I am very new and really interested in buying a framework laptop, but my current laptop is my all inclusive computer which means also gaming (has a 2060 MAX-Q in it, older zephyrus g14). I love everything about the 13in and want to get it with the Ryzen 7 processor, but I know most/all eGPUs use thunderbolt 4. Is there any way that one could work on the 13in with an AMD motherboard? Thank you all for whatever you are able to provide, hope to be an owner soon regardless of the outcome of this.
You can see what people are using for eGPU setups here:
I currently have a Razor Core X and amd-radeon-rx-6600.
Not completely plug & play (I need to run a script before unplugging) but that’s fine for me.
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For the AMD motherboard, Framework has mentioned that an eGPU will work (link here: Announcing the Framework Laptop 13 powered by AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series Processors (Really this time)). Depending on its implementation, USB 4 can function identically to Thunderbolt 4 (Thunderbolt is just a certification standard by Intel). Your experience with it will vary depending on what OS and eGPU enclosure you’re using. I use a i5 1240p with a GTX 1080 in a Razer Core X on Windows 11. Sometimes, it immediately picks up when I’ve plugged in the eGPU and will automatically switch over. Other times, I’ll have to enable the eGPU through device manager but overall, it works great.
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Has anyone that has received their laptops tried this yet? I’m kind of banking on this setup and would like to know if it works.
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Mine has been working great with my 3070Ti in a Razer Core X in Windows at least. Fedora doesn’t like the multiple displays at the moment and crashes when I try to rotate one.
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So I am looking around and I am struggling to find information on whether the Thunderbolt 3 compatible EGPU’s will be compatible with the Framework 13 AMD Ryzen 7040 series mainboards, as I see Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 are the only ports that support PCIe data transfer, even though USB 4 has the bandwidth and data transfer rates for something like an EGPU. I know Intel licenses the Thunderbolt port types, but most manufacturers don’t implement Thunderbolt 4 into compatible laptops according to this blog.
Has anyone successfully used any external cards on the AMD Frameworks yet, and if so what components/hardware are in the setup?
I have also found this article from Framework detailing port support for TB/USB 4 indicating that the ports should support the EGPU, but what I also don’t know is whether FW’s AMD systems will have implemented TB3/4 across the TB/USB 4 capable ports.
Since the Framework Laptops with 11th Gen Intel Core processors we launched in 2021, we’ve built in all of the necessary hardware (retimers, USB-PD controllers, power circuitry, and connectors) to be able to support both USB4 and Thunderbolt 4, and have been working through the certification process since. In practice, we’ve seen community members using Thunderbolt and USB4 docks and eGPU enclosures successfully anyway, but we wanted to be sure to make support official.
Additionally, are there any charts or documents that someone can provide on the FW 13 ports and specs, or USB types and specs?
I found this chart for an easy overview of some of the differences in protocols/port types.
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And this is on an AMD Ryzen series FW13? If so that is great news!
I see it is, thanks for the community activity!
I see at least one person has had some success here:
https://community.frame.work/t/thunderbolt-egpu-on-ryzen-7840u/37836/2
Thanks @TossedTripod645
This is specifically for the Ryzen 7040 Frameworks. Basically you can only use a egpu on the back ports, not the front ones.
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Keep in mind this lists the MINIMUM capabilities and not the possible ones.
The USB4 interfaces in the amd chipset have the full 40Gbit bandwidth, 1 displayport channel and pcie tunneling, the one in the m1/m2 macbook chips do so too. Thunderbolt networking should work with USB4 but afaik is currently a bit borked driver wise on linux.
One issue between TB4 and usb4 is the 1vs2 display-port channels but that doesn’t really matter for egpus.
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That’s… not wrong but potentially misleading.
“Thunderbolt 3” and “Thunderbolt 4” are the only trademarks that positively guarantee that a given port supports PCIe connectivity (among other functions), because you can get your product certified as “USB” while supporting a fairly small subset of all available features. USB4 with all optional features is essentially a superset of TB3, as far as I can tell; I’m not so clear on TB4.
The thing is, Intel won’t let you use “Thunderbolt” branding unless you’re using their chips (or are Apple, it seems?), even if everything works as required, so you’re very unlikely to see it on an AMD machine. Given Framework has had to do additional work for a TB certification on an Intel laptop, the test suite Intel uses does seem to be more stringent than the USB one even if the spec requirements are the same, but the tests are under NDA, so we have no idea what the differences are.
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USB4 is based on TB3 (At least for the transport layer, the stuff above is a bit more different), TB4 is basically USB4 with everything optional mandatory.
DP2.0 Is also based on the TB3 transport layer, seems like it is pretty good and now freely available to everyone.
Technically it’s unless you got their cert but you tend to only get those with their chips XD
Apple didn’t bother to certify the USB4 on the m1/m2 chips (not that they’d pass without a rule change, they only got one DP channel like the USB4 in the amd chips)
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Sorry if this is too old of a post, and you may have tried it yourself already, but I can confirm that I’m able to use my AMD Framework 13, and plug in a Razor Core X with a 3090. I was able to pass it through to Windows Subsystem for Linux running Ubuntu and get GPU accelerated Ollama LLM usage (running Ollama and OpenWebUI in a docker container under WSL). It worked pretty well to have the 24GB of GPU RAM for fast responses.
My only issue is that I have to plug it in after the system is booted and unplug before hibernating, otherwise it seems to trip the bitlocker and I have to look up and type a long key to boot into Windows 11. If I boot it plugged in and unlock with bitlocker then take my laptop somewhere without the eGPU and reboot, the bitlocker gets reset to need the key again. It’s a little frustrating that I can’t whitelist both configurations.
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