its not. For anyone on intel laptop from 7 gen backward its still a major bump. I agree that next gen will bump the numbers by 30%, but 12nm is plenty powerful compared to standard user needs.
It's not just the 20-30% IPC+clock improvement. They could use that opportunity to double the max core count for Ryzen Mobile from 4 to 8. Especially if they are using the same 8-core chiplet used in all the other Zen 2 products.
The cherry on top could be AV1 hardware decode support.
It's unclear if Zen 2 based APUs will go directly to 8 cores and if they'll use chiplets. Chiplets might be unsuitable for laptops. More likely they will not use chiplets and they'll move to monolithic 6 cores + Navi iGPU dies. Using 8-core chiplets for laptops would require using the exact same dies as the desktop and *severely* downclocking them, on top of the space and power required for the I/O die. That would collapse single core performance.
Chiplets might be a fast way to have 8-core Zen in laptops, but there is yet no indication of AMD doing it. Also, AMD have only 4-core CCX, so monolithic 6-core APU is very unlikely. Old leaked AMD plans, that have been reliable thus far, have next APUs as 7nm 4c/8t, and there were leaks of them using Vega. This would obviously be the low power, mainstream APU to adress 80-90% of laptop market. For really low cost solutions- they have just released 2c/4t die. But for high performance mobile- no info if AMD are planning anything.
Yeah, the downside of monolithic dies where major components are developed by completely different teams - it just takes longer to do. Not that chiplets (or MCM, as it was known) is a walk in the park.
Some part of me is disappointed that AMD isn't focusing on mobile first, but their top end scaling seems to be working out for them in servers.
All indications are that they won't be using a chiplet design for their first 7nm APUs. I'm sure they have their reasons, more space efficient probably (more room for larger iGPU). They'll likely get there eventually but I don't know if it will happen before they end up with a stacking arrangement and/or I/O integral to the interposer.
Even setting that aside, 7nm APUs are a ways off. That's why they have a 12nm stopgap. Slightly higher clocks across the board, better temps (mostly due to solder IMO), probably substantially better sustained clocks too. It's still a decent upgrade, and if you're in the market NOW (not 6-9 months from now) they have some good options spanning from 12W to 35W.
I don't get why dumb oems waste precious volume space, available tdp and costs on a second gpu instead of properly equipping the APU with available memory bandwidth to perform optimally in a compact chassis. For the Nitro, I understand it's a gaming solution but the Swift isn't.
What is that supposed to mean? Ryzen Mobile maxes out at dual-channel standard DDR4 memory, which won't ever challenge GDDR5 on a huge GPU bus. Nothing to do with the OEM.
"Nothing to do with the OEM." OEMs *still* have a nasty habit of strangling Ryzen APU based laptops with single-channel memory, often with freaking soldered on the motherboard RAM dies (so both single-channel and fixed size memory)...
It's not like AMD doesn't have a say in it at all. They could mandate minimum requirements. They don't for the same reason Google isn't very quick to mandate minimum requirements for Android either - they want to eat their cake and eat it, too. They want the market share and sales - who cares if a few million users get a little screwed in the process, amirite?!
Yes, they could have a say, but based on what (power)? It's not like they have a dominant position in the laptop CPU market or could threaten OEM to cut off the supply... being the small player, you do not have that luxury.
I agree with uefi. The Ryzen SKU is supposed to deliver above average CPU and GPU capabilities in one SoC instead of 4 chips (Intel Core + MX230 and requisite pair of DDR5 chips), enabling next generation chassis designs featuring better heat pipes, RAM slots, 2nd m.2 slot, or bigger batteries that deliver marked improvements over Intel integrated graphics. It would not make sense to augment Ryzen with anything less than a GTX1050, in which case the thermal design will be over-kill for Ryzen SoC alone. Instead companies are opting for platform agnostic chassis designs that work for both AMD and Intel SKUs to maximize their opportunities in sticking whatever random part combinations they can get, like Ryzen + MX130 SKUs. Worse, not all users are urged to populate that extra RAM slot for dual channel benefits.
on the subject of thermal design, a couple of sub-1kg designs such as some models in the LG Gram, Acer Swift 5, or Asus UX ranges are no doubt designed with the promised 10nm Intel SoC with 11-Gen graphics in mind, and certainly no discrete graphics, but instead had to stick more 14nm cores using the same lame HD 620 graphics that Intel is able to deliver. Thus, i7 SKUs often run worse than i5 (and I suspect i3-8130U/i3-8145U in some workloads) due to thermals. I'm not sure if the 7nm Ryzen is pin compatible with 12nm Ryzen. If they are, it's about time PC companies start pushing out 12nm Ryzen NOW in the form of those sub-1kg notebooks rather than waiting until the 7nm Ryzen lands, and rather than putting Ryzen in discrete GPU chassis designs unless it's for gaming.
Have a Ryzen 2500U notebook and performance wise my kid can play Fortnite and similar games just fine at 1920x1080 with medium details. So I do agree that a weak dGPU is not really necessary.
But as it's optional, I have no issues in case someone feels they need it.
Yeah the unified chassis designs make it harder for these APUs to shine, but it isn't likely to change any time soon. The more egregious issue I see is systems that have 4GB of RAM soldered to the mainboard. With the AMD APUs, if you upgrade from 8GB (4 onboard, 4 in a stick) to 12 or 20GB, you lose dual channel and murder your GPU performance. But 8GB really isn't enough IMO, especially if you're sharing a couple gigs with the GPU.
They need to make both channels user-serviceable SODIMMs on every AMD laptop.
I struggled myself with that for some time, but it's making more and more sense to me these days: Problem sits in front of these machines: Users want machines that both run for a long time on batteries and offer gaming performance. At least they tend to accept that you need to plug it in when you game.
And as for single-channel vs. dual, it doesn't really get you into dGPU territory anyway, while the second DIMM may put you beyond the price point where it's worth selling the device. If you have a slot for a 2nd DIMM, then go and get crazy when RAM prices have stopped doing so (now seems a jolly better time than six months ago). It does get rather cramped in these ultrabooks, but at 2.3KG the Swift 3 is just as heavy as one of my GTX1070 based Skylake i7 so there should be plenty of space for an extra DIMM or three.
The iGPU part of the APU then gives you all the 2D and light 3D and VPU stuff that you need to last as long as possible on a charge, while the dGPU takes over for gaming.
On the Intel side of things, that's how they have done it with Nvidia for years now (subject to change, if Intel can carry it off) and here AMD and Acer are betting on the AMD software and driver team to deliver the type of integration in graphics and power management that can beat or at least draw close to what Intel and Nvidia have been able to do, certainly with enough of a price advantage to make it attractive for consumers.
I'd love to see if they can make that happen, because evidently they couldn't in the past, otherwise we'd have seen it before.
I am still somewhat "traumatized" by evaluating a 95Watt A10-7850K Kaveri with DDR3-2400 next to an i5-6267U with Iris Plus graphics (64MB of eDRAM as L4 cache): Both systems had pretty much 100% the same performance on any compute and graphics task that I could throw at both, yet the AMD was really overstepping the 100Watt mark every now and then, while the notebook with the i5 never sucked more than 30Watts from the power mains.
For many years Intel seemed very hard to beat on playing the idle and low power game while Nvidia was just as hard to beat at GPU performance per Watt at high power: AMD was using far too much power for far too little and now need to prove that they have at least become competitive.
They're more than competitive on CPU power consumption, and have been ever since Zen hit, although Zen-enhanced (APU) and Zen+ (CPU) designs have refined it a bit.
On the GPU side Navi should do pretty decent because of the smaller process and the mid-range initial targets, but it's hard to say what kind of gains we'll ultimately see.
Don't miss the forest for the trees here, the big improvement for the Ryzen 3XXX APUs is significantly improved power management and boost characteristics. Previously, the 2xxx APUs had issues with idle power consumption, and an inability to balance performance with both thermal load and power draw. Enthusiasts made software tools that helped tailor those behaviors in their laptops and made significant improvements in platform performance, but they could never fix the power draw issues.
This generation offers up a few hundred Mhz of base and boost performance improvement at each market point. It has the same iGPUs design, but with another few hundred Mhz of speed. Built in power management behaves much better, and, when pushing the platform while gaming or doing content creation, it behaves better with respect to achieving the best CPU Core performance AND iGPU graphics acceleration performance. Whereas before, it would either max out the iGPU or the CPU cores, but draw so much power or create so much heat, that it would have to run the other section at vastly lowered clocks to keep within its power budget.
The H series processors are also designed for higher power draw in total than the previous gen U series processors, allowing them to maintain their boost numbers for longer.
All in all, this looks like the mobile SKUs that AMD probably wishes they could have released the first time around. They will be more than competitive in their price points, so long as the OEMs have properly configured the laptops.
Aren’t Laptop chips SOC these days. So it needs integration. Does AMD makes things like Wifi modules to integrate them into SOC?
I am curious about reviews for AMD 3xxx laptop chips. Do we have one. How does it do on idle power consumption? I might consider one if it’s good on that front.
I paid $650 for the Intel i5/1050ti version of this laptop and I'm pretty happy with it. The Nitro 5 is a compromise but it is a good compromise. Previous gaming laptops were heavy and expensive while the Nitro is more portable and much cheaper. The specs are fantastic for a laptop in this price range.
Memory was not soldered in and was easy to upgrade through a little hatch in the back of the laptop. Not sure why people are complaining about this unless the AMD version is very different. Remove one screw and you are in the memory area.
Remove another screw and you are in the hard drive expansion bay. My laptop came with a small M2 SSD but more storage can easily be added. The bay includes a mount, screws and a cable for a SATA drive.
My biggest complaint is the lack of an optical drive. I have purchased a USB external for those times when a drive is required but a built in would be more handy.
There are plenty of laptops in this price range that lack a decent video card and lack an SSD. I feel like I pretty much have it all.
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nandnandnand - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
12nm Ryzen Mobile is for suckers. Wait for 7nm.deil - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
its not. For anyone on intel laptop from 7 gen backward its still a major bump.I agree that next gen will bump the numbers by 30%, but 12nm is plenty powerful compared to standard user needs.
nandnandnand - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
It's not just the 20-30% IPC+clock improvement. They could use that opportunity to double the max core count for Ryzen Mobile from 4 to 8. Especially if they are using the same 8-core chiplet used in all the other Zen 2 products.The cherry on top could be AV1 hardware decode support.
Santoval - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
It's unclear if Zen 2 based APUs will go directly to 8 cores and if they'll use chiplets. Chiplets might be unsuitable for laptops. More likely they will not use chiplets and they'll move to monolithic 6 cores + Navi iGPU dies. Using 8-core chiplets for laptops would require using the exact same dies as the desktop and *severely* downclocking them, on top of the space and power required for the I/O die. That would collapse single core performance.neblogai - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Chiplets might be a fast way to have 8-core Zen in laptops, but there is yet no indication of AMD doing it. Also, AMD have only 4-core CCX, so monolithic 6-core APU is very unlikely. Old leaked AMD plans, that have been reliable thus far, have next APUs as 7nm 4c/8t, and there were leaks of them using Vega. This would obviously be the low power, mainstream APU to adress 80-90% of laptop market. For really low cost solutions- they have just released 2c/4t die. But for high performance mobile- no info if AMD are planning anything.jeremyshaw - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Yeah, the downside of monolithic dies where major components are developed by completely different teams - it just takes longer to do. Not that chiplets (or MCM, as it was known) is a walk in the park.Some part of me is disappointed that AMD isn't focusing on mobile first, but their top end scaling seems to be working out for them in servers.
Alexvrb - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
All indications are that they won't be using a chiplet design for their first 7nm APUs. I'm sure they have their reasons, more space efficient probably (more room for larger iGPU). They'll likely get there eventually but I don't know if it will happen before they end up with a stacking arrangement and/or I/O integral to the interposer.Even setting that aside, 7nm APUs are a ways off. That's why they have a 12nm stopgap. Slightly higher clocks across the board, better temps (mostly due to solder IMO), probably substantially better sustained clocks too. It's still a decent upgrade, and if you're in the market NOW (not 6-9 months from now) they have some good options spanning from 12W to 35W.
Death666Angel - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Sure, so wait another half year to a year? If you can, great. Why not just continue waiting for 5nm or 3nm?nandnandnand - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Intel has 6 and 8-core mobile chips. When AMD puts those out, they are worth a buy.tokyojerry - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
That's true. It makes sense to me unless one wants to get a good bargain for only $700 USD versus north of 2K. Money-savings is the key here.nandnandnand - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Whether or not they reuse the same Zen 2 chiplets for Ryzen Mobile, doubling the core count won't add $1,300 to the price.sorten - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
July is just over a month away.If nothing else wait until the 7nm products are announced in 4 days and then look for sales on the old stuff.
zodiacfml - Saturday, May 25, 2019 - link
Yes. Double core counts and more efficient GPUs. I'd rather wait.uefi - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
I don't get why dumb oems waste precious volume space, available tdp and costs on a second gpu instead of properly equipping the APU with available memory bandwidth to perform optimally in a compact chassis. For the Nitro, I understand it's a gaming solution but the Swift isn't.lmcd - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
What is that supposed to mean? Ryzen Mobile maxes out at dual-channel standard DDR4 memory, which won't ever challenge GDDR5 on a huge GPU bus. Nothing to do with the OEM.Santoval - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
"Nothing to do with the OEM." OEMs *still* have a nasty habit of strangling Ryzen APU based laptops with single-channel memory, often with freaking soldered on the motherboard RAM dies (so both single-channel and fixed size memory)...Krysto - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
It's not like AMD doesn't have a say in it at all. They could mandate minimum requirements. They don't for the same reason Google isn't very quick to mandate minimum requirements for Android either - they want to eat their cake and eat it, too. They want the market share and sales - who cares if a few million users get a little screwed in the process, amirite?!Irata - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Yes, they could have a say, but based on what (power)? It's not like they have a dominant position in the laptop CPU market or could threaten OEM to cut off the supply... being the small player, you do not have that luxury.Irata - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
the dGPU is optional on the Swift, so if you do not want / need it, you can get the laptop without (this would be what I would go for).This is definitely an improvement from earlier times where at least you get the choice.
fmcjw - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
I agree with uefi. The Ryzen SKU is supposed to deliver above average CPU and GPU capabilities in one SoC instead of 4 chips (Intel Core + MX230 and requisite pair of DDR5 chips), enabling next generation chassis designs featuring better heat pipes, RAM slots, 2nd m.2 slot, or bigger batteries that deliver marked improvements over Intel integrated graphics. It would not make sense to augment Ryzen with anything less than a GTX1050, in which case the thermal design will be over-kill for Ryzen SoC alone. Instead companies are opting for platform agnostic chassis designs that work for both AMD and Intel SKUs to maximize their opportunities in sticking whatever random part combinations they can get, like Ryzen + MX130 SKUs. Worse, not all users are urged to populate that extra RAM slot for dual channel benefits.fmcjw - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
on the subject of thermal design, a couple of sub-1kg designs such as some models in the LG Gram, Acer Swift 5, or Asus UX ranges are no doubt designed with the promised 10nm Intel SoC with 11-Gen graphics in mind, and certainly no discrete graphics, but instead had to stick more 14nm cores using the same lame HD 620 graphics that Intel is able to deliver. Thus, i7 SKUs often run worse than i5 (and I suspect i3-8130U/i3-8145U in some workloads) due to thermals. I'm not sure if the 7nm Ryzen is pin compatible with 12nm Ryzen. If they are, it's about time PC companies start pushing out 12nm Ryzen NOW in the form of those sub-1kg notebooks rather than waiting until the 7nm Ryzen lands, and rather than putting Ryzen in discrete GPU chassis designs unless it's for gaming.Irata - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Have a Ryzen 2500U notebook and performance wise my kid can play Fortnite and similar games just fine at 1920x1080 with medium details. So I do agree that a weak dGPU is not really necessary.But as it's optional, I have no issues in case someone feels they need it.
Alexvrb - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Yeah the unified chassis designs make it harder for these APUs to shine, but it isn't likely to change any time soon. The more egregious issue I see is systems that have 4GB of RAM soldered to the mainboard. With the AMD APUs, if you upgrade from 8GB (4 onboard, 4 in a stick) to 12 or 20GB, you lose dual channel and murder your GPU performance. But 8GB really isn't enough IMO, especially if you're sharing a couple gigs with the GPU.They need to make both channels user-serviceable SODIMMs on every AMD laptop.
abufrejoval - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
I struggled myself with that for some time, but it's making more and more sense to me these days:Problem sits in front of these machines: Users want machines that both run for a long time on batteries and offer gaming performance. At least they tend to accept that you need to plug it in when you game.
And as for single-channel vs. dual, it doesn't really get you into dGPU territory anyway, while the second DIMM may put you beyond the price point where it's worth selling the device. If you have a slot for a 2nd DIMM, then go and get crazy when RAM prices have stopped doing so (now seems a jolly better time than six months ago). It does get rather cramped in these ultrabooks, but at 2.3KG the Swift 3 is just as heavy as one of my GTX1070 based Skylake i7 so there should be plenty of space for an extra DIMM or three.
The iGPU part of the APU then gives you all the 2D and light 3D and VPU stuff that you need to last as long as possible on a charge, while the dGPU takes over for gaming.
On the Intel side of things, that's how they have done it with Nvidia for years now (subject to change, if Intel can carry it off) and here AMD and Acer are betting on the AMD software and driver team to deliver the type of integration in graphics and power management that can beat or at least draw close to what Intel and Nvidia have been able to do, certainly with enough of a price advantage to make it attractive for consumers.
I'd love to see if they can make that happen, because evidently they couldn't in the past, otherwise we'd have seen it before.
I am still somewhat "traumatized" by evaluating a 95Watt A10-7850K Kaveri with DDR3-2400 next to an i5-6267U with Iris Plus graphics (64MB of eDRAM as L4 cache): Both systems had pretty much 100% the same performance on any compute and graphics task that I could throw at both, yet the AMD was really overstepping the 100Watt mark every now and then, while the notebook with the i5 never sucked more than 30Watts from the power mains.
For many years Intel seemed very hard to beat on playing the idle and low power game while Nvidia was just as hard to beat at GPU performance per Watt at high power: AMD was using far too much power for far too little and now need to prove that they have at least become competitive.
Alexvrb - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
They're more than competitive on CPU power consumption, and have been ever since Zen hit, although Zen-enhanced (APU) and Zen+ (CPU) designs have refined it a bit.On the GPU side Navi should do pretty decent because of the smaller process and the mid-range initial targets, but it's hard to say what kind of gains we'll ultimately see.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Better late than never. Benchmark against Core gen 7?Krysto - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Does anyone actually like red-font keyboards? Especially if the keyboards are not backlit, they are so difficult to read in even medium room light.lightningz71 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Don't miss the forest for the trees here, the big improvement for the Ryzen 3XXX APUs is significantly improved power management and boost characteristics. Previously, the 2xxx APUs had issues with idle power consumption, and an inability to balance performance with both thermal load and power draw. Enthusiasts made software tools that helped tailor those behaviors in their laptops and made significant improvements in platform performance, but they could never fix the power draw issues.This generation offers up a few hundred Mhz of base and boost performance improvement at each market point. It has the same iGPUs design, but with another few hundred Mhz of speed. Built in power management behaves much better, and, when pushing the platform while gaming or doing content creation, it behaves better with respect to achieving the best CPU Core performance AND iGPU graphics acceleration performance. Whereas before, it would either max out the iGPU or the CPU cores, but draw so much power or create so much heat, that it would have to run the other section at vastly lowered clocks to keep within its power budget.
The H series processors are also designed for higher power draw in total than the previous gen U series processors, allowing them to maintain their boost numbers for longer.
All in all, this looks like the mobile SKUs that AMD probably wishes they could have released the first time around. They will be more than competitive in their price points, so long as the OEMs have properly configured the laptops.
trivik12 - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Aren’t Laptop chips SOC these days. So it needs integration. Does AMD makes things like Wifi modules to integrate them into SOC?I am curious about reviews for AMD 3xxx laptop chips. Do we have one. How does it do on idle power consumption? I might consider one if it’s good on that front.
lakedude - Saturday, May 25, 2019 - link
I paid $650 for the Intel i5/1050ti version of this laptop and I'm pretty happy with it. The Nitro 5 is a compromise but it is a good compromise. Previous gaming laptops were heavy and expensive while the Nitro is more portable and much cheaper. The specs are fantastic for a laptop in this price range.Memory was not soldered in and was easy to upgrade through a little hatch in the back of the laptop. Not sure why people are complaining about this unless the AMD version is very different. Remove one screw and you are in the memory area.
Remove another screw and you are in the hard drive expansion bay. My laptop came with a small M2 SSD but more storage can easily be added. The bay includes a mount, screws and a cable for a SATA drive.
My biggest complaint is the lack of an optical drive. I have purchased a USB external for those times when a drive is required but a built in would be more handy.
There are plenty of laptops in this price range that lack a decent video card and lack an SSD. I feel like I pretty much have it all.