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AMD’s Mobile Revival: Redefining the Notebook Business with the Ryzen 9 4900HS
- speedgoose 7y agoThe video game benchmarks really show that it's still not powerful enough to play less than 5 years old video games in good conditions. Old games are fine, as always.
- striking 7y agoJust to clarify for anyone who at first misunderstood the comment as I did: the integrated graphics are not so powerful, not the CPU itself. So you'll still want a dGPU in your laptop if you plan to game.
- neogodless 7y agoIt's a really misleading comment (if I'm being charitable) considering that the review points out, quite clearly, how the laptop being reviewed has a dedicated GPU, which is pretty powerful, though arguably maybe 30% slower than the full powered desktop RTX 2060 (and a third the power consumption.)
- speedgoose 7y agoThe test that is linked is about the integrated GPU though.
- SubiculumCode 7y agoI assume you mean that AMD's integrated graphics still do not compete with discrete GPUs.
- p1necone 7y agoWhich isn't surprising - integrated graphics are never going to beat discrete GPUs with their own power delivery, cooling and dedicated high speed memory.
- foota 7y agoThis is not intrinsically true. Cooling and power delivery certain have it beat, but it seems feasible to beat based on memory bandwidth. I bet a GPU uses roughly the same order of power/cooling that say half a threadripper does?
- eloff 7y agoNo, how do you beat the wide bus memory bandwidth of a discrete GPU with the standard dram bandwidth? Even if your processor was not competing with the GPU for bandwidth you'd still have a small fraction of the memory bandwidth available.
- p1necone 7y agoYou'd have to come up with a new architecture to make this work, but perhaps you could have CPU/GPU on the same chip with dedicated GDDR memory lanes. PS4/XBOne have an APU with powerful (ish) graphics - how does their memory work?
- eloff 7y agoThey work with graphics memory rather than regular memory if my memory serves. Hehe.
- foota 7y agoAw, I was thinking bw between the CPU and GPU directly, my bad.
- rubber_duck 7y agoAren't console GPU chips on the same die as the CPU ?
- speedgoose 7y agoYes sorry to not be explicit enough. It's still way too slow compared to a dedicated GPU.
- rurban 7y agoHW-wise the Vega is better, but the SW, OpenCL compared to Cuda at least on Linux, sucks. It rarely works, and you get the crashes at runtime, not compile-time.
- Sileni 7y agoWhich is pretty much a given with integrated graphics. The Vega series iGPUs are worlds faster than Intel's, even going back to the 3000 series laptops.
- chrisseaton 7y agoThis seems like an unreasonably high bar to set.
- tedunangst 7y agoKinda weird to deep link into the middle of a review.
- twelvechairs 7y agoFor a business notebook to the page comparing game performance.
- gowld 7y agoIt's not a business notebook.
- ProAm 7y agoDepends on your business
- thelittleone 7y agoIf “this laptop is the business” does that make it also a business laptop?
- toyg 7y agoIt depends also on your definition of “business time”: https://youtu.be/WGOohBytKTU https://youtu.be/WGOohBytKTU
- eugeniub 7y agoI think you misread “notebook business” as “business notebook”
- twelvechairs 7y agooh apologies!
- partingshots 7y ago
- vvanders 7y agohttps://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-red... is the page you really want to look at along with the battery life at https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-redefining-the-notebook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review/10 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15708/amds-mobile-revival-red... which just destroys the i7-9750H.
- heelix 7y agoI picked my kid one of the new 4800h based laptops for the heavy Adobe work she does at work and university. Unplugged, I can watch full screen twitch.tv videos with all indications looking like the 9+ hour estimate might be correct - which was a bit of a shocker. I've not had a chance to do much else with it... as she won't give it back. :)
- dr_zoidberg 7y agoYeah, that's quite a shocker truth be told. I bought a little "netbook" last year for my mom and I was surprised the Intel Goldmont+ [0] it has inside could pull 11 hours of netflix. Now having a beast like those Ryzens pull a similar feat? Sign me up! I'm looking forward to getting one of these! [0] Goldmont(+) is an architecture where Intel pulled a few tricks from Skylake, put them in the blender with an Atom and got a surprisingly good, yet power efficient design... For late 2018 that is. Seems AMD topped them there too, and without having to go for a less powerful design.
- PenguinCoder 7y agoI've been looking for a good netbook that isn't a chromebook. Which one did you pick up?
- AsyncAwait 7y agoNot OP, but if you're looking for solid performance in a tiny form-factor, I'd suggest One Netbook 3.
- sneak 7y agoIs there a firmware available for these that can disable the AMD version of the Intel ME like the Purism/coreboot ones do?
- monocasa 7y agoNah, I don't think there's a way to disable PSP on ryzen.
- kemotep 7y agoThere was a talk at ccc last year by a group dissecting the psp[1]. It would not be a stretch to say that eventually it will be possible. [1]:https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-38-dissecting-the-amd-platform-security-processor https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-38-dissecting-the-amd-platform-s...
- my123 7y agoHello, Disabling PSP in such a case would be subjective. Ryzen doesn't support cache as RAM anymore, with the PSP doing RAM initialization. The furthest that you'd be able to is getting a minimal PSP firmware that only handles system bringup. Some OEMs currently propose an option to disable the PSP <-> main processor communication interface during bootup.
- sneak 7y agoWould that proposed option disable PSP main memory access? It’s access to system memory + access to PCI devices (networking) that most concerns me.
- thelittleone 7y agoI would gladly pay an extra $50 for a variant of the CPU without PSP.
- kvark 7y agoWe've yet to see a proper business notebook with those Ryzen H series APUs. So far, the manufactures have been eager to put it into gaming machines with a discrete GPU on board.
- neogodless 7y agoDepending on use case, I would expect the Ryzen U series to end up on thin and light business notebooks. 8 cores, 15W TDP, expecting fantastic battery life. But I'm still wondering when one of these OEMs will tackle Thunderbolt ports. From what I've read it's not as easy with AMD, but certainly possible, and up to the OEM's discretion.
- greenknight 7y agoWhen USB4 standards come into play, which will be in 1-2 years time. USB4 contains all of thunderbolt3 features, even if it is not 'certified' to be called thunderbolt3.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoExternal gpu in the case we need it would require thunderbolt?!
- neogodless 7y agoStumbled across this tonight... this is Lenovo marketing so take it with a grain of salt, but given what we've seen so far, I wouldn't be surprised. > 14 hours of battery > WiFi 6 > 3.1 lbs Under 15 mm / 0.6" thick https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/IdeaPad-Slim-7-14ARE05/p/88IPS701400 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/IdeaPad-Slim-7-14AR...
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoAaaaand for HDMI, they just say "HDMI". 8K TVs are coming. You can get one for $2500 right now: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-led-q900-series-4320p-smart-8k-uhd-tv-with-hdr/6355633.p https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-led-q900-serie... Can we PLEASE get HDMI 2.1? Laptops hardly offer HDMI 2.0.
- greendave 7y agoI misread the title as 'Redefining the business notebook...' This looks like a very good CPU. At some point it would be nice to see a well-cooled laptop with an 8 core CPU benchmarked against an 8 core desktop. AMD seems to be doing very well on the TDP side and I wonder if we may be reaching the point where only games and a handful of really demanding (non-cloud) workloads require a desktop.
- Arelius 7y ago> I wonder if we may be reaching the point where only games and a handful of really demanding (non-cloud) workloads require a desktop. I sort-of feel like we are there already. I think we are quickly reaching the point where even games and most demanding workloads don't require a desktop. I work on video games professionally and even I do most of my work on a laptop.
- _fullpint 7y agoDo you have any suggestions on laptops? I've been using a MacBook Air 2013 as my daily drive for a good minute now. I've been eyeing the Razer Blade, while the build quality is enticing, the battery life has me worried.
- neogodless 7y agoLaptops come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. If I was buying for battery life, I would think the new AMD Ryzen 4000 series would be high on my list though. For reasonable portability, decent gaming and excellent CPU performance, the laptop in the article is $1450, though availability is still low. For seriously good performance on a tight budget, the Asus TUF 506 (A15) lines packs a Ryzen 48xx and up to an RTX 2060 into a $1000-1200 laptop. The screen has high performance on paper but older versions of this laptop had bad things to say about the screen, so I'd wait for reviews. There are other Asus options like the A17 and Zephyrus G15 which are all worth a look, and starting to show up in stock here and there.
- bambataa 7y agoThis probably isn’t what you’re looking for but I’ve been playing RDR2 via Stadia and it works surprisingly well. It’s probably not at the level a hardcore gamer would want but streaming is well worth a look if you’ve been put off laptops because you want to play a few games now and then.
- dzonga 7y agodoes anyone own both a t490 and t495 ? how do they compare ? and how's amd with Linux i.e Ubuntu KDE variants ? I own a t490 running Kubuntu
- wmf 7y agoAt this point it's probably better to wait for the T14.
- redsparrow 7y agoFor anyone else wondering like I was... The T14 will be the replacement for the T490 and T495. Likewise there will be a T14s to replace the T490s and T495s and a T15 to replace the T590. They will no longer distinguish between Intel and AMD in the model name. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-T14s-T15-with-AMD-Ryzen-Pro-4000-and-Intel-Comet-Lake-announced.454393.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-T14s-T15-w...
- akvadrako 7y agoThe T14 Intel is better then the T14 AMD. Better display and thunderbolt.
- o_x 7y agoThey both have 1x Thunderbolt 3, but yes, intel allows for 4K panel upgrade
- akvadrako 7y agoT14 does not have thunderbolt. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-T14s-X13-AMD-Ryzen-4000-versions-do-not-feature-Thunderbolt-after-all.460707.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-T14s-X13-A... https://nbreview.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ThinkPad-T14-AMD-Datasheet.pdf https://nbreview.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ThinkPad-T14-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ct520 7y agoAnd yet many of us will still buy the next macbook pro 13inch refresh when it comes out with a "good keyboard" and a substandard processor. Why is that? For me - its the total package. The software/the hardware/integrations that just work/the arguably best track pad in the industry. CPU is one piece to the puzzle. I read on the message board to unlock the top tier AMD mobile processors you had to guarantee it wouldn't be paired with other crap hardware like vendors done in the past. We will see - hopefully next microsoft refresh breaks this trend for amd.
- teruakohatu 7y agoI may well end up buying it to replace my aging Macbook Pro, but it will be because the cost of switching to Windows is too high, and because there is proprietary software I need that won't run on Linux. I am buying it because I have little choice, not because it represents good value or the "total package". Few ports, bad repairability, and an OS that won't run perfectly good 32-bit applications.
- ct520 7y agoInteresting. I'm not stuck on OSX ecosystem as much as you but certain things do turn me off. I'm really in love with the trackpad and for the most part overall build quality. (my daily is still a macbook pro retina late 2013). I would love to make jump to linux but traditionally battery life the hardware options i have not been in love with. :(
- zrm 7y agoA good alternative to this is to run Linux and use Windows in a VM if necessary. Having to use a VM for something once in a while is mildly inconvenient, but it's not that bad, and on the other hand it's just bad enough to keep you on the lookout for ways to stop using it entirely.
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago> use Windows in a VM if necessary That's my last vestige of Windows usage, and by the end of the coming weekend I'm hoping not to need that VM very often either. My only other occasional need to use Windows tends to, ironically, revolve around the software needed to root some Android phones.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y agoThe comment section on there is something else. Jesus
- macawfish 7y agoMaybe some of Intel's $3B "meet comp" budget went to paid trolls?
- wtallis 7y agoUnfortunately, most if not all of those accounts are all too genuine—often users who have been on the site for well over a decade. PC hardware attracts almost as much vapid tribalism as politics and pro sports.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoIt's sad, I'd expect more from people that presumably pick parts and build PCs based on benchmarks. That level of fanboity should be reserved for the teenagers and the XBox vs Playstation debates about their gun shooter du jour that looks indistinguishable on both without a magnifying glass.
- r00fus 7y ago> PC hardware attracts almost as much vapid tribalism as politics and pro sports. This seems to happen a lot where a lot of money is on the line. How much of this long-term astroturf? Just because the account has been around for a long time doesn't mean they can't be an "influencer".
- sethhochberg 7y agoYears ago, I managed one of the larger performance computer hardware forums on the web (its still around, albeit having changed owners a time or two since I left). We knew pretty well that most of the audience was kids, and knew most of the marketing people from the major chipmakers. The brands were just starting to wake up to the idea of community engagement at the end of the tech magazine era / start of the Youtuber era, and as best I can tell there were no signs of any of today's astroturfing behavior - yet all of the tribalism was there. Its certainly more influenced now, but even back in the day everyone wanted to justify their own purchases by insisting it was the best possible thing ever.
- knolax 7y agoLooking at the benchmarks it's amazing how despite not having significantly more advanced gameplay compared to Civ 2, Civ 6 still manages to take up as many resources as a modern FPS.
- lonelappde 7y agoVideo game FPS need GPU for graphics, not gameplay.
- Koshkin 7y agoWell, what do we know. There may be some game AI computations done on the GPU as well.
- knolax 7y agoCiv 6 is still a 2D (gameplay-wise) tile based strategy game with a cartoon art style. You can't even rotate the camera, there are plenty of optimizations they could've made graphics wise.
- imtringued 7y agoI think the complaint is that people would like to play Civ 6 on their low powered laptops. It's perfectly okay for the laptop to be awful for reflex skill based games because those are expected to require even more processing power.
- yread 7y agoThe good news is you can still play civ 2. And turns dont take 30s to resolve
- jiggawatts 7y agoCivilization uses a single-threaded, interpreted language for all of the AI and game logic during a turn. It's slow as molasses and hasn't benefited from modern CPU advancements. For comparison, games like Factorio or Cities Skylines can faithfully simulate hundreds of thousands of entities in real time, but they use C++ and are multi-threaded.
- blitmap 7y agoI just want an AMD "gaming laptop" with an OLED, 4k display :( Ideally 3840x2400.
- bitL 7y ago"The ASUS Zephyrus G14 as tested is set for $1449. There is a 4K version with Ryzen 7 for £1600."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- blitmap 7y agoI see a 1440p display :( I have this currently.
- toastal 7y agoI'd rather have 1440p since I can't normally see the difference. In exchange for less density, can I get a wider color gamut like DCI-P3 or AdobeRGB?
- blitmap 7y agoEven on a gaming laptop I'm usually playing at half-resolution, so I like 2160p or 2400p because for gaming that would be 1080 & 1200. Normally I'm running a text-dense setup where >1440p is very nice. :-)
- akvadrako 7y ago1440 is good enough for sharp text, but you need to use fractional scaling to get reasonable ui sizes. Better to get 4K and use integer scaling.
- Joeri 7y agoOn a 1440p screen at 14 inch you end up at 210 dpi which is 2x integer scaling. Everyone puts in 1080p or 4k panels at 14 inch and both require fractional scaling. It makes no sense why so few vendors opt for 1440p.
- dis-sys 7y agoreally interesting time ahead! will be excited to pick up one to run WSL2.
- usefulcat 7y agoWould love to get one of these in a form factor like the NUC.
- dr_zoidberg 7y agoDo I have good news for you: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15103/simplynuc-unveils-sequoia-amd-ryzen-vseriesbased-ucff-pc https://www.anandtech.com/show/15103/simplynuc-unveils-sequo... (now we need Renoir based NUCs)
- thomasfedb 7y agoAny reason these wouldn't work for desktop use? The website seems very kiosk/signage oriented.
- wtallis 7y agoElectronic signage is one of the most popular use cases for PCs with such a small form factor. Those customers are willing to pay more of a premium than the typical home desktop user who simply wants a smaller footprint. But right now, AMD's focus with these chips is almost exclusively on getting them into laptops, not SFF PCs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACBDe1obhkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACBDe1obhkM
- rayhendricks 7y agoMicrosoft please use this in the surface laptop update for this year. Last years Ryzen Surface Laptop 3 was a bit anemic IMO. This would be insane, pair with upgradeable storage and ram and I would buy over a MBP.
- uyuioi 7y agoYes. This would also make me consider moving from a Mac.
- Razengan 7y agoAre you on a Mac just because of the CPU? What do you do that solely depends on the CPU and would improve so much by moving to AMD, at the cost of a completely different OS and software? It would still be beleaguered by Windows, the main reason most of us moved to Macs. :)
- oyashirochama 7y agoI mean honestly the only reason I would stay with Mac would be the 4 TB3 ports, the heat and performance of MacOS pales in comparison to their Windows software production counterparts.
- Razengan 7y agomacOS' thermal management of macOS appears to be better than Windows': https://youtu.be/LGOmbNRlZdM?t=495 https://youtu.be/LGOmbNRlZdM?t=495 (8:15) It also gives a better battery life on average compared to Windows on the same machine. And the new Mac Pro is apparently a beast in performance and cooling.
- philliphaydon 7y ago> It also gives a better battery life on average compared to Windows on the same machine. Only if you have a dedicated gpu. Because OSX can easily switch between integrated and discrete. On my Macbook 12" I get 2 extra hours out of Windows 10. But on my old Retina Mac Pro I get almost half the time out of Windows 10. It's a shame that Apple wont go AMD because the battery life would be awesome on OSX with discrete gpu.
- PaulWaldman 7y agoWhat level of machine hardware will OEMs use to market these CPUs? Typically the Intel lines brought the best overall components and AMD machines were...lacking. Will they have similar machines, but with the choice of AMD or Intel (XPS 15 / X1 Extreme)? Microsoft went in this direction with the Surface Laptop 3 by marketing the AMD line to their business customers. This will be expensive to maintain, but may allow OEMs to breathe a little easier not being reliant on Intel for their premium lines.
- josteink 7y ago> What level of machine hardware will OEMs use to market these CPUs? Typically the Intel lines brought the best overall components and AMD machines were...lacking. Lenovo is starting to have some parallel Intel vs AMD product-lines. For instance you have the Thinkpad E490 (Intel) vs E495 (AMD) and E590 (Intel) vs E595 (Intel). Not sure about other vendors, but for those Thinkpad-models, AMD seems to come out quite favourably.
- akvadrako 7y agoNot quite. One thing Lenovo still hasn’t done is pair a high res display with AMD. Nor do they support Thunderbolt.
- muro 7y agoI wish they did the X-1 with AMD.
- josteink 7y agoI'm actually considering the opposite: replacing my (2nd gen) X-1 with another Thinkpad, primaryly an AMD-based one. When doing that, my primary concern is going to be serviceability and upgradability. The lack of options when it comes to upgrading my X-1 has been somewhat disappointing. For my laptop-needs, a top-specced E495 looks reasonably doable. Small enough form factor, powerful enough for light dev work, and upgradable to handle future needs. and at such a low a price-point that I'm willing to take a chance, even though it might not be perfect. Of course, If I hold out a little, these 4000-series mobile chips will start shipping, and I might go for those instead :)
- fluffything 7y agoAny idea how the 4900HS compares with the ARM chips in the new iPad Pro ? I saw a benchmark of the 2020 iPad Pro vs the 2020 Macbook Air where the iPad Pro won by quite a bit on pretty much every benchmark. If Apple were to migrate the Macbook line out of Intel, it would surprise me if they didn't migrate to ARM instead of AMD.
- dannyw 7y agoApple as a company is all about integration. It’s amazing how many shared parts exist between the iPhone, iPad, and yes, even the Mac to some extent with the T2 chip. A larger, thermally unconstrained ARM octacore, with SMT? Maybe with 20 hours battery life (but realistically they’ll just make the device thinner lol). I think it’s entirely predictable for Apple to go ARM on Mac.
- oyashirochama 7y agoI wonder how they'll get past the RISC/out of order execution issue that still is an issue with ARM chips.
- pmjordan 7y agoSorry, can you elaborate? Apple's "A" series CPUs have been out-of-order for years and at least a few years ago had a similar superscalar/ooo structure to Intel's Haswell chips. (Apple poached a bunch of Intel processor designers…)
- starfallg 7y agoThere will always be a question of backward compatibility due to the nature of the Mac ecosystem that you don't have in iOS. Then you have the issue of getting developers to migrate any existing arch specific optimisations. This can be mitigated somewhat and Apple has done this a few times before, but it's still a massive undertaking. It may be easier for them to play the CPU vendors against each other if there is real competition in the AMD64 space. There are rumours of Apple going ARM on Macs, so it may be that that path is set, but if it isn't, there is sense in holding out the transition to ARM at this time.
- snvzz 7y agoStill waiting for a similar review of the 4900U, which I understand targets a much larger market with its very low power footprint.
- Tepix 7y agoJust using 8k on the desktop would be nice
- ksec 7y agoIntel can still play the marketing budget game where it can bundle Thunderbolt ( for Apple ) or WiFi Module all while lowering price. ( For Server they were doing it with SSD ) If anything I think that was one of the reason how Apple got their MacBook Air to be priced at $999. Despite having the better product, AMD will still need to work on its marketing message, support material, distribution channel, Sales, and forecasting. Right now AMD seems to be winning at Technical while Intel is winning at operating.
- close04 7y agoThe TB controller is ~$9 [0]. That should be next to nothing for a premium laptop. Yet even HP on their premium/pro Z-series went again with Intel, despite the fact that the the current gen Z-series (a series that tops out at ~$10000 in the highest specced models) includes configurations like i5-8400H, Intel UHD 630 iGPU, or 8GB of RAM. Not a real "workstation" config, not high performance, no ISV certifications. Yet AMD was still left out. I think one reason is many OEMs don't want to invest in an AMD platform until they're sure AMD will be a long-term success. The second reason is probably that they don't want to annoy Intel. I'm sure there are still plenty of tricks Intel can pull to achieve the same result as in the past but without running afoul of regulators. [0] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/87742/thunderbolt-3-controllers.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/...
- dannyw 7y agoWe’re seeing a much stronger resurgence this time. These transitions won’t happen overnight, but will be over many product cycles. It was a recent surprise revelation to the public how powerful the 4000 series is!
- eptcyka 7y agoWhat's the price of adding an extra controller on a motherboard?
- close04 7y agoThe same regardless of CPU so I considered it irrelevant for the comparison. The difference between an OEM building Intel or AMD based systems is in the fact that the TB controller comes for free with Intel chipsets. The extra PCB complexity, ICs, and connectors are still the OEM's burden.
- t4h4 7y agoRelated: AMD 25x20 Energy Efficiency Initiative https://www.amd.com/25x20 https://www.amd.com/25x20
- IanCutress 7y agoI've been asking AMD since January to get an update to this with Renoir. They say they are planning an update for later in the year. Perhaps there's a better Renoir system to come?
- _ph_ 7y agoAnyone tried running Fedora on this machine yet? (perhaps the beta of Fedora 32?)
- DCKing 7y agoWhat is interesting here is that multiple news outlets are calling this "AMD's revival". As far as I'm aware AMD has always been kind of "second rate" in the mobile space - until now, apparently. There's nothing they're really reviving from - it's a first. Even when AMD was previously whooping Intel - in the Athlon 64 vs Pentium 4 days - AMD was not particularly great in the mobile space. The Athlon 64 tech was downscaled for mobile uses fine, but AMD did not have a good answer to Intel's broad Centrino platform for mobile technologies. Moreover, Intel was quick to introduce the Pentium M on the mobile market, which was a much better and competitive product than the Pentium 4 (and the direct predecessor of the "Core" branded processors that marginalized AMD again later). AMD was competitive with Intel before the Athlon 64 too, but the mobile market was more niche before the early 2000s and the differences were smaller anyway. AMD was ahead of Intel multiple times in the past, but never in laptops. This seems to be the first instance where AMD is not only "sort of competitive, but meh" in mobile products - it's the first instance where they're in the lead technology wise. The first time you could be better off buying an AMD laptop.
- mcv 7y agoI agree. I'm quite happy to see AMD compete effectively. More competition is ultimately good for all of us. Unless it drives them to cut corners resulting in security issues, like with the recent spate of Intel issues, but then it's good to have an alternative. I just bought a laptop for my son, and felt this was a good opportunity to try out a Thinkpad with a Ryzen processor.
- Plasmoid2000ad 7y agoAgreed. I remember you were more likely to spot a VIA processor in a laptop then spot an AMD processor before the Athlon 64 mobile processors arrived as Turion. This is new. Intel really did accelerate into the laptop mobile space with Centrino. It seemed like no one could match them on a combination of performance, aggressive power saving and battery life, consistently good WiFi and good GPU solutions (Nvidia optimus integration) It looked up until now like Intel had some secret sauce in it's drivers or elsewhere as well, to get such (relatively) good battery life out of the pig that Windows running non-UWP apps can be. I wonder how much is AMD getting better at software/drivers and optimization, and how much is AMD just getting such a lead in power usage and performance that they can compensate their software.
- unnouinceput 7y agoOn a somehow related-topic: I tried to get a laptop at beginning of this lock-down (in Feb) and market was looking kinda bleak. Had my eyes on a Ryzen 7 with 8 GB RAM and 500 GB SSD which went for ~$500 at the time. Boom, gone. Also what's left is only crap that's expensive. Laptops that only 4 months ago were laughed at, now are for those $500 (I mean c'mon, a decade old CPU to pay $500 for a laptop which has that is laughable IMO). Anyway, coming to this topic, how fast you guys reckon this platform will come to consumers, given the current circumstances? I'd wager is not this year.
- neogodless 7y agoI've seen laptops with Ryzen 4800HS CPU in stock at NewEgg and Amazon. Not often at Best Buy yet. Look for the Asus TUF 506 and Asus Zephyrus G15.
- OldHand2018 7y agoMy wife needed a new laptop just recently and she's a ThinkPad-only kind of gal. It was nice to see that there are many AMD options, but you can't buy them. In fact, you can't buy much of anything from Lenovo. Outside of the L13 (what she ended up with), everything is "ships in 5+ weeks" on the Lenovo site. Having one in stock at NewEgg or Amazon might be helpful, but they are typically base spec with soldered memory. If you want 16G+ memory, you are just generally out of luck.
- Vrondi 7y agoDon't buy those from Lenovo yet. They do not yet have this new generation of Ryzen chip available. Don't buy a last-gen slow part.
- rurban 7y agoI went from a €2000 MacBook to a €500 ThinkPad with Ryzen. Before the lockdowns. Not comparable whatsoever. Benchmarks are usually 30% to 300% faster. The Ryzen even blows away my fastest desktop machine with Intel and 4x more RAM. Unfortunately I cannot benchmark with the fast AMD because it switches frequencies too fast. Lots of state changes. Eg it's faster on higher load than on low load. All my benchmarking logic is wrong. You really need a locked down kernel now for proper measurements.
- dr_zoidberg 7y agoIs that Renoir (Ryzen 4x00) chip? As far as I've read, the 3x00 mobile (Zen+) were good but not amazing. The Renoirs seem to be blowing everyone out of the water, and I've read several times that it seems to pack "desktop performance on a mobile envelope".
- rurban 7y agoYes, just the old one, a 3200. Still much better than my Intels.
- Ratiofarmings 7y agoWhile that might be true and I am happy that you're happy, this is something different. Intel has competitive products to your cpu, outright better ones, too. To Ryzen 4000(mobile) they don't. It's not even close.
- dr_zoidberg 7y agoAnd apparently they won't have either against Ryzen 4000 desktop (Zen3 on 7nm+). Interesting times ahead...
- cpursley 7y agoWhich ThinkPad model and chip?
- Vrondi 7y ago
- mzmzmzm 7y agoI hope that AMD having decent mobile performance in some of this year's laptops will make the next cycle of laptops really see OEMs embrace the platform. While they are catching up with performance, cooling solutions, sleek design (MS Surface, some Lenovos, etc)... there's nothing like an AMD flavor XPS 13 I could pick up now, no 4K option really. That would be great competition for Intel and potentially a better option for ultrabooks that are so reliant on integrated graphics.
- wasyl 7y agoI see lots of these business notebooks come with 8GB of RAM. Is it really enough for most users? I assumed 16GB should be the standard by now, especially with how memory hungry day-to-day software is.
- Ratiofarmings 7y agoIf you do some text processing, some email and generally office software, 8gb is absolutely enough. Beyond that it's not anymore. 16gb is where most people with more serious applications are happy. The cool kids have 32gb. Anybody who needs even more knows it.
- spoid 7y agoSadly, on most Ryzen 4000 Notebooks with a U processor so far, all I see is soldered single-channel RAM maxing out at 16GB... I would kill for a refresh of the E595 but it's never going to happen.
- DeathArrow 7y agoThis is more of TSMC's merit. While Zen 2 certainly is a good microarchitecture, it's not much better than Comet Lake. If Intel would have a working 7nm process, AMD wouldn't take the lead.