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I hope AMD doesn't slow down on the performance side with their 3rd generation of Zen. I want to get a new laptop next year and I hope it comes with a good mo

I hope AMD doesn't slow down on the performance side with their 3rd generation of Zen. I want to get a new laptop next year and I hope it comes with a good mobile Ryzen processor with Thunderbolt support.

toast0 7y ago
AMDs mobile and APU line is generally about a year behind desktop, so expect to see Zen 2 cores in mobile mid 2020, numbered as Ryzen 4xxx. Zen 2 combined with much better than intel integrated GPU is likely going to make a very nice dent in marketshare, unless Intel pulls a rabbit out of their hat.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- chx 7y ago
  There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. Watch how the majority of the roadmap is still on 14nm into 2021, there never will be a desktop 10nm for example. The Rocket Lake desktop chips in 2021 still on 14nm will drop down to eight cores to cram the new GPU architecture into desktop chips at a truly ridiculous 125 W. The Ryzen 9 3900 today does 65W w/ 12 cores and and you can easily squeeze in a 1650 into the remaining 60W.
  - toast0 7y ago
    Well from that roadmap, I see 6 core Comet Lake U (high end mobile) set for Q2 2020; we don't know how many cores AMD is planning for Zen2 mobile. If AMD sticks to 4, and Intel has 6, that's going to swing some buyers. The (leaked) Intel roadmaps tend to have more specifics than the AMD ones though.
    - chx 7y ago
      It's still 14nm, even the quad core KLR chips were a minor miracle and only brought 25-30% from the dual core KBL.
    - sundvor 7y ago
      Just about every 6 core mobile CPU laptop struggles with thermals. 7nm could conceivably upend that.
      - wtallis 7y ago
        For as long as the ultrabook design remains popular (and it shows no signs of waning), the high-end CPU options will be riding the edge of their thermal limits during sustained use. OEMs aren't going to suddenly start over-building their cooling solutions just to help out marginally with a niche use case. As long as we don't get back to the problems from a decade ago with dying mobile GPUs, there's not really anything wrong with having CPUs that boost up to the thermal limits of the system form factor. If someone comes out with a laptop CPU that can't boost up to those thermal limits, it means the chip's undersized and that vendor will probably need a different microarchitecture for the desktop or server markets.
        sundvor 7y ago
        I think my point is that a lot of laptops have been held back (throttled) by the thermal solutions not being able to cope with the heat. More efficient design will give better perf.
        wtallis 7y ago
        You have to take into consideration what kind of workloads lead to throttling. Laptops are usually not used for the kind of tasks that keep a CPU fully loaded for several minutes or hours at a time. People who do use laptops in that manner are a tiny fraction of the market, and when they experience throttling that does not have any bearing on whether the cooling system of an ultrabook is adequate for the kinds of more typical workloads it is actually designed for. There have been some ultrabook-style designs that offered inadequate cooling even for fairly normal use cases, but that's a separate issue. Mainstream laptops will be designed around mainstream workloads, and heavier workloads will push them to their limits. Better cooling doesn't come free, and if it doesn't benefit mainstream workloads it's unreasonable to expect mainstream laptops to put more emphasis on cooling capabilities.
    - navjack27 7y ago
      Comet 6 core already exists and I bought one to review. 10710U
  - tapland 7y ago
    Now TDP isn't really reflecting output and can't be compared well across brands. But a 2x difference in TDP is a lot more than the different ways of calculating them between amd and intel
    - davrosthedalek 7y ago
      Especially since intel normally has a bigger spread between declared TDP and actual TDP.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    > There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. Watch how the majority of the roadmap is still on 14nm into 2021, there never will be a desktop 10nm for example. From what I heard from a man close to Intel process crowd is that Intel will simply slap a 7nm marketing designation on their current 10nm process when they finally get it going. They will then change design rules to deliver enough density change, comparable to a node shrink without any change in the process.
    - HelloNurse 7y ago
      Design rules don't change because marketing says so. It is reasonable to begin early processor development in a new process with conservative design rules (in order to be sure that everything works and yields are acceptable) and rework some components, pushing the envelope a little more, if tests allow it; but such improvements are going to be small "without any change in the process". Maybe the same specifications on a slightly smaller die to reduce costs or a slightly higher clock or lower power SKU. Or nothing at all because the tooling costs for marginally improved revised processors aren't justified.
    - chx 7y ago
      The 7nm is using EUV and the performance per watt would immediately tell if it were not using EUV...
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. 10nm products have "shipped" and put up a solid fight: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15092/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2in1-review-the-ice-lake-cometh https://www.anandtech.com/show/15092/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2i... It shows good performance and strong efficiency. 10nm desktop & server parts seem entirely MIA and dead. But it seems that Intel is able to at least struggle out small laptop parts on the process.
- mtgx 7y ago
  It's really annoying how AMD attempts to shamelessly mislead laptop buyers by giving the current desktop series name to last year's tech on mobile. So Ryzen 3000 Mobile is actually Ryzen 2000 desktop CPU tech. Next year's Ryzen 4000 Mobile will be this year's Ryzen 3000 tech, and so on. And in case this wasn't clear, it's not about expecting a 4.5 desktop-class base clock speed in laptops, I'm talking about the micro-architecture being a year old and being given the same name as the current-year architecture. It's super-misleading to 99% of the people who don't read CPU news, and it's obviously done on purpose. AMD doesn't need to and shouldn't stoop to Intel's level.
shmerl 7y ago
Isn't Thunderbolt getting replaced with USB4, after Intel opened it up?
- pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
  Their existing Thunderbolt peripherals do not need to be replaced.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  I'm not super familiar with the usb spec but it was my understanding that thunderbolt was an optional feature that usb devices could support.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Not current generation ones. USB4 is supposed to combine the two.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      So you are telling me a usb microphone needs to implement hdmi and displayport if it wants to be compliant? Or are these devices expected to stay on lower usb versions? What if the device needs some of the features from usb4 but it makes no sense to have thunderbolt features?
      - shmerl 7y ago
        USB4 will implement DisplayPort and PCIe if I understand correctly (in addition to actual USB), like Thunderbolt does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB4 Obviously, not every device need to use every feature. I'm talking about the port on the computer.
      - wmf 7y ago
        The only new feature in USB4 is Thunderbolt, so yes, if a device doesn't need Thunderbolt features it should stay on an older version. Of course, older USB versions will end up rebranded as something like "USB 4.0 1x1 High Speed".
mcv 7y ago
I recently bought a new laptop and actually wanted AMD, but none of the laptops I was inteested in were available with one. It appears that high-end laptops are still ruled by Intel. Do AMDs run too hot for mobile or something?
- bildung 7y ago
  It's not about heat, more probably vendors have a contract with Intel that makes Intel parts more expensive if they are not bought exclusively (it will be worded differently because Intel already got sued for this practice). I recently bought a Thinkpad E495 with a Ryzen 3700u and thermals are just fine. The surface barely heats up under sustained load. The E series is more budget, though. But the T495 (14") or X395 are of higher build quality (and price) and also have Ryzen 3x00u CPUs.
  - snvzz 7y ago
    Typing this on my x395 (with 3700u) and can confirm these are really well made laptops. Linux support is excellent. Openbsd is good but doesn't support this generation of wireless cards yet, which is quite inconvenient; next version perhaps.
    - yoloClin 7y ago
      How is graphics performance / functionality? I've only ever really dealt wit nVidia and Intel graphics, and highly prefer intel due to tearing fixes. I'm not a gamer, but do need at least basic hardware acceleration for X rendering etc.
      - chupasaurus 7y ago
        Integrated Vega full support landed in June 2018 (kernel 4.17, Mesa 18 for 3D), as long as you have these or newer and a firmware for your card in the system — you'll get full acceleration. I've been running Debian Testing on 2400G since 04/2018, where I had to put firmware and compile the kernel with the config changes to enable the support, but it was already in kernel tree nonetheless. It's out-of-the-box since 07/2018, way before the release happened.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I think AMD is still (slightly) behind in power consumption, especially if the CPU is idling. Some tests suggest that this is heavily dependent on the motherboards chipset though. But power consumption is probably very important for the industry and for notebook devices. That said, AMD becoming a worthy competitor on the market again is awesome.

toast0 7y ago

AMDs mobile and APU line is generally about a year behind desktop, so expect to see Zen 2 cores in mobile mid 2020, numbered as Ryzen 4xxx. Zen 2 combined with much better than intel integrated GPU is likely going to make a very nice dent in marketshare, unless Intel pulls a rabbit out of their hat.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chx 7y ago
There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. Watch how the majority of the roadmap is still on 14nm into 2021, there never will be a desktop 10nm for example. The Rocket Lake desktop chips in 2021 still on 14nm will drop down to eight cores to cram the new GPU architecture into desktop chips at a truly ridiculous 125 W. The Ryzen 9 3900 today does 65W w/ 12 cores and and you can easily squeeze in a 1650 into the remaining 60W.
- toast0 7y ago
  Well from that roadmap, I see 6 core Comet Lake U (high end mobile) set for Q2 2020; we don't know how many cores AMD is planning for Zen2 mobile. If AMD sticks to 4, and Intel has 6, that's going to swing some buyers. The (leaked) Intel roadmaps tend to have more specifics than the AMD ones though.
  - chx 7y ago
    It's still 14nm, even the quad core KLR chips were a minor miracle and only brought 25-30% from the dual core KBL.
  - sundvor 7y ago
    Just about every 6 core mobile CPU laptop struggles with thermals. 7nm could conceivably upend that.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      For as long as the ultrabook design remains popular (and it shows no signs of waning), the high-end CPU options will be riding the edge of their thermal limits during sustained use. OEMs aren't going to suddenly start over-building their cooling solutions just to help out marginally with a niche use case. As long as we don't get back to the problems from a decade ago with dying mobile GPUs, there's not really anything wrong with having CPUs that boost up to the thermal limits of the system form factor. If someone comes out with a laptop CPU that can't boost up to those thermal limits, it means the chip's undersized and that vendor will probably need a different microarchitecture for the desktop or server markets.
      - sundvor 7y ago
        I think my point is that a lot of laptops have been held back (throttled) by the thermal solutions not being able to cope with the heat. More efficient design will give better perf.
        wtallis 7y ago
        You have to take into consideration what kind of workloads lead to throttling. Laptops are usually not used for the kind of tasks that keep a CPU fully loaded for several minutes or hours at a time. People who do use laptops in that manner are a tiny fraction of the market, and when they experience throttling that does not have any bearing on whether the cooling system of an ultrabook is adequate for the kinds of more typical workloads it is actually designed for. There have been some ultrabook-style designs that offered inadequate cooling even for fairly normal use cases, but that's a separate issue. Mainstream laptops will be designed around mainstream workloads, and heavier workloads will push them to their limits. Better cooling doesn't come free, and if it doesn't benefit mainstream workloads it's unreasonable to expect mainstream laptops to put more emphasis on cooling capabilities.
  - navjack27 7y ago
    Comet 6 core already exists and I bought one to review. 10710U
- tapland 7y ago
  Now TDP isn't really reflecting output and can't be compared well across brands. But a 2x difference in TDP is a lot more than the different ways of calculating them between amd and intel
  - davrosthedalek 7y ago
    Especially since intel normally has a bigger spread between declared TDP and actual TDP.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. Watch how the majority of the roadmap is still on 14nm into 2021, there never will be a desktop 10nm for example. From what I heard from a man close to Intel process crowd is that Intel will simply slap a 7nm marketing designation on their current 10nm process when they finally get it going. They will then change design rules to deliver enough density change, comparable to a node shrink without any change in the process.
  - HelloNurse 7y ago
    Design rules don't change because marketing says so. It is reasonable to begin early processor development in a new process with conservative design rules (in order to be sure that everything works and yields are acceptable) and rework some components, pushing the envelope a little more, if tests allow it; but such improvements are going to be small "without any change in the process". Maybe the same specifications on a slightly smaller die to reduce costs or a slightly higher clock or lower power SKU. Or nothing at all because the tooling costs for marginally improved revised processors aren't justified.
  - chx 7y ago
    The 7nm is using EUV and the performance per watt would immediately tell if it were not using EUV...
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  > There are no rabbits in the hat until late 2021 when 7nm comes to market. The 10nm process is completely broken. 10nm products have "shipped" and put up a solid fight: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15092/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2in1-review-the-ice-lake-cometh https://www.anandtech.com/show/15092/the-dell-xps-13-7390-2i... It shows good performance and strong efficiency. 10nm desktop & server parts seem entirely MIA and dead. But it seems that Intel is able to at least struggle out small laptop parts on the process.
mtgx 7y ago
It's really annoying how AMD attempts to shamelessly mislead laptop buyers by giving the current desktop series name to last year's tech on mobile. So Ryzen 3000 Mobile is actually Ryzen 2000 desktop CPU tech. Next year's Ryzen 4000 Mobile will be this year's Ryzen 3000 tech, and so on. And in case this wasn't clear, it's not about expecting a 4.5 desktop-class base clock speed in laptops, I'm talking about the micro-architecture being a year old and being given the same name as the current-year architecture. It's super-misleading to 99% of the people who don't read CPU news, and it's obviously done on purpose. AMD doesn't need to and shouldn't stoop to Intel's level.

shmerl 7y ago

Isn't Thunderbolt getting replaced with USB4, after Intel opened it up?

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
Their existing Thunderbolt peripherals do not need to be replaced.
baroffoos 7y ago
I'm not super familiar with the usb spec but it was my understanding that thunderbolt was an optional feature that usb devices could support.
- shmerl 7y ago
  Not current generation ones. USB4 is supposed to combine the two.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    So you are telling me a usb microphone needs to implement hdmi and displayport if it wants to be compliant? Or are these devices expected to stay on lower usb versions? What if the device needs some of the features from usb4 but it makes no sense to have thunderbolt features?
    - shmerl 7y ago
      USB4 will implement DisplayPort and PCIe if I understand correctly (in addition to actual USB), like Thunderbolt does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB4 Obviously, not every device need to use every feature. I'm talking about the port on the computer.
    - wmf 7y ago
      The only new feature in USB4 is Thunderbolt, so yes, if a device doesn't need Thunderbolt features it should stay on an older version. Of course, older USB versions will end up rebranded as something like "USB 4.0 1x1 High Speed".

mcv 7y ago

I recently bought a new laptop and actually wanted AMD, but none of the laptops I was inteested in were available with one. It appears that high-end laptops are still ruled by Intel. Do AMDs run too hot for mobile or something?

bildung 7y ago
It's not about heat, more probably vendors have a contract with Intel that makes Intel parts more expensive if they are not bought exclusively (it will be worded differently because Intel already got sued for this practice). I recently bought a Thinkpad E495 with a Ryzen 3700u and thermals are just fine. The surface barely heats up under sustained load. The E series is more budget, though. But the T495 (14") or X395 are of higher build quality (and price) and also have Ryzen 3x00u CPUs.
- snvzz 7y ago
  Typing this on my x395 (with 3700u) and can confirm these are really well made laptops. Linux support is excellent. Openbsd is good but doesn't support this generation of wireless cards yet, which is quite inconvenient; next version perhaps.
  - yoloClin 7y ago
    How is graphics performance / functionality? I've only ever really dealt wit nVidia and Intel graphics, and highly prefer intel due to tearing fixes. I'm not a gamer, but do need at least basic hardware acceleration for X rendering etc.
    - chupasaurus 7y ago
      Integrated Vega full support landed in June 2018 (kernel 4.17, Mesa 18 for 3D), as long as you have these or newer and a firmware for your card in the system — you'll get full acceleration. I've been running Debian Testing on 2400G since 04/2018, where I had to put firmware and compile the kernel with the config changes to enable the support, but it was already in kernel tree nonetheless. It's out-of-the-box since 07/2018, way before the release happened.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I think AMD is still (slightly) behind in power consumption, especially if the CPU is idling. Some tests suggest that this is heavily dependent on the motherboards chipset though. But power consumption is probably very important for the industry and for notebook devices. That said, AMD becoming a worthy competitor on the market again is awesome.