Hardware revision?

Hi,

I’m looking for my next laptop and i love the modularity of Framework.
However the CPU and GPU module is far from groundbreaking. I love AMD cpu and wonder if there is going to be a major upgrade to the series anytime in a near future.
I would be ok with AMD Ryzen™ 9 7945HX combined with even a 4080 or now with say 5070 or 5080 module.
Or why not the new AMD 9955HX. And for the 13 model something like AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 would be so cool! It has huge CPU and GPU power! Hell even the 16 could do better with this beast. There are so many great options on AMD side and a refresh would really lift up the brand i think.
I know these are very very new from CES but i already see other brands presenting the laptops on the webpages like Asus. I hope you guys can consider some update soon. Please if possible please share if there will be any update in 2025.

Other new CPU models:

You won’t get an official date until they are ready to release. Historically the refresh drops in June and starts shipping in August if I remember correctly. So gonna have to wait a couple of months, but I am pretty confident they will be incoming around those dates. I coming up on my third year with a 12th gen Intel, and depending on what is going to land I may jump over to AMD on the laptop.

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The 7945HX and 9955HX are physically chips that were designed for desktops but repurposed into a laptop form factor. Desktop CPUs are designed for maximum CPU performance at the lowest possible cost. However they sacrifice on other aspects such as power efficiency (battery life), iGPU performance, USB4 controllers, and other features (ex. NPU).

Framework could decide to offer a CPU like that, however I expect it would be lower priority than offering CPUs that were designed for laptops.

The Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 is rated for laptops with between 45W and 120W of thermal dissipation.

The current Framework Laptop 13 is rated at 30W thermal dissipation. So it would need to be increased by 50% to even reach the bottom of that range, and I expect that for the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 to really stretch its legs it likely needs a lot more than that.

Framework typically doesn’t share future plans until they are close to ready to launch a product.

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Thanks, good to know. Looking forward to summer then :slight_smile:

Thoese are the top of the line for laptops actually (i’m sure desktop could use them but then again AMD has the proper desktop CPU line so i would rather use them like 9950X or 9950X3D (soon)).
As an ex 9955HX uses 55W TDP but can go up to 75W which isnt crazy when plugged in.

For AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 i see videos showing you get a whooping 80% performance when on battery alone which is insane.

There is also AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 375 which uses 28W.

AMD has a ton of awesome options to be honest. I use to go with Intel but as of last 1-2 years i only use AMD, it runs cooler, more optimal and the company actually innovates :slight_smile:
One complaint is they have now so many options that its very confusing to know what is what.
Here is a full list i found useful:
https://www.amd.com/en/products/specifications/processors.html

You misunderstood what I said.

The 7945hx and 9955hx are physically chips that were designed for desktop but repurposed into a laptop form factor.

Physically those are the same chip as the 7950x and the 9950x respectively. They were designed for desktops. They’re just called 7945hx and 9955hx when they’re soldered and put into a laptop.

Putting them into a laptop doesn’t change the fact that physically they were engineered for desktop and putting them in a laptop results in crippled performance and reduced features compared to using a CPU that was designed to offer what laptops need.

There hasn’t yet been much testing of the 9955hx, however the 7945hx lost a lot of performance (~24%) when limited to 55W instead of higher.

And 55W is higher power than what the Framework Laptop 16 is currently rated for (although I do think that it does have some headroom past that 55w). 75w would be a challenge to cool.

There was a leak that that chip is HP-exclusive. There hasn’t been official confirmation of that afaik, however it has only been offered in HP laptops so far and AMD didn’t announce it at a major event like they did all of the other Ryzen AI CPUs.

Although it is almost the same as the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The only difference is that the HX 375 has 10% higher NPU clockspeed (which I assume you don’t care about given that you mentioned the 7945hx and 9955hx, both of which don’t have an NPU).

Lately they’ve been innovating at the higher price points, however at low and medium price points they seem to be doing the opposite currently.

For example the Ryzen AI 7 350 is intended as the successor to the Ryzen 7 7840u. The Ryzen 7 7840u has 8 full-sized cores and 12 iGPU compute units. The Ryzen AI 7 350 on the other hand has 4 full-sized cores, 4 compact cores, and 8 iGPU compute units. It does of course have a newer architecture, however it seems to only match the 7840u (its 2 year old predecessor) in CPU performance and fall behind in iGPU performance.

The Ryzen 5 340 vs 7640u is a similar debate.

Only at the Ryzen 9 and above level are they currently innovating.

For sure you are right that they started as desktop CPU. But Watching the CES they say these are made for laptops but sure AMD dont reinvent the wheel, they use what they have and make the chip less power hungry and say its for laptops :smiley: i get what your saying.

Yeah true, i don’t see a huge bump from 7945hx either. That CPU is a beast still so it would be great too.

Great info, i did also not understand why that is so well hidden. I see other brands use the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 but not 375. That explains it. Thanks for sharing.

hehe your observant :smiley: no i don’t i hate the whole AI debacle and forcing people into opening up their data and privacy. Like co-pilot if what i read and see is true is a piece of garbage. Letting MS read all my data and i’m sure having access to it so i can find a file i worked with when i search is a lame excuse to let go of my privacy.
There are for sure nice usecases if things are only done locally but once you open that door it wont get closed.
Was actually considering the qualcom laptop as a second laptop for travel and when i don’t need a huge horse power but they all come with co-pilot so need to dig more into how its affecting the privacy and if i can fully turn it off.

This is the segment i’m interested in to be honest. I know its not for everyone but i like the highest tier.

very true :smiley: hoping we get something that is competitive in the future :slight_smile: would be nice to have the option. Plus the GPU module i would say is pretty bad. Even the APU AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 395 with 40 CU has much more horse power. To be honest that APU alone would be a worthy upgrade for both the 13 and 16.

Will we have to purchase a completely different FW16 machine or would the new Ryzen come with a board we can swap with our existing FW16 amd board?

Based on their past behavior, they would release a board you can swap out inside your FW16 without replacing your entire machine. This has been the case for all the FW13 boards which are completely interchangeable (for example, I myself am running an AMD FW13 board that I placed inside the laptop I got with the original 11th gen Intel FW13).

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We can’t be sure though. They might also decide to make the case more rigid or introduce some bigger changes.
We can speculate and hope of course :slight_smile:

Of course it is a valid discussion what hardware should be used in the next AMD version of a 13" Framework.

Ryzen 7000 (Phoenix) was a great choice, Ryzen 8000 just a rebrand with an AI-unit, so nobody cared and Ryzen AI Max would be a really great update for gaming AND computing for content creators.
But there is one problem: Cooling.

The Framework 13" made a poor decision about cooling. You can run your CPU at 15W (complete silent), the other profiles creating noise. The cooling system could run on a higher power limit without any noise, because at 15W the CPU isn’t very hot, so we could use around 18-20W in my opinion without any noise, but Framework didn’t let us change the TDP when using Windows in the BIOS. And maybe, because of the slight better cooling system in the new 13" Intel, also maybe 20-22W would be possible without any noise.
With these low TDPs you can use in your Framework 13", only the Ryzen AI Max 385 would be a good choice, the higher ones only for the Framework 16".

I would by an new Framework 13 Mainboard with an Ryzen AI Max 385 and 32GB oder 48GB RAM on day one, when you could set an individual TDP in the BIOS or maybe a value in the middle between 15W and 28W would be set in the sweet spot of the used cooling solution.

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Yes exactly, this is why i also could imagine they make a improved design due to cooling and whatnot.
For low TDP you need to go to down to Ryzen AI Max 375 from what i can see.

And personally i want the top dog with Max Pro 395 with 64 or max 128 Memory.
If they can make a super think tablet/laptop this size with the Max Pro 395 i’m sure framework could at the very least put that beastly APU in the 16’

From all i have gathered the best two options for a laptop that i would personally get is either the Max Pro 395/390 or the Qualcomm’s Elite chip. I’m a bit on the fence on ARM. Not sure about full compatibility and if i can fully turn off online co-pilot crap.
Plus i want to have the options and drivers to run linux.