I was looking to buy a Framework 13 for the new college semester and I ran into a small concern about a use case. I’m a part of a research project where we’re using the Unity game engine for rapid prototyping and development. Would the Ryzen AI7 be a good option for a light Unity project or will I have to bite the bullet with the Framework 16?
The AI 300 makes a decent gaming machine, so it’s probably fine, but the 16 is better. You’ll have to put some numbers on your requirements for anyone to tell you if the 13” is good enough.
If you select 13”, you’ll need to consider the screen you want: the high res is soooo nice for graphics/editing… but it comes with a frame rate penalty.
We’re not doing any serious shader work so I’m ok with a 30-60fps frame target for previewing the build. I was already going to option for the better screen for the 120hz as 60hz is kind of hard to use after using 120hz display on my current laptop.
If doing a research project involving a high demand graphics engine a laptop is not really the right answer. Pick any Framework laptop desired and get an external GPU and monitor. The model can still be shown/demonstrated; the heavy lifting though can be done with the external GPU and be seen better with a nicer monitor. The eyes will thank you later.
For Unity development the GPU shouldn’t really matter that much except for a few specific cases, working with shaders in particular. (unless you use other applications like Blender in your workflow, and even then it depends on the renderer and features used). Rule of thumb: your PC needs to be able to run what you’re making, plus a little extra.
I think the AI 7 should be fine, it’s comparable to mid-range desktop CPUs from 3 years ago.
I would however recommend getting plenty of RAM, 32 or 64GB.
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