I’ve been thinking of buying a 7040 series 13 inch DIY laptop, but seeing as its from 2023 I’m worried if I upgrade now there will be a hardware refresh pretty soon. What do you think, is there likely to be a new AMD mainboard soon?
We don’t know. Framework doesn’t disclose coming products before they are actually release ready
At least according to previous releases as listed on Wikipedia, most announcements/releases seem to have happened in the range of March to July, with only few other things happening in other parts of the year (Chromebook edition in September), so your best bet is probably waiting for summer, since there has been at least one Laptop generation every year in Summer since 2021.
My guess is that the next things they are likely to try building is an Intel mainboard for the Framework 16, and maybe an AMD refresh, but I think it’s unlikely that they will release 4 mainboards (Intel F13+F16, AMD F13+F16) this year.
Anyway, Framework doesn’t seem to like announcing things far in advance, so your best bet is probably waiting for Summer, they will probably announce something, but we can’t really predict what it will be.
In my opinion, any decision on what AMD hardware you get would depend on your use case. If you’re planning to do basic tasks like web browsing and word processing, even if there is a new motherboard released with a new AMD processor, there is probably likely not going to be anything substantially advanced enough to make it worth it. Perhaps 100 or 200MHZ greater on individual cores and maybe an AI neural engine as such things are being marketted now, which likely would not effect you in such cases, unless you’re planning to use AI on your computer for specific tasks.
If you’re planning to do more advanced tasks however, 3D rendering, gaming, graphics design, then there could be features in a new AMD processor that might be worth it for you.
It all depends on your use case, in my view, so I’d take that into consideration when choosing whether to select hardware now or wait.
As to whether or not Framework will be releasing a new AMD motherboard this year, there’s a fifty fifty chance that they will. But, they did just release the Intel Ultra 1 last year for the Framework 13, so I’d say they might provide Intel for the Framework 16 which people have been asking for, rather than updating the Framework 13 AMD mainboard.
I think the 28W heatsink in the framework 13 is quite limiting, even with a generation bump or two, there isn’t too much exciting things to bring to table. It will be nice to have, especially say, the Strix Point or whatever.
The 16, on the other hand, with the significant higher thermal headroom (I am able to do 54W full package at 85C), might be able to pull some truly incredible things.
AMD hasn’t yet announced anything that would be both suitable for and (IMHO) worth of a new Framework MOBO. AI300 series CPUs are a joke trying to squeeze money from the AI bubble: Strix Halo’s TDP is 45-120W, while Strix Point does not have that much more cache than the currently used 7000 series (in fact only top 3 models have more). Finally 9000 series does not have U models yet. Until some U models in 9000 series are announced, there’s really nothing for Framework to work with IMHO…
Cache isn’t the be-all and end-all, especially with the monolithic architecture that Strix Point uses making it less sensitive to cache.
Strix Point does gain additional cores resulting in potential performance gains, although it uses smaller Zen5c cores and reports indicate that pricing for Strix Point is quite extreme.
There’s also Kraken Point, which is the smaller sibling of Strix Point and targeting the same pricing as Phoenix Point, however those CPUs have fewer iGPU CUs and have half the cores replaced with c-cores compared to their predecessors. So they’re not really an upgrade.
AMD reworked their naming scheme (mostly copying Intel).
Like when Intel changed their naming scheme, the CPUs designed for laptops transitioned first while the desktop CPUs (and CPUs designed for desktop that were repurposed into a laptop format like the Fire Range CPUs) will transition later.
There is no more U models, it’s not part of AMD’s new naming scheme. They’ve been replaced with Kraken Point and Strix Point (which laptop manufacturers can configure to match the power/heat levels of what was formerly U series).
Thanks for the info! What I meant are 9000 series models with a TDP comparable to the U models in 7000 series:(15-30W), whatever letter they may get as a suffix (if AMD have plans for such models at all, that is…)
AMD has stopped using suffixes for their laptop CPUs (aside from HX which denotes CPUs that were originally designed for desktop but got repurposed into a laptop, how those have higher TDP and fewer features).
The 300 series CPUs (other than Strix Halo) have the same default TDP as the former U suffix CPUs, although laptop manufacturers can optionally configure them for the same TDP as the former HS suffix CPUs.
AMD quietly refreshed their 7040 series (well technically 8040 series, but that was already a refresh of 7040 series) onto the new naming scheme. Here’s the refreshed models of what Framework currently offers:
- Ryzen 5 7640U → Ryzen 5 230
- Ryzen 7 7840U → Ryzen 7 250
- Ryzen 7 7840HS → Ryzen 7 260
- Ryzen 9 7940HS → Ryzen 9 270
From that you’d expect that the successors are therefore similar numbers except with the first digit incremented (and the word AI added because marketing). Leakers have indicated that pricing is also aligned to indicate that successor chain. Although it’s not perfectly aligned as there is no 330 model (so instead the successor is expected to be the 340) and the 360 model is exclusively available as the more expensive “Pro” variant.
I know this is a bit of an erm actually, but considering the fact that laptop cpus are slowly starting to only support LPCAMM2, the extra space could be used for another heatsink with the additional vent port on the FW13. Additionally, I can do 35W sustained with my FW13, which is a whole 125% of base wattage for the thermal system. All in all, I would say it’s not too much of a stretch to figure out how to fit a 45w cpu into the fw13, assuming the thermal solution was only designed for 45w sustained max.
Strix point does look like a worthwhile upgrade over Phoenix point used in the current AMD mainboards.
True, it’s only up-to 30% faster, but that’s not nothing as it also seems to have efficiency improvements, and those are useful for laptops.
even if the architecture itself wasn’t more efficient, the updated graphics and more advanced featureset alone is worth it. Look at the intel 12th vs 13th gen mainboards, not too big an improvement but it got made
Also, the XDNA chip is also 5 times faster. from 10 TOPS to 50 TOPS
also consider: nobody smart enough to buy a framework will want something like recall
nor simply using Windows
more seriously, AI doesn’t stop at Recalln there a lot of uses
I suspect there are a lot of programmers here who would like to play with XDNA. I’m one.