4 ms·

Can't speak for System76, but I got the AMD Thinkpad (A485), and I'm honestly disappointed as hell and now I understand why you don't see the Ryzens on laptops

Can't speak for System76, but I got the AMD Thinkpad (A485), and I'm honestly disappointed as hell and now I understand why you don't see the Ryzens on laptops too much. The power management is an absolute joke (the thing has two batteries and barely lasts 2 hours total), suspend works maybe 20% of the time, and the OS actually freezes on it every now and then leaving no trace in syslog. I'd much rather get an Intel now if I had a choice.

franey 7y ago
What distro? I have a T495s and I haven't had any issues with it running Arch.
- peller 7y ago
  Yea, something seems fishy. My E485 (one 3-cell battery) gets 3-4 hours on Arch
  - tbrock 7y ago
    You poor bastard. I’m running arch on an X1 6th and getting 8 hours+
    - g4d 7y ago
      I mean, they're very different laptops and anyway, if this is a competition, I get ~10-11 hours with a 9 cell in my x220 on arch.
lettergram 7y ago
The A485 was their first attempt with the first mobile Ryzen release. The T495s (latest mobile release) should be way better. For reference, I had a Ryzen 1800x and it had the same OS freeze issue. The latest Ryzen CPU hasn’t had any issue with 0% down time for months.
LMYahooTFY 7y ago
I have a similar experience with the A285. Battery life is disappointing with Windows 10, and significantly more so with Ubuntu and variants.
freeflight 7y ago
What Ryzen are you specifically referring to? Afaik newer generations have Intel beat on performance/watt, particularly in HT heavy applications and at least on desktop.
- busterarm 7y ago
  Leaving HT enabled in 2019. You're bold. :)
  - voldacar 7y ago
    Not a single one of those exploits has ever been seen in the wild.
    - busterarm 7y ago
      We don't have to lock our doors, this is a safe community. Security isn't even the only good reason to disable HT.
- derefr 7y ago
  Being able to put out more FLOPs at max pinned wattage, doesn’t imply that you’ll take in fewer watts at idle. Power consumption isn’t linear.
  - freeflight 7y ago
    I'm not talking about "more FLOPs at max pinned wattage", that would be Intel. I'm talking about efficiency as in performance delivered per watt used and on that metric Ryzen has Intel beat on desktop. So it stands to reason those new Ryzen chips would also perform very well in laptops. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-intel-core_i7-9900k,6225.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-in...
    - derefr 7y ago
      No, you’re misreading what I said. My point was that the metric AMD has Intel beat in is “performance per watt under load”. With Ryzen, each watt you spend will get you more FLOPs than the same marginal watt will get you on an Intel chip. It’s like Ryzen is a car with more torque, that can turn each cc of gasoline burned into more force, and so get you further down the road. But that doesn’t mean that Ryzen idles as low as an Intel chip; i.e. that the Ryzen car would end up burning less gasoline over an hour of city driving. Ryzen can be more power-efficient in e.g. a server (constant near-100% load profile) while also being less power-efficient in a laptop (constant near-idle load profile.) People who talk about the Ryzen power efficiency numbers are only talking about how it performs in the server-like test context (or, often, a gaming context, where the measurement they’re using is just “what sort of PSU do you need to power this thing at max load.”) As is evidenced by sibling posts in this thread, Ryzen doesn’t fare so well in the laptop-like test context in practice.
beatgammit 7y ago
I have an E495 (would have gotten the T495 if it didn't have soldered RAM and/or if it still offered a second battery), and it does okay. I think I get 3-5 hours battery (haven't measured it), and I'm considering getting an external battery pack before I need the extra battery life. The E495 uses a newer rev of their chips and is completely usable (not as good as Intel) despite still not being on 7nm. I expect the next gen to be very competitive with Intel. That being said, I'm really disappointed at the direction Lenovo is going by trying to make everything thin. I want a powerful laptop (compiling, light gaming) and I'm fine with some extra thickness, but I want don't want anything bigger than 14". If I want thin, I can go for the X models or the T...s models, but for some reason, the regular T line is getting thinner as well, and losing a lot of the reasons I have for getting them. I ended up with the E series because I don't want soldered RAM and I'm not paying a premium for a laptop that has much of what I want removed. If System76 can deliver a decent Ryzen laptop (want those cores) with a good keyboard and open firmware, I'll pay. I'm happy with it being thick, provided it's not too wide (needs to fit in my bag). But all I see from System76 is mediocre laptops with open source bits, and that's just not my cup of tea.

franey 7y ago

What distro? I have a T495s and I haven't had any issues with it running Arch.

peller 7y ago
Yea, something seems fishy. My E485 (one 3-cell battery) gets 3-4 hours on Arch
- tbrock 7y ago
  You poor bastard. I’m running arch on an X1 6th and getting 8 hours+
  - g4d 7y ago
    I mean, they're very different laptops and anyway, if this is a competition, I get ~10-11 hours with a 9 cell in my x220 on arch.

lettergram 7y ago

The A485 was their first attempt with the first mobile Ryzen release. The T495s (latest mobile release) should be way better. For reference, I had a Ryzen 1800x and it had the same OS freeze issue. The latest Ryzen CPU hasn’t had any issue with 0% down time for months.

LMYahooTFY 7y ago

I have a similar experience with the A285. Battery life is disappointing with Windows 10, and significantly more so with Ubuntu and variants.

freeflight 7y ago

What Ryzen are you specifically referring to? Afaik newer generations have Intel beat on performance/watt, particularly in HT heavy applications and at least on desktop.

busterarm 7y ago
Leaving HT enabled in 2019. You're bold. :)
- voldacar 7y ago
  Not a single one of those exploits has ever been seen in the wild.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    We don't have to lock our doors, this is a safe community. Security isn't even the only good reason to disable HT.
derefr 7y ago
Being able to put out more FLOPs at max pinned wattage, doesn’t imply that you’ll take in fewer watts at idle. Power consumption isn’t linear.
- freeflight 7y ago
  I'm not talking about "more FLOPs at max pinned wattage", that would be Intel. I'm talking about efficiency as in performance delivered per watt used and on that metric Ryzen has Intel beat on desktop. So it stands to reason those new Ryzen chips would also perform very well in laptops. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-intel-core_i7-9900k,6225.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-in...
  - derefr 7y ago
    No, you’re misreading what I said. My point was that the metric AMD has Intel beat in is “performance per watt under load”. With Ryzen, each watt you spend will get you more FLOPs than the same marginal watt will get you on an Intel chip. It’s like Ryzen is a car with more torque, that can turn each cc of gasoline burned into more force, and so get you further down the road. But that doesn’t mean that Ryzen idles as low as an Intel chip; i.e. that the Ryzen car would end up burning less gasoline over an hour of city driving. Ryzen can be more power-efficient in e.g. a server (constant near-100% load profile) while also being less power-efficient in a laptop (constant near-idle load profile.) People who talk about the Ryzen power efficiency numbers are only talking about how it performs in the server-like test context (or, often, a gaming context, where the measurement they’re using is just “what sort of PSU do you need to power this thing at max load.”) As is evidenced by sibling posts in this thread, Ryzen doesn’t fare so well in the laptop-like test context in practice.

beatgammit 7y ago

I have an E495 (would have gotten the T495 if it didn't have soldered RAM and/or if it still offered a second battery), and it does okay. I think I get 3-5 hours battery (haven't measured it), and I'm considering getting an external battery pack before I need the extra battery life. The E495 uses a newer rev of their chips and is completely usable (not as good as Intel) despite still not being on 7nm. I expect the next gen to be very competitive with Intel. That being said, I'm really disappointed at the direction Lenovo is going by trying to make everything thin. I want a powerful laptop (compiling, light gaming) and I'm fine with some extra thickness, but I want don't want anything bigger than 14". If I want thin, I can go for the X models or the T...s models, but for some reason, the regular T line is getting thinner as well, and losing a lot of the reasons I have for getting them. I ended up with the E series because I don't want soldered RAM and I'm not paying a premium for a laptop that has much of what I want removed. If System76 can deliver a decent Ryzen laptop (want those cores) with a good keyboard and open firmware, I'll pay. I'm happy with it being thick, provided it's not too wide (needs to fit in my bag). But all I see from System76 is mediocre laptops with open source bits, and that's just not my cup of tea.