Gaming on the Framework Laptop 13

[Michael_Wu]

@Michael_Wu

@Allenx51

TLDR; AWD 13 owners, please break the silence!

Here’s some anecdata!

Game: Halo Infinite
FPS: 60,
Settings: all low, with dynamic resolution
Resolution: 3440x1440
Framework Specs: AMD 7840U, 2x32GB @ 5600MT/s
Notes: Fedora and Windows

Game: Ghostrunner 1 full play through (tried a little bit of Ghostrunner 2, seemed similar)
FPS: ~40 low, average around 60FPS,
Settings: IIRC medium?, with AMD FSR
Resolution: 3440x1440
Framework Specs: AMD 7840U, 2x32GB @ 5600MT/s
Notes: I played through the entire game on Fedora/Sway. If I changed the graphics to low, I’d get ~70-90 FPS.

Game: Switch emulation on Yuzu and Ryujinx (Zelda BoTW and Super Smash Bros Ultimate)
FPS: 30 (I haven’t tried 60FPS mods)
Settings: -
Resolution: -
Framework Specs: AMD 7840U, 2x32GB @ 5600MT/s
Notes: Fedora. No frame dips on Yuzu (some on Ryujinx).

Most if not all games are playable imo, where as before on my i7-1165G7 iGPU they were not.

More details below:

@Michael_Wu

I tried gaming for a bit, and they ran surprisingly to shockingly well (especially with AMD FSR upscaling to a 3440x1440@60Hz monitor; it’s a gamechanger, pun intended. I consider 60FPS+ “playable”). I tried Halo Infinite multiplayer (big team battle), Ghostrunner 1 (played through the entire game) and 2, Switch emulation.

Performance was similar on both Fedora and Windows. It looks like it may be possible to squeeze out more performance, but I’m over the moon with how an “ultraportable” like this performs (reminds me of my old Alienware m11x, but vastly better in every way except no RGB ), especially since these games wouldn’t really be playable on my Framework 11th gen i7-1165G7 Intel Xe. I think I could play basically any game with the AMD 7840U decently on the go. Though now it also gseems possible with the Intel 14th gen/Meteor Lake iGPU!

I don’t really game much nowadays and am comparing with my dying decade old overclocked Intel i5-2500K/Nvidia GTX 970.

Heck, Halo Infinite was running better on my 7840U than on that. Granted, it wasn’t optimized and had issues on on the 970 around the November 2021 release date, and I think the i5-2500K was the bottleneck. The 7840U CPU is way faster.

From what I’ve researched, performance of the 780M is about at the level of GTX 1050 Ti to GTX 1060. Compared to my desktop GTX 970 (with the possibly bottlenecking i5-2500K), IIRC Hitman 2016 at 3440x1440 would get ~60FPS, where as on the AMD 7840U it’d get around 30FPS. However, turning on FSR or the equivalent makes it (and other games) perfectly playable at 60FPS+, imo.

Here’s an excellent thread full of gaming/GPU benchmarks (I was getting similar performance):

As anyone does with a new computer, I decided to benchmark mine. Though, I went a little overboard and decided to grab a new NVMe drive, installed tiny11, and benchmarked it. I wanted to share benchmarks for others wanting to get an idea of how it performs. With all of this, I noticed, this CPU/iGPU combo is very good at compute. 3DMark 3DMark, is very focused on gaming, so it’s not really representative of compute. Nor is it very accurate, however it gives some reference, so I wasted too much…

Regarding temperatures, per that same thread post:

Anyways, less about gaming performance and more about temps: it looked like temps were capping at ~80C GPU and a bit less on CPU. Fans were max, and fairly loud but not annoying and the chassis got hot, but never uncomfortably hot to use. I’m also wary of a hot chassis that would degrade battery longevity. Gaming on just the built-in keyboard and external mouse was totally fine!