[HN Gopher] AMD Launches Ryzen 5000 Mobile: Zen 3 and Cezanne fo...
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       AMD Launches Ryzen 5000 Mobile: Zen 3 and Cezanne for Notebooks
        
       Author : adwn
       Score  : 180 points
       Date   : 2021-01-15 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com)
        
       | po1nter wrote:
       | I wonder how they will tackle the availability issue since on the
       | desktop side, it's close to impossible to get a 5900x/5950x CPU
       | at MSRP or close to MSRP price.
        
       | bevenky wrote:
       | Would it be fair to compare these with M1s and if yes how would
       | they compare side by side?
        
         | 6d65 wrote:
         | Geekbench
         | 
         | M1 single threaded ~= 1720
         | 
         | M1 multi threaded ~= 7400
         | 
         | Ryzen 5900h single threaded = 1520
         | 
         | Ryzen 5900h multithreaded = 9325
         | 
         | Ryzen is consuming 45W, M1 is said to consume 13. Ryzen is on
         | TSMC 7nm, M1 on 5nm. It's said that TSMCs 5nm is 1.8x more
         | dense than 7nm, 30% more efficient and 15% faster.
         | 
         | So if both were on 5nm, one could extrapolate that the single
         | threaded performance would be similar, but ryzen would still
         | lose on battery life. But it's a speculation.
         | 
         | As to whether it's fair, Apple can pay premium for 5nm
         | exclusive access, and then charge the users hundreds of dollars
         | per 8GB of RAM or storage upgrades.
         | 
         | AMD is selling the chips to the OEMs which have to make money
         | themselves, which means that using cutting edge nodes might not
         | make sense economically.
         | 
         | But that doesn't matter, both are businesses, it's AMDs fault
         | that they didn't rush to 5nm and are comfortable at staying
         | behind.
         | 
         | The ones to lose will be the premium laptop manufactures, that
         | sell laptops at 1000+ usd. As the agressive Apple marketing
         | will most likely cut into their sales.
         | 
         | It would be interesting to see if the rumors, about Intel using
         | TSMC 5nm this year, are true. Intel had the single threaded
         | perf lead, even on their less dense 14nm node, vs AMD on TSMCs
         | 7nm. Could be that on TSMCs nodes they would be faster than
         | both Apple and AMD, but still probably at a higher TDP than
         | Apple chips.
        
           | kllrnohj wrote:
           | M1 under multicore loads hits north of 20W:
           | https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-
           | apple-m1-teste...
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | fvv wrote:
           | Better compare to 5800u if u want lower power comparison
        
       | chrismorgan wrote:
       | I have three requirements that I would like to satisfy in a new
       | laptop:
       | 
       | 1. AMD Ryzen, Zen 2 or later (meaning 3000 desktop, 4000 mobile
       | or 5000 any). At this point assume that I'm not concerned about
       | class of processor, though I think H-class is probably my ideal.
       | 
       | 2. Minimum screen resolution of 2560x1440, preferably 4K or
       | similar. (And since I'm talking, ideally a squarer aspect ratio
       | like 3:2, but those are so rare I won't even bother looking. But
       | I do really like my Surface Book's 3000x2000 display.)
       | 
       | 3. No NVIDIA GPU, because I want to use Linux and NVIDIA hates
       | Linux, and I want to be able to run Wayland also. So either
       | integrated graphics only (with a U-class or H-class APU), or an
       | AMD dGPU (which would be the only option on the higher-end
       | desktop CPUs). Sure, with U-class or H-class I could just disable
       | the NVIDIA GPU, but the dead weight and giving money to NVIDIA
       | for something I will never use galls, quite apart from the mild
       | nuisance of figuring out how to disable it.
       | 
       | I looked through all the manufacturers I could find in Australia,
       | and all the Clevo OEMs I could find worldwide.
       | 
       | I have not found a single device that satisfies all three of
       | these requirements. Any two, sure, but not all three.
       | 
       | A related peeve lies with the H-class APUs: why can't I get one
       | without an NVIDIA GPU? I have found only one place selling
       | laptops with H-class APUs and no dedicated NVIDIA GPU: TUXEDO, in
       | their Pulse 14 and Pulse 15. But even then, they're only
       | available on paper--order now and you won't get it for over three
       | months since they're currently out of both 4600H and 4800H APUs.
       | (For myself, I rule TUXEDO out for not shipping to Australia,
       | anyway; any forwarding service arrangement would be a bother and
       | probably expensive, and leave me with a useless warranty.) But
       | you'd think that more than one manufacturer would look at how
       | light yet powerful a laptop they can make this way and do one
       | without a discrete GPU. Look, the Pulse 15 with its 91Wh battery
       | even advertises _over 20 hours_ of battery life when idling at
       | minimum brightness (and the Pulse 14's 47Wh battery, 12 hours).
       | 
       | These things make me sad. I hope the portfolio expansion
       | mentioned here will include something to satisfy me.
        
         | Triv888 wrote:
         | I like https://www.asus.com/us/Mini-PCs/Mini-PC-PN50/ but I use
         | hotel TVs for my screen (so resolution varies...)
        
         | mattnewton wrote:
         | > No NVIDIA GPU, because I want to use Linux and NVIDIA hates
         | Linux
         | 
         | Is this a voting-with-your-wallet position for open drivers /
         | better Linux support, or have you experienced issues in the
         | past with the proprietary drivers?
         | 
         | I ask because Linux with an Nvidia gpu is my daily driver
         | (desktop), and I'm likely to build another system like that
         | again, was just curious what I don't know.
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | A bit of both, really.
           | 
           | I've never tried to run Linux on a machine with an NVIDIA
           | GPU, or on a machine with two GPUs. But from what I have
           | read, this is the _impression_ that I get:
           | 
           | It's quite common to have a bit of trouble getting _anything_
           | working, and you will run into problems far more often than
           | with any other brand of GPU (which will just work perfectly).
           | 
           | Many things won't work with the proprietary drivers, because
           | they implement everything their own way, and so software has
           | to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, rather
           | than using the standard tools that everything else uses like
           | OpenGL and Mesa.
           | 
           | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-
           | asu... is the sort of thing I've heard of: there, the NVIDIA
           | GPU is trouble from start to end. Admittedly it might have
           | gone more smoothly with something other than Ubuntu, with
           | more recent versions of kernels and other such stuff (I like
           | Arch, so this wouldn't be a problem for me), but it's still
           | just bad.
           | 
           | But then too, I mentioned Wayland: because of how NVIDIA made
           | their own world on Linux, the proprietary drivers are
           | completely incompatible with Wayland--basically NVIDIA
           | hardcoded support for X (again, rather than using the
           | standard approach everyone else settled on) and haven't done
           | so for Wayland.
           | 
           | If you use Nouveau instead of the proprietary drivers, you're
           | left with a GPU missing a substantial fraction of its
           | functionality, stuck at a low clock speed in power-draining
           | mode. But I think you _might_ be able to use Wayland.
           | 
           | I gather that Linux has problems in any dual GPU environment,
           | but that the issues are far worse with NVIDIA than with
           | anything else. If you're operating a single-GPU machine and
           | are content to use the proprietary drivers, I gather it's not
           | _such_ a problem, though many applications may be unable to
           | use GPU acceleration.
           | 
           | I welcome any corrections to what I've written here. As I
           | say, this is all just hearsay.
        
             | deckard1 wrote:
             | If you're trying to do anything with the latest hardware,
             | it's always going to be a pain on Linux. Even Windows
             | doesn't have flawless support with every game on day one.
             | 
             | > It's quite common to have a bit of trouble getting
             | anything working, and you will run into problems far more
             | often than with any other brand of GPU (which will just
             | work perfectly).
             | 
             | That's a joke. I've been using Linux on Nvidia since the
             | Riva TNT. It was _always_ Radeon that had garbage drivers
             | and really didn 't give two shits about Linux. Not sure how
             | much this has changed with AMD owning them, but I never
             | bothered to look at Radeon since Nvidia was always the best
             | card and always worked. It's almost never more than just
             | doing a single package install.
             | 
             | > software has to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary
             | drivers, rather than using the standard tools that
             | everything else uses like OpenGL and Mesa.
             | 
             | I think you fundamentally do not understand Mesa or OpenGL
             | to say this. And no, nothing has to be "written against"
             | Nvidia. It's literally OpenGL (or Vulkan, today). Unless
             | you're talking CUDA or something, which I don't touch.
             | 
             | This all just sounds like so much FUD that you wrote.
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | I certainly don't understand all that I'm writing of--
               | it's based purely on what I've read, which has mostly
               | been casual rather than deliberate research. It's almost
               | certain that I've made errors.
               | 
               | I'm referring to things like the Background section of
               | https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/NVIDIA:
               | 
               | > _The proprietary NVIDIA doesn 't provide the same user
               | space API as the open source drivers. While the open
               | source drivers allows the display server to use the
               | Generic Buffer Manager (gbm) and Kernel Mode Setting
               | (KMS) APIs to manage hardware buffers, set modes, and
               | queue page flips, configure hardware planes, the NVIDIA
               | driver forces the display server to treat it differently.
               | Instead of these APIs, the compositor uses a combination
               | of KMS, to set modes, and EGL (EGLDevice & EGLStream
               | extensions to be precise) to indirectly queue page flips
               | by linking an EGLSurface, corresponding to an area of the
               | screen, with a CRTC of an EGLDevice, using an EGLStream._
               | 
               | My OpenGL and Mesa remarks are very probably wrong.
               | 
               | The impression that I have received is that the window
               | manager is probably the main thing that needs to be aware
               | of these differences and NVIDIA ignoring the standards
               | (this is why Sway doesn't support NVIDIA's proprietary
               | drivers: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-
               | nvidia.html), but that anything wanting to actually use
               | GPU capabilities may well need to be aware as well.
               | 
               | --
               | 
               | What I have heard on the GPU drivers situation is that
               | Radeon used to be terrible (and NVIDIA less terrible
               | despite doing things its own way rather than the standard
               | way), but that they overhauled it all completely so that
               | for at least the last five years it's been great.
        
             | jandrese wrote:
             | For what it's worth I've had a fairly easy time with nVidia
             | on Linux. My daily driver is an Ubuntu 20 machine where I
             | just selected the nVidia binary blob option from a menu and
             | it just works, even through kernel upgrades.
             | 
             | But this is also just about the easiest setup. I might feel
             | differently if I were on a laptop with dual graphics cards.
        
             | mattnewton wrote:
             | I see, I guess I must just be on Nvidia's happy path: I use
             | a Debian distro similar to Ubuntu at work and Ubuntu at
             | home with X windows and have experienced no problems; I
             | didn't know that there might be dragons if I try to stray
             | from that.
        
             | marmaduke wrote:
             | just a few datapoints, the Dell Ubuntu machines (4+) we've
             | received, I just do the "Additional Drivers", click Nvidia,
             | reboot and stuff like TensorFlow just works. CentOS (RHEL)
             | same.
             | 
             | I think if you start messing with one of distributions not
             | on the CUDA download paper, you get stuck easily, but at
             | least for work purposes, I don't see the point of using
             | something other than RHEL/CentOS/Fedora/Debian.
        
             | zwaps wrote:
             | I have to use Nvidia bc of Cuda, as does everyone else who
             | does ML on Linux, which is a large majority of people doing
             | ML.
             | 
             | Long story short, it works. On Desktop, that is.
             | 
             | So I an not sure how representative your opinion is.
             | 
             | On the other hand, I had gpu problems on Linus with
             | literally every single laptop I have ever owned,
             | independent of Gpu brand. So there's that.
        
           | nicolaslem wrote:
           | Not OP but I'm also avoiding anything with Nvidia in it. Half
           | of the reason is voting with my wallet, as you mentioned.
           | This other half is feeling much more confident that the
           | hardware will be supported and compatible with Linux in the
           | long term.
        
           | Bluerise wrote:
           | OpenBSD obviously doesn't have NVIDIA support, but amdgpu(4)
           | works pretty well. I'd also prefer to use AMD's own GPU, not
           | only because I can't use NVIDIA, but also because I don't
           | support NVIDIA's business practice.
        
           | fossuser wrote:
           | This was largely my experience too and always confused me
           | about people saying AMD was better for Linux.
           | 
           | Nvidia proprietary drivers existed and worked, the AMD stuff
           | was worse.
           | 
           | It makes more sense if it's about open vs. proprietary rather
           | than what works better.
           | 
           | Though sounds like things may have changed since then.
        
             | awill wrote:
             | I've run intel/nvidia with Arch Linux for the last 14
             | years.
             | 
             | I upgraded recently from an intel/nvidia setup (GTX 1070)
             | to a zen3 w/ a Radeon 6800. Honestly, both nvidia and AMD
             | have excellent support on Linux. Both hardware decode, play
             | steam games, are stable, support the latest kernel etc..
             | 
             | However, latest steam games (and proton in particular) is
             | better tested against Mesa (AMD OSS drivers), so it's the
             | place to be for gaming on linux. AMD also tears less on
             | Linux, and supports Wayland (though Wayland support could
             | be the reason for less tearing).
             | 
             | Either way, I'm fully AMD now and wouldn't go back. I see
             | zero downsides, and a few upsides.
        
           | drwu wrote:
           | About better linux support: VDPAU does not have browser
           | hardware accelerated video decoding yet. It seems both AMD
           | and Intel based on VA have this feature already.
           | 
           | However, I had to choose NVIDIA only because of CUDA.
        
         | pachico wrote:
         | You forgot a key element for me, which is a matte screen.
        
         | novaleaf wrote:
         | beware NVidia hybrid GPU's in laptops. I have had 4 such
         | laptops, all 4 suffered from graphics problems. 2 ended up
         | dead. 1 works great but the Nvidia GPU is no longer detected
         | (???) And the last one still works, but graphics crash about
         | every 4 hours when the gpu is under heavy load (I think due to
         | heat)
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | Here you can get a Huawei Matebook 14[1] which fits those specs
         | as far as I can see, including the 3:2 aspect ratio.
         | 
         | Never bought Huawei so no experiences to share.
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-14-amd-2020/...
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | 2160x1440 (185ppi) is a touch on the low side, though
           | admittedly very close to 2560x1440 on a 15.6'' display
           | (188ppi; I confess I had that resolution more in mind for a
           | 13'' or 14'' chassis). But definitely far less than the
           | ~275ppi of my Surface Book's 3000x2000!
           | 
           | This definitely looks an interesting machine, but it seems
           | they're not selling it in Australia, so alas, _I_ can't get
           | it. Otherwise I'd be very strongly considering it.
        
             | godzillabrennus wrote:
             | Buy it through a USA based VAR. Small ones exist that can
             | likely help. Case in point: https://greenbeetech.com/
        
             | lukevp wrote:
             | I have a huawei mate book x pro and it's great! It's got
             | the 3:2 aspect ratio and a higher resolution screen, touch,
             | 16 gigs of ram, etc. it is super nice, but it does have
             | nvidia.
        
         | thestu wrote:
         | https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/model/NX.HULAA.003 They
         | mention an optional 2560x1440 monitor but it's right alongside
         | a mention of an Intel CPU, which is incorrect, so maybe the
         | 2560x1440 is incorrect also.
        
         | loufe wrote:
         | 4K is a little much even for 17" screens. I think 1440p is a
         | better size.
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Use the HiDPI feature or simply larger fonts if it is hard to
           | read. My 15" laptop is 4k and I wouldn't give up the clarity
           | to go back to the old days.
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | My Surface Book is 267ppi (3000x2000, 13.5''). It's very
           | good, but at typical viewing distances it's still
           | unquestionably lower than the human eye is capable of
           | resolving. I doubt there's _much_ value in going higher, but
           | it's not _useless_ , either--if all else was equal, 400ppi
           | would certainly be more pleasant to look upon than 267ppi.
           | 
           | 4K on 17'' is 260ppi, which I reckon is pretty good. On 13''
           | or 14'', full 4K is probably a little bit of overkill at
           | present (315-340ppi), but 1440p is definitely less than I'd
           | _like_ even on a 13'' monitor (226ppi).
           | 
           | Of course, it's always a matter of balance, because all else
           | is _not_ equal; higher resolution means higher cost, higher
           | power consumption, higher memory usage, and higher processing
           | requirements. But I'd definitely prefer 4K to 1440p even at
           | 13''.
        
             | gomjabbar wrote:
             | External monitors are typically used farther way from the
             | eye compared to a laptop screen - have you tried 4k at 24"
             | ? It may achieve what you are looking for.
        
         | gshulegaard wrote:
         | Ah man, you are describing my ideal laptop as well.
         | 
         | I don't have a solution for you, but I have had good
         | experiences with System76 in the past and am hoping that
         | upcoming laptop refreshes should start to hit those points or
         | me as well.
         | 
         | Ideally this gets a better screen:
         | 
         | https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin
         | 
         | Or this gets a Ryzen APU and a 16:10 aspect ratio:
         | 
         | https://system76.com/laptops/lemur
         | 
         | But those are dreams at this point...
        
           | Osiris wrote:
           | I have a system76 but it uses an NVIDIA GPU for the external
           | monitors.
           | 
           | It works fine when plugged in, but I basically don't use it
           | as a portable computer because it's such a pain to switch
           | back to Intel graphics. There are some options for hybrid
           | graphics but it limits the options I have for external
           | monitor orientation.
        
             | gshulegaard wrote:
             | Graphics switching remains somewhat painful in the Linux
             | ecosystem. There are options but nothing that quite
             | achieves the seamlessness of Windows or Mac solutions.
             | 
             | Did you get the System76 with PopOS? I was impressed with
             | my last one with the desktop menu that allowed graphics
             | switching (albeit after a restart).
             | 
             | https://support.system76.com/articles/graphics-switch-pop/
             | 
             | Which I think is just a wrapper around the nvidia drivers,
             | but at least I didn't have to install it myself and the
             | menu location is a tad more convenient.
        
               | Osiris wrote:
               | yeah the restart is the problem, it adds a lot of
               | overhead if I'm just running to a meeting or something.
               | There is a Prime option but you can only use external
               | monitors in standard landscape and I use mine in
               | portrait.
        
         | Thaxll wrote:
         | Nvida drivers are better than AMD one on Linux and windows.
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | Of Windows, I have no comment; but Linux-- _what!?_
           | 
           | I have heard, and keep on hearing of, _many_ tales of
           | problems with NVIDIA drivers on Linux, and there's some
           | functionality from the GPU that simply isn't exposed in a
           | usable way on Linux.
           | 
           | But I can only think of hearing of one problem with AMD
           | (integrated or discrete GPU) drivers within the last five
           | years, and that one was promptly fixed (it was a missing
           | break statement that caused I think it was the RX 570 to be
           | misclassified). But generally speaking, provided you have a
           | recent enough kernel, I gather that it all just works,
           | perfectly.
           | 
           | Now admittedly AMD GPUs are less common than NVIDIA ones, but
           | even taking that into account the evidence is
           | _overwhelmingly_ against NVIDIA.
        
             | Thaxll wrote:
             | Everyone using CUDA on Linux are usually using Ubuntu +
             | Nvidia drivers, so no it doesn't sucks. The only down side
             | is that its closed source and does not work with Wayland.
             | Overall Nvidia has just more people working on those
             | drivers than AMD.
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | What I repeatedly hear is that _even with_ the
               | proprietary drivers, it's not terribly uncommon for
               | people to still have serious problems, and that not
               | everything can use the acceleration (e.g. from elsewhere
               | in the thread, "VDPAU does not have browser hardware
               | accelerated video decoding yet").
               | 
               | I'm by no means sure, but the impression I've received of
               | AMD GPUs is that all functionality of the GPU is
               | available and functional. And no one ever seems to have
               | trouble getting normal things working.
        
         | ohyes wrote:
         | So, I looked on the AMD shop online and it looks like the MSI
         | Bravo 15 satisfies all of these requirements, it is surprising
         | that there was only one laptop in the AMD store that seems to
         | satisfy this.
         | 
         | I'm in the USA, maybe that makes a difference.
        
           | _coveredInBees wrote:
           | They seem to only have a FHD (1080p) screen with 16:9 aspect-
           | ratio though?
           | 
           | https://us.msi.com/Laptop/Bravo-15-A4DX/Specification
        
             | ohyes wrote:
             | ah, that would do it, I was trying to figure out what the
             | issue would be with it.
             | 
             | Is it possible that they just don't sell 4:3 screens very
             | much anymore? I can't imagine why.
             | 
             | (Google tells me this is the case, 4:3 is the old standard
             | and not made much anymore).
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | It's the resolution I care about more than the aspect
               | ratio. A squarer aspect ratio would just be the icing on
               | top. But yeah, if you're happy with 1920x1080, then it's
               | not too difficult to find machines satisfying the other
               | two requirements.
        
               | _coveredInBees wrote:
               | I think it's just that unfortunately a lot of these
               | laptops are geared towards gamers, and pretty much all
               | gaming laptops have 16:9 aspect-ratio, and they also
               | usually use high refresh-rate screens, which are also
               | almost entirely in 16:9 aspect-ratio.
        
         | masklinn wrote:
         | > I have not found a single device that satisfies all three of
         | these requirements. Any two, sure, but not all three.
         | 
         | And for even more fun you can add a 4th: ECC.
        
           | jandrese wrote:
           | That requirement could be a roll of the dice. Get the laptop
           | with the Ryzen processor and hope that the BIOS just happens
           | to have ECC enabled and buy the right DIMMs. It's not
           | something you're likely to see as a bullet point in the
           | feature list except on some kind of hideously expensive
           | "industrial" laptop, which would probably fail all of the
           | other critera.
        
             | 1996 wrote:
             | I would pay good money for it.
        
         | e12e wrote:
         | Microsoft surface laptop 4 is likely to be this - looks like
         | the 3 was close - except for poor battery:
         | 
         | https://www.pcworld.com/article/3449758/microsoft-surface-la...
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | But it's unlikely to be great at Linux out of the box. The
           | Surface families have a history of doing things their own
           | way, which means being poor at running Linux until people
           | reverse-engineer things. Per https://github.com/linux-
           | surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte..., Surface Laptop 3
           | (AMD) still isn't perfect: like most of the Surface families
           | it requires a special kernel for most stuff to work, and the
           | touchscreen and pen support don't work (admittedly
           | functionality outright missing from most laptops, so perhaps
           | not a big deal), and if you suspend it, you need an external
           | keyboard to wake it up again!
           | 
           | Also I'm shocked at the price hike from 16GB RAM, 512GB
           | storage to 32GB RAM, 1TB storage: it goes up from AUD 2931 to
           | AUD 4399. _A $1,468 increase._ I would consider $468 not
           | unreasonable (even though the retail cost delta on the actual
           | _parts_ should be under half of that), but it's like they
           | hoped you wouldn't notice them slipping an extra $1,000 onto
           | the price. But then, given that the second and third
           | configurations increase the first's $1,699 by $425 to
           | increase 128GB of storage to 256GB (that's more than even
           | _Apple_ charge for such things!), and then by another $255 to
           | increase 8GB of RAM to 16GB, perhaps I shouldn't be
           | surprised. Still am, though.
        
             | e12e wrote:
             | I didn't see Linux support in your 3 points, though!
             | 
             | As an owner of a surface 4 pro, I feel the pain of _almost_
             | good Linux support - and is a little surprised and dismayed
             | at the rate of mainline kernel support.
             | 
             | Also agreed on the pricing model - but in my experience the
             | hardware is very good. Arguably, I prefer it to Apple hw
             | (except for the m1 cpu, that looks nice).
        
               | chrismorgan wrote:
               | Eh, I reckoned it was kinda implied in my reasons for
               | wanting no NVIDIA.
               | 
               | I also didn't say "must have more than 4GB of RAM". :-)
               | 
               | (A funny fact about it all is that I purchased the
               | Surface Book a few years back simply because its hardware
               | was so good on paper for what I wanted to do that I was
               | willing even to switch from Linux back to Windows.
               | Admittedly I would never have done it without WSL
               | existing, but still. Anyway, a few years later I'm
               | hankering to get back to Arch Linux and i3, or perhaps
               | Sway now. The Surface Book has been good hardware, except
               | that unit #1 was developing some problems at the age of
               | 19 months, #2 was basically DOA, #3 had Battery 1
               | disappear after four months, and a couple of weeks ago #4
               | at the age of 21/4 had its Battery 1 die in a more
               | unpleasant way: the computer will spontaneously lose
               | power typically 1-4 times per day. But I have probably
               | used it an average of over 10 hours a day, and regularly
               | very heavily at that, except for its dGPU which is almost
               | untouched.)
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | em500 wrote:
       | Since people are probably curious: the Ryzen 7 5800U (8-core, 15W
       | TDP) will probably be close to (but not equal to or better than)
       | Apple's M1 in performance (based on specs and desktop Zen3
       | Geekbench scores). But they will probably have significantly
       | worse efficiency. With idle / low-CPU workload, it's probably not
       | too bad (17-21hr on 53Wh battery), but if you're compiling on
       | your laptop all day I'd expect much worse battery life than
       | Apple's M1 laptops.
        
         | Findeton wrote:
         | I will get a 5800U nevertheless and avoid Apple's walled
         | garden.
        
           | SXX wrote:
           | Now we only need proper laptops with AMD hardware. Mostly
           | everything I seen before in dreadful state and Intel monopoly
           | on the market doesn't help.
        
         | SXX wrote:
         | Apple M1 has 4 hours on battery life when playing games. Is it
         | much better during heavy C++ compilation or Java builds?
         | 
         | PS: 4 hours on Air M1
        
           | holmium wrote:
           | The only C++ M1 time and battery benchmark I remember is from
           | Matthew Panzarino[1]. He found that it took the M1 Air 25
           | minutes to do a fresh compile of WebKit, and that the Air had
           | 91% battery remaining after finishing the compilation.
           | 
           | So, roughly assuming that you could compile WebKit 10 times
           | before the laptop runs out of juice, that'd give you 4 hours
           | 10 minutes of battery life.
           | 
           | -----
           | 
           | [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-
           | pro...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hmottestad wrote:
         | I really hope they can compete. As much as I would love Apple
         | to pull ahead by a mile, it's not going to help the computer
         | space that much.
         | 
         | I have some Android friends who are super happy with their
         | phones. When they ask why I'm upgrading my iPhone again and I
         | say "it's got a lot better performance" they usually say
         | something like "why do you need a faster phone....my midrange 3
         | year old android phone is blazingly fast".
         | 
         | It's not until we lift all users in general that we will be
         | able to create new and innovative software. I like to compare
         | an old school project where they had to create a spell
         | checker...but this was back when you didn't have enough ram to
         | keep the dictionary in memory.
         | 
         | More memory and faster CPUs make yesterday's challenges trivial
         | for today's developers.
        
           | cbozeman wrote:
           | Reading this, I can only assume you want to be one of those
           | people that Ubuntu targeted years ago, who can plug their
           | phone into a dock and have the same power as top-tier desktop
           | computer.
           | 
           | Otherwise, I don't really see the point. Every machine has a
           | different purpose.
           | 
           | My telephone is for phone calls, texting, extremely light
           | emailing, checking weather, using it as a GPS, occasionally
           | taking a photo or a quick video.
           | 
           | My Surface Book 3 is for actual on-the-road document work,
           | programming, light gaming, and digital painting.
           | 
           | My Ryzen Threadripper / RTX 3090 workstation at home is for
           | no-shit, actual income-generating work and super-heavy-duty
           | gaming.
           | 
           | My Panasonic Lumix DC-S1H is for videography, but my Canon
           | EOS R5 is for highest-quality stills, and my Sony A7C is for
           | travelling.
           | 
           | Every one of those cameras has different purposes, different
           | use cases. Just like the rest of my hardware. There is no
           | "one size fits all" anywhere, for anything.
           | 
           | > More memory and faster CPUs make yesterday's challenges
           | trivial for today's developers.
           | 
           | Today's developers are by-and-large utter shit at designing
           | software. Its usually poorly thought-out, poorly-documented,
           | and poorly-maintained. The number of truly exceptional
           | software programs out there is incredibly sparse.
        
           | Out_of_Characte wrote:
           | But really, What do you need more cpu power on the phone for?
           | email, whatsapp and a browser is about everything I can
           | envision my phone for. Nothing innovative I can think of is
           | going to change anything about what people use and need their
           | phone for. Not that I'm against progress, better screens,
           | lower latencies and faster loading are always appreciated.
        
             | daxelrod wrote:
             | For many people, their phone is their primary computing
             | device. Sometimes their only computing device.
             | 
             | Large numbers of people use their phones for games,
             | video/photo editing, videoconferencing (which can involve
             | real time image processing for virtual backgrounds and
             | appearance filters).
             | 
             | At the low end of the phone market, phone hardware performs
             | significantly better today than it did two years ago for
             | those tasks.
        
           | The_Colonel wrote:
           | > they usually say something like "why do you need a faster
           | phone....my midrange 3 year old android phone is blazingly
           | fast
           | 
           | Yes, there aren't a lot of valid reasons to spend over ~200
           | Euro for a phone these days (unless you're tech enthusiast).
        
             | ip26 wrote:
             | It's hard to agree completely with this. On the one hand
             | you can accomplish just about anything with a $150 phone,
             | and I used one for many years. Recently though my midrange
             | 2 year old phone could barely keep up with certain basic
             | apps, and a upper-mid phone has been night-and-day higher
             | quality usage experience.
             | 
             | I suspect a mix of Wirth's Law plus a lower level of polish
             | on things like drivers on cheaper phones (inexplicably poor
             | WiFi stability, for example)
        
               | The_Colonel wrote:
               | I know that the situation with mid-range phones was not
               | always so rosy. I was myself buying mostly high-end
               | phones in the past.
               | 
               | But recently my friend bought a Motorola for 200 Euro -
               | Snapdragon 730, 6 GB RAM, 128 GB UFS 2.1 storage, pretty
               | good main camera + (so-so) ultrawide, (gimmicky) macro
               | camera, 5000 mAh battery. I was very impressed what can
               | 200 Euro these days buy. I'm pretty confident this phone
               | will do just fine in 2 years too ...
        
         | sudosysgen wrote:
         | It will be significantly faster the M1 in multicore performance
         | and slightly slower in single core.
         | 
         | Compiles that use multiple cores with end significantly faster
         | and thus battery life will be compensated.
        
         | pja wrote:
         | > but if you're compiling on your laptop all day I'd expect
         | much worse battery life than Apple's M1 laptops.
         | 
         | On the flip side, you get 8 full fat cores instead of 4 fast &
         | 4 not so fast, so your compile jobs might go a bit quicker.
         | Have to wait for the benchmarks to find out for sure.
        
       | brnt wrote:
       | Is there any word on slower desktop variants? A followup to the
       | 1300/3100?
        
       | voidmain0001 wrote:
       | I have been waiting for Lenovo to release the Legion 7 Slim with
       | the 4900H to replace my aged Lenovo Thinkpad 540p, but a 7 Slim
       | with a 5000 series would be drool worthy for me.
        
       | acd wrote:
       | Will be nice of there will be Mini ITX/media HTPC variants of
       | this CPU.
       | 
       | You can play games and media on 14-45W CPU TDP which should be
       | very quiet from fan noise.
        
         | pimeys wrote:
         | And with two nics, so you could build a home router and server
         | with freebsd and jails serving all your needs.
         | 
         | One can dream...
        
       | foolmeonce wrote:
       | No updates in the area of GPU might be a good thing for me, can
       | anyone share experiences regarding Linux with the 4000?
        
         | scns wrote:
         | Check phoronix.com, there should be several articles about it.
        
         | toolz wrote:
         | I have a 4700u, some device issues at first (touchpad, namely)
         | that work now (as is the case with all brand new laptop models)
         | - AMD cpus are beasts though - can't wait until they start
         | putting them in higher build quality laptops.
        
         | hydroxideOH- wrote:
         | I run Arch on the HP Envy x360 with a ryzen 4500u and it's a
         | very smooth experience, I've had no issues. I did have Ubuntu
         | on it at first and it may have been a bad install, but it was
         | terrible. Half the time I'd turn on the laptop and something
         | different would be broken.
        
       | teekert wrote:
       | I wanted a Ryzen 4000 (for a home server), it was never available
       | anywhere. I got an i3. I feel a bit said.
        
       | xiphias2 wrote:
       | Ryzen 5000 Mobile: U Series (not all Zen 3)
       | 
       | These things are so frustrating... 5700U probably performs worse
       | than 5600U in real life scenarios. I liked that in the previous
       | laptop generation I could just tell my girlfriend to look for a
       | 4000x AMD CPU, and she got an amazing laptop deal at the end.
        
         | other_herbert wrote:
         | Now you have to also make sure the 2nd digit is even... I feel
         | like this has happened in the past, the odd / even signified a
         | different architecture.. don't remember if it was Intel or Amd
         | though
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | kllrnohj wrote:
       | It's so dumb that there's a few zen2 SKUs under the 5000 name.
       | They skipped 4000 on the desktop so that mobile and desktop could
       | have the same name for the same generation only to immediately
       | screw it up.
        
         | whatch wrote:
         | AMD hardware names look like a mess for me, but is it really
         | different from Intel's i3-i9 cpus for both desktops and
         | laptops?
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | If you really want to be confused, try to figure out which
           | laptops have Coffee/Ice/Tiger Lake and whether it's 10nm or
           | 14nm.
           | 
           | Take a look at 10th gen Intel mobile processors: https://en.w
           | ikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_processors#Lates... (You'll
           | have to scroll a page or two)
           | 
           | 11th gen seems to be a mix of Tiger Lake and the upcoming
           | Rocket Lake iterations.
        
         | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
         | My thoughts exactly. Couldn't they have released those Zen2
         | parts as refreshed 4000 series, which they are?
         | 
         | This feels like they're trying to scam less knowledgeable
         | consumers. WTF is going on at AMD?
         | 
         | Also, the Zen3 iGPU is still Vega not RDNA2. WTF AMD?! They
         | could integrate RDNA2 in the console Zen2 APUs but the PC Zen3
         | chips are still running a GPU from 2017 which is based on an
         | architecture from 2012! How is this possible, it just seems
         | crazu to me.
        
           | tehbeard wrote:
           | Consoles have more space for proper cooling solutions? That's
           | the only reason I can think.
        
           | tw04 wrote:
           | I would bet it's more likely that the OEM who is using and
           | asked for those chips demanded they be a 5000 series part so
           | that customers weren't skipping it over because of "last
           | gen".
           | 
           | I completely agree it's dishonest, I'm not sure you can blame
           | AMD though. If Dell (I'm not saying this was Dell), came to
           | you and said: either this chip is 5000 or I don't carry ANY
           | of your chips, you give them what they want.
           | 
           | To me this shows AMD has learned its lesson: without the OEMs
           | onboard you aren't going anywhere. Selling individual chips
           | to gamers is profitable, but that only goes so far.
        
             | csharptwdec19 wrote:
             | They probably also learned it from their time in the GPU
             | arena, where such shenanigans have been in play for a long
             | time (although usually moreso by the green team)
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | Latty wrote:
           | This isn't a new practice, and it isn't specific to AMD:
           | 
           | Here is an LTT video from years ago talking about it:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEileqxmags
        
           | Jonnax wrote:
           | The reason is time to market.
           | 
           | Intel are releasing new laptop parts said to beat their 4000
           | series, so they need to continue being competitive out of the
           | door.
           | 
           | Also their highest margin chips are going to be pared with
           | discrete GPUs.
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | I don't know if "scam" is exactly the right word, though the
           | sentiment is likely close enough. At those lower levels
           | anyone buying those laptops is going to have _much_ more
           | power than they need. Someone buying a Ryzen 5 4500U to do
           | regular spreadsheets, email, documents, video conferencing,
           | etc. will have ample horsepower. And a Ryzen 5 5500U is not
           | much different. The clocks (base, all-core turbo) might even
           | be lower, though the GPU is slightly better. However, for
           | that kind of user, they might get better battery life, and if
           | they fire up games, a better experience.
           | 
           | This isn't ideal if you upgrade every generation - that
           | wouldn't be worth it. But in those $500-600 laptops, it
           | probably doesn't hurt. I suspect they have Zen 2 chiplet
           | supply and buyers in that price range will be plenty happy.
           | If they really need more CPU power from Zen 3, they could
           | step up to Ryzen 5 5600U. So _you need to be better educated_
           | on those little nuances, but only if you really need the CPU
           | power.
           | 
           | Presumably anyone buying that doesn't dig into these details
           | reads reviews and looks at the benchmarks on those reviews
           | based on programs they run that are CPU intensive. Otherwise,
           | they probably won't be affected greatly by the difference.
           | 
           | It's not ideal but given supply chain issues, it might be a
           | necessary evil.
        
             | Out_of_Characte wrote:
             | I remember the lowest sku's almost always being a last
             | generation part. which seem to be more about economics than
             | uninformed buyers. You _can_ buy a last generation laptop
             | with a 4500u however there is merit to buying a new laptop
             | with all new features the laptop itself provides. Also, the
             | design might be  'last generation' however that does not
             | mean its exactly the same. which is important because
             | architectural changes can and have caused problems that
             | were adressed in later revisions of the same cpu. You'd be
             | surprised how much effort most people put in to researching
             | consumer electronics decisions. their knowledge might
             | scratch the surface of what technical people know months in
             | advance to a cpu launch but it is significant nonetheless.
        
               | numpad0 wrote:
               | The confusing part is Zen3 and Zen2 SKUs are intermeshed
               | among U tier processors, 5800U/5600U are Zen3 and
               | 5700U/5500U/5300U are Zen2.
        
             | jjoonathan wrote:
             | Rebadging last-gen products into the current-gen lineup is
             | a genuine value add for me as a customer.
             | 
             | If I'm buying a new product, I want to see a lineup of
             | exactly the products a given company thinks are
             | competitive, ordered by price or performance. I don't want
             | to have to pore over review articles and youtube videos to
             | figure out how many performance grades correspond to how
             | many generational jumps and cross reference to older
             | generations. I just don't.
        
               | helloworld653 wrote:
               | "I don't want to have to pore over review articles and
               | youtube videos to figure out how many performance grades
               | correspond to how many generational jumps and cross
               | reference to older generations. I just don't."
               | 
               | If they named things properly and wouldn't mix
               | generations within a single generational series marketing
               | campaign (5xxx series), you wouldn't have to - as a
               | consumer, if you wanted to buy the best, you would buy
               | the 5000 series. They would still carry 4xxx stock - if
               | you wanted something at a different price point, you'd
               | buy the 4xxx series.
               | 
               | AMD's choice to mix generations within the same series
               | makes things more confusing, not less confusing.
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | That's only true if generations don't overlap in
               | performance. If they do overlap, either the company
               | "ports" the old products into the new lineup or you're in
               | for considerable homework.
        
               | helloworld653 wrote:
               | What is the point then in up-branding a chip with
               | identical performance that spans two different process
               | generations?
               | 
               | Do the two different generations have different TDP
               | envelopes? I though the 5xxx and 4xxx series both use
               | Vega - what is the appreciable product difference between
               | Zen 2 and Zen 3 if the performance/TDP/graphics
               | performance is the same?
        
               | leetcrew wrote:
               | I think you are kinda answering your own question here?
               | the difference between Zen 2 and Zen 3 is that they are
               | different architectures. there may not be an appreciable
               | _product_ difference between a mid /high bin Zen 2 part
               | and a low/mid bin Zen 3 part. this is why we have SKUs;
               | they take a spreadsheet worth of details and compress
               | them into a rough total ordering of price/performance.
               | 
               | the point is that it's annoying to compare 4000 series
               | parts against 5000 series parts to figure out what is the
               | best budget AMD CPU. outside of enthusiast circles, no
               | one cares about being on the latest architecture. they
               | care about what is currently the best performing part
               | within their budget.
        
         | nly wrote:
         | Equivalence between desktop and mobile chips is largely make-
         | believe anyway given the different thermal and power envelopes.
        
           | waheoo wrote:
           | It's about knowing when you buy a "new laptop" in the store
           | that it has current gen chips.
           | 
           | The amount of times I find old gen Mac's sold at new gen Mac
           | prices in stores is disturbing.
        
             | soperj wrote:
             | Didn't most new gen Mac's have old cpus in them anyway? I
             | remember the Air going like 5 years or something without a
             | refresh.
        
           | kllrnohj wrote:
           | The difference in thermals and power really just impacts
           | boost clocks. It's not a very significant difference
           | otherwise, at least not in the CPU space and especially not
           | in single-core performance.
           | 
           | A max-draw zen3 desktop core is only 20w. You'll see that in
           | these laptops, or near enough to make no difference.
        
       | slezyr wrote:
       | There are just two models with AMD and HiDPI displays: Microsoft
       | Surface Laptop 3, Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. It seems that the laptop
       | market simply ignores AMD's mobile CPUs for middle-, high- end
       | laptops.
        
         | agloeregrets wrote:
         | This probably comes off way off base but it's worth mentioning
         | that Apple's new MacBooks also offer greater perfromance than
         | most Ryzen 4000 chips (faster than all in single core, faster
         | than most in multi) while offering pretty HiDPI stuff. Granted
         | no Linux or W10. So the market clearly is there for them to
         | hit.
        
         | tw04 wrote:
         | And you can write off the Surface because it's a 3000 series
         | chip which was... not good.
         | 
         | At least this generation seems to have far more OEM wins which
         | will hopefully result in better displays.
        
         | danieldk wrote:
         | Not HiDPI, but the ThinkPad T14 AMD is a pretty good business
         | laptop with AMD Ryzen 7 Pro. Also with extensible memory and
         | replaceable NVMe SSD as a cherry on top. There is also the less
         | extendable but slimmer T14s.
         | 
         | Source: I own a T14 AMD. I am pretty happy with it after 13
         | years of MacBooks and returning a MacBook Air M1. With 8 cores
         | it's fast for development and the fan is not very loud (nowhere
         | near as loud as Intel MacBooks),
        
           | pimeys wrote:
           | How is Linux with it now in 2021. I'm currently not needing a
           | new laptop, having the T25 and just replaced a US keyboard to
           | it, it'll be great for the next 10-15 years.
           | 
           | But, if I need a laptop from the company, I'd definitely look
           | into the AMD series of ThinkPads, if I could get a good Arch
           | Linux experience with it.
        
             | forty wrote:
             | With a 5.10 kernel, everything works perfectly fine (at
             | least everything I use). Note that I use Debian bullseye.
             | 
             | It's much much less noisy that my work laptop T480s. The
             | fans don't run too often, and I find them very discreet.
        
           | deckard1 wrote:
           | I recently received the ThinkPad P14s AMD (same as T14) that
           | I ordered back in November. I only paid about $800 US for
           | this, with some corporate discounts that most people can
           | easily find. Comparing it to my Macbook, I'm pleasantly
           | surprised. It's only 1080p, but I really don't mind it at all
           | because it's matte instead of glossy. And the keyboard is
           | pure bliss compared to just about anything.
           | 
           | > with extensible memory and replaceable NVMe SSD
           | 
           | Not only that, but there is a WWAN slot that you can add an
           | additional NVMe drive to. You can find 512GB 2242 form factor
           | drives on AliExpress for about $50. There are 1GB ones for
           | about $100. That's my current experiment. Hoping to dual boot
           | Windows and Linux.
           | 
           | But this thing has an _ethernet_ port. In 2021. And all the
           | other ports you 'll ever need. Mine came with an Intel Wi-Fi
           | 6 card installed in a slot which would appear can be upgraded
           | or replaced as well. Just insane utility. I even like the
           | soft feel of the case more than the cold aluminum of the
           | Macbook.
        
           | kilburn wrote:
           | Lucky you, but they don't want my money.
           | 
           | Lenovo does not sell ANY AMD-equipped Thinkpad in Spain as of
           | right now because they are all sold out [1]. The Ryzen 7
           | version in particular was sold out a mere 1 week after launch
           | and hasn't been available since.
           | 
           | To add insult to injury, they have announced 5 new thinkpads
           | (X1 Titanium Yoga, X12 Detachable, X1 Yoga Gen6, X1 Nano, X1
           | Carbon Gen9) but all of them are intel-based. [2]
           | 
           | [1] https://www.lenovo.com/es/es/laptops/c/LAPTOPS#view-all
           | 
           | [2] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/events/ces/products#laptops
        
             | danieldk wrote:
             | _Lucky you, but they don 't want my money. Lenovo does not
             | sell ANY AMD-equipped Thinkpad in Spain_
             | 
             | That's frustrating. I am in the Netherlands and when I
             | decided to buy it, I picked it up the next day. It's also
             | in stock now:
             | 
             | https://www.coolblue.nl/product/862275/lenovo-
             | thinkpad-t14-2...
             | 
             | Interestingly, it's now 60 Euro more expensive than when I
             | bought it. I guess the new lockdown drives prices up due to
             | people working from home?
        
         | u678u wrote:
         | I think its more they're in short supply. You look at Thinkpad
         | AMD laptops and many are one month+ wait times.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | I'm wondering at this point whether it's TSMC supply
         | constraints. Intel still wins in sheer number of fabs producing
         | their product. If you can't actually get enough AMD chips to
         | ship your laptop...
        
           | NewLogic wrote:
           | Paper launches everywhere, as far as the eye can see.
        
         | llampx wrote:
         | > It seems that the laptop market simply ignores AMD's mobile
         | CPUs for middle-, high- end laptops.
         | 
         | It seems that's changing from this year's lineup, looking at
         | Asus and Acer and Lenovo. Intel partners like Dell are not in
         | my buying list.
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | Yeah I think the OEM landscape is rapidly evolving for AMD.
           | 
           | Before Ryzen 4000 / 2020, you could pretty much only get
           | budget laptops with relatively cheap chassis, abysmal screens
           | (1366x768!), low-end graphics, spinning disk HDD, that sort
           | of thing.
           | 
           | Starting in 2020 Ryzen 4000 you started to get reasonably
           | good 1080p Ryzen laptops, but they seemed quite artificially
           | limited to RTX 2060, rarely over 300 nits, often 16GB or
           | lower, no more than 144Hz in most cases. If you'd shuffle
           | over to Intel, you'd find RTX 2080, 500 nits, 32GB, 300Hz
           | screens, and QHD/4K.
           | 
           | Already in 2021 we're seeing (announced) QHD screens, up to
           | 360Hz, RTX 3080, 32GB.
           | 
           | (I've been looking for high refresh and prefer gaming
           | laptops, so I'm less clear on what's available in business
           | laptops with 4K, etc.)
        
             | posguy wrote:
             | Even during the Ryzen 2000 generation you could find
             | reasonably priced laptops with 1080p screens, though the
             | compromise would be a tiny SSD or spinning rust.
        
       | ylere wrote:
       | I really hope there will be more high quality non gaming laptops
       | with good availability. Especially in the upper tier it seems
       | most manufacturers kept their Intel designs (not sure if due to
       | availability, costs of adapting to the AMD platform, pressure by
       | Intel or a combination of these).
        
         | acomjean wrote:
         | Based on some recent "previews" it seems that 2021 will have a
         | lot more amd laptops.
         | 
         | Dave2d previewed a pile of asus ones recently . Some are gaming
         | but lots are multi use
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/_o-D-bgXAKM
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | In January 2020 at CES, Lisa Su said AMD had 100+ laptop
           | design wins. This year she said they had 150+.
           | 
           | I am not sure how this compares to Intel, but I saw two
           | slides for Intel's Tiger Lake and Rocket Lake, and one said
           | 40+ design wins. The other said 40+ refreshed designs.
        
             | rowanG077 wrote:
             | TBH. The amount doesn't matter. It's about the quality.
             | There isn't a single Ryzen 4000 laptop that I want to buy
             | because all of them either have:
             | 
             | 1. Shit screen.
             | 
             | 2. Are not 13 inch
             | 
             | I would pay premium for a Ryzen 5800u dell XPS.
        
               | neogodless wrote:
               | Oh I get that! I have different preferences (think HP
               | Omen 15, Lenovo Legion 5) but those weren't available at
               | a good price until late summer (and really only when
               | sales occurred). Anyone wanting QHD or 4K was out of luck
               | last year. Wanting Ryzen but also wanting a 500-nit
               | screen is not a great feeling.
               | 
               | I'm actually selling my HP Omen 15 to my brother because
               | I discovered it uses PWM for brightness, and I have a
               | very high sensitivity - if I turn brightness down from
               | 100% I get a headache within an hour or two. (I mostly
               | prefer 100% brightness but when on battery I'd like to
               | turn it down.)
               | 
               | Fingers crossed 2021 is a big improvement from 2020 for
               | Ryzen laptops.
        
               | noir_lord wrote:
               | Bought the missus the Zenbook with the 4700U in for xmas,
               | that has a nice enough screen and it absolutely crushes
               | my thinkpad.                   i7-7700HQ passmark  6988
               | Ryzen 4700U passmark  13801         Ryzen 2700X (my
               | desktop)  17618
               | 
               | The 4800U actually outscores my 2700X desktop.
               | 
               | My next desktop (5950X) would score 45970.
               | 
               | We live in interesting times in the CPU world.
               | 
               | She uses it for youtube.
               | 
               | It is however _screaming_ fast for a laptop.
        
               | rowanG077 wrote:
               | FHD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 screen. And get this. It DOES NOT
               | have an audio jack. I thought I was being trolled at
               | first.
        
               | Wafje wrote:
               | I am in the same boat. Lets hope this year brings some
               | quality 15inch+ 19:10+ Ryzen Laptops.
        
       | Tsarbomb wrote:
       | The crunch for space at TSMC must be much worse than we realize
       | for AMD to still use Vega which is made at GlobalFoundries.
       | 
       | With that said, this is some impressive logistical and supply
       | chain juggling on AMDs part.
        
         | cbozeman wrote:
         | Your initial idea is still correct though, the crunch for space
         | at TSMC is truly awful.
        
         | ChuckNorris89 wrote:
         | Zen3 and Zen2 are monolithic. The Vega GPU is on the same die
         | as the CPU, not a separately fabbed part.
        
           | Tsarbomb wrote:
           | Oh damn you are correct. Okay, then I don't understand the
           | continued use of Vega unless RDNA2 doesn't scale well to low
           | voltage yet.
        
             | enragedcacti wrote:
             | My understanding is that there is little benefit in
             | upgrading the iGPU to RDNA2 because of the bandwidth
             | limitations imposed by sharing ddr4 with the CPU. We should
             | see some real improvements in iPGU performance once ddr5
             | rolls out late 2021/early 2022.
        
             | kllrnohj wrote:
             | Probably just a no need type of thing. The Vega 8 is plenty
             | fine for normal desktop usage, and they already had it
             | integrated into Zen2. So just plop in the new Zen3 CPU and
             | call it a day?
             | 
             | Which is for comparison basically what they did on the
             | desktop side. The Ryzen 5000 desktop CPUs use the exact
             | same IO die as the Ryzen 3000 line.
        
             | pedrocr wrote:
             | Maybe they skipped 7nm and are going straight to 5nm for
             | RDNA2 in CPUs. Zen4 based mobile chips will probably be a
             | very interesting release.
        
       | flatiron wrote:
       | Is it just me or does it feel like in the past 5-7 years it
       | doesn't really make that much of a difference when new CPUs come
       | out? My laptop is a i7-4800MQ and it still feels incredibly
       | snappy. Anything I need to do for work I just farm out to AWS.
       | All of my gaming is on Stadia. Personally its just easier for me
       | to use the cloud for all of these things instead of cycling
       | through devices all the time.
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | It's not just you. CPUs have stagnated massively.
         | 
         | Intel CPUs still give 16 PCI lanes on the consumer chips,
         | despite any modern graphics card using that entirely.
         | 
         | (Meaning your nvme drives all compete somewhat).
         | 
         | Compared to phones which have real, huge, generational
         | improvements every couple of years which is sometimes jarring.
         | 
         | However, this is different.
         | 
         | AMDs previous Ryzen laptop line performed incredibly well, both
         | in power consumption (which equates to battery life) and
         | thermal envelope (which, also equates to battery life) while
         | also delivering jaw dropping performance.
         | 
         | I am a "devops" and farm out a lot of compute to the cloud, but
         | that comes at a cost (iteration times, price, bandwidth, not
         | all flows can be remote). And gaming does too (stadia has mixed
         | results- though I am a fan).
         | 
         | I would posit that your workflow has become remote likely
         | _because_ of this stagnation.
        
         | blackhaz wrote:
         | I'm thinking of upgrading my i7-6600U 1st gen X1 Yoga. I'm
         | beginning to feel I need something faster.
        
           | bserge wrote:
           | Try undervolting and increasing the TDP with Throttlestop if
           | you run Windows and your board allows voltage control.
        
         | darkwater wrote:
         | Good for you if you are OK with not owning anything.
        
         | blackearl wrote:
         | I guess if you're not gaming on hardware. Although Steam just
         | released numbers and their base is bigger than ever, VR went up
         | a lot too. Can't do that without newer CPUs. Also means you're
         | handcuffed to the internet to do anything.
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | This is absolutely true in my case as well - on the
         | desktop/laptop. I use Fedora fwiw also so Windows/macOS slowing
         | down over time isn't applicable in my case.
         | 
         | That said, it is definitely not true in the case of server
         | hardware.
         | 
         | I have a home lab with a few R620s that have 2014 era Xeons in
         | them, and while there are a lot of parallel cores, single core
         | performance is abysmal compared to newer in-class hardware. For
         | CPU-bound single-threaded tasks, I actually spin up a Linode
         | and use that, rather than my on-prem hardware.
         | 
         | I would also note, I have only Intel. I'm going to build an AMD
         | rig here within the next few months though because I've had
         | numerous people tell me that it's noticeably better.
        
         | whatever1 wrote:
         | Your observation holds in desktop. In laptops, the thermals of
         | the 14nm generation were horrible, essentially you have to deal
         | with a whining fan or cpu throttling, or both. AMD's 4000
         | series has much improved upon this, and I assume that the
         | latest 10nm Intel will be much better. Performance-wise I agree
         | with you. Minor changes, probably more noticeable changes come
         | from the massive adoption of fast SSDs (1-2GB/s).
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | > Your observation holds in desktop.
           | 
           | > Minor changes
           | 
           | There have been absolutely _massive_ gains in desktop
           | performance, if you 're doing CPU bound tasks locally with
           | work can be split across cores the high number of cores that
           | are now available. The performance for my workloads is about
           | 4x what it was, from 7 years ago, for the same price.
        
         | llampx wrote:
         | > Is it just me or does it feel like in the past 5-7 years it
         | doesn't really make that much of a difference when new CPUs
         | come out? My laptop is a i7-4800MQ and it still feels
         | incredibly snappy
         | 
         | Your CPU is a 4C/8T 47W one. Not bad for being in a laptop. My
         | Thinkpad for example is a 2C/4T 25W one, from the 7xxxU series.
         | Which doesn't feel snappy at all.
         | 
         | Your CPU would probably be handily beat by a recent 4-core or
         | 6-core Ryzen, and it would be done so while outputting far less
         | heat and fan noise.
         | 
         | From geekbench you CPU has: 780 single-core, 2784 multi-core.
         | For a 25W Ryzen 5 4500U: 1079 single-core, 4260 multi-core.
        
         | leetcrew wrote:
         | if you don't do anything locally that benefits from significant
         | compute performance then, yeah, it's gonna look like the market
         | is standing still.
         | 
         | in reality, even in intel land much progress has been made in
         | single-thread performance and even more for multi-thread.
         | 
         | take a look at these benchmarks comparing a 4770k (4C/8T)
         | against a 10700k (8C/16T), both launching at $350:
         | https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2659?vs=2664
        
         | dvdkon wrote:
         | CPUs have been progressing faster in the last few years, mainly
         | because of AMD's Ryzen line. In laptops, 4 cores are now
         | standard, and if you can gen one of the AMD 4000U CPUs, 8 cores
         | with good single-threaded performance are relatively cheap.
         | Same thing on desktop, you can get 20%+ more performance by
         | upgrading the CPU.
         | 
         | Sure, it's not the same as 486 vs Pentium, but the Ivy Bridge-
         | era CPUs that were used for such a long time are now equivalent
         | to low-end CPUs, it's no longer universally better to get an
         | old i7 vs a new i5. That said, if you're happy, there's no
         | reason to upgrade.
        
           | duffyjp wrote:
           | I'm in the process of returning an i3-9100 based Dell
           | Precision. It's a true 4 core and despite no hyper-threading
           | on the benchmark sites it beats my Haswell Xeon E3 in both
           | multi and single threaded tests. In reality however it's a
           | dog. It gets bogged down for the lightest workloads.
           | 
           | It's also using MORE electricity from the wall, as the old
           | PowerEdge T20 system was an ATX12VO design with a Xeon 1275L.
           | 
           | I'll extend your comment to say that old i7 is universally
           | better than new i3 (and I should have known better).
        
             | Synaesthesia wrote:
             | SSD performance is quite important for perceived speed.
        
           | fulafel wrote:
           | Core count > 2 doesn't help general responsiveness much with
           | the current state of software.
        
         | throwawayzRUU6f wrote:
         | They've progressed notably in terms of total draw power and
         | therefore battery life. Admittedly, not much of a difference
         | when it comes to the overall system responsiveness in basic
         | user workflows. Quoting from the article:
         | 
         | > Ryzen 7 5800U as its most efficient mobile processor to date,
         | citing 21.4 hours battery life on a 53 Wh battery during 1080p
         | video playback with Wi-Fi on, or 17.5 hours in MobileMark
         | 2018's battery life test
        
           | fctorial wrote:
           | > with Wi-Fi on
           | 
           | Does it matter? Doesn't wifi use specialized hardware?
        
             | HelloNurse wrote:
             | It's a honest endurance test. Moreover, turning on WiFi
             | implies a little CPU activity (some process is going to
             | keep an eye on it).
        
         | chrismorgan wrote:
         | The AMD Ryzen 7 4800H is around 35% faster than the Intel Core
         | i7-4800MQ at single-threaded workloads, up to being about 3x as
         | fast when loading all cores (e.g. compiling code). I gather
         | that the 5800H should be something like 25% faster again (~19%
         | IPC improvement, 5-10% clock speed bump). Compared to the
         | i7-4800MQ, that should be up to about 70% faster single-
         | threaded, and 4x as fast with all cores loaded.
         | 
         | That's H-class APUs, since you were talking about an Intel MQ.
         | The U-class APUs seem to be surprisingly close in performance,
         | mostly only 10-20% slower, with a third of the TDP.
        
         | jsight wrote:
         | I recently had my work laptop refreshed. The most noticable
         | differences are that the new one is thinner, lighter, and has
         | better battery life. Performance is roughly comparable and was
         | excellent with the 3 year old machine as well.
        
         | kevstev wrote:
         | I am still using a SandyBridge core i7 laptop from 2011, and my
         | only real gripe with it is its comically large bezel around the
         | monitor by today's standards. I can't game with it, but general
         | usage and development is not an issue.
         | 
         | I knew I was getting a big architectural jump when I bought the
         | Sandybridge, but I wouldn't have believed you if you told me
         | that in ten years I would still be happy with its performance
         | and still using it.
        
         | neogodless wrote:
         | As others pointed out, Zen 2 has upped the game. My Ryzen 7
         | 4800H benchmarks very neatly in line with my Ryzen 7 2700X
         | desktop (which is Zen+ so half a generation older.) Basically I
         | give up very little switching between my desktop and laptop. Up
         | until a few years ago I only ever gamed on my desktop but since
         | I got this laptop (80W GeForce GTX 1660 Ti) 1080p laptop gaming
         | is quite good.
         | 
         | Do you do PC gaming on Stadia or is that all Chromecast+TV type
         | gaming? Personally I'm much more of a PC gamer, and while I
         | don't have the experience to have an opinion on Stadia, I'm
         | currently assuming having good hardware locally is the better
         | experience.
        
           | ylere wrote:
           | In the posters case, going from their i7-4800mq to a Ryzen
           | 5800u, would result in roughly +50% single core performance
           | while also doubling the amount of cores, resulting in ~3x the
           | performance at 1/3 of the TDP.
        
         | Philip-J-Fry wrote:
         | Intel has really been holding a monopoly on CPUs. AMD's YOY
         | performance gains in Zen really are exceptional. Their mobile
         | processors blow intel out of the water. They are more efficient
         | and performant.
         | 
         | I still have a 6700k which is plenty fast enough for anything I
         | do. But in reality it's quickly getting outpaced by Zen. The
         | only reason Intel has been getting faster in the past few years
         | is because of Zen and now Intel is shitting the bed.
         | 
         | The next few years, especially because of Apple Silicon, are
         | going to be really interesting for desktop processors. I think
         | we're going to see some really crazy innovations.
        
         | bserge wrote:
         | No, that's literally been the case with Intel processors.
         | Especially mobile ones. There's practically zero difference
         | between Haswell and Whiskey Lake (5 years newer) core
         | performance. Even Ice Lake was a minor improvement.
         | 
         | But the power consumption has dropped, heat generation has
         | dropped (a lot of it because they abandoned FIVR), IGP
         | performance has increased and they started supporting DDR4, so
         | _overall_ performance has increased.
         | 
         | I personally lament the death of the mobile socket. I hope AMD
         | still has socketed mobile processors, but I doubt it. They're
         | only useful for people who want to upgrade or fix their laptops
         | themselves, people who want to resell their old laptop/parts,
         | and the environment.
        
         | gameswithgo wrote:
         | Yes, cpu performance no longer increasing by factors of 2 with
         | new generations, so a CPU stays relevant for a lot longer,
         | unless you have compute heavy jobs that can leverage the new
         | core counts. (compilation sometimes fits that description)
        
           | hmottestad wrote:
           | It's been quite a few years since we had a 2x improvement
           | between generations. I get a feeling it's probably 5-10 years
           | ago.
        
             | gameswithgo wrote:
             | yes, that is why the person I replied to can have an old
             | cpu and it is still fine today.
        
           | nicoburns wrote:
           | Anyone multitasking can use the core counts. I feel like 2 ->
           | 4 cores will make a difference for most users. 4 -> 8 for
           | heavy users like developers.
        
             | gameswithgo wrote:
             | Yes, but 4 cores has been the standard for a long time
             | already. Recently thanks to AMD heavy users often are
             | grabbing 8, 12, 16 or more.
        
               | qayxc wrote:
               | You wish! Intel only very recently (e.g. 3 years ago)
               | brought 4 cores to mainstream in the mobile segment.
               | 
               | Low power mobile chips were dual core until Q3 2017 when
               | Kaby Lake refresh was released and brought 4 cores to the
               | i5 and i7 line-up. Even then, entry level and mainstream
               | versions (i3 in particular) remained dual core configs.
        
               | nicoburns wrote:
               | Only the very top end of laptop CPUs had 4 cores until
               | recently. Certainly they weren't mainstream 5-7 years
               | ago.
        
               | findthewords wrote:
               | I have a cheap Thinkpad E-series from 2012 with Intel
               | i7-3612QM 4c/8t CPU. At the time it cost a third less
               | than a Macbook. As far as price was concerned it was
               | mainstream.
        
           | technofiend wrote:
           | I'll be honest - I doubt it qualifies as compute heavy, but
           | I'm definitely fantasizing about getting some of these new
           | CPUs in a firewall appliance. Some NICs offer various
           | offloading options but according to PFSense's website they
           | caution users that support is mixed at best. Then there's VPN
           | acceleration: there are no AES-NI-like CPU instructions to
           | accelerate Wireguard's crypto choices.
           | 
           | Not to mention network speeds even at the consumer end are
           | slowly increasing. So having enough beef to push 1 gigabit
           | NICs is good but planning for the future and adding 2.5 gb or
           | higher is better. And finally having enough compute to layer
           | fq_codel or better on top along with some monitoring all adds
           | up.
           | 
           | Like a lot of projects the demand will act like a gas and
           | fill whatever volume is given to it. Given more compute I'll
           | find a way to use it. :-)
        
         | throwawaytolk wrote:
         | This is exactly my observation.
         | 
         | I ran a 4700mq from when it came out. I waited to a similar
         | processor to come out that was better. took a long while and I
         | upgraded to an 8750h because it had more cores and was being
         | sold in 500-600$ machines. There is now an 8 core chip of the
         | same quality that i the next to most recent intel generation,
         | this will be my next upgrade. My 4700mq machine runs win10 and
         | ubuntu linux just fine. I dont do heavy compute work on it
         | anymore, but I did back when it was current.
        
       | hehehaha wrote:
       | Think AMD was too slow to capitalize on Intel's mistakes and
       | arrived a year too late. I expect them to lose momentum from here
       | on out.
        
         | cbozeman wrote:
         | Based on what.
         | 
         | Lay out your case. Anyone can make a "hot take". Not anyone can
         | back it up.
        
       | ginko wrote:
       | Meanwhile I still have problems getting my hands on a mini-pc
       | with a Ryzen 4000 mobile APU.
        
         | slantyyz wrote:
         | If you're not dead set on the mobile chip, Lenovo makes a
         | ThinkCenter M75q Tiny Gen2 with a Ryzen 4750GE [1], although
         | the ship dates look ridiculously far out at 5 weeks or more.
         | 
         | I just ordered the larger SFF model (M75s Gen 2) this week with
         | a Ryzen 7 4750G and it is scheduled to arrive within 14d.
         | 
         | MSRP is pricey, but in Canada, I was able to score mine for
         | less than half of MSRP due to a sale and some other promos.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops-and-all-in-
         | ones/thinkc...
        
         | hocuspocus wrote:
         | I assume they cannot even supply enough parts to fill the
         | demand from laptop OEMs .
         | 
         | I also wish I could replace my desktop PC with an H-class CPU
         | setup. The iGPU is enough for my needs, but I could definitely
         | use the 8C/16T in a reasonable power envelope. Intel might do
         | it, but it's probably be going to be a very expensive NUC
         | platform targeted at gamers that also want a dGPU. In the end
         | it's cheaper and easier to build a mini-ITX setup using desktop
         | parts...
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | ncmncm wrote:
       | I am seeing hints that Ryzen 5000 RDRAND is busted again, on e.g.
       | systemd and wireguard lists. Is it confusion, or is there really
       | a problem?
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-15 23:02 UTC)