They went through it on the desktop announcement part of the presentation. AMD engineers said not to use unsoldered RAM because it massively affected latency and errors if I remember rightly.
Could be, and if this is the future, go for it ![]()
If there are other reasons, they should talk with their customers about the problems.
They said the FW Desktop was not something originally on their roadmap. And listening to other things they said, the impression I got was, that part of the decision to make the Desktop was that it helped their relationship with AMD. AMD wanted someone to build a computer to show off their new chip, which is primarily useful for specific use cases needing the fastest RAM with extra wide channels. Someone else could have built the computer working closely with AMD or Framework could have. Such projects can have significant benefits beyond however much the Desktop sells (or doesn’t). Honestly, that’s what it sounded like the whole point was.
And considering that others have said that there’s just no suitable CPU or GPU that provides a proper upgrade for the FWL16 right now (again it needs a certain number of PCIe lanes), even if they didn’t do the FW Desktop or FWL12, it would have made no difference.
The reason for business decisions are not always going to be apparent. Simply because one may not have all the details, some of which may not be sharable publicly even if FW wanted to.
I believe they were talking about AMD saying that replaceable RAM didn’t look workable for that CPU at that point in time.
was in the desktop section of the last event iirc - https://www.youtube.com/live/-8k7jTF_JCg?si=6kM5I2J1HqOl4j7N
I think that, except choosing an Intel processor, the only current option for sidegrade+ would be the “new” Ryzen 200 series. They are basically a 3-5% “upgrade”, if you will, over the 8000 and 7000 series (via Passmark Software) and have 20 PCIe lanes.
But at this point, Intel might be a better choice. I doubt that AMD would like that, especially since the FW16 is one of like three (it’s more than that, but not a lot more) AMD Advantage laptops, but the Arc 140T is on average better than the 780m from those AMD chips. Also multi-core as well as single-core are about 5-10% better as well. It’s not a huge jump, but I think the best argument for 200H are the 8 native PCIe 5.0 lanes in addition to 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes. I think they could do something with that.
Last of all, I don’t think there is an ideal solution yet except better/more communication, for example what challenges they are facing and what they’re working on (and with AMD).