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> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Int

by mhitza 1y ago

> Is it unreasonable to think Framework should be able to make a laptop competitive with the 5 years old MacBook Air M1? Kind of unreasonable. I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? On the topic of displays, my understanding is that they "kind of use what they can get". That's how there can be a 13 display with rounded corners in a straight edge case. What you're asking are the things I'm looking for, though still every time I go into their forum I see enough thermal, fan noise issues and AMD firmware bugs, that I'm still on the fence on buying one. I wish them luck with the 12, for me sounds like a model for "true believers" because it doesn't seem to compete well enough with run of the mill chromebooks (or an Air) that are more established in the students segment.

fweimer 1y ago
Intel's T variants in the Core series can be passively cooled. They have pretty good burst performance in case you need it. I don't know if there are laptops using them (I only have fanless desktop systems with these CPUs).
- nextos 1y ago
  Besides, at least in Linux, lots of kernel options can tweak Intel/AMD CPUs to make them mostly silent. The problem is that manufacturers don't put much thought into building good cooling systems. Lenovo, for instance, has so many SKUs that it's really random. A few are great, but some sound like a hairdyer or rev up too aggressively. Apple gets this. By having a small product line, they usually polish all those details.
criddell 1y ago
> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now. When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?
- eloisant 1y ago
  To put it simply, I don't think we'll get anything closer to the M1 on the x86 architecture. You'll have to wait for Framework to offer a Snapdragon instead of Intel/AMD but they haven't announced anything yet.
  - miguel_martin 1y ago
    The first-generation Intel Ultra lineup is comparable to the M1 and M1 Max. See: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165h-vs-apple-m1-max https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165... Intel's integrated graphics aren't as good, but they are similar in terms of power consumption & CPU performance. Compared to M4, well, that's a different beast entirely. I'm not sure what's the latest there.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
It isn't the chip which determines whether it's fanless. Basically every modern chip supports power capping and then the power cap is determined by how much heat the machine can dissipate. What that really determines is multi-thread performance. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of one core? No problem. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of all the cores? For that you have to lower the clock speed quite a bit. Which is why you see AMD chips on older TSMC process nodes getting better multithread performance than Apple's fanless ones. The cost/benefit ratio of adding a fan is extremely attractive. The alternative way of doing it is to add more cores. If you have 8 fanless cores at 2 GHz, how do you improve multi-thread performance by 50%? Option one, clock them at 3 GHz, but now you need a fan; cost of fan ~$5. Option two, get 16 cores and cap them at 1.5 GHz to fit in the same power envelope, but now you need twice as much silicon, cost of twice as many cores $500+. The number of people who pick the second option given that trade off is so small that hardly anybody even bothers to offer it. Apple continues to do it because a) then they get to claim "see, they can't do this?" even when hardly anybody chooses that given the option, and b) then if you actually want the higher performance one from them, you're paying hundreds of dollars extra for more cores instead of $5 extra for the same one but with a fan in it.
- solardev 1y ago
  Doesn't this miss differences between CPUs in their per-core efficiency?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    The per-core efficiency of Apple and AMD CPUs on the same process node is pretty much identical. This has become harder to directly compare because they're now using alternate process nodes from one another, but have a look at this chart for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_per_watt https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_... What do we see at the top of this chart? TSMC 3nm (M3/M4), followed by TSMC 4nm (Ryzen 7000U/8000U), TSMC 5nm (M1/M2), TSMC 5nm/6nm mixed (Ryzen 7000H), and then finally we find something made on an Intel process node instead of TSMC. The efficiency has more to do with the process node than which architecture it is. It's too bad they don't have Epyc on that chart. Epyc 9845 is on TSMC N3E and that thing is running cores at a >2GHz base clock at less than 2.5W per core.
kej 1y ago
> thermal, fan noise issues Anecdotal, obviously, but disabling Turbo-Core [0] on my AMD Framework 13 stopped all of my fan noise and heat complaints, with no noticeable performance impacts. It went from being so loud that my wife on the other side of the room would ask if my computer was okay to quieter than my ThinkPad, and from noticeably hot to just slightly warm. Kind of ridiculous that it takes messing with an obscure system file to resolve it, but not any more ridiculous than issues I've had with other brands. [0] It's `echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost` or something like that, and `echo 1` to turn it back on when you want that extra performance.
- mmcnl 1y ago
  You might not have noticed, but your single-core performance will take a serious hit if you disable turbo boost. For the AMD 7480u, turbo boost frequency is 5.1Ghz vs 3.3GHz base clock frequency. If you disable turbo boost you lose 36% single-core performance.
- VHRanger 1y ago
  Wouldnt something like this tool [0] be a cleaner solution? [0]: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj
  - kej 1y ago
    Quite possibly, I will check it out. Thank you.
Const-me 1y ago
> which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? For example, AMD Ryzen 7 8840U or 7840U can be configured for the same 15W TDP as Apple M1. At 15W, the overall performance going to be about the same as M1.
const_cast 1y ago
> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? Lunar Lake.

by mhitza 1y ago

fweimer 1y ago

Intel's T variants in the Core series can be passively cooled. They have pretty good burst performance in case you need it. I don't know if there are laptops using them (I only have fanless desktop systems with these CPUs).

nextos 1y ago
Besides, at least in Linux, lots of kernel options can tweak Intel/AMD CPUs to make them mostly silent. The problem is that manufacturers don't put much thought into building good cooling systems. Lenovo, for instance, has so many SKUs that it's really random. A few are great, but some sound like a hairdyer or rev up too aggressively. Apple gets this. By having a small product line, they usually polish all those details.

criddell 1y ago

> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? I don't follow CPU news and have no idea what lake they're at now, but I'd be surprised if Intel and AMD didn't have a chip competitive with an M1 by now. When I google "fanless amd intel laptop cpu" I find this old thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31142209 which does suggest some fanless machines exist. That's from 3 years ago so surely there are even more options today, no?

eloisant 1y ago
To put it simply, I don't think we'll get anything closer to the M1 on the x86 architecture. You'll have to wait for Framework to offer a Snapdragon instead of Intel/AMD but they haven't announced anything yet.
- miguel_martin 1y ago
  The first-generation Intel Ultra lineup is comparable to the M1 and M1 Max. See: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165h-vs-apple-m1-max https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-core-ultra-7-165... Intel's integrated graphics aren't as good, but they are similar in terms of power consumption & CPU performance. Compared to M4, well, that's a different beast entirely. I'm not sure what's the latest there.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

It isn't the chip which determines whether it's fanless. Basically every modern chip supports power capping and then the power cap is determined by how much heat the machine can dissipate. What that really determines is multi-thread performance. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of one core? No problem. Fanless laptop that can dissipate the power of all the cores? For that you have to lower the clock speed quite a bit. Which is why you see AMD chips on older TSMC process nodes getting better multithread performance than Apple's fanless ones. The cost/benefit ratio of adding a fan is extremely attractive. The alternative way of doing it is to add more cores. If you have 8 fanless cores at 2 GHz, how do you improve multi-thread performance by 50%? Option one, clock them at 3 GHz, but now you need a fan; cost of fan ~$5. Option two, get 16 cores and cap them at 1.5 GHz to fit in the same power envelope, but now you need twice as much silicon, cost of twice as many cores $500+. The number of people who pick the second option given that trade off is so small that hardly anybody even bothers to offer it. Apple continues to do it because a) then they get to claim "see, they can't do this?" even when hardly anybody chooses that given the option, and b) then if you actually want the higher performance one from them, you're paying hundreds of dollars extra for more cores instead of $5 extra for the same one but with a fan in it.

solardev 1y ago
Doesn't this miss differences between CPUs in their per-core efficiency?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  The per-core efficiency of Apple and AMD CPUs on the same process node is pretty much identical. This has become harder to directly compare because they're now using alternate process nodes from one another, but have a look at this chart for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_per_watt https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cpu_performance_... What do we see at the top of this chart? TSMC 3nm (M3/M4), followed by TSMC 4nm (Ryzen 7000U/8000U), TSMC 5nm (M1/M2), TSMC 5nm/6nm mixed (Ryzen 7000H), and then finally we find something made on an Intel process node instead of TSMC. The efficiency has more to do with the process node than which architecture it is. It's too bad they don't have Epyc on that chart. Epyc 9845 is on TSMC N3E and that thing is running cores at a >2GHz base clock at less than 2.5W per core.

kej 1y ago

> thermal, fan noise issues Anecdotal, obviously, but disabling Turbo-Core [0] on my AMD Framework 13 stopped all of my fan noise and heat complaints, with no noticeable performance impacts. It went from being so loud that my wife on the other side of the room would ask if my computer was okay to quieter than my ThinkPad, and from noticeably hot to just slightly warm. Kind of ridiculous that it takes messing with an obscure system file to resolve it, but not any more ridiculous than issues I've had with other brands. [0] It's `echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost` or something like that, and `echo 1` to turn it back on when you want that extra performance.

mmcnl 1y ago
You might not have noticed, but your single-core performance will take a serious hit if you disable turbo boost. For the AMD 7480u, turbo boost frequency is 5.1Ghz vs 3.3GHz base clock frequency. If you disable turbo boost you lose 36% single-core performance.
VHRanger 1y ago
Wouldnt something like this tool [0] be a cleaner solution? [0]: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj
- kej 1y ago
  Quite possibly, I will check it out. Thank you.

Const-me 1y ago

> which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? For example, AMD Ryzen 7 8840U or 7840U can be configured for the same 15W TDP as Apple M1. At 15W, the overall performance going to be about the same as M1.

const_cast 1y ago

> I mean which Intel or AMD cpu can be run fanless and perform well? Lunar Lake.