Reviews so far seem to paint an inconsistent picture re: Intel comparisons… Wonder if that is somehow reviewer bias or per-unit differences?
I’d prefer it if the SKUs were fairly close in performance, otherwise one camp is going to feel cheated.
1 Like
Yeah, there are results that say it’s better, even or worse than Intel in performance as well as battery life. I wonder what that’s about
1 Like
Same with noise. I’ve read it is both quieter and a bit louder at full tilt.
1 Like
Similarly confused by the reviews as some others in this thread - Ars technica found it to have worse battery life than the intel version here ( Review: Framework Laptop finally gets an AMD Ryzen config—and it’s pretty good | Ars Technica ) while Just Josh on Youtube found it to completely obliterate intel and even rival the Apple Macbook Pro 14 when it comes to power use under load ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwr14Q4C9gY ).
A great showing nonetheless! Now to see if Intel’s Meteor lake will take the efficiency crown as it is purported to 
1 Like
This one I like!
1 Like
A post was merged into an existing topic: Reviews, AMD Framework-13 Ryzen 7 7840U - Notebookcheck & Arstechnica. “So much better than the Intel version”
Is there a comparison of both AMD versions side by side yet?
1 Like
Looks like all the reviewers only got the 7840U model
3 Likes
None that I’ve seen; it would help someone decide who may be on the fence re: which processor to get, so I imagine it will be done at some point.
Welcome!
I’m glad they did it that way. That should help to normalize the early third party testing results as much as possible. Given the discrepancies so far, adding in other variables would have muddied the water even more.
After reading a few, it’s so weird how mixed these are.
One will say “battery life is much better than the Intel”
Then the next one shows it worse than Intel.
I also saw mixed ones about performance, one showing Intel was better mostly and then amd mostly better.
Wonder why there is so much variation
3 Likes
I’m also wondering this… I don’t think it’s a thermal problem as that doesn’t explain the battery life.
Might be differences in testing methodology, e.g. Windows power states not properly configured.
2 Likes
Different testing methodology and potentially, placing the USB A ports on the back ports (leading to higher power draw). Notebook check did their wifi test while other reviewers use pcmark10 or a video playback loop.
4 Likes
I wonder how many got boards only and threw it in their old-battery systems, and how many got fresh systems
3 Likes
That is an interesting point however, given that many reviewers who got boards just swapped it with their 13th gen Intel and it’s only been a couple of months, battery degradation should be negligent.
Edit: Most of them either had the i7 1360p or 1370p with the 61 watthour battery
1 Like
There may have been some bias in the review done by Matthew Moniz, unintentional or not.
His slide near the 6:51 mark states the comparison was with the 11th gen Intel. One has to wonder if that was a typo, or if all the claims he made were based on a comparison with a much older unit.
Regardless, he needs to fix the typo or do a fair review.
I guess we should be skeptical of all the reviews. Maybe blue team reviewers “accidentally” put some USB-A cards in back, and maybe some red team reviewers “forgot” to swap in a fresh battery for the Intel tests, used older firmware, or chose to forgoe a retest entirely (should be able to confirm if their numbers match any of their previous reviews).
The numbers in Just Josh’s video did seem very plausible to me, at least. Seemed like he took great care in preparing the video.
It’d be interesting to see an aggregate of the scores so far (in as much as that were possible).
1 Like
Just as Batch 1 is being prepared for shipment, it’s honestly amazing to see the growth Framework has achieved in a short period of time. We’ve gone from “AMD when?” and “reset the clock” to finally seeing actually seeing them is incredible. Even more so that there are very few Ryzen 7040 series laptops from other manufacturers.
The Intel mainboard upgrades along the way were great but the holy grail for me and a lot of people was the AMD mainboard as it meant you weren’t stuck to with a particular CPU brand depending on when you bought it. It also means you can now switch between the 2 as long as this chassis is supported.
I bought into a 12th gen even having sworn that my next laptop would have been either an AMD or ARM laptop but it’s great to know that one of those will become true very soon.
3 Likes
I also did notice he listed the screen’s brightness as 300 nits instead of 400 so his review may be more sloppy than others.
3 Likes
IMO this is the right answer. Arstechnica used PCMark 10 battery bench which has a mix of web browsing, office and I think some video conferencing, while Notebookcheck did a web browsing only test. My guess is the video conference part of PCMark bench uses some hardware acceleration on Intel that was not working properly on the Amd side due to immature drivers or something like that.
3 Likes
Amusing considering how much AMD focused on Video Conferencing iirc.
AMD’s GPU division has always been lacking when it comes to driver support and bugs. While it’s gotten better, it’s still an issue.
1 Like