It’s great to see how the Framework hardware (mainboard, display, …) evolves and still stays compatible with older parts.
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@Destroya Do the new motherboards support allocating up to 48GB of the maximum 96GB memory to the video card? I’ve seen some Core Ultra NUCs that do allow this and this would be great for running large language models locally with the new integrated Arc GPUs
All of that sounds great, although my laptop is quite recent, and I don’t think I’m going to be doing any big improvements to it for a while, especially if there’s no good way to repurpose the upgraded parts (e.g. the current screen). The one that I might consider sooner is the webcam module upgrade, if it is noticeably better. We need comparative reviews of the individual parts really.
I really liked the coolermaster case for old motherboards, I wonder if something similar could be done for old webcam modules, to turn them into external usb webcams for other systems.
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Hurray for the availability in Denmark, Finland and Sweden!!
Maybe it is a dumb question but, what about Greenland, since Denmark is already included?
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I think there’s a good chance you’ll be limited by memory bandwidth, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t gain anything over executing on the CPU alone.
There is a way for the screen:
Finally shipping to Finland soon(ish). Been waiting for few years and great to see its finally happening.
Now the hard part is to decide to go with the new Intel or the “older” AMD one. Just looking at some early tests for the Ultra series, it seems they are pretty on par with the AMD 7000 series.
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would love to see a kit from FW with the driver board and some sort of case/ kickstand for the monitor
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Gangster.
A couple hundred more pixels of resolution, slightly better brightness/contrast, perhaps more efficient power usage, not sure it’s worth the rounded corners cutting off 3mm of pixels. You can tell this was made for Windows only, as the bottom corners sacrifice less screen space than top for that Windows bar. Linux WMs often have it up top, where that 3mm roundoff will cut off information.
The camera may perform better in low light, but its fps is half the existing and same resolution. I’d need to see video comparison to be sold that this is even an upgrade.
The new mainboard is obviously an upgrade, I’m preordered. Same for the Linux keyboard. The rest though, feels like framework is cutting corners (hehe) with their hardware sourcing while engineering upgrades. Seems a strange decision to me, for a product I thought was competing in the premium laptop market.
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Actually this was done with Linux in mind. No more fractional scaling. Nirav explains: https://youtu.be/vo-okzQOxOU?si=rIVpTU25GK4_RtD-&t=154
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I believe that was more a reference to the original company that paid for this design, that company intended Windows use.
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It’s still a startup and I expect FW compared the tooling costs to get a panel that didn’t have those rounded corners with “just dealing with it” and investing those resources elsewhere and chose the latter. Can’t say I blame them, I’d have made the same choice too
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Any indication on what the battery life is going to be vs. a Ryzen based Framework 13? With Linux?
Bump. 
I think the 3mm rounded corners should fit well with the default GNOME status bar, and should you want to place a panel/taskbar on the top side of the screen under KDE Plasma, you can easily insert tiny spacers on the left and right side.
Of course there are dozens of DEs for Linux, and I agree rounded corners aren’t ideal as the OS isn’t technically aware of them, but it’s something you can easily work around.
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The resolution is better suited when using 200% scaling, which is of value for Linux users who want > 100% scale, because it doesn’t do fractional scaling well or at all. (That’s not for me, I use 100%, but I’m just one customer.) Everything else said, e.g. pixel density for text clarity, is not a significant change from my current panel. Even the 120 hz is only kinda neat when not using it for fast reaction gaming.
I was guessing that the panel was originally developed for a Windows only product. The resolution just happens to be better suited for a feature in Linux; I doubt it was designed for that purpose.
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I’m on i3, bar on top, have information in those top corners. Yes, I could insert space there, but that’s a workaround which would require sufficient value to be worth it. For customers in this situation, I don’t think that value is there.
I’m sure that’s not the majority of customers, so I don’t doubt this will sell. I’m just kinda surprised that FW went ahead with this panel, rather than waiting for a better opportunity.
According to tonymongkolsmai (an intel engineer) on Twitter it does still perform quite a bit a better than CPU only.