But now that I might be able to get a 3 pound ultrabook with decent graphics, I'm willing to put up with a lot more inconvenience .
Also, they have pretty good API support: https://mesamatrix.net/
Only Intel is slightly better on that, but their performance is abysmal.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx-vega-...
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/fan_speed_control
If so, then you should be able to control them manually.
This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they refused in the end. [2][3]
Anyone running AMD chipsets have a completely separate and unaccessible operating system running on their computer that they can not control nor know exactly what it's doing. [4]
Intel has the same sort of system with it's Intel Management Engine (known as Intel ME) that even the NSA didn't want to have running on their own computers. [5]
[1] http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/s...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5z4phx/petition_fo...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6msujx/what_happened_t...
[4] https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd
[5] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/intel_management_en...
This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the exact same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel.
I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none for the claim "a likely backdoored system". Your post reads like something a bad Intel astroturfing shill would say.
This is bad, but seems like more of an incremental issue than anything. Can you audit every line of source in your system? No closed source drivers or firmware on any devices? No devices on your network with vendor controlled firmware? You log all network I/O through a passive tap? For the average user targeted by a state actor this makes little difference.
If your system is totally new, try checking your RAM with memtest too.
My Threadripper build had similar issues in Linux and Windows. Ended up being my PSU. I tried to save $30 buying a refurb one from Corsair. My system would lock up occasionally at totally stock settings and even shutdown on its own. Works perfectly now after I swapped it out.
FWIW, I'm really happy with the Threadripper/X399. Most of the early Ryzen bugs are worked out. It's a great value for the performance. Compiling large C or C++ code bases is insanely fast.
Still, I'd be wary of buying AMD's first gen mobile offering. When you buy a laptop you're buying a whole system and battery life, no glitches after sleep/wake, heat, noise, etc. trump raw performance. Intel has way more experience there. This Radeon iGPU also sits in a weird market segment. People who don't game/render/3D model on the go do just fine with the weak Intel iGPU. People who really care about that stuff can get a big laptop with faster dGPU or just do 3D on their desktop. So I guess their target is people who casually game but want a thin-ish laptop?
NB: I don't doubt AMD's ability to make a decent mobile platform. Just Intel has shipped hundreds of millions more units, so they've seen every "system crashes after sleep when re-pairing with $OBSCURE_BLUETOOTH_DEVICE" issue on earth. On a desktop you can always swap hardware, but on a laptop you're stuck with what you get.
I, myself was thinking to acquire a Ryzen 5 1600 for a high performance programming desktop. I was thinking of running FreeBSD, it's sad to hear that it's glitchy.
It would be nice to have an octa-core in a laptop.
Also would be really nice to have Vega as well — current Radeons aren't very good compared to 10-series nVidia chips.
Think when Apple finally moved to Intel and th speed increase. EVEN though Apple claimed they were the as fast if no faster before the switch.
AMD had horrible performance on laptops and they are finally able to say they doubled the speed AKA they had a horrible product before.
"For its own part, AMD claims that the new Ryzen chips will offer dramatically improved performance over its own last generation of laptop chips, with up to 200 percent more CPU performance (for multicore use) and up to 128 percent better GPU performance, although AMD’s last generation of chips weren’t exactly computational powerhouses to start." https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/26/16552208/...
Intel has announced that Thunderbolt 3 will become royalty-free in 2018[1], but it's gonna be a long while before ever getting to market.
[1] http://www.techradar.com/news/intel-has-a-grand-plan-to-brin...
But for some reason I dont think Apple cares anymore. They will continue to have HDD as standard and crappy Intel iGPU.
The reason for this belief is that currently the basic building block of Zen line is the CCX, which is 4 cores. Raven ridge is 1 CCX and GPU, Ryzen chips are 2 CCX, EPYC CPUs are made of 4x ryzen, for a total of 32 cores. But, when AMD advertised their server platform, the promised that in the next generation there will be 48-core chips that will be drop-in compatible with current server boards. Because the memory channels/PCIE lanes need to remain positioned for 4 chips, they can't just put 6 chips in. This implies that they will go from 8-core Ryzen to 12-core Ryzen 2, and the smallest change to make that happen is probably a 6-core CCX. And if they drop that same CCX into their 2nd generation Zen APU, that would make it a 6-core chip.
Incidentally, AMD GPUs have been at a disadvantage compared to NVIDIA's in the power management area for a while, as well. Which is unfortunate because they're very good cores with (arguably) a better feature set for compute/rasterization than NVIDIA's. Intel seems to have the market for low-power GPUs on PC sewn up as well. If AMD manages to make improvements here they could put out a very compelling product, if only because you wouldn't need GPU-switching in your laptop (with all the hassle that entails) and it'd be easier to substitute a laptop for your desktop when you do compute-heavy work.
For example, https://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-r... shows worse idle power draw and worse load power draw for Ryzen. In desktop cases this gap doesn't matter as long as you have a good heatsink+fan but it will map to worse battery life and worse noise/thermals in a laptop. (An extra thirty watts in total system draw under load can add up on your utility bill, though.)
Power draw on AMD's GPUs is not great either, unfortunately: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx-vega-... And past GPUs they've released also had issues with drawing more power over the PCIe slot than it was rated for (and exceeding their TDP in general, I believe).
For example - if I am compiling Linux Kernel and Ryzen takes more power but compilation is faster then my laptop can hit lower power state faster after it is done compiling. And 1500x for example is way faster than all CPUs in linked benchmark.
I do agree about Idle power draw though, but it seems very small difference.
I think in the end, we will have to wait for official benchmarks from reviewers before concluding anything. We can't draw our conclusions from AMD's marketing material.
That is a pretty small (<5%) gap.
I like AMD and want more competition for Intel. If you have a use that scales across many cores, AMD is a great value for workstations. Their new server lineup is pretty compelling too. But if they want to win in mobile they need to be better on power and thermals even for normal users who won't use the iGPU's capabilities heavily.
Correct. And here's why: https://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterization-nvidi...
[0]: https://heise.cloudimg.io/bound/2300x1400/tjpeg.q90.webp-los...
Users will have to wait for 4.15 - until mid-late January.
AMD needs to be competitive for the health of the industry and consumers. There is little doubt now Intel was holding the market back.
We have seen similar stagnation on desktops with any slight step magnified by the tech press desperate for content. And fortunately AMD have an efficient architecture with Ryzen.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936468
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-seg...
I would like to know about the progress with SR_IOV as well. I've never had an AMD processor but would definitely welcome some competition. AMD, if you're reading having graphics drivers "mainline" in the Linux kernel would be a huge plus. Thank you!
[newegg] https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1683431... https://archive.fo/iFkUO
[ark] https://ark.intel.com/products/75117/Intel-Core-i7-4700MQ-Pr... https://archive.fo/5SpgX
Envy x360 seems the most promising, but doesn't seem to come with the Ryzen 7 2700U. So probably not.
Ideapad 720S has memory limitations (no dual channel support) and is straight out.
Swift 3 seems to be the closest to what I want - but .. limited to 8GB :-/
Given that I'm currently, right now, in the market for a laptop, I guess I've got to skip AMD for now.
