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I was recently looking at various Ryzen 3xxxu series laptops to help a family member trying to get something on a budget. One thing I noticed while researching
by nirvdrum 7y ago
I was recently looking at various Ryzen 3xxxu series laptops to help a family member trying to get something on a budget. One thing I noticed while researching them is a lot of people think Ryzen systems are cheap builds because they require two RAM channels for the iGPU to be any good. So, on a Dell system with 8GB RAM instead of getting one 8GB DIMM and one free slot, you end up with two 4GB DIMMs and no free slots. A lot of people think this Dell cutting corners on builds by shoving in cheaper parts and subsequently making it harder to upgrade the laptop. I think there's a market education component here that isn't going to be easy to tackle.
- wmf 7y agoShipping dual-channel is better because 99% of people never upgrade.
- nirvdrum 7y agoI agree. But that speaks to the market education component I was referring to. For people that don't know the difference, they're probably not looking at a premium build anyway. And for those that want the capability to upgrade, occupying both RAM slots with lower capacity DIMMs appears to be a worse situation than you get with a typical Intel build. Moreover, since they're occupied with 4GB DIMMs a fair number of people think this is done as a cost saving measure on a cheap machine. I'm not an industry analyst, but that strikes me as something that's going to be difficult for AMD if they're looking to move into the higher end of the market.