Although not Linux specific, the nice thing about Notebookcheck is they have a nice database of other CPUs/devices that you can easily compare against. ServeTheHome has been reviewing a lot of these minipcs as well, here's their review of another one w/ Linux compile times and a few other Linux benchmarks: https://www.servethehome.com/minisforum-um790-pro-review-big...
For those that don't know, the U, HS, and H chips are basically the same chip with slightly different bins and usually can have their TDP modified in BIOS, via Ryzen Master, or third party tools like RyzenAdj (Phoenix support: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/pull/256) to perform pretty closely. (This generation the HX is a '7045' chip is closer to a desktop chip than a mobile APU)
I really hope they stay alive in this video review age.
I didn't know about that. Do you have citations or benchmarks?
Note, each laptop manufacturer may choose their different power limits (and like Intel, AMD's curves are largely driven by temperature, so dependent on cooling solution and other settings).
This is a good summary of some of how Ryzen Mobile's power limiting works (actually, read that whole wiki if you're interested in the topic): https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide
I'd also look up "AMD PMF" (their equivalent of DPTF) which only recently made it's way to the Linux kernel (but of course, that will include loads of details anyone can look through): https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-PMF-CnQF-Linux-6.1
It's meant for ~15W thin and light devices, not thick gaming laptops, AMD has 35W parts for those.
Notable improvements from previous generation:
* AV1 encoding
* AVX512 supportMany benchmarks for these 2 models can be seen at:
https://www.servethehome.com/minisforum-um790-pro-review-big...
TLDR: Both Ryzen 9 7940HS and Ryzen 7 7840HS laptop CPUs (which are slower than the Ryzen HX laptop CPUs) are faster than the fastest 65 W desktop Intel Alder Lake CPU, Core i9-12900 (despite the fact that the latter not only uses more power, but it has 50% more threads).
And it's comparing against the previous generation 12900 instead of the current generation 13900.
And the extra threads on the 12900 are the E-cores, which aren't that fast.
Basically the result is that current gen AMD mobile CPUs are faster than last gen Intel desktop CPUs. Which is true, and not unimpressive, but far less informative than a comparison of like with like would have been.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-7950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7945hx
https://www.servethehome.com/minisforum-um790-pro-review-big...
Very impressive machine, and quite affordable. Bonus points for Minisforum for offering barebones versions.
Before that they had BIOS versions that under-ran the fan so it overheated, versions that overran the fan constantly, and power management and wake-from-lid-closed under Linux has in general been a nightmare all along.
Lenovo's reputation for reliability has been heavily tarnished by this, but in particular I think going Ryzen with them is a real roll of the dice.
Aside from a hardware defect at the beginning (cpu cooler not correctly installed), they disabled S3 sleep in BIOS after an update and sleep is sill broken. Unless I boot with `processor.max_cstate=1` the graphics lock up ~once a day (even if you keep it idle and on AC), and resume is more miss than hit.
It seems to be a known and ignored bios problem. (Some say on windows, too. I didn't check)
Wayland/sway might be less capable than good old X on resuming from graphics lockup, but I really disliked Thinkpad BIOS this time.
If I am running a beefy single threaded or multi program with CPU, I want the best, not some low power device. Gaming laptop.(Or whatever we want to call it)
If I'm running consumer/enterprise software, I likely want a beefy GPU. Gaming laptop.(Or whatever we want to call it)
If I'm taking a 7 hour bus ride in a bus without a 120V outlet, I want this.
If I'm taking a 6 hour bus ride in a bus without a 120V outlet, I want a gaming laptop.(Or whatever we want to call it)
What is the use case? I got a feeling these companies are chasing Apple's insignificant metric of compute/watt, which doesn't matter as far as I understand.
Also on the bus ride. I certainly wouldn't want to unpack a 17" gaming laptop on a bus of all places. You couldn't use a external mouse anyways. There I'd want a steam deck or Nintendo switch.
They also have to dissipate the heat into something, which is often the chassis, and therefore your lap. Not fun in the summertime.
The higher power chips are only significantly faster on threaded workloads, so if most of your applications are poorly threaded it's a trade off in exchange for almost nothing.
There's a decent chance that ryzen models with 740m or 760m that we'll probably see in cheaper ThinkPads won't be half bad either compared to the Intel alternative.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+7840HS&...
* multithread: 31124
* single thread: 3945
* number of samples: 15
* margin for error: medium
I have several Ryzen laptops, including a 6800H. The thing is as fast as the latest and greatest from Apple, although with a bit worse battery life. I get about 12 hours in Linux with Gnome. Very quiet. The fan turns on only during gaming, or prolonged compiling.
The mobile Ryzen 7000 line is a bit messy, though. If you want the Zen 4 stuff, you need to look for a 7x4x model, such as the 7840 from this article.
7 is the generation.
4 indicates that it's a Zen 4 part. There are many 7x3x parts on the market because they are simply rebranded Zen 3 (5000 and 6000) parts.
"AMD also included battery life benchmarks comparing the Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U against two Core i7 models and the Apple M2 Pro, with the former both having a battery capacity of 54 Wh, while the latter had a 69.6 Wh battery. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U system was equipped with a 51.3 Wh battery yet managed to deliver longer battery life than all three competing laptops, with the highest delta being a 70% advantage over the Core i7-1370P"
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-intros-ryzen-7000-pro-...
I still find this compute per watt thing such a silly thing for any company to care about. Until Apple did it, it was not on anyone's minds. Once Apple did it, they dumped a bunch of money into marketing a metric that no one cared about; and now people pretend to care about it.
Not to mention this obsession with CPU that I just cannot grasp. Not sure what industries this is the bottleneck.
I think it's impressive to not only double the performance, and still keep roughly the same power rating.