The modern AMD CPUs can actually run with a lot less power than people expect… We could eventually get some good embedded engineers to help (like the ones working on Project X - coreboot for AMD) optimize the platform to give M1s a run for their money!
Whether AMD processors are truly superior to Intel ones it’s something I can not be sure of; but I’m more than sure that most of the demands for AMD CPU is driven by the hype fueled by many Youtube influencers, showing results from synthetic benchmarks and praising an advantage of a few seconds on certain operations or a few Frame per Seconds in some games; and, since they’re synthetic benchmarks, they are also usually run in ideal conditions. My point, here, is that in real life the differences between AMD and Intel can be marginal, if noticeable; we can argue that, perhaps, the AMD CPUs are much more power-efficient on laptops but, again, this is based on benchmarks, and real life might be a little bit different. I’d really, really like to see some indepenedent scientific tests on this subject. But I’m afraid that it’s too marketing-driven.
I can only see a true objective advantage by AMD over Intel: the AM4 socket spans across multiple generations of their CPUs, and there is a great backward and forward compatibility with motherboards; but we’re talking about desktop, and it goes without saying that in the laptops world it’s a totally different story…
I think that people is basing their ideas on someone else’s opinion rather than on objective and reputable facts.
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I would like to raise a counterpoint in specific to the 6000 lineup just announced.
In the lower end power draw area, they beat out the Intel 12th gen mobile processors by about a minute in the BMW Blender render. At the top end, 60W+, they do fall to Intel, but performance per watt they’re FAR better than Intel’s offerings.
I’d be interested to see what happens for a next gen upgrade.
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That’s my point: does your day-to-day workflow involve rendering a fancy car on a 3D software? If it does, well, you may need a much powerful device than an APU on a tiny and power-efficient laptop, possibly with many more cores, a decent power supply, fast RAM and a top-tier graphics card; or, if you really need a laptop to handle such workflow, you may have to spend four of five times more than an average AMD-based laptop in order to get a decent amount of power that allows you to deal with day-to-day 3D rendering, 3D CAD and scientific calculations within a reasonable time and without overheating.
Then, my other point is: have you run a comparison? Have you tried to do whatever you need to do on an AMD 6000 series APU, and compare it to an Intel one? I haven’t, to be honest, so I can not say myself that AMD is better or more efficient than Intel, or the other way around… But I don’t like to hype over a few results from synthetic benchmarks that are shown on a Youtube video which is clearly geared towards advertising. I’d like, as said, a true scientific comparison. which you will never find on an advertising platform like Youtube.
Everybody should feel free to choose whatever they like, or whatever they can afford: if that’s AMD, then so be it… But you cannot demand that a company does what you want, instead of what they need to do; on a side note, that’s why I think that the Right to Repair movement is wrong when demands that Apple (and Dell, Lenovo, HP, Microsoft) change its mind and make all of its devices repairable if not upgradeable: the thing we should do is give a strong signal to the market, and stop buying their products, rather than forcing a company to do something that they will never do otherwise.
Finally: do we all really need 16 cores instead of 8? Do we all really need to render a BMW car in Blender one minute faster? I don’t, to be honest. I’d rather have laptop that promises (in theory) to be more future-proof, perhaps a bit worse in terms of value-per-power; but I will not give my money to Lenovo, HP or Dell only because I need (if I ever) to buy a laptop with an AMD CPU. And, to be completely honest, I was looking for a laptop with an AMD CPU, before choosing Framework, but only because I was curious to find out what all the fuss was about. Ultimately, the features that Framework already deliver are far more important, to me, than showing off the AMD logo on an glued-on laptop.
(NOTE: when I say “you” I don’t mean @Senhara personally… I mean a generic “you”!)
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It’s not, but I seriusly doubt that an APU can handle the real workflow of an Engineer doing 3D CAD day-by-day: you need some serious thermal-efficiency and heat management, a strong and stable power delivery system (either a battery or a robust PSU), and lots of other details geared towards hard computational workload.
Nothing that a lightweight commercial laptop can really give you.
If we’re only talking about gaming, though, I agree: that APU promises a lot, and the Steam Deck appears to deliver. But I haven’t put my hands on it (nor I will), so I can’t talk about something I don’t know firsthand.
This feels pretty irrelevant. This isn’t the most accurate for comparison as I don’t have comparable thermal load data, but my FW operates normally between 20-40W power draw during what games and loads I do run on it. Assuming comparable thermal loads, CPU-bound tasks will be far better on AMD’s newest gen. “What about GPU loads?” I hear you ask. The 6000 lineup uses RDNA2 graphics on mobile, and reaches stable 60 FPS in FH5 at low with their most performant CPUs. This is far better than Intel’s performant 12th gen processors, which clocks in at 40 FPS, far worse.
See what I’m getting at? AMD is better performance per watt. Let’s also bring up something important you haven’t considered. Mobile workstations. The Framework definitely feels oriented for Linux users, it’s better than System76’s offerings as far as I’m concerned, and it’s not whatever the hell Purism is doing. So Linux users gravitate to Framework, as it also fits within ideologies of Linux users generally. A good chunk of Linux users are also developers. Guess what compilers like? CPU power and cache. The 6000 lineup has both.
Afterthought I also came up with. Given that the CPU is more powerful performance per watt, we’ll see better battery life with users who run their systems in a power saving configuration, or just better battery life overall if they don’t absolutely slam their CPU. Is worth considering.
I never demanded Framework to make AMD processors, I’m fine with team red or blue, I don’t give a shit personally, I use what works for me. I also didn’t read the rest of the thread, I felt like I had to respond to your point. If other people here demanded for Framework to make AMD mainboards, then I am upset and do not agree with these demands, I feel the option should exist, it would be a bad idea not to offer both in the future from my perspective, especially with the market Framework targets.
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I’ve phrased the whole thing so badly that I’ve given you the impression that I was addressing you personally, but I was only talking about other people that demands such things. I’m truly sorry if I’ve made you thinking otherwise, that was not my intention.
We can argue as long as we want, but I won’t change your mind (and I don’t want to!) and you won’t convince me otherwise; let me just add that I don’t agree with you completely, but it’s just because I’m basically skeptical. I’d be glad to be proven wrong, believe me, but there is nothing that will change my mind other than a direct experience… And meanwhile, hope there are no hard feelings, despite my disagreement.
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For the first point, I’m just abrasive, I work on it but I’m incredibly vocal about my opinions on subjects. As for the second, I felt I had to make my stance clear to not give the wrong impression about my beliefs on the topic, I harbor no bad feelings, I just didn’t want to (in the perspective of others) give the impression I implicitly agreed with something that I do not believe.
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I love AMD a lot - my desktop is a 5800 with 128GB RAM in part because I didn’t want to play silly market segmentation games with IOMMU/VT-D. The company is great, and Lisa Su has some rare brilliance.
But she’s not the only business savvy tech director in the room.
It would be malpractice for a company to promise two platforms that support the same software library; for Framework to take their team and slice it in two in order to support both Intel and AMD fans would basically be doubling R&D and gain nothing in the process; sure, they might pickup some customers on the way, but boards would need to be designed and QA testing would need to happen. It’s not easy, either; different bit layouts means testing against different levels of impedance and crosstalk, further complicating designs.
Framework needs to sell a widespread accessible notebook computer that is, at the very least, credible. They need to make the case to businesses as much as to users that this computer is appealing to their needs.
We don’t know what FrameWork’s numbers look like, but possible scenarios might go like this:
- They announce AMD-exclusive as their next gen. Sales die as people anticipate; others go an by a Ryzen system today. Some decide that Ryzen doesn’t have efficiency cores and were gonna buy Intel anyway.
- They announce both Intel and AMD. R&D is divided and the budget is increased. 90% of systems are Intel purchases; lots of Ryzen stock fills a crate in the warehouse and is quietly discarded in a few years.
- They announc Intel and AMD. Both are equally successful - 50-50 split. In the end there’s no real gain as no more computers are sold than what would have been sold.
- AMD utterly knocks it out of the park, crushing Intel sales. A warehouse is filled with Intel parts. R&D budget was doubled, but returns don’t.
There are few scenarios where FW comes out ahead, but if we’re thinking optimistically then perhaps FW’s addition of Ryzen-based boards manage to sell as much as Intel boards and also increases install base, resulting in incredibly high revenue. This assumes every buyer is perfectly informed and also has FW on their radar, and they’ve managed to make inroads to business sales, beating Dell, Lenovo, and Apple. Microsoft, who despite having dedicated business account sales teams, evangelists and Azure integration built-in to Windows, has barely cracked it, and MS offers Ryzen and Intel options (so does Lenovo and HP, while Dell barely has Ryzen on consumer models).
Long story short, if I were an investor and saw MS’s own limitations at the hands of their partners, I’d be weary about Ryzen being a selling point to FW customers (even if I knew better).
I’m not hating on the idea of FW making a Ryzen system, and perhaps they could shake things up by giving the market something new. But the reality is that by now we’ve been clamoring for an AMD model with vague promises like “I’d buy one if you made it”, when a handful of direct and non-committed promises aren’t business building blocks. Some of us, myself included, are fans who totally would drop in a replacement board. But given that the install base for most FW devices is about one year old, they’re not even likely to sell a giant number of boards, and there would need to be a compelling reason to get us to remove our perfectly good boards as it is, leaving new customers to be the majority buyers in a split niche market.
TL;DR: I want it too, but as an outside speculator, I think it’s far more likely that we’ll get an Fn lock indicator than see an AMD-based FW board this soon. Maybe in 7K/8K generation, but not likely for 6K (or whatever the upcoming notebook gen is).
Addendum:
Any approach that FrameWork makes will ultimately also beg the question about what to do with discarded motherboards. If FW did offer a shiny, new motherboard, regardless of platform, I’d also fully expect to see a FrameWork CyberDock - a new home for old boards with modular slots for power and gfx output, as well as a means for mounting Wifi antennas (perhaps an “extended EGPU mount” that’s internally routed to a GPU slot might get attention, too!). Assuming that old boards would be thrown out seems wasteful, contrary to FW’s mission, but they likely won’t have much secondary market value on their own, and the third option - buying a new laptop shell - is just buying another laptop with more steps. The i5s and i7’s are fantastic boards in their own right, and there is value to a functional board that can easily handle the needs of SteamOS with the option of slotting in a 1050-2070 eGPU, getting locked into a RAID storage friendly case, and heck, even racked in and attached to an iSCSI array and low-key running a hundred Docker containers from a 1u chassis (lets get creative with the “Wifi” slot while we’re at it!).
I know that for me, each of those scenarios are pretty compelling. I rather like the idea of firing up a new dedicated Linux server that uses half the space of a typical rack system, and could even see “HomeRacks” being a thing, and that might be enticing to those otherwise less likely to upgrade so soon after receiving their FrameWork computers. The HomeRack idea wouldn’t even need an Fn Lock indicator!
I don’t mean to shift the conversation too far away from wanting a Ryzen drop-in, but I think it’s something to think about: how do we answer that question in a way that aligns with the overall company mission around sustainability?
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Same here! I haven’t felt any harshness on your side and I hope that I didn’t sound too harsh either; I only wanted to clear the air and make sure that we are on good terms. That’s all.
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That’s a thing for the future, I guess. Or, maybe, for a third party that might jump on this wagon, who knows? But I agree with the rest of what you said: there’s not much sense, from a business point of view, to diversify the product too much and/or too early.
TL;DR: I can only guess that Framework has decided to go with Intel initially only because they’re chasing the Thunderbolt certification, which not only is an huge sellpoint in its own, but also because Thunderbolt fits perfectly with the modular expansion cards concept.
Part of this ask should be working with Project X - "Project X" - Pure Open-Source Coreboot Support On AMD Zen - Phoronix
Project X & frame.work are aware of each other already - but perhaps they don’t realize the boon of working together. With the help of Project X I bet they could get Ryzen mobile CPUs running at even lower power without significant performance degradation. We could also see defaultly somewhat overclocked memory in laptops - and as we know already this is a massive benefit to Ryzen CPUs.
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Everyone just needs to give up on AMD at the moment. Allocation just isn’t there and what CPUs AMD can make are almost certainly going into Epyc and if not that then the bigger OEMs. There is a greater variety of Alder Lake platforms at much greater availability atm. Unfortunate, but true.
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This one comment above sums it all up; IMHO, I believe AMD might be a better option for a small company like Framework to be able to offer repeat, reusable, up-gradable options for years to come unlike Intel’s two generation support model.
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This only applies to desktop and not at all to laptop and frankly never will unless there is major change in how CPUs are designed
Whichever design offers the best balance of performance to efficiency should be the design chosen
Unfortunately, their lack of supply ensures sales go to intel despite their drawbacks
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Can’t AMD theoretically release a Version on their own scince evertything/most is open soucre?
Not that much is open source. AMD also is not a laptop manufacturer.
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I want an AMD Framework but I had a 32 core threadripper and my intel hexacore i7 single threaded performance was much better than my threadripper.
I write multithreaded software in Java, Rust and C, so I like having multiple cores and using multithreading as opposed to multiprocessing.
If you don’t care about performance per watt and care about overall performance, then you might choose Intel. I bought Intel twice lately. The CPUs are good and as a software engineer, the performance is acceptable.
The Ryzen is a good chip, but so is Intel. Intel was better than AMD for a long time and now it might be the other way around but it doesn’t mean that Intel is worthless. Try having perspective, it means life is easier.
I don’t understand the need to stick it to a company for not doing what you want. AMD is behind on laptop chips compared to Intel so that’s where the business is, it is what it is.
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Well, generally speaking this is a laptop, and one with notoriously poor battery life compared to its peers, so…
Honestly, I have no idea who has the better chip, I just have a personal vow not to give Intel a single penny after the way they handled the VISA situation (and honestly the fact VISA even shipped at all, you should not be making this kind of accident if you are a $140 billion company where if you fail, identity theft of your customers is extremely easy), their decision to place a fab in Arizona of all places, the like five different unpatchable hardware exploits found in their CPUs in 2021 alone, making their backdoor diagnostic for sysadmins to get into headless boxes into a necessary component for their low power YouTube watcher chip to even boot… and yeah, AMD is barely better, but they’re at least marginally better as a stopgap while the ARM or I guess RISC-V board is being worked on.
I assume you mean not buying a FW (at least, new) until AMD arrives. The answer for me, though others will likely be different, is that I actually really want to buy one and the Intel CPU and wireless card are the only two blockers. The company it is being stuck to is Intel, and Framework is unfortunate collateral. Maybe I’ll get an 11th gen off someone for now and just get parts from Framework.
Could you tell me what is wrong with the wireless card? Is it the vPro?
Yes I was aware of the poor battery life when I decided to buy a Framework, I want to support the idea of long term reuseable repairable hardware and I tend to be sat on the sofa or in a coffee shop with my laptop, so I don’t worry about battery life. As long as I can find a socket!
I am thinking of long term performance of the laptop, that’s important to me. I understand that AMD has superior multicore performance, but single threaded performance is important too. I’m not sure who is superior, I think AMD is better for multiple core, multithreaded performance and Intel is superior to AMD in single core performance. But I suspect it depends on model and workload.
The Ryzen supposedly outclasses Intel’s lineup for single core performance but I’ve not seen the benchmark confirmed anywhere else. So I’m not sure if it is actually true. (It was a user submitted benchmark)