Hi,
I just joined, I love your laptops. I’d like to get one myself but have some questions regarding performance options that I do not see. It’s not a deal breaker, just more of a high-end enthusiast variant question.
Okay, I’m going to get blasted for this. Just a disclaimer before my comment, I do want to make it clear that I am not promoting nor have been paid by anybody regarding the below statement:
I did buy an alienware laptop m18 r1 which does have the AMD 7945HX and Radeon 7900m… I can say this laptop is not slow for what it is. That was a 2023 model no longer in production as to not disrupt Framework laptop options. I only brought that up as it is technically possible to make a powerful laptop that is small form factor. I did install Linux (will not mention distro due to very strong opinions). I run Windows 11 in a VM. If I need to, I dual boot two windows 11 directly, but that’s not too often. I did promise myself several years ago I would never buy another one since my 2016 era 17r4 was a complete piece of crap. They did offer all AMD with the power I wanted. 30-day return policy came and gone.
Now that I stated that, I am looking for a second slightly smaller laptop for traveling and having that extra CPU and GPU power would be awesome. I do understand thermal and power delivery complexities with the above mentioned CPU and GPU combo. It would be nice to see maybe something even faster for the super enthusiast.
I will check out the performance numbers, price looks good. I am definitely interested.
The 7945hx is actually a soldered variant of the desktop 7950x.
This is significant because desktop CPUs are designed for maximum CPU performance at a cheap price. Laptop CPUs (like what Framework currently offers) on the other hand are designed for a good balanced between performance, price, battery life, cooling requirements, and features (such as a decent iGPU, better IO capabilities, and other things like the NPU).
The 7945hx has only 22% higher rated default power than the Framework Laptop 16’s current cooling system is designed for so it could potentially work with some tweaks, however most laptops with the 7945hx actually crank power much higher. At the rated default power the 7945hx is only around 50% faster than Framework’s current offerings.
IMO the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (the successor to Framework’s current offerings) would make more sense as it achieves multi-core performance roughly halfway between Framework’s current offerings and the 7945hx (when the 7945hx is running at rated default power, many brands crank it higher) and doesn’t have the downsides of the 7945hx. I wouldn’t be surprised if Framework is already working on that (although nothing has been announced).
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Thank you for that info. I did not realize 7945hx was actually a desktop processor. Though it sure behaves like one.
I believe JayzTwoCents has a FrameWork laptop for his daily driver. I was always curious what laptop he had and I did not recognize the insignia on his lid. Now I know!
Thank you, the 16 is really nice. I do like the balanced power to operate on battery. The beast I have now doesn’t run so good on battery. Lol