind of incomplete as a result. It's more like a data point to be compiled against other existing data. They could pull more clicks if they either had some of that other data done in house or collaborated with some other shop that does have the data (or a laptop to loan) readily available.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#32

Post by SecretDreams »

roenxi wrote: post #8
SecretDreams wrote: post #3

I would have liked to see some discussions on cost and comparisons to dGPUs in the laptop space. I can see it's beating the Intel laptops, but that is expected based on specs. Maybe I'm missing something?

We have a GPU/CPU fusion chip that is unremarkable, performant and runs well under linux out of the box. There isn't a lot of novelty in that which is, in itself, pretty remarkable. Plus, although I can't really swear to understand how these chips work, my read is this is basically a graphics card that can be configured with 64GB of memory. If I'm not misreading that it actually sounds quite interesting; even AMDs ho…

> We have a GPU/CPU fusion chip that is unremarkable, performant and runs well under linux out of the box. There isn't a lot of novelty in that which is, in itself, pretty remarkable.

With this reasoning, I'd probably argue all modern cpus and GPUs aren't particularly remarkable/novel. That could help even be fine.

At the end of the day, these benchmarks are all meant to inform on relative performance, price, and power consumption for end users to make informed decisions (imo). The relative* comparisons are low-key just as important as the new bench data point.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#33

Post by flakiness »

michaellarabel wrote: post #6
phdelightful wrote: post #4

I think I’d buy something with Strix Halo or Strix Point if there was official ROCm support. As of 6.4.1 from earlier this month there’s still not, as I understand it. I’d be delighted to be corrected on this matter.

There is (unofficial) ROCm support for Strix Halo with ROCm 6.4.1. But like Llama.cpp and such were seg faulting but ROCR-based OpenCL was working and other workloads. ROCm GPU Compute Performance With AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ "Strix Halo": https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-strix-halo-rocm-benchmar...

By the way thanks for working on this! I read all of your reviews on this device and it's been very informative.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#34

Post by michaellarabel »

pantalaimon wrote: post #28
michaellarabel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is (unofficial) ROCm support for Strix Halo with ROCm 6.4.1. But like Llama.cpp and such were seg faulting but ROCR-based OpenCL was working and other workloads. ROCm GPU Compute Performance With AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ "Strix Halo": https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-strix-halo-rocm-benchmar...

Does it work with RustiCL?

I haven't gotten around to trying it but it's on my TODO list if having the time before needing to send the review unit back (likely next week or so I'd expect)

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#35

Post by jauntywundrkind »

SecretDreams wrote: post #3

I would have liked to see some discussions on cost and comparisons to dGPUs in the laptop space. I can see it's beating the Intel laptops, but that is expected based on specs. Maybe I'm missing something?

Agreed that for GPU oomph, you'd do better with a dGPU; there's some very good deals for dGPU laptops but even this next-tier-down 8050S is still a rather expensive new purchase by compare (for now; Strix Halo is brand new). But the power consumption will likely be much higher.

Strix Halo as an APU has two very clear advantages. First, I expect power consumption is somewhat better, due to using LPDDR5(x?) and not needing to go over PCIe.

But the real win is that you can get a 64GB or 128GB GPU (well somewhat less than that)! And there's not really anything stopping 192GB or 256GB builds from happening, now that bigger ram sizes are finally available in the world. But so far all Strix Halo offerings are soldered on ram (non user upgradeable, no camm2 offerings yet), and no one's doing more than 128GB. But that's still a huge LLM compared to what consumers could run before! Or lots of LLMs loaded and ready to go! We see similar things with the large unified memory on Mac APUs; it's why are minis are sometimes popular for LLMs.

Meanwhile Nvidia is charging $20k+ for an A100 GPU with 80GB ram. You won't have that level of performance, but you I'll be able to fit an even bigger LLM than it. For 1/10th the price.

There's also a lot of neat applications for DB's or any kind of data-intense processing. Because unified memory means the work can move between CPU and GPU, without having to move the workload. Normally to use a GPU you end up copying data out of main memory then writing it to the GPU* then reading it to do work, and you can skip 2/3rds of these read/write steps here.

There's some very awesome potential for doing query processing on GPU (ex: PG-Strom). Might also be a pretty interesting for a GPU based router, ala PacketShader (2010).

* Note that PCIe p2p-dma / device RDMA / dma-buf has been getting progressively much better, a lot of attention, across the past half deacde, such that say a nic can send network data direct to GPU memory, or a NVMe drive can send data direct to GPU or network, without bouncing through main memory. One recent example of many: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Device-Memory-TCP-TX-Linux-6.1...

Giving an APU actually fast ram has some cool use cases. I'm excited to see the lines blur in computing like this, to see

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#36

Post by nexle »

It is mindblowing how AMD managed to squeeze such a powerful iGPU (essentially a low-end dGPU) into an APU while much more energy efficient compared to a dGPU (and thus requires less heat sink = more compact).

Of course the major problem about Strix Halo is the price. I'm just wondering how much the iGPU contributed to the insane price tag compared to the NPU. If AMD can release a similar APU without the useless NPU (at least in Linux) with a more accessible pricing (e.g. 8745HS), they can easily dominate the low-end mobile dGPU market.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#37

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

ho_schi wrote: post #25
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that Valve will wait at least 1 more generation, since Zen 6 will be on N2p which will be the first nanosheet generation (with promised 30% power reductions compared to the n3e that zen5 uses). Valve clearly is more interested in a console model with new releases only when there is a massive performance uplift compared to the prior generation, so I think we are at least 1 gen away. Specifically, I think t…

Yep. And that's good for customers and Linux. Maybe Zen 6. AMD already provides the Z-Series specifically for handhelds. The Steamdeck uses currently the regular Zen2 with a RNDA2 from Zen3+. Best would be passive cooling, which would probably run well with native Linux ports like Counter-Strike 2 . But I'm worried that they need to use fans again.

a fan seems very likely to me. to avoid it, you need to go down to ~5 watts, and then you remove the ability to run faster when plugged in.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #35
SecretDreams wrote: post #3

I would have liked to see some discussions on cost and comparisons to dGPUs in the laptop space. I can see it's beating the Intel laptops, but that is expected based on specs. Maybe I'm missing something?

Agreed that for GPU oomph, you'd do better with a dGPU; there's some very good deals for dGPU laptops but even this next-tier-down 8050S is still a rather expensive new purchase by compare (for now; Strix Halo is brand new). But the power consumption will likely be much higher. Strix Halo as an APU has two very clear advantages. First, I expect power consumption is somewhat better, due to using LPDDR5(x?) and not nee…

> Meanwhile Nvidia is charging $20k+ for an A100 GPU with 80GB ram.

Or, sometime in the next month or so, NVidia GB10-based miniPC form factor devices with 128GB (with high-speed interconnect to allow two to serve as a single 256GB system) from various brands (including direct from Nvidia) for $3000-4000 depending on exact configuration and who is assembling the completed system.

Re: AMD Radeon 8050S “Strix Halo” Linux Graphics Performance Review

#39

Post by _aavaa_ »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #15

It seems that AMD/ATI reuses the Radeon 8000 name approximately every 10 years: 2001: Radeon 8000 series 2013: Radeon HD 8000 series 2025: Radeon 8000S series

Checks out. Increase number by 1,000 every year, modulo 10,000.
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