Not. When your display is 1080, you aren't going to be able to display 1200 vertical. You can display a 16:20 ASPECT RATIO by pillarboxing, but the point is the extra lines without sacrificing the width. Far more practical to display 16:9 1920x1080 content on a screen with a 16:10 1920x1200 screen which, as mentioned, allows the controls to be displayed without overlaying the content. For technical work, it allows the remote desktop to display at 1920x1080 while still seeing your local task bar, not constant minimizing and maximizing to go back and forth.
I've used 16:10 and 16:9 and I don't prefer 1080 lines over 1200 but that's a significant difference in resolution and I don't think it's a fair apples to apples comparison.
I'm currently on 4K which handily drops nicely to 1080 for gaming when the GPU struggles. I was kind of hoping for four 1080 monitors in one but it hasn't worked out that way. I've now got a small 7" touchscreen to go below it which takes out Youtube videos or spotify controls quite nicely.
I'm still rocking HP Dreamcolor LP2480zx's just because they're decent\inexpensive 16:10 monitors. I don't get the appeal of 16:9 widescreen for a work PC, and the cake is when you have TWO 16:10 monitors side-by-side. I also feel 16:10 is more appropriate for 'some' games where the vertical height is a huge advantage.
It's so strange this format died under non-existent consumer demand for an 'entertainment' aspect ratio, opposed to production aspect ratio.
I'm still rocking on a "Big Bertha" of the time, Viewsonic VP2290b (essentially an IBM T221) via two DVI links. 3840x2400 resolution. I'm in a desperate search for a monitor with the same or higher vertical resolution.
The vertical height REALLY matters for content creation.
It has 135W power consumption (at 24Hz) but I love it. Mind you, for CAD work, the higher the DPI, the better - so its relatively small diagonal dimension is actually a win here.
Have I had some spare time, I'd test it with Raspberry Pi 4 in a dual monitor setup - two stripes forming one screen. Should be possible, it has two HDMI outputs.
If you guys had some clue where to look for a 16:10 (or even 1:1 !) 4k monitor, let me know please.
Whenever I hear "soft-touch finish", I always wonder about long-term durability. In my experience (admittedly not with recent Dell products) such finishes have either scratched easily and/or turned "gummy" over time. Is this still a problem?
My lenovo Yoga 1 had softer touch. Its pretty thick. It did not get gummy but it is peeling off. Which is better than gummy I guess. About 8 years old.
The soft touch did not age well for my XPS 15 9560. Gotten extremely sticky and started to peel off around 2 years in - this was of course not covered under warranty as it was considered "wear and tear".
Context: I live in a tropical and humid country which probably accelerated the deterioration, so your experience may vary.
My 2019 XPS 13 2N1 has this finish and leaves me wondering every time after I use the palm rest if I should wipe it with water, with alcohol, or just leave it. Good thing I often use it in tent mode(a must for stylus use) and use a BT keyboard, which sidesteps the whole issue. There is a tiny flaw on the finish though, it's a dent less than 1mm in diameter that looks like what's left of a burst bubble of a highly viscous fluid on a flat surface.
Oh, FWIW I have a USB charger I bought about 6 years ago that claimed a "babyskin" finish, which feels similar to this "soft-touch" finish, I'm guessing some people really thought it's made of the skin of babies is why they dropped the name. It's often under somewhat high temperatures since it's a charging brick and it's softened with some wear at the corners, but it's only very slightly sticky.
None of those? Intel has solid mobile offerings. Extremely competitive in performance and power consumption. Try reading the article instead of shilling the comments section.
are you a bot or st.? Did you noticed the ryzen 4000 mobile CPU from AMD, which destorys any and all intel mobile chips in terms like performance, core count and power consumption? in this test, its repsesented by acer swift 3, which just completely annihilated the xps 13 in multi thread and GPU tests
No it's not, mainly because very few companies actually has put Ryzen chips in their premium laptops/Ultrabooks. If you need a laptop right now and not next year, then these machines are fine. Also, any eGPU enthusiasts will have a more limited choice as future Ryzen machines will undoubtedly use thunderbolt only on few devices since it is not built in.
Competitive doesn't mean better, it means competitive. Like Qualcomm chips are competitive with Apple's offerings, not because it has equivalent performance, it just means that they are good enough that people using Android won't be compelled to go to iPhones because the chipset is just too far behind (like if Qualcomm was stuck on 3G for some reason or lacked wifi).
Similarly, if you can do similar things with an Intel cpu compared to an AMD cpu, then they are "competitive" even if they are behind.
eek: Here's a review comparing a $600 Acer laptop with the 4700u (not AMD's top mobile CPU) against an XPS 13 with the Intel 1065G7, and it's not pretty. Tiger Lake is supposed to have a massively improved GPU (Intel's new Xe brand), but we don't know much about the CPU side yet.
According to unverified leaks. I await for actual performance values, while being skeptical that Intel managed to raise the IPC (and/or clocks) of Tiger Lake so much over Ice Lake (I obviously refer to the CPU block, not the iGPU block; I have no doubt that Xe will outperform AMD's Vega iGPUs - that is AMD's choice for having a 3-year old GPU design compete against Intel's latest and greatest Xe GPU, in an act of apparent self-sabotage).
@Jorgp2 It's kind of funny that your argument is "It's okay for Ultrabooks to be slower than craptops". The comparison is not only valid, it's *damning*. There shouldn't be any reason why you can get that performance from a junk notebook but not in the #1 Ultrabook design.
@grant3 - the cooling system on that Acer Swift is pretty terrible!
@Deicidium - the XPS 13 9300 launched in January this year - that's 6 months ago. It's the current competition for AMD's current mobile chips that launched one month ago. A comparison with a product that hasn't released yet isn't "more appropriate". 🤦♂️
Ice Lake is almost a year old. The more appropriate comparison is the upcoming Tiger Lake, Anandtech has been slow to get a review unit for an almost year old design, while the next gen is being prepped for release.
"Valid" in what sense? sorten is giving Intel a competitive benefit (or, alternatively, gives AMD a handicap) by comparing an AMD "craptop" with an Intel ultrabook; it's not the other way around.
Tiger Lake is coming in the next month or so - Lenovo and Acer already have their systems working the Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 - 4 core + 96EU Xe LP wrecks the most powerful Renoir in iGPU (actually matching or slightly exceeding the MX350) and with double the CPU cores (4 Intel / 8 AMD) the AMD is only 17% ahead. So Yeah, way less performance from the AMD.
Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance, but Intel has well moved on from that architecture. Intel is solid as they come in ultralights/ultrabooks.
Not sure what you mean when you say "Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance." Zen 2 mobile chips easily outperform Ice Lake and Comet Lake.
Yes, we all expect the Xe iGPU to outperform AMD's iGPU. Intel has been humiliated for so long in this area that they've put all of their efforts into becoming competitive. In some respects, both brands targeted their competitor's strength, and gave up ground in theirs.
I'd personally prefer the CPU advantage, because if I'm doing anything with graphics that any decent iGPU can handle, I'd just use the Dell's TB3 port to hook up an eGPU. But everyone has their own priorities, I understand.
On what basis are you announcing Sunny Cove and the unreleased Willow Cove as superior architectures? Can you link to some data to support that? Because this review directly contradicts that claim.
The lightly threaded tests in this very review show the 4700U trading blows with the 1065G7. Both are clocked similarly. IPC is close in workloads that are relevant to ultrabooks.
I just can't see any basis for the claims you are making here.
Most of what I do as a software engineer, from the compilers, build tools, and the software I write, eats up the cores. So if I can get 2x the cores for less money, then that's a bonus rather than a point against AMD.
As a fellow software engineer, I still prefer Intel over AMD. What you win with having more cores, you lose with poor compiler optimizations and the big advantage of AVX-512 in certain workloads. Not to mention AMD platforms tend to have more bugs at launch so you spend more time finding workarounds.
@vladx with the FUD here. Nice weasel words with "tend to have more bugs" even though we're talking about a specific platform that doesn't have any egregious bugs.
"and the big advantage of AVX-512 in certain workloads. " Can you name some of these workloads? Even better, out of 10 workloads (or, to make it temporal, out of every "10 programming hours") on average how many can benefit by or be accelerated with AVX-512? Hand on heart answers only please. As for the "poor compiler optimizations" do you mean the "super aggressive compiler flags Intel tends to prefer that often result in poorer, bug prone code"? Spunjji below covered me with the arbitrary "bugs" of the "AMD platforms".
"The Zen 2 architecture still has around Skylake level performance, SNC and WLC have a much higher lead over Skylake than Zen 2 does." That is pure, groundless BS. You have also confused the Zen 2 "architecture" (thus only the *IPC* of Zen 2) with Skylake's "performance" (both its IPC and clock speed). That is like comparing the acceleration from 0 to 60/100 of one car with the final speed of another car without even realizing the arbitrary comparison. Finally CPUs with Willow Cove (i.e. Tiger Lake) has not even been released yet, so referring to Willow Cove in the present tense is beyond surreal.
There seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around here. Perhaps I should link to our initial Ryzen 7 4700U review in every review I do. Ice Lake is well ahead in single-threaded performance over Zen 2, despite the lower frequency. AMD has double the cores though so even lightly threaded workloads can see a nice improvement.
Leaks from Lenovo show Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 (not even the top end part) obviously besting the ancient Vega (AMD's choice) and equaling the MX350 - and with only 4 cores only being outran by 17% - double the cores for 17% lead - and when you factor in the flagging GPU - what's the Renoir's advantage again?
Ice Lake is almost a year old. Comparing the latest AMD with an almost year old design should be a win for the newer part. the most appropriate comparison is 2020 vs 2020. That would be Tiger Lake
As always for a Deicidium post about AMD, Lots Of Citations Needed.
"Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance" - They already matched that clock-for-clock with Raven Ridge (at lower clocks, hence lower overall performance), and they have now exceeded it with Renoir.
"Intel has well moved on from that architecture" - Not really. I'd accept this if they had Sunny Cove or better across most of their range, but they absolutely do not - not even in notebooks, let alone the entire market.
Tiger Lake looks like it'll be a good release, when it arrives in quantity. Problem is that we're talking about today, not Jam Tomorrow.
It is still unclear if Tiger Lake will be a high volume release or a low volume release that will need to be released along perhaps Rocket Lake-U/Y, rehashing the way Ice Lake was released along with Comet Lake-U/Y. It should be higher volume than Ice Lake but maybe not high enough to fully supply the U/Y market on its own.
Well Ice Lake shipped in greater numbers than all of the Ryzen Mobile - so high volume is a relative term. Ice Lake was going to be low volume and relatively niche. Tiger Lake is high volume (not high volume like the Ice Lake SP Xeon) compared to Ice Lake U.
I was surprised to see the 1065G7 in an Inspiron class machine at Dell - I had thought it was only the XPS class machines.
@Deicidium - Of course it shipped in greater numbers than Ryzen Mobile! Intel are ~35X the size of AMD - you'd kind of hope they'd be shipping products in larger absolute numbers. I was talking about Sunny Cove as a proportion of Intel's product range, and I was pretty damn clear about that. It's telling that you flipped metrics under discussion to suit your argument.
"Ice Lake was going to be low volume and relatively niche" - says who? Why? To what end? You're pointing to the results of a sub-par product launch (by Intel's historically high standards) and claiming it was the plan all along. It's just like the AMD fanbois who used to laud the FX 9590's 5Ghz clock speed as if it was an achievement, rather than the best they could salvage from what they had.
You said Intel have "moved on" from Skylake. That's untrue and will remain the case until Rocket Lake, Ice Lake SP and Tiger Lake are out. At that point in time (and not before) Intel will be fully competitive in all areas on a technical level. I'm genuinely interested to see how Sunny Cove on 14nm looks - there's no reason to believe it won't be solidly competitive with AMD on performance, but power draw and die size might not be quite so flattering.
"Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance, but Intel has well moved on from that architecture. Intel is solid as they come in ultralights/ultrabooks."
That's a very bizarre statement for quite a few reasons : 1. AMD are not targeting Skylake performance levels. When they designed the original Zen they had in mind Cannon Lake - level performance (Intel semi-released a single semi-disabled Cannon Lake 2-core Core i3 in low volume and now they trying to pretend they never did) and when they designed Zen 2 (according to CTO Mark Papermaster) they were targeting it against Ice Lake - not knowing it would be limited to 4-core low power parts. AMD never had Skylake in mind because they never expected Intel would be stuck so many years with it.
2. Intel have not "well" moved on from Skylake at all. They *just* did, at the beginning of the year (still in low volume, hence the dual release with Comet Lake-U/Y, which was the bulk of the release), with low power 4-core mobile parts and they are *still* stuck with it in the form of Comet Lake. Until Comet Lake is replaced by Rocket Lake Intel are still stuck with Skylake, still fabbing and releasing CPUs with an μarch they have been using, reusing and re-reusing and re-re-reusing since 2015. In which parallel universe would that be regarded as "well moved on from that architecture"?
then you haven't been reading here that much. he will bash and any chance he can, while praising his gods intel and nvidia, with no proof at all of his claims.
Zen 1 vs Zen 3 are minor architectural tweaks and improved manufacturing and packaging ("chiplets" and IO die) - per core performance has not increased any more than Skylake to to Coffee Lake to Comet Lake. Minor tweaks. So still competing at Skylake level perormance.
Well moved on - Last 14nm server CPU has shipped - last 14nm desktop CPU is shipping later this year. Ice Lake is widespread enough to count - in way more designs than AMD.
Leaks show that 8C monstrosity to be 17% better perf than 4 cores on Tiger Lake.
Rocket Lake is basically backported Ice Lake/Tiger Lake to 14nm - so no Skylake there. Sunny Cove/Willow Cove/Golden Cove ARE NOT SKYLAKE. New arch. I know you know this.
going by that same logic, all intel cpu's since skylake are also minor architectural tweaks and improved manufacturing as well, whats your point ? " Last 14nm server CPU has shipped - last 14nm desktop CPU is shipping later this year" oh ? lets see you post proof of this. oh wait, you cant, cause there isnt any proof. " Leaks show that 8C monstrosity to be 17% better perf than 4 cores on Tiger Lake. " like another mentioned, still cherry picking are you ?
IF it was a new architecture, intel them selves would of called it gen 1, not gen 10/11/12/etc.
Per core performance hasn't increased from Zen 1 to Zen+, to Zen 2??? Whatever you are smoking I hope you share. Clock for clock Zen 2 is about 18% faster than Zen 1, that means per core performance is higher. Whereas Intel hasn't increased per core performance since 2015. Before that Intel hadn't had more than minor changes since the change from Nehlema to Sandy Bridge. After that they had nothing more that 5% IPC improvements, all other performance increase was sheer clock speed.
Odds are that Rocket Lake will not clock as high as Skylake derivatives. It will need to have a massively higher IPC to counteract the loss of clock compared to Comet Lake. On top of that it will probably be very power hungry due to the bigger chip and added complexity.
If tiger late is as impressive as ice lake the ryzen 4700u will retain a significant advantage in performance, and I'll believe it releases when I see it.
Much more impressive. 4C Tiger Lake is 17% slower than 8C Renoir - and Xe LP is at least 2x as fast as Gen11 (in Ice Lake) and performs as well as a Nvidia MX350 (hence why Nvidia is pushing out the Turing MX450) - which wrecks the ancient Vega.
So double the cores and a whopping 17% perf advantage - and much slower iGPU - are we sure that AMD understands the laptop market?
You are doing some gold-standard cherry picking here. Which chart gets you this "17% slower" number you keep quoting as if it's gospel? The 15W thermal envelope is the limiting factor here, so "double the cores" won't net you anywhere near double the performance, nor are they supposed to.
According to this very review, lightly threaded tests show the 4700U on par with the similarly clocked Ice Lake. They are neck and neck. IPC is very close between Zen 2 and Sunny Cove.
Highly threaded workloads are dominated by AMD: CB: 4700U is 52% faster HB(software): 4700U is 71% faster HB(hardware): 4700U is 79% faster 7-Zip(comp): 4700U is 34% faster 7-Zip(decomp): 4700U is 40% faster
Remember that the 4700U is **not** the top SKU (though admittedly the 4800U isn't much faster).
Again - where is this "17%" coming from if not deceptively cherry picked?
Tiger Lake looks to have a massive GPU, but what are we looking at CPU wise? A few % IPC and very small clock bump? Maybe Intel squeeze out a tiny single threaded lead, while still getting trashed in multi-core workloads - in exchange for a better iGPU.
@rhysiam - He's basing his claims on an early benchmark leak that does indeed suggest a healthy single-thread lead for Tiger Lake and a moderate multi-core deficit. It doesn't look to be a particularly unreliable leak - apparently comparing like-for-like in terms of chassis - but it's still just the one leak. There are also leaks implying a far less dramatic advantage for the Xe LP GPU, but he's not citing those.
When it comes to Deicidium, information suggesting Intel superiority is taken as gospel and information suggesting otherwise is discarded. He spent the months leading up to Renoir's release refusing to believe any of the benchmark leaks favouring AMD and hammering on how unreleased products don't matter. Go figure.
Yeah, boy as I wrong - that Great Renoir can compete with an almost year old design! That is unbelievable. With such massive year over year IPC increases - would only be fair to compare the Great Renoir with Alder or Meteor Lake.
Too bad AMD marketing never pans out and when the fanboys get it - and filter it through their fever dreams - it is even more disappointing when released - The Another Marketing Deception product release
HYPE HYPE HYPE LAUNCH SIGH! NEXT (or compare to last years outgoing CPU)
If Tiger Lake is still capped at 4 cores (and apparently both the Y and U variants are, though the -H variant will probably have up to 6 cores) it will not be able to compete with AMD's APUs in *CPU* performance. According to some leaks though Tiger Lake's Xe iGPU outperforms the (very) old Vega based iGPU that for some inexplicable reason (to avoid internal competition with their lowest end Navi graphics cards?) AMD decided to add to their 4000 APU series.
Well, Xe hasn't even been released yet and Vega was released 3 full years ago, so if Xe couldn't even outclass (barely apparently) a 3-year old iGPU Intel would be in deep trouble. Tiger Lake might outperform AMD's APUs in single thread performance, but that doesn't matter as much anymore. The question is how much Intel managed to raise the IPC and the clocks of Tiger Lake over Ice Lake, but it's not "doubtful" at all that AMD's APUs will be in most ultrabooks by early next year. Only people who were sleeping in a technological cave for the last 3 years would think that.
Ice Lake had a 30% increase in IPC (the quip about, at the expense of lower clocks is meaningless) and with improved 10nm+ and architectural advanced in Willow Cove equate to an actual IPC increase, not just one in marketing materials.
4 cores can easily equal AMD 8 cores. These are ultralights - they are not DTR - 4 superior cores + superior graphics are the best mix - not 8 cores an ancient Vega iGPU.
They won't be in premium devices - it is not their market - Lenovo is as close as they will come - not worth the OEMs to design around a niche APU that won't sell in profitable numbers.
OEMs seem to not want to make the investment into AMD designs, no one is asking for them, and they have no advantage over the well established, steady (Intel never dropped out of sight for more than a decade) and reliable Intel.
IIRC, this was not mentioned by Anandtech, but this laptop (and many, many, many, many) others from the premium Ultrabook category are partnered directly with Intel through the Project Athena program, aka the "Engineered for Mobile Performance" badge you sometimes see.
It gives a lot of manufacturing / R&D support while also demanding a minimum set of specifications; I think, in the end, it's a win for OEMs as they get a better product (a virtuous cycle) and they get R&D support directly from Intel on the entire notebook (not just the CPU or wireless).
I think 9/10 premium Ultrabooks are Project Athena certified.
I do believe AMD has launched a rival program with Renoir, but it may take time to gain traction. Tiger Lake vs Zen3-based mobile is going to be exciting and AMD absolutely deserves far better than the relatively average performers they keep getting stuck with.
They did, with HP, a company with historically strong AMD ties in their consumer line. It didn't go well. Whomever thought bulldozer on netbooks was a good idea, is hopefully no longer calling shots at AMD or HP anymore.
If you're referring to the entire Bulldozer family history, I gotta say my Toshiba Satellite with an A8-4500M was actually pretty solid for a number of years. Yea the battery life was trash but performance held up for years, especially with dual-channel memory that I upgraded it to.
Depends what they think AMD and Intel will be offering next year, I'd imagine.
Most vendors wouldn't have even started designing an AMD premium notebook until after they had real performance and power usage data on Ryzen 4xxx, and even then wouldn't bother unless they were fairly confident Intel wouldn't be able to match it fairly soon.
Cinebench multithread (and other embarrassingly parallel benchmarks) notwithstanding, there's really not much value in more than 4 core/8 threads for most consumers (servers and workstations are another matter); Amdhal's law is still real. But the optics of selling 4 cores vs 8 aren't great, and at least initially, Tiger Lake U will still be a quad core.
"Most vendors wouldn't have even started designing an AMD premium notebook until after they had real performance and power usage data on Ryzen 4xxx"
They would have had that data a long time before the platform shipped - Asus couldn't have designed the class-redefining Zephyrus 14 without it. They managed to create a whole new category of gaming sub-notebook, yet most of the larger OEMs couldn't manage to get one into an existing Ultrabook chassis. 🤔
Yeah agree there - the OEMs have had access to the specifics of Renoir - but likely will repurpose previous designs, since Renoir is largely like the previous (3xxx APUs, don't know the names) - from an electrical and packaging point of view.
I can't imagine having a laptop as a gaming platform - Opus Magnum maybe - but not BF5. But every use case is different - there used to be a DTR slot in my lineup - but not any more.
Microsoft did with the Surface Laptop - they partnered with AMD to get the previous gen into production, with the follow up - Renoir - to be easily slotted into.
AMD is more in the DiY market. and No one runs benchmarks as their main application.
The Ultralight/Athena designs are the highest end, lightest designs - like the XPS13 and Dell 13 2-in-1 - weigh a couple of pounds, lasts a whole day (i get 12+ hrs) on a single charge - and runs everything I need to run - it is NOT a DTR product.
I disagree with the optics - Most do not care if it's 8 core or quantum or made from carebears - they ask "does it do what I want it to do?" that's the only metric for most people. We are not most people. The Intel name is universally recognized - and the sales pitch for AMD is to compare it to Intel - and why get the "as good as" when you can get Intel - their last laptop was probably Intel, so their next laptop will likely be Intel - and likely the same OEM.
The idea is that most premium ultrabooks are made with the help of project Athena. If AMD wants premium ultrabooks they need to start working on their own design.
Yep, having stability is just as important as performance. When AMD products become rock solid straight from the launch then I will consider an AMD product in my desktop/laptop.
That's right, people often forget there's also chipset drivers that can impact performance and stability of a system and AMD proved every time they are uncapable of writing reliable drivers.
like intel or nvidia is any better ? i had a board with both an intel NIC, and a realtech NIC onboard, and had to use the realtech one as the intel, had issues. had to go back to a previous nvidia driver cause the latest had issues. come on, every hardware maker can have issues with drivers, none of them are perfect, no matter what you or Deicidium369 claim.
Yes indeed, Intel might not as flashy but their chipset drivers are rock solid. Their GPU drivers need more work but are much less likely to cause crashes or software conflicts.
You've never used an Intel GPU then? :| How about their amazing Management Engine Interface? :| :| Or the absolutely stunning PROSet networking software? :| :| :|
Every manufacturer releases buggy software for some of their products. We can do this all day, or you could *point to the specifics that are supposedly wrong with Renoir*. As nobody has - and the only people hammering on this particular nail or notoriously unable to hold a discussion without introducing a motte-and-bailey - I'm going to assume you do not have anything to back up the claims.
You realize this is an almost 1 year old chip - same as the Late September Dell 13 2-in-1...
Tiger Lake launches in the next couple of months - and Tiger Lake 4C is 17% slower than AMD 8C and the iGPU is not even competitive on the AMD side - Xe LP equals the Nvidia MX350.
So yeah LOL Intel - matching the MX350 and virtually matching the top Renoir with half the cores.
It is because people don`t buy amd laptops... why make something that most people Are not willing to buy? That is the biggest problem with amd laptops. Intel can put 5 years old cpus in laptops and those sel like hotcakes...
Oh come on, this cherry picked "17%" claim again? See my post above. The very review you are commenting on shows highly threaded workloads pushing to AMD's advantage in the 34% to 79% range, depending on the specific workload. That is **not** "virtually matching"... and the 4700U is **not** the top Renoir.
"Summing up the performance metrics, the Intel Core i7-1165G7 has a lead of up to 20% in single-core performance tests while featuring a 10% clock speed advantage over the Ryzen 7 4800U (4.2 GHz vs 4.7 GHz). In multi-core tests, the Ryzen 7 4800U is 17% faster but that is despite the AMD chip having twice the number of cores and threads. But that's the fastest score for the chip with Linux OS which tends to offer higher scores. Compared to a Ryzen 7 4800U on Windows OS, the Core i7-1165G7 leads by up to 35% in single-core while being just 6% slower than its 8 core & 16 thread competitor."
34% higher performance in single core - slightly higher clock, but not 34% higher clocks - that's a nice IPC gain.
Not seeing the 34 to 79% AMD advantage in multicore. I am seeing the multicore being between 17% slower and 6% slower depending on the OS - with 8 cores & 16 threads vs 4 cores and 8 threads.
WCCFTech were running with rumours that Zen 2 would hit ~5Ghz for months before it was released, so yeah, I'd say their record isn't particularly reliable.
Their comments section is also notoriously full of trolls and jackasses...
So buggy and power hungry that it gets 15 hours of normalized battery life. SOOOO power hungry. The iris GPU is also far mroe powerful then your typical HD 620 GPU.
It is true. AMD is going bankrupt because of Ryzenfall(remember that?). Intel won't even bother to buy the corpse because it is so worthless. nVidia will actively send a team down to AMD HQ to piss on their front door after they lay everyone off. ... The only part of that I genuinely believe is that nVidia would send a team to AMD HQ to urinate on their porch.
It's quite funny seeing Deicidium finally admit that AMD have indeed had a time in the sun right as he's proclaiming it to be over.
It's a binary flip from "their products are all rubbish" to "they're soon going to be losing to an unreleased product". You are the worst kind of zealot.
He's not lacking in sense - he knows exactly what he's doing. It takes some nous to be that specific about which facts you discuss and how you frame them. A real idiot would just shut up after a while...
I have had the same Core i7-1065G7 in my Dell 13 2-in-1 since the first week in October - not buggy - rock solid, much faster than the top Dell 13 2-in-1 it replaces - faster CPU, faster GPU, faster memory and noticeably much more responsive - and 13hrs+ battery life. Real life day to day use - not some website review.
So you need to upgrade where you get your talking points from.
I really hope manufacturers copy Dell's strong improvements here: no silly keyboard gimmicks or bloatware (looking at you, *****ing HP), improve the screen contrast, glare, and ratio (you gotta stare it all day), and nail battery life. With a near 16-hour real-world battery life, it absolutely dissuades ARM transitions purely for efficiency.
But, while I love Dell's improvements, a few hard-to-swallow regressions here:
-- no type-A port. That's just frustrating. Are we *really* in a type-C-only world? No. And Dell knows that. Why is a "productivity" device (16:10 panel) handicapped? Did we need it thinner? Where the hell are all the PCH's USB / PCIe bandwidth going? Into the ... charge port? We should have 4X type-C ports these days. -- soldered SSD. An absolutely groundless regression. Goodbye to a last-chance backup if the motherboard dies. And don't even think about out-of-warranty replacements. -- toasty, toasty, toasty bottoms. 42 W PL2, even with GORE, is absolutely "crazy", as Anandtech points out. Likewise, Notebookcheck notched a nearly 30C idle bottom panel in a 20C room: the heat just exudes out even at idle. Add in a heavy load and you're at a toasty 46C in the back bottom (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9300-Cor...
And, it should be noted: Dell still sells the older Comet Lake-U models, so buyer beware which "XPS 13" you click on. The product names are identical and both use "10th gen" CPUs.
Buyers don’t have to beware. Just use it for a couple weeks then return. I went to dell website to check the price and specs of the model AT reviews. They have everything messy. No filter and no year of release for all the laptops they’re selling. Only “for home” and “for work”. wtf? I can’t buy a “work” laptop just to watch youtube at home? How about a laptop for both home and work? I used to prefer dell products especially monitors but since they became intel’s lap dog to monopolize the market, I put them on my “do not buy” list. Overpriced dells are for idiots.
Qualcomm based atheros wireless modules were so good, I don't believe how killer ones are so bad, that intel acquired killer, sad that Qualcomm based modules will no longer will be available.
I don't know, are Qualcomm's wireless modules that good for Windows? I've had many problems in enterprises where Qualcomm's wifi was always unstable compared to Intel's. Though admittedly, at home I never had a problem.
So frustrating that Dell made yet another XPS hamstring by its thermal dissipation ability. The see-sawing ruins these systems for my brother, who happens to like to play a few games after work. It used to be possible to undervolt to fix this, but now I Tel has sent out firmware updates to disable that because it's protecting SGX enclaves from the Plundervolt vulnerability. I certainly won't be recommending this new version to him.
Ofcourse! It is the best way of making money. People buy Intel laptops. It does not matter if Intel cpus Are bad, people still buy them. Amd can make better cpus and people still don`t buy AMD laptops... so They Are making the only sensible thing... by usining intel cpus. They want to make money and sell laptops...
Tiger Lake will be in the premium Dells - AMD won't
Lenovo's new systems are Tiger Lake and there is an almost identical system with the top end Renoir - the Tiger Lake system wrecks the Renoir iGPU and with 4C vs 8C only 17% slower - those are benchmarks on Jul 3 2020.
Other than gaming I'm primarily a Mac user, but the XPS 13 DE has been on my radar as a Linux machine. I'm still surprised that Apple hasn't been more aggressive with their updates to the 13" MacBook Pro to better compete with the XPS 13.
My received 2 in 1 has many parts that did not fit well. For example, the screen's topmost layer bulges out at the bottom of the frame, and a few keys are poorly stabilized. The hinge is also too stiff, making opening the laptop a two-handed job. I wonder if I got an early production version as a result of the rush to get units out to customers. The OS install also feels stuttery at times. Since these issues do not impact normal use, I've so far not bothered with informing Dell.
When the XPS 15 9560 was purchased with on site service, it took six attempts to get it to work. Here are the parts replaced on just the last (sixth) attempt. SERVICE REPORT REPLACEMENT PARTS No. Dell Part QTY Description Parts Retained by Customer 1 5R1JP 1 ASSY,CVR,BTM,W/BDG,9550 No 2 M0T6P 1 ASSY,PLMRST,W/FPR,80,9560 No 3 9TXK7 1 ADPT,AC,130W,DLTA,4.5,L6,V2,E5 No 4 RN699 1 ADPT,CON,VID,DNGL,DP2VGA,L No 5 64TM0 1 ASSY,CBL,DC-IN, 9550/5510 No 6 2JVNJ 1 CORD,PWR,125V,2.5A,1M,C5,E5,US No 7 5G0HC 1 ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,AUDIO,9560/5520 No
Old wounds, not healed only fester. I purchase two U3011s. Both suffered the same design defect. Dell replace one but NOT the other, claiming "it was their policy to replace only one". Go figure. www.tinyurl.com/HellIsDell
You're making me feel better... The xps-15-7500 6 weeks ago hasn't seen a day of use yet because of the massive delays in getting the touchpad + fingerprint defects fixed. I'm surprised the hardware is never tested on new machines before being shipped.
Looks nice, just one major downside, and one "wish they'd made that available": the major downside is the complete absence of a USB type A connector. I know they include an adapter, but that's just one more thing to forget or lose. If a Surface tablet has enough space for one, the XPS should have space for one, too. 2 USB-C/TB + one USB A 3.2, and it'd be almost perfect. The other "complaint" is the battery size. I'd gladly pay a bit extra and lug another 200 g around and have a 90 Wh battery - now that'll be a "whole day without recharge" ultraportable.
And yes, it would have been nice to have a 4800u as a processor option, but these units are designed over a year before rollout, and AMD wasn't all that ready to rumble last summer. Now they are, and I hope that Dell will add a Renoir option for their 2021 XPS models.
Forgot to add: why only one (one!) heatpipe with a 42 W top TDP CPU? C'mon, Dell, add the 50 or 100g weight for a second heatpipe and give the thing the cooling it deserves!
and will be going against the massively superior Tiger Lake - MX350 level graphics, and 17% slower with half the cores (4 vs 8) than the top end Renoir. Unlikely to ever see an AMD in an XPS13 class machine.
Yeah right, Renoir is such a failure. Only these cheap and low quality models available (ThinkPad X13 13” (AMD) Laptop, LENOVO ThinkPad T14s AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, HP Elitebook 835/845/855 G7). Oh wait...
I just don't buy this "AMD weren't ready" shtick. Asus designed an *entirely new class of gaming laptop* around Renoir. It really wouldn't have been difficult for Dell to integrate Renoir into this design - which has released much later in the year than the Zephyrus 14 - if they had had any interest in doing so.
Whether this is down to AMD's failure in OEM outreach, Dell's failure in imagination, or standard Intel shenanigans is unclear - but the end result is inferior products and TBH I'm sick of it.
USB-A is sometimes useful sure, but aside from old flash drives, what do you -need- it for? Just spend the $30 on some USB-C cables to replace your USB-A cables. Yes it's in many ways a needless expense, but it can be justified as a minor price bump for people who are already spending $1400+ on a new laptop.
Soldered SSD? only two Type-C ports? Just get an X1 Carbon. All around a much more solid laptop, more reliable, much better keyboard, lots of ports and similar footprint.
I wonder why it's not included in the device comparison in this article..
I would never buy a Dell product. When the XPS 15 9560 was purchased with on site service, it took six attempts to get it to work. Here are the parts replaced on just the last (sixth) attempt. SERVICE REPORT REPLACEMENT PARTS No. Dell Part QTY Description Parts Retained by Customer 1 5R1JP 1 ASSY,CVR,BTM,W/BDG,9550 No 2 M0T6P 1 ASSY,PLMRST,W/FPR,80,9560 No 3 9TXK7 1 ADPT,AC,130W,DLTA,4.5,L6,V2,E5 No 4 RN699 1 ADPT,CON,VID,DNGL,DP2VGA,L No 5 64TM0 1 ASSY,CBL,DC-IN, 9550/5510 No 6 2JVNJ 1 CORD,PWR,125V,2.5A,1M,C5,E5,US No 7 5G0HC 1 ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,AUDIO,9560/5520 No
Old wounds, not healed only fester. I purchase two U3011s. Both suffered the same design defect. Dell replace one but NOT the other, claiming "it was their policy to replace only one". Go figure. www.tinyurl.com/HellIsDell
Of course that's not how it works, but that's a straw man.
According to the habitual Intel stans on this page: You can't expect AMD designs when AMD has markedly inferior products and Intel is executing well. You can't expect AMD designs when AMD have released broadly competitive products and Intel has been executing poorly for a couple of years with no signs of improving any time soon. You can't expect AMD designs when AMD have released markedly superior products and Intel have been dropping the ball for 4 years straight but will maybe have a competitive product *soon*.
So the question is: when can we ever expect AMD designs to be developed? When do we finally get the competition needed to keep prices reasonable on high-end products?
The answer you're giving is "I'm fine with never", which means your opinion isn't worth shit.
I own a XPS15 which had two main problems. Crappy Wifi chip (swap out for new Intel one, fixed) and bad cooling (can't fix, it is amazing how low my clock speeds went during gaming, buy a Ryzen 4700 Asus laptop and it is almost twice as fast because of thermals and better cooling). Mostly I want an XPS13 with AMD inside and I'll give it another shot. My $3000 XPS15 sits doing nothing, beaten by my $1500 Asus Ryzen 4000 laptop. G15.
I looked at this, and I am very disappointed with anything soldered, means NON-upgradeable. Also lack of a separate GPU is also a problem. I am happy with my older, 15" MSI with the 7700HQ and GTX 1060. And upgradeable SATA 2.5" / m.2 drives, currently running an Adata SX8200 and a Samsung 850 Evo. I also have 2 SODIMM slots, can add another 16GB in if needed.
My XPS13 had constant thermal problems that took months to "fix" - when I finally got rid of some Intel management software AND undervolted the CPU. At last the fan stopped cycling up and down just at idle, with the CPU at 70 degC. What a nightmare and so many hours wasted. Now I read in the comments here that undervolting is being disabled in Intel updates!
I won't even consider another XPS13 unless it's AMD.
I had this issue with my first-gen Infinity-Edge Broadwell XPS13. That combined with the "contrast boosting" display-dimming feature that couldn't be disabled made it useless for what I bought it for (mobile photo editing). I got rid of it in the end.
Regarding the battery life & performance. It would be interesting to see how much you lose performance if you're running the laptop without the power cord.
I have a somewhat bad feeling that the latest generation of laptops have a better battery life than the previous generations mainly because the laptops slow down their CPUs more than they used to.
If we take Surface Book 2 as an example (not a new laptop but still). The CPU automatically works with lower speeds when it is unplugged. AND it is not possible to get the full speed out from the machine, no matter how you change Windows' power settings.
That actually sounds like a good basis for an article. Windows 10 has added a lot of power management settings which can adjust the power levels of the CPU with just a slider. Can't promise anything right away but if I have time I'll look into this.
From what kind of USB-C chargers does this charge from? Does it charge from 9V 2A PD-charger or just complains that charger is not powerful enough? How about some 20V 2A or whatever else there might be?
Lovely chassis. Not enough to make up for the wrong CPU and the lack of a 1600p screen. I don’t want battery-sucking 4K in a 13” laptop, but I also don’t want to see pixels on my small fonts.
There is a big problem with these devices.. The focus on thin bezels has had a negative impact on the palm rest area. It's so tiny now that the typing experience isn't very good. I suppose if you don't use it that much - it's bearable. But for heavy keyboarders ... like programmers ... I would recommend the Dell XPS 15 or 16" MacBook Pro instead. They only costs a few dollars more, but deliver a much better experience all around.
The USP of the Dell was always that it's a 13" display in a 12"-sized chassis, so the palm-rest should really be judged as such. There are a few 14"-in-13"-chassis devices out there (LG Gram 14, Matebook D, Swift 5 14) if you need more room.
I hope they fixed the Bluetooth. I can’t move three feet away when trying to listen to music on my 2016 XPS 13”. Same headphone on my iPhone, I can go all over the house.
I used to say "unless it's Intel I'm not gonna bother", am now just realising with the latest AMD mobile chipsets, I've firmly swung in the other direction. It feels almost daft to go with Intel nowadays considering what AMD are putting out. I'd love one of these with new Ryzen in it
This "king" is overrated. Surface Laptop is miles better at a lower price. The i3 and i5 versions of xps are useless because they are G1. 4gb ram version is, again, useless. It's not even a $1000 laptop.
The lack of Ryzen here means there are sub 600 dollar laptops running laps around this when any resemblance of stress is present. Makes this a lot less attractive.
Not sure why people still say windows 10 still handles HDR poorly, have they tried it since the HDR update? Apps look fine to me, everything looks fantastic (if a little bright)
I had the XPS 9300 for a couple months before deciding to sell it. There are some issues with this laptop which wasn't highlighted in this review:
- The display is really bright and all, but I had issues with screen colour uniformity -- on my set, there were two vertical "bars" where the colour had a little bit of green tint to it, noticeable on white or grey backgrounds. I had my display replaced twice before getting a decent one. After the lockdown was lifted, I went to look at display units in shops and it appears many of the Full HD and 4K sets had the same issue. Perhaps it's my eyes, or maybe panel lottery is particularly bad on this laptop.
- For some reason, my microSD card kept getting stuck in the slot (slot seemed misaligned or something, causing the spring mechanism to get stuck). In the end, I had to get a replacement laptop from Dell.
- The current firmware, 1.0.11 (and the previous, 1.0.10), has issues outputting video with certain USB-C to HDMI adapters. This has been going on for two months with no fix in sight, despite bringing it up to Dell's attention: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9300-BIO... . Further, users are also reporting issues connecting to certain LG and Samsung USB-C/ TB3 monitors (issue reported at launch but no fix yet -- apparently, you need to plug a separate power cable into the laptop and then plug the LG/ Samsung monitor into the other port just to get it to work, notwithstanding that the Samsung/ LG monitors are supposed to do PD passthrough). TB3/ PD support is really buggy on the XPS 9300 at the moment, and I wonder if they will ever get it fixed.
- If you have the Fast Startup option disabled (which is essentially hibernation in a different form), or restart the laptop, the laptop takes about 1min to startup, even on a whooping fast SSD. No fix in sight despite a 10-page+ long thread on the Dell forums: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Bug-New-XPS-13-...
- The laptop gets hot very easily at the palmrest area. I think this is a byproduct of the carbon fibre palmrest which kinda traps heat.
Overall, I found the laptop to be of rather good build quality and very good to look at. However, the flaws and lack of after-sales support (in terms of fixing BIOS/ firmware issues) from Dell has left me somewhat disappointed and I decided to cut my losses and sold it. Now I'm holding out for Renoir options...
To clarify on the boot times, the laptop gets stuck on the Dell "loading" logo for about 40 seconds, even on a fresh install without bloatware. It seems like a BIOS bug (where something is being stuck) more than anything else, but since Fast Startup is left enabled by default (I prefer to disable it to reduce unnecessary writes to the SSD), Dell doesn't seem keen to fix it.
I rec'd this Dell i7 with 16GB yesterday on the 16th and saw this review! Excellent write-up. Thanks for putting in the time & effort. Certainly reassures my purchase. It replaced a 5 yr old XPS 13.
I've currently started looking for a new laptop. I'm leaning towards the Ryzen mobiles. One thing I've noticed though is the disappointing RAM options. For my use I need a minimum of 16GB. Using Win10 at work I'm averaging around 12-15GBs of usage, at home it is usually less around 7-10GB unless gaming. I don't understand why OEMs feel the need to solder RAM - do SODIMM slots really take up more space? The laptop I'm replacing is an older laptop that has a 24GB cache ssd soldered on which is failing, (in addition to a 512GB 860evo) and as a result Windows install hangs up, so I can only run Ubuntu. I love this laptop but I need to run Windows. What if you have soldered RAM and it fails outside of warranty?
I've had this laptop for 5 months and actually have lots of problems with it that Dell just refuses to fix. Their answer to all of the following is that it's "by design".
- Custom charging. If you set the charging to stop at, say, 80% or 90% (to prolong the life of the battery), reach the desired level (so that it stops charging), and then stress the CPU, the charging will continuously start and stop at a 1-5 second interval. Because of this, the charging light at the front of the laptop will keep turning on and off, which is very annoying in a dark room.
- Every time the battery starts charging, the screen's backlight will flicker for one second, like there's some instability with switching from battery power to AC. This combined with the issue above makes the custom charging level pretty useless.
- When Panel Self Refresh is turn on (in Intel's settings), the screen will randomly insert black frames once or every 10mins to 10 hours. It's very random. Solution is to just turn off PSR.
- The fans will run when nothing in the laptop is above 60 degrees C. Once they turn on, they will keep spinning for a while even if everything cools down to under 50 degrees C. My experience with the laptop is that the fans just keep running almost all the time when just browsing the web. My cooling setting is set to "quiet".
- Mayor problems with sleep mode. The laptop occasionally wakes up and just loads up the CPU and overheats everything to 100 degrees C when inside my backpack. I've had to hack Windows to re-enable S3 sleep (instead of modern sleep). Since Dell can't handle "Modern standby" correctly, they could at least have a BIOS option to disable to altogether (in fact they have an option to disable S3), so the user wouldn't have to hack-enable it with Windows.
- Home and End button placement is horrible. I've asked to enable Fn+left and Fn+right in a BIOS update, as they used to be in older XPS laptops, and the technician thought it was a good idea, but there's nothing he could do because people higher-up didn't want this.
Though in spite of all of these problems, I still like this laptop, and I don't know of a better one. The 16:10 screen alone makes this an obvious choice, and I just have to learn to live with (and work around) all the other issues.
I love the idea controlling charging in software to extend the longevity of the battery!
I'm not sure how you could feasibly report this, but I'd like to know how much difference it makes after a few years of use. Does Dell make any claims?
There are problems with this particular laptop's custom charging. Read my comment above yours, the first two points.
I've used this feature in an older XPS laptop (max charge at 80% except for long flights and such), the Skylake version, which is ~4 years old. It's been in pretty much constant use on-the-go, and battery wear is at 1%.
A Skylake-Y CPU with max turbo at 2.2GHz? That's your alternative to a 4-core Ice Lake? And possibly the slowest iGPU in existence, compared to one of the fastest. 1920x1080 screen. The speakers are "bad, even by laptop standards". And despite the extremely slow and low-power CPU, battery life is also bad.
Looks like a very good notebook. It is a shame that Dell does not offer it with an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU. I have never understood why Dell only offers AMD in their Inspiron laptops. Let consumers make their choices. I expect Zen 3 will be dropping about the same time as Tiger Lake. I also expect Zen 3 will trounce Tiger lake. Intel must be offering a huge discount/rebate (Marketing Development Funds) to be exclusive. If they offered the 4700U in this notebook I would buy it.
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III-V - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
16:10? I thought those had gone extinct.Good to hear they haven't.
nwrigley - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I don't know how anyone who has ever used 16:10 would not prefer it.nathanddrews - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Did you know you can run 16:10 resolutions on any 16:9 monitor by applying pillarboxing?rrinker - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Not. When your display is 1080, you aren't going to be able to display 1200 vertical. You can display a 16:20 ASPECT RATIO by pillarboxing, but the point is the extra lines without sacrificing the width. Far more practical to display 16:9 1920x1080 content on a screen with a 16:10 1920x1200 screen which, as mentioned, allows the controls to be displayed without overlaying the content. For technical work, it allows the remote desktop to display at 1920x1080 while still seeing your local task bar, not constant minimizing and maximizing to go back and forth.philehidiot - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I've used 16:10 and 16:9 and I don't prefer 1080 lines over 1200 but that's a significant difference in resolution and I don't think it's a fair apples to apples comparison.I'm currently on 4K which handily drops nicely to 1080 for gaming when the GPU struggles. I was kind of hoping for four 1080 monitors in one but it hasn't worked out that way. I've now got a small 7" touchscreen to go below it which takes out Youtube videos or spotify controls quite nicely.
lazarpandar - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Wow what a great idea to use less of the available screen space.... *eyeroll*Byte - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
So you don't know anyone over 15 years old?Samus - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I'm still rocking HP Dreamcolor LP2480zx's just because they're decent\inexpensive 16:10 monitors. I don't get the appeal of 16:9 widescreen for a work PC, and the cake is when you have TWO 16:10 monitors side-by-side. I also feel 16:10 is more appropriate for 'some' games where the vertical height is a huge advantage.It's so strange this format died under non-existent consumer demand for an 'entertainment' aspect ratio, opposed to production aspect ratio.
CooliPi - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I'm still rocking on a "Big Bertha" of the time, Viewsonic VP2290b (essentially an IBM T221) via two DVI links. 3840x2400 resolution. I'm in a desperate search for a monitor with the same or higher vertical resolution.The vertical height REALLY matters for content creation.
It has 135W power consumption (at 24Hz) but I love it. Mind you, for CAD work, the higher the DPI, the better - so its relatively small diagonal dimension is actually a win here.
Have I had some spare time, I'd test it with Raspberry Pi 4 in a dual monitor setup - two stripes forming one screen. Should be possible, it has two HDMI outputs.
If you guys had some clue where to look for a 16:10 (or even 1:1 !) 4k monitor, let me know please.
puetzk - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
There's the Eizo FlexScan-EV2730QFX (1920x1920), that arguably taller since you'd likely run it 1:1 rather than HiDPI scaling.or the 4200 x 2800 (3:2) RX1270 if money is absolutely no object (it's a "medical device" line, so if you have to ask...)
serendip - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Surface models are the only mainstream computers to use a 3:2 ratio. I think 16:9 is only good for media consumption.cerfcanuck - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Whenever I hear "soft-touch finish", I always wonder about long-term durability. In my experience (admittedly not with recent Dell products) such finishes have either scratched easily and/or turned "gummy" over time. Is this still a problem?willis936 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I have had an XPS 13 9343 for five years and the soft touch materials don’t feel aged. Five years isn’t very long term, but it’s a data point.I doubt these will go the way of the early 2000s mice that require a thorough hand wash after use.
Byte - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
My lenovo Yoga 1 had softer touch. Its pretty thick. It did not get gummy but it is peeling off. Which is better than gummy I guess. About 8 years old.Retycint - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
The soft touch did not age well for my XPS 15 9560. Gotten extremely sticky and started to peel off around 2 years in - this was of course not covered under warranty as it was considered "wear and tear".Context: I live in a tropical and humid country which probably accelerated the deterioration, so your experience may vary.
s.yu - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
My 2019 XPS 13 2N1 has this finish and leaves me wondering every time after I use the palm rest if I should wipe it with water, with alcohol, or just leave it. Good thing I often use it in tent mode(a must for stylus use) and use a BT keyboard, which sidesteps the whole issue.There is a tiny flaw on the finish though, it's a dent less than 1mm in diameter that looks like what's left of a burst bubble of a highly viscous fluid on a flat surface.
s.yu - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
Oh, FWIW I have a USB charger I bought about 6 years ago that claimed a "babyskin" finish, which feels similar to this "soft-touch" finish, I'm guessing some people really thought it's made of the skin of babies is why they dropped the name. It's often under somewhat high temperatures since it's a charging brick and it's softened with some wear at the corners, but it's only very slightly sticky.raystriker - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Wonder if most of the premium ultrabooks will have an AMD offering by next year?eek2121 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Doubtful. Intel is very competitive in the mobile space and Tiger Lake is apparently dropping in September.Walkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
what exactly do you mean by "very competitive in the mobile space"? more bugs? more power consumption? way less performance?eek2121 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
None of those? Intel has solid mobile offerings. Extremely competitive in performance and power consumption. Try reading the article instead of shilling the comments section.aebiv - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
You've been asleep for awhile eh?Walkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
are you a bot or st.? Did you noticed the ryzen 4000 mobile CPU from AMD, which destorys any and all intel mobile chips in terms like performance, core count and power consumption? in this test, its repsesented by acer swift 3, which just completely annihilated the xps 13 in multi thread and GPU testsSharma_Ji - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
True that, after looking at those performance charts, buying an intel based machine would be plain stupid.invinciblegod - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
No it's not, mainly because very few companies actually has put Ryzen chips in their premium laptops/Ultrabooks. If you need a laptop right now and not next year, then these machines are fine. Also, any eGPU enthusiasts will have a more limited choice as future Ryzen machines will undoubtedly use thunderbolt only on few devices since it is not built in.invinciblegod - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Competitive doesn't mean better, it means competitive. Like Qualcomm chips are competitive with Apple's offerings, not because it has equivalent performance, it just means that they are good enough that people using Android won't be compelled to go to iPhones because the chipset is just too far behind (like if Qualcomm was stuck on 3G for some reason or lacked wifi).Similarly, if you can do similar things with an Intel cpu compared to an AMD cpu, then they are "competitive" even if they are behind.
Operandi - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Competitive means you are competing. When you are loosing in pretty much every meaningful metric you doing something else and its competing...PeterCollier - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I didn't know that number of design wins was not a meaningful metric.Rookierookie - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I consider the mobile Ryzen 3000 series to be competitive, and those were losing in every meaningful metric to Intel chips.mrochester - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Out of interest, where do you get 16:10 AMD Ryzen 4000 laptops from?sorten - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
eek: Here's a review comparing a $600 Acer laptop with the 4700u (not AMD's top mobile CPU) against an XPS 13 with the Intel 1065G7, and it's not pretty. Tiger Lake is supposed to have a massively improved GPU (Intel's new Xe brand), but we don't know much about the CPU side yet.https://www.anandtech.com/show/15762/the-acer-swif...
Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The CPU side of Tiger Lake - 4 cores is 17% slower than AMD Renoir 8 cores. Xe LP (the 96 EU iGPU in Tiger Lake) is equal to the MX350 from Nvidia.Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
According to unverified leaks. I await for actual performance values, while being skeptical that Intel managed to raise the IPC (and/or clocks) of Tiger Lake so much over Ice Lake (I obviously refer to the CPU block, not the iGPU block; I have no doubt that Xe will outperform AMD's Vega iGPUs - that is AMD's choice for having a 3-year old GPU design compete against Intel's latest and greatest Xe GPU, in an act of apparent self-sabotage).gescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U leaves Intel in the dust.Notebookcheck.net
Jorgp2 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Again why are shilling?Who thinks a craptop vs an Ultrabook is a valid comparison.
Lord of the Bored - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I think the point is that the AMD processor being used in the craptop is kinda wrecking Intel's "solid" and "competitive" offerings.PeterCollier - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
So AMD catches up with Intel after Intel falls behind by 4 years with their 10nm process. Big __ deal.Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
the bigger deal, intel STILL hasn't regained its lead during the same timeframe.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
@Jorgp2 It's kind of funny that your argument is "It's okay for Ultrabooks to be slower than craptops". The comparison is not only valid, it's *damning*. There shouldn't be any reason why you can get that performance from a junk notebook but not in the #1 Ultrabook design.Jorgp2 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Because you're comparing a $300 craptop to an Ultrabook.Of course the craptop is going to be cheaper.
grant3 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
There's an excellent reason why ultrabooks might underperform: their cooling capacity is limited by the form factor.If CPU performance, or price:CPU Performance, were the only metrics which mattered to people, then ultrabooks & apple would not exist.
Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
@grant3 - the cooling system on that Acer Swift is pretty terrible!@Deicidium - the XPS 13 9300 launched in January this year - that's 6 months ago. It's the current competition for AMD's current mobile chips that launched one month ago. A comparison with a product that hasn't released yet isn't "more appropriate". 🤦♂️
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Ice Lake is almost a year old. The more appropriate comparison is the upcoming Tiger Lake, Anandtech has been slow to get a review unit for an almost year old design, while the next gen is being prepped for release.Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"Valid" in what sense? sorten is giving Intel a competitive benefit (or, alternatively, gives AMD a handicap) by comparing an AMD "craptop" with an Intel ultrabook; it's not the other way around.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Performance: No, not for Ice Lake.Power Consumption: Yes, but only for Ice Lake.
Price: Not even funny.
When you combine all three AMD currently come out easily on top, and yet...
Meteor2 - Thursday, August 20, 2020 - link
It's incredible how much people can argue about objective numbers.Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Tiger Lake is coming in the next month or so - Lenovo and Acer already have their systems working the Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 - 4 core + 96EU Xe LP wrecks the most powerful Renoir in iGPU (actually matching or slightly exceeding the MX350) and with double the CPU cores (4 Intel / 8 AMD) the AMD is only 17% ahead. So Yeah, way less performance from the AMD.Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance, but Intel has well moved on from that architecture. Intel is solid as they come in ultralights/ultrabooks.
sorten - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Not sure what you mean when you say "Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance." Zen 2 mobile chips easily outperform Ice Lake and Comet Lake.Yes, we all expect the Xe iGPU to outperform AMD's iGPU. Intel has been humiliated for so long in this area that they've put all of their efforts into becoming competitive. In some respects, both brands targeted their competitor's strength, and gave up ground in theirs.
I'd personally prefer the CPU advantage, because if I'm doing anything with graphics that any decent iGPU can handle, I'd just use the Dell's TB3 port to hook up an eGPU. But everyone has their own priorities, I understand.
Cliff34 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The problem is that AMD doesn't support Tb3. So if you need Tb3 for anything you will end up buying Intel.PixyMisa - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
AMD does support TB3, as evidence by the fact that you can buy AMD devices with TB3.There just aren't many of them.
Jorgp2 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
>Zen 2 mobile chips easily outperform Ice Lake and Comet LakeOnly in multicore, and only because they have 8 cores.
The Zen 2 architecture still has around Skylake level performance, SNC and WLC have a much higher lead over Skylake than Zen 2 does.
rhysiam - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
On what basis are you announcing Sunny Cove and the unreleased Willow Cove as superior architectures? Can you link to some data to support that? Because this review directly contradicts that claim.The lightly threaded tests in this very review show the 4700U trading blows with the 1065G7. Both are clocked similarly. IPC is close in workloads that are relevant to ultrabooks.
I just can't see any basis for the claims you are making here.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Comparing a 2020 CPU with a 2019 CPU is not a fair comparison.sorten - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Most of what I do as a software engineer, from the compilers, build tools, and the software I write, eats up the cores. So if I can get 2x the cores for less money, then that's a bonus rather than a point against AMD.vladx - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
As a fellow software engineer, I still prefer Intel over AMD. What you win with having more cores, you lose with poor compiler optimizations and the big advantage of AVX-512 in certain workloads. Not to mention AMD platforms tend to have more bugs at launch so you spend more time finding workarounds.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
@vladx with the FUD here. Nice weasel words with "tend to have more bugs" even though we're talking about a specific platform that doesn't have any egregious bugs.Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"and the big advantage of AVX-512 in certain workloads. "Can you name some of these workloads? Even better, out of 10 workloads (or, to make it temporal, out of every "10 programming hours") on average how many can benefit by or be accelerated with AVX-512? Hand on heart answers only please.
As for the "poor compiler optimizations" do you mean the "super aggressive compiler flags Intel tends to prefer that often result in poorer, bug prone code"?
Spunjji below covered me with the arbitrary "bugs" of the "AMD platforms".
Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"The Zen 2 architecture still has around Skylake level performance, SNC and WLC have a much higher lead over Skylake than Zen 2 does."That is pure, groundless BS. You have also confused the Zen 2 "architecture" (thus only the *IPC* of Zen 2) with Skylake's "performance" (both its IPC and clock speed). That is like comparing the acceleration from 0 to 60/100 of one car with the final speed of another car without even realizing the arbitrary comparison.
Finally CPUs with Willow Cove (i.e. Tiger Lake) has not even been released yet, so referring to Willow Cove in the present tense is beyond surreal.
dudedud - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Did you even see the Cinebench single threaded results? Zen 2 has Ice Lake performance at around the same clock (4.1 vs 3.9)Brett Howse - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
There seems to be a lot of misinformation flying around here. Perhaps I should link to our initial Ryzen 7 4700U review in every review I do. Ice Lake is well ahead in single-threaded performance over Zen 2, despite the lower frequency. AMD has double the cores though so even lightly threaded workloads can see a nice improvement.Please reference this:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15762/the-acer-swif...
Cinebench is just a single workload and is compute bound.
Hopefully we can update our SPEC results with a LPDDR4 laptop as well since our first take was just DDR4.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Leaks from Lenovo show Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 (not even the top end part) obviously besting the ancient Vega (AMD's choice) and equaling the MX350 - and with only 4 cores only being outran by 17% - double the cores for 17% lead - and when you factor in the flagging GPU - what's the Renoir's advantage again?gescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Huh, let's wait for amd 5x00 cezanne, shall we?Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Ice Lake is almost a year old. Comparing the latest AMD with an almost year old design should be a win for the newer part. the most appropriate comparison is 2020 vs 2020. That would be Tiger Lakegescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Tiger Lake Q4 2020 vsamd cezanne Q1 2021.
s.yu - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
You think it's the effort? So they haven't been putting all their effort into 10nm?...ok?
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
As always for a Deicidium post about AMD, Lots Of Citations Needed."Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance"
- They already matched that clock-for-clock with Raven Ridge (at lower clocks, hence lower overall performance), and they have now exceeded it with Renoir.
"Intel has well moved on from that architecture"
- Not really. I'd accept this if they had Sunny Cove or better across most of their range, but they absolutely do not - not even in notebooks, let alone the entire market.
Tiger Lake looks like it'll be a good release, when it arrives in quantity. Problem is that we're talking about today, not Jam Tomorrow.
Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
It is still unclear if Tiger Lake will be a high volume release or a low volume release that will need to be released along perhaps Rocket Lake-U/Y, rehashing the way Ice Lake was released along with Comet Lake-U/Y. It should be higher volume than Ice Lake but maybe not high enough to fully supply the U/Y market on its own.Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Well Ice Lake shipped in greater numbers than all of the Ryzen Mobile - so high volume is a relative term. Ice Lake was going to be low volume and relatively niche. Tiger Lake is high volume (not high volume like the Ice Lake SP Xeon) compared to Ice Lake U.I was surprised to see the 1065G7 in an Inspiron class machine at Dell - I had thought it was only the XPS class machines.
Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
@Deicidium - Of course it shipped in greater numbers than Ryzen Mobile! Intel are ~35X the size of AMD - you'd kind of hope they'd be shipping products in larger absolute numbers. I was talking about Sunny Cove as a proportion of Intel's product range, and I was pretty damn clear about that. It's telling that you flipped metrics under discussion to suit your argument."Ice Lake was going to be low volume and relatively niche" - says who? Why? To what end? You're pointing to the results of a sub-par product launch (by Intel's historically high standards) and claiming it was the plan all along. It's just like the AMD fanbois who used to laud the FX 9590's 5Ghz clock speed as if it was an achievement, rather than the best they could salvage from what they had.
You said Intel have "moved on" from Skylake. That's untrue and will remain the case until Rocket Lake, Ice Lake SP and Tiger Lake are out. At that point in time (and not before) Intel will be fully competitive in all areas on a technical level. I'm genuinely interested to see how Sunny Cove on 14nm looks - there's no reason to believe it won't be solidly competitive with AMD on performance, but power draw and die size might not be quite so flattering.
Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"Problem with AMD is they are still trying to get Skylake levels of performance, but Intel has well moved on from that architecture. Intel is solid as they come in ultralights/ultrabooks."That's a very bizarre statement for quite a few reasons :
1. AMD are not targeting Skylake performance levels. When they designed the original Zen they had in mind Cannon Lake - level performance (Intel semi-released a single semi-disabled Cannon Lake 2-core Core i3 in low volume and now they trying to pretend they never did) and when they designed Zen 2 (according to CTO Mark Papermaster) they were targeting it against Ice Lake - not knowing it would be limited to 4-core low power parts. AMD never had Skylake in mind because they never expected Intel would be stuck so many years with it.
2. Intel have not "well" moved on from Skylake at all. They *just* did, at the beginning of the year (still in low volume, hence the dual release with Comet Lake-U/Y, which was the bulk of the release), with low power 4-core mobile parts and they are *still* stuck with it in the form of Comet Lake. Until Comet Lake is replaced by Rocket Lake Intel are still stuck with Skylake, still fabbing and releasing CPUs with an μarch they have been using, reusing and re-reusing and re-re-reusing since 2015. In which parallel universe would that be regarded as "well moved on from that architecture"?
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Santoval, look who made the comment, there is no need to say anything else. its self explainitory.Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Is it? I have no idea who "Deicidium" is, sorry..Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
then you haven't been reading here that much. he will bash and any chance he can, while praising his gods intel and nvidia, with no proof at all of his claims.Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
bash amd any chance he canDeicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I got you mixed up with Spungy, have no clue who you are either.Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Run along little boy.Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Zen 1 vs Zen 3 are minor architectural tweaks and improved manufacturing and packaging ("chiplets" and IO die) - per core performance has not increased any more than Skylake to to Coffee Lake to Comet Lake. Minor tweaks. So still competing at Skylake level perormance.Well moved on - Last 14nm server CPU has shipped - last 14nm desktop CPU is shipping later this year. Ice Lake is widespread enough to count - in way more designs than AMD.
Leaks show that 8C monstrosity to be 17% better perf than 4 cores on Tiger Lake.
Rocket Lake is basically backported Ice Lake/Tiger Lake to 14nm - so no Skylake there. Sunny Cove/Willow Cove/Golden Cove ARE NOT SKYLAKE. New arch. I know you know this.
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
going by that same logic, all intel cpu's since skylake are also minor architectural tweaks and improved manufacturing as well, whats your point ?" Last 14nm server CPU has shipped - last 14nm desktop CPU is shipping later this year" oh ? lets see you post proof of this. oh wait, you cant, cause there isnt any proof.
" Leaks show that 8C monstrosity to be 17% better perf than 4 cores on Tiger Lake. " like another mentioned, still cherry picking are you ?
IF it was a new architecture, intel them selves would of called it gen 1, not gen 10/11/12/etc.
schujj07 - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
Per core performance hasn't increased from Zen 1 to Zen+, to Zen 2??? Whatever you are smoking I hope you share. Clock for clock Zen 2 is about 18% faster than Zen 1, that means per core performance is higher. Whereas Intel hasn't increased per core performance since 2015. Before that Intel hadn't had more than minor changes since the change from Nehlema to Sandy Bridge. After that they had nothing more that 5% IPC improvements, all other performance increase was sheer clock speed.Odds are that Rocket Lake will not clock as high as Skylake derivatives. It will need to have a massively higher IPC to counteract the loss of clock compared to Comet Lake. On top of that it will probably be very power hungry due to the bigger chip and added complexity.
gescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Similar single performance at much lower power consumption.https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s...
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
If tiger late is as impressive as ice lake the ryzen 4700u will retain a significant advantage in performance, and I'll believe it releases when I see it.Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Much more impressive. 4C Tiger Lake is 17% slower than 8C Renoir - and Xe LP is at least 2x as fast as Gen11 (in Ice Lake) and performs as well as a Nvidia MX350 (hence why Nvidia is pushing out the Turing MX450) - which wrecks the ancient Vega.So double the cores and a whopping 17% perf advantage - and much slower iGPU - are we sure that AMD understands the laptop market?
rhysiam - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
You are doing some gold-standard cherry picking here. Which chart gets you this "17% slower" number you keep quoting as if it's gospel? The 15W thermal envelope is the limiting factor here, so "double the cores" won't net you anywhere near double the performance, nor are they supposed to.According to this very review, lightly threaded tests show the 4700U on par with the similarly clocked Ice Lake. They are neck and neck. IPC is very close between Zen 2 and Sunny Cove.
Highly threaded workloads are dominated by AMD:
CB: 4700U is 52% faster
HB(software): 4700U is 71% faster
HB(hardware): 4700U is 79% faster
7-Zip(comp): 4700U is 34% faster
7-Zip(decomp): 4700U is 40% faster
Remember that the 4700U is **not** the top SKU (though admittedly the 4800U isn't much faster).
Again - where is this "17%" coming from if not deceptively cherry picked?
Tiger Lake looks to have a massive GPU, but what are we looking at CPU wise? A few % IPC and very small clock bump? Maybe Intel squeeze out a tiny single threaded lead, while still getting trashed in multi-core workloads - in exchange for a better iGPU.
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
@rhysiam - He's basing his claims on an early benchmark leak that does indeed suggest a healthy single-thread lead for Tiger Lake and a moderate multi-core deficit. It doesn't look to be a particularly unreliable leak - apparently comparing like-for-like in terms of chassis - but it's still just the one leak. There are also leaks implying a far less dramatic advantage for the Xe LP GPU, but he's not citing those.When it comes to Deicidium, information suggesting Intel superiority is taken as gospel and information suggesting otherwise is discarded. He spent the months leading up to Renoir's release refusing to believe any of the benchmark leaks favouring AMD and hammering on how unreleased products don't matter. Go figure.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Yeah, boy as I wrong - that Great Renoir can compete with an almost year old design! That is unbelievable. With such massive year over year IPC increases - would only be fair to compare the Great Renoir with Alder or Meteor Lake.Too bad AMD marketing never pans out and when the fanboys get it - and filter it through their fever dreams - it is even more disappointing when released - The Another Marketing Deception product release
HYPE HYPE HYPE LAUNCH SIGH! NEXT (or compare to last years outgoing CPU)
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
just like you do as well Deicidium369. so look who's talking, little childByte - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I guess competitive means you are still alive in a two horse race. Doesn't matter if your horse overheated on the side of the road.Santoval - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
If Tiger Lake is still capped at 4 cores (and apparently both the Y and U variants are, though the -H variant will probably have up to 6 cores) it will not be able to compete with AMD's APUs in *CPU* performance. According to some leaks though Tiger Lake's Xe iGPU outperforms the (very) old Vega based iGPU that for some inexplicable reason (to avoid internal competition with their lowest end Navi graphics cards?) AMD decided to add to their 4000 APU series.Well, Xe hasn't even been released yet and Vega was released 3 full years ago, so if Xe couldn't even outclass (barely apparently) a 3-year old iGPU Intel would be in deep trouble. Tiger Lake might outperform AMD's APUs in single thread performance, but that doesn't matter as much anymore. The question is how much Intel managed to raise the IPC and the clocks of Tiger Lake over Ice Lake, but it's not "doubtful" at all that AMD's APUs will be in most ultrabooks by early next year. Only people who were sleeping in a technological cave for the last 3 years would think that.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
inclusion of Vega was AMD's choice.Ice Lake had a 30% increase in IPC (the quip about, at the expense of lower clocks is meaningless) and with improved 10nm+ and architectural advanced in Willow Cove equate to an actual IPC increase, not just one in marketing materials.
4 cores can easily equal AMD 8 cores. These are ultralights - they are not DTR - 4 superior cores + superior graphics are the best mix - not 8 cores an ancient Vega iGPU.
They won't be in premium devices - it is not their market - Lenovo is as close as they will come - not worth the OEMs to design around a niche APU that won't sell in profitable numbers.
OEMs seem to not want to make the investment into AMD designs, no one is asking for them, and they have no advantage over the well established, steady (Intel never dropped out of sight for more than a decade) and reliable Intel.
MOAR COARZ. LMAO.
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
lets see you post proof of this, Deicidium369. if not, its just your usual pro intel, anti amd bs, as you always post.gescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
You have a kind of sick desperation in your laugh.https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s...
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
gescom, more like a sick desperation to keep praising his god intel, and to bash amd any chance he can.ikjadoon - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
IIRC, this was not mentioned by Anandtech, but this laptop (and many, many, many, many) others from the premium Ultrabook category are partnered directly with Intel through the Project Athena program, aka the "Engineered for Mobile Performance" badge you sometimes see.It gives a lot of manufacturing / R&D support while also demanding a minimum set of specifications; I think, in the end, it's a win for OEMs as they get a better product (a virtuous cycle) and they get R&D support directly from Intel on the entire notebook (not just the CPU or wireless).
I think 9/10 premium Ultrabooks are Project Athena certified.
I do believe AMD has launched a rival program with Renoir, but it may take time to gain traction. Tiger Lake vs Zen3-based mobile is going to be exciting and AMD absolutely deserves far better than the relatively average performers they keep getting stuck with.
See Anandtech's reporting here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14444/intels-projec...
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I've said for years that AMD needs to partner with a smaller brand like MSI or Clevo and show the world what a proper AMD notebook looks like.I was saying this back in the Llano days where nobody wanted to make a ultrabook style laptop with the A8-3500mx.
jeremyshaw - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
They did, with HP, a company with historically strong AMD ties in their consumer line. It didn't go well. Whomever thought bulldozer on netbooks was a good idea, is hopefully no longer calling shots at AMD or HP anymore.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I made the mistake of buying one, and it was bad. The sooner that whole period is buried and forgotten, the better for AMD.lmcd - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
If you're referring to the entire Bulldozer family history, I gotta say my Toshiba Satellite with an A8-4500M was actually pretty solid for a number of years. Yea the battery life was trash but performance held up for years, especially with dual-channel memory that I upgraded it to.drothgery - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Depends what they think AMD and Intel will be offering next year, I'd imagine.Most vendors wouldn't have even started designing an AMD premium notebook until after they had real performance and power usage data on Ryzen 4xxx, and even then wouldn't bother unless they were fairly confident Intel wouldn't be able to match it fairly soon.
Cinebench multithread (and other embarrassingly parallel benchmarks) notwithstanding, there's really not much value in more than 4 core/8 threads for most consumers (servers and workstations are another matter); Amdhal's law is still real. But the optics of selling 4 cores vs 8 aren't great, and at least initially, Tiger Lake U will still be a quad core.
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"Most vendors wouldn't have even started designing an AMD premium notebook until after they had real performance and power usage data on Ryzen 4xxx"They would have had that data a long time before the platform shipped - Asus couldn't have designed the class-redefining Zephyrus 14 without it. They managed to create a whole new category of gaming sub-notebook, yet most of the larger OEMs couldn't manage to get one into an existing Ultrabook chassis. 🤔
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Yeah agree there - the OEMs have had access to the specifics of Renoir - but likely will repurpose previous designs, since Renoir is largely like the previous (3xxx APUs, don't know the names) - from an electrical and packaging point of view.I can't imagine having a laptop as a gaming platform - Opus Magnum maybe - but not BF5. But every use case is different - there used to be a DTR slot in my lineup - but not any more.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Microsoft did with the Surface Laptop - they partnered with AMD to get the previous gen into production, with the follow up - Renoir - to be easily slotted into.AMD is more in the DiY market. and No one runs benchmarks as their main application.
The Ultralight/Athena designs are the highest end, lightest designs - like the XPS13 and Dell 13 2-in-1 - weigh a couple of pounds, lasts a whole day (i get 12+ hrs) on a single charge - and runs everything I need to run - it is NOT a DTR product.
I disagree with the optics - Most do not care if it's 8 core or quantum or made from carebears - they ask "does it do what I want it to do?" that's the only metric for most people. We are not most people. The Intel name is universally recognized - and the sales pitch for AMD is to compare it to Intel - and why get the "as good as" when you can get Intel - their last laptop was probably Intel, so their next laptop will likely be Intel - and likely the same OEM.
yeeeeman - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The idea is that most premium ultrabooks are made with the help of project Athena.If AMD wants premium ultrabooks they need to start working on their own design.
Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Make a platform / ecosystem rather than an SKUhaukionkannel - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Noup. Most people don`t want to buy amd laptops...sonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Most STUPID people don’t want to buy AMD laptops. Go away shill! Too much trash on internet as it is.vladx - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Yep, having stability is just as important as performance. When AMD products become rock solid straight from the launch then I will consider an AMD product in my desktop/laptop.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Where's the data on Renoir not being rock-solid from launch?Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
contains AMD software doesn't it?vladx - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
That's right, people often forget there's also chipset drivers that can impact performance and stability of a system and AMD proved every time they are uncapable of writing reliable drivers.Korguz - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
like intel or nvidia is any better ? i had a board with both an intel NIC, and a realtech NIC onboard, and had to use the realtech one as the intel, had issues. had to go back to a previous nvidia driver cause the latest had issues. come on, every hardware maker can have issues with drivers, none of them are perfect, no matter what you or Deicidium369 claim.vladx - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
Yes indeed, Intel might not as flashy but their chipset drivers are rock solid. Their GPU drivers need more work but are much less likely to cause crashes or software conflicts.Korguz - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
" their chipset drivers are rock solid " not really, but your an intel shill, so of course you will say that.vladx - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
That's because they are, unless you go to over the top with overclocking.Korguz - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
yea ok sure.Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
You've never used an Intel GPU then? :|How about their amazing Management Engine Interface? :| :|
Or the absolutely stunning PROSet networking software? :| :| :|
Every manufacturer releases buggy software for some of their products. We can do this all day, or you could *point to the specifics that are supposedly wrong with Renoir*. As nobody has - and the only people hammering on this particular nail or notoriously unable to hold a discussion without introducing a motte-and-bailey - I'm going to assume you do not have anything to back up the claims.
gescom - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Some Thinkpad series are already available with amd ryzen 4x00.The True Morbus - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Lol, Intel...Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
You realize this is an almost 1 year old chip - same as the Late September Dell 13 2-in-1...Tiger Lake launches in the next couple of months - and Tiger Lake 4C is 17% slower than AMD 8C and the iGPU is not even competitive on the AMD side - Xe LP equals the Nvidia MX350.
So yeah LOL Intel - matching the MX350 and virtually matching the top Renoir with half the cores.
haukionkannel - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
It is because people don`t buy amd laptops... why make something that most people Are not willing to buy? That is the biggest problem with amd laptops. Intel can put 5 years old cpus in laptops and those sel like hotcakes...sonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
You’re spouting senseless BS over and over. It’s disgusting.Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I agree. OEMs will build what their customers want. I just don't see people clamoring for an AMD over an IntelKorguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
of course you dont, cause you can only see intel, no matter what.vladx - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
No we can certainly see AMD with how they fail time and time again to launch reliable products and platforms.Korguz - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
seems your god intel seems to be failing quite a lot the last few years.vladx - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
Sorry that you're so butthurt that you try to mock others, Intel sells best because they are very reliable unlike AMD.Korguz - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
sorry you are butthurt cause your god intel has screwed up so bad the last few years, and that you blind to see anything else.rhysiam - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Oh come on, this cherry picked "17%" claim again? See my post above. The very review you are commenting on shows highly threaded workloads pushing to AMD's advantage in the 34% to 79% range, depending on the specific workload. That is **not** "virtually matching"... and the 4700U is **not** the top Renoir.Deicidium369 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
"Summing up the performance metrics, the Intel Core i7-1165G7 has a lead of up to 20% in single-core performance tests while featuring a 10% clock speed advantage over the Ryzen 7 4800U (4.2 GHz vs 4.7 GHz). In multi-core tests, the Ryzen 7 4800U is 17% faster but that is despite the AMD chip having twice the number of cores and threads. But that's the fastest score for the chip with Linux OS which tends to offer higher scores. Compared to a Ryzen 7 4800U on Windows OS, the Core i7-1165G7 leads by up to 35% in single-core while being just 6% slower than its 8 core & 16 thread competitor."https://wccftech.com/intel-10nm-core-i7-1165g7-cpu...
34% higher performance in single core - slightly higher clock, but not 34% higher clocks - that's a nice IPC gain.
Not seeing the 34 to 79% AMD advantage in multicore. I am seeing the multicore being between 17% slower and 6% slower depending on the OS - with 8 cores & 16 threads vs 4 cores and 8 threads.
Just so we are working from the same materials.
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
yea, wccftech is a trust worthy source, arent they mostly a rumor/BS site ?Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
WCCFTech were running with rumours that Zen 2 would hit ~5Ghz for months before it was released, so yeah, I'd say their record isn't particularly reliable.Their comments section is also notoriously full of trolls and jackasses...
eek2121 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Looks like a solid laptop.Walkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
except for the buggy, slow and power hungry CPU with very bad GPUTheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
So buggy and power hungry that it gets 15 hours of normalized battery life. SOOOO power hungry. The iris GPU is also far mroe powerful then your typical HD 620 GPU.Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The AMD Kiddies are getting desperate - they know that AMD's time in the Sun is coming to a closePixyMisa - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Yes, because AMD will never release any further Zen cores. That's totally what's going to happen.Lord of the Bored - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
It is true. AMD is going bankrupt because of Ryzenfall(remember that?). Intel won't even bother to buy the corpse because it is so worthless. nVidia will actively send a team down to AMD HQ to piss on their front door after they lay everyone off....
The only part of that I genuinely believe is that nVidia would send a team to AMD HQ to urinate on their porch.
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
It's quite funny seeing Deicidium finally admit that AMD have indeed had a time in the sun right as he's proclaiming it to be over.It's a binary flip from "their products are all rubbish" to "they're soon going to be losing to an unreleased product". You are the worst kind of zealot.
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
its not funny, its down right sadsonny73n - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
It is funny because my dog has more common sense than deicidium does.Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
He's not lacking in sense - he knows exactly what he's doing. It takes some nous to be that specific about which facts you discuss and how you frame them. A real idiot would just shut up after a while...MDD1963 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Folks that buy these are not looking for Battlefield 5 systems; instead, most need Office/web/ Solitaire...!FunBunny2 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
well... yeah!!!Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I have had the same Core i7-1065G7 in my Dell 13 2-in-1 since the first week in October - not buggy - rock solid, much faster than the top Dell 13 2-in-1 it replaces - faster CPU, faster GPU, faster memory and noticeably much more responsive - and 13hrs+ battery life. Real life day to day use - not some website review.So you need to upgrade where you get your talking points from.
sonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
You have had NOTHING. Stop lying already.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I bet your girlfriend goes to another school too, right?sonny73n - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
No, his girlfriend went to another asylum, not school.cosmotic - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Return of the king... stomped by an Acer Swift 3? Acer. Swift. 3...Walkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
lol XDWalkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I mean, this is not even funny, this is very sadWalkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
in multi thread, its not even a competition....its a blood bath. Cinebench R20 1600 vs. 2500? common, Dell, do st. with thatsonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Haha... Dell XPS i7 $1400 gets beat up by Acer 4700U $650. Lovely!Based on some comments here, Intel fanboys are a bunch of sore losers.
Walkeer - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
a king...with intel...in 2020 XDikjadoon - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I really hope manufacturers copy Dell's strong improvements here: no silly keyboard gimmicks or bloatware (looking at you, *****ing HP), improve the screen contrast, glare, and ratio (you gotta stare it all day), and nail battery life. With a near 16-hour real-world battery life, it absolutely dissuades ARM transitions purely for efficiency.But, while I love Dell's improvements, a few hard-to-swallow regressions here:
-- no type-A port. That's just frustrating. Are we *really* in a type-C-only world? No. And Dell knows that. Why is a "productivity" device (16:10 panel) handicapped? Did we need it thinner? Where the hell are all the PCH's USB / PCIe bandwidth going? Into the ... charge port? We should have 4X type-C ports these days.
-- soldered SSD. An absolutely groundless regression. Goodbye to a last-chance backup if the motherboard dies. And don't even think about out-of-warranty replacements.
-- toasty, toasty, toasty bottoms. 42 W PL2, even with GORE, is absolutely "crazy", as Anandtech points out. Likewise, Notebookcheck notched a nearly 30C idle bottom panel in a 20C room: the heat just exudes out even at idle. Add in a heavy load and you're at a toasty 46C in the back bottom (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-13-9300-Cor...
And, it should be noted: Dell still sells the older Comet Lake-U models, so buyer beware which "XPS 13" you click on. The product names are identical and both use "10th gen" CPUs.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
High heat, lack of useful ports and soldered storage make this a worthless device.sonny73n - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
Buyers don’t have to beware. Just use it for a couple weeks then return. I went to dell website to check the price and specs of the model AT reviews. They have everything messy. No filter and no year of release for all the laptops they’re selling. Only “for home” and “for work”. wtf? I can’t buy a “work” laptop just to watch youtube at home? How about a laptop for both home and work?I used to prefer dell products especially monitors but since they became intel’s lap dog to monopolize the market, I put them on my “do not buy” list. Overpriced dells are for idiots.
stanleyipkiss - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
It WOULD be a solid laptop (the perfect ultrabook even) -- if they had included at least ONE USB A port.sonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
NOT when it costs $1400.Sharma_Ji - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Qualcomm based atheros wireless modules were so good, I don't believe how killer ones are so bad, that intel acquired killer, sad that Qualcomm based modules will no longer will be available.invinciblegod - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I don't know, are Qualcomm's wireless modules that good for Windows? I've had many problems in enterprises where Qualcomm's wifi was always unstable compared to Intel's. Though admittedly, at home I never had a problem.shadowjk - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
Qualcomm based Killer WiFi is borderline unusable. If you can get the hardware running on the regular drivers from Qualcomm it gets tolerable.GreenReaper - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
So frustrating that Dell made yet another XPS hamstring by its thermal dissipation ability. The see-sawing ruins these systems for my brother, who happens to like to play a few games after work. It used to be possible to undervolt to fix this, but now I Tel has sent out firmware updates to disable that because it's protecting SGX enclaves from the Plundervolt vulnerability. I certainly won't be recommending this new version to him.flowingbass - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I see dell is still under intel's payrollhaukionkannel - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Ofcourse! It is the best way of making money. People buy Intel laptops. It does not matter if Intel cpus Are bad, people still buy them. Amd can make better cpus and people still don`t buy AMD laptops... so They Are making the only sensible thing... by usining intel cpus. They want to make money and sell laptops...sonny73n - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I’m buying an AMD laptop. Bite me.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I love it when people use the results of a tilted system to justify the continued existence of a tilted system. Circular arguments are so *neat*! 😐trivik12 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I hope we see a tigerlake version this year and an AMD version soon as well. Quality of display and build quality is great.Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Tiger Lake will be in the premium Dells - AMD won'tLenovo's new systems are Tiger Lake and there is an almost identical system with the top end Renoir - the Tiger Lake system wrecks the Renoir iGPU and with 4C vs 8C only 17% slower - those are benchmarks on Jul 3 2020.
Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
still touting that cherry picked BS, huh ?mrvco - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Other than gaming I'm primarily a Mac user, but the XPS 13 DE has been on my radar as a Linux machine. I'm still surprised that Apple hasn't been more aggressive with their updates to the 13" MacBook Pro to better compete with the XPS 13.Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
XPS13 is the benchmark in that segmentErulian - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
My received 2 in 1 has many parts that did not fit well. For example, the screen's topmost layer bulges out at the bottom of the frame, and a few keys are poorly stabilized. The hinge is also too stiff, making opening the laptop a two-handed job. I wonder if I got an early production version as a result of the rush to get units out to customers. The OS install also feels stuttery at times. Since these issues do not impact normal use, I've so far not bothered with informing Dell.iq100 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
When the XPS 15 9560 was purchased with on site service, it took six attempts to get it to work.Here are the parts replaced on just the last (sixth) attempt.
SERVICE REPORT
REPLACEMENT PARTS
No. Dell Part QTY Description Parts Retained by Customer
1 5R1JP 1 ASSY,CVR,BTM,W/BDG,9550 No
2 M0T6P 1 ASSY,PLMRST,W/FPR,80,9560 No
3 9TXK7 1 ADPT,AC,130W,DLTA,4.5,L6,V2,E5 No
4 RN699 1 ADPT,CON,VID,DNGL,DP2VGA,L No
5 64TM0 1 ASSY,CBL,DC-IN, 9550/5510 No
6 2JVNJ 1 CORD,PWR,125V,2.5A,1M,C5,E5,US No
7 5G0HC 1 ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,AUDIO,9560/5520 No
Old wounds, not healed only fester. I purchase two U3011s. Both suffered the same design defect. Dell replace one but NOT the other, claiming "it was their policy to replace only one". Go figure.
www.tinyurl.com/HellIsDell
grant3 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
You're making me feel better... The xps-15-7500 6 weeks ago hasn't seen a day of use yet because of the massive delays in getting the touchpad + fingerprint defects fixed.I'm surprised the hardware is never tested on new machines before being shipped.
ET - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
My XPS 13 9350 definitely could use an upgrade, but I'd rather have a Ryzen in my laptop.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Looks nice, just one major downside, and one "wish they'd made that available": the major downside is the complete absence of a USB type A connector. I know they include an adapter, but that's just one more thing to forget or lose. If a Surface tablet has enough space for one, the XPS should have space for one, too. 2 USB-C/TB + one USB A 3.2, and it'd be almost perfect. The other "complaint" is the battery size. I'd gladly pay a bit extra and lug another 200 g around and have a 90 Wh battery - now that'll be a "whole day without recharge" ultraportable.And yes, it would have been nice to have a 4800u as a processor option, but these units are designed over a year before rollout, and AMD wasn't all that ready to rumble last summer. Now they are, and I hope that Dell will add a Renoir option for their 2021 XPS models.
eastcoast_pete - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Forgot to add: why only one (one!) heatpipe with a 42 W top TDP CPU? C'mon, Dell, add the 50 or 100g weight for a second heatpipe and give the thing the cooling it deserves!Deicidium369 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
and will be going against the massively superior Tiger Lake - MX350 level graphics, and 17% slower with half the cores (4 vs 8) than the top end Renoir. Unlikely to ever see an AMD in an XPS13 class machine.tamsysmm - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Yeah right, Renoir is such a failure. Only these cheap and low quality models available (ThinkPad X13 13” (AMD) Laptop, LENOVO ThinkPad T14s AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U, HP Elitebook 835/845/855 G7). Oh wait...Korguz - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
to Deicidium369, ANYTHING AMD makes is a failure.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I just don't buy this "AMD weren't ready" shtick. Asus designed an *entirely new class of gaming laptop* around Renoir. It really wouldn't have been difficult for Dell to integrate Renoir into this design - which has released much later in the year than the Zephyrus 14 - if they had had any interest in doing so.Whether this is down to AMD's failure in OEM outreach, Dell's failure in imagination, or standard Intel shenanigans is unclear - but the end result is inferior products and TBH I'm sick of it.
grant3 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
USB-A is sometimes useful sure, but aside from old flash drives, what do you -need- it for?Just spend the $30 on some USB-C cables to replace your USB-A cables. Yes it's in many ways a needless expense, but it can be justified as a minor price bump for people who are already spending $1400+ on a new laptop.
yeeeeman - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Tigerlake has a lot of things to fix...Sahrin - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
No Ryzen 4000 series; it's obsolete on launch day.roldaxc - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Soldered SSD? only two Type-C ports? Just get an X1 Carbon. All around a much more solid laptop, more reliable, much better keyboard, lots of ports and similar footprint.I wonder why it's not included in the device comparison in this article..
iq100 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I would never buy a Dell product.When the XPS 15 9560 was purchased with on site service, it took six attempts to get it to work.
Here are the parts replaced on just the last (sixth) attempt.
SERVICE REPORT
REPLACEMENT PARTS
No. Dell Part QTY Description Parts Retained by Customer
1 5R1JP 1 ASSY,CVR,BTM,W/BDG,9550 No
2 M0T6P 1 ASSY,PLMRST,W/FPR,80,9560 No
3 9TXK7 1 ADPT,AC,130W,DLTA,4.5,L6,V2,E5 No
4 RN699 1 ADPT,CON,VID,DNGL,DP2VGA,L No
5 64TM0 1 ASSY,CBL,DC-IN, 9550/5510 No
6 2JVNJ 1 CORD,PWR,125V,2.5A,1M,C5,E5,US No
7 5G0HC 1 ASSY,PWA,DTRBD,AUDIO,9560/5520 No
Old wounds, not healed only fester. I purchase two U3011s. Both suffered the same design defect. Dell replace one but NOT the other, claiming "it was their policy to replace only one". Go figure.
www.tinyurl.com/HellIsDell
svan1971 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
The only thing it's missing is a Ryzen cpu as far as I can tell.lmcd - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Every comment thread is AMD vs Intel. I'm here to represent VIA's amazing Nano product line featuring Isaiah cores. Fight the power. Pick VIA.Honestly dunno why everyone is screaming for retroactive design wins. That's just not how it works.
Jorgp2 - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
Especially since AMD seems to count gaming laptops and their many products on the same chassis.What's the point of having more design wins, if those designs push fewer units.
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
You should really ask the people making the designs. They're the ones shooting their own products in the foot, year after year.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Of course that's not how it works, but that's a straw man.According to the habitual Intel stans on this page:
You can't expect AMD designs when AMD has markedly inferior products and Intel is executing well.
You can't expect AMD designs when AMD have released broadly competitive products and Intel has been executing poorly for a couple of years with no signs of improving any time soon.
You can't expect AMD designs when AMD have released markedly superior products and Intel have been dropping the ball for 4 years straight but will maybe have a competitive product *soon*.
So the question is: when can we ever expect AMD designs to be developed? When do we finally get the competition needed to keep prices reasonable on high-end products?
The answer you're giving is "I'm fine with never", which means your opinion isn't worth shit.
Alistair - Thursday, July 16, 2020 - link
I own a XPS15 which had two main problems. Crappy Wifi chip (swap out for new Intel one, fixed) and bad cooling (can't fix, it is amazing how low my clock speeds went during gaming, buy a Ryzen 4700 Asus laptop and it is almost twice as fast because of thermals and better cooling). Mostly I want an XPS13 with AMD inside and I'll give it another shot. My $3000 XPS15 sits doing nothing, beaten by my $1500 Asus Ryzen 4000 laptop. G15.Shmee - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I looked at this, and I am very disappointed with anything soldered, means NON-upgradeable. Also lack of a separate GPU is also a problem. I am happy with my older, 15" MSI with the 7700HQ and GTX 1060. And upgradeable SATA 2.5" / m.2 drives, currently running an Adata SX8200 and a Samsung 850 Evo. I also have 2 SODIMM slots, can add another 16GB in if needed.Arbie - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
My XPS13 had constant thermal problems that took months to "fix" - when I finally got rid of some Intel management software AND undervolted the CPU. At last the fan stopped cycling up and down just at idle, with the CPU at 70 degC. What a nightmare and so many hours wasted. Now I read in the comments here that undervolting is being disabled in Intel updates!I won't even consider another XPS13 unless it's AMD.
Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I had this issue with my first-gen Infinity-Edge Broadwell XPS13. That combined with the "contrast boosting" display-dimming feature that couldn't be disabled made it useless for what I bought it for (mobile photo editing). I got rid of it in the end.Mikad - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Regarding the battery life & performance. It would be interesting to see how much you lose performance if you're running the laptop without the power cord.I have a somewhat bad feeling that the latest generation of laptops have a better battery life than the previous generations mainly because the laptops slow down their CPUs more than they used to.
If we take Surface Book 2 as an example (not a new laptop but still). The CPU automatically works with lower speeds when it is unplugged. AND it is not possible to get the full speed out from the machine, no matter how you change Windows' power settings.
Brett Howse - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
That actually sounds like a good basis for an article. Windows 10 has added a lot of power management settings which can adjust the power levels of the CPU with just a slider. Can't promise anything right away but if I have time I'll look into this.zepi - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
From what kind of USB-C chargers does this charge from? Does it charge from 9V 2A PD-charger or just complains that charger is not powerful enough? How about some 20V 2A or whatever else there might be?alexdi - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Lovely chassis. Not enough to make up for the wrong CPU and the lack of a 1600p screen. I don’t want battery-sucking 4K in a 13” laptop, but I also don’t want to see pixels on my small fonts.TEAMSWITCHER - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
There is a big problem with these devices.. The focus on thin bezels has had a negative impact on the palm rest area. It's so tiny now that the typing experience isn't very good. I suppose if you don't use it that much - it's bearable. But for heavy keyboarders ... like programmers ... I would recommend the Dell XPS 15 or 16" MacBook Pro instead. They only costs a few dollars more, but deliver a much better experience all around.Spunjji - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
The USP of the Dell was always that it's a 13" display in a 12"-sized chassis, so the palm-rest should really be judged as such. There are a few 14"-in-13"-chassis devices out there (LG Gram 14, Matebook D, Swift 5 14) if you need more room.Gigaplex - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I'm a programmer, but I rarely use the laptop keyboard. I plug it into a dock and use a desktop keyboard.TEAMSWITCHER - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
So .. you agree with me?mjz_5 - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I hope they fixed the Bluetooth. I can’t move three feet away when trying to listen to music on my 2016 XPS 13”. Same headphone on my iPhone, I can go all over the house.Tunnah - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I used to say "unless it's Intel I'm not gonna bother", am now just realising with the latest AMD mobile chipsets, I've firmly swung in the other direction. It feels almost daft to go with Intel nowadays considering what AMD are putting out. I'd love one of these with new Ryzen in itisthisavailable - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
This "king" is overrated. Surface Laptop is miles better at a lower price. The i3 and i5 versions of xps are useless because they are G1. 4gb ram version is, again, useless. It's not even a $1000 laptop.hanselltc - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
The lack of Ryzen here means there are sub 600 dollar laptops running laps around this when any resemblance of stress is present. Makes this a lot less attractive.Deders - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
Not sure why people still say windows 10 still handles HDR poorly, have they tried it since the HDR update? Apps look fine to me, everything looks fantastic (if a little bright)trenzterra - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
I had the XPS 9300 for a couple months before deciding to sell it. There are some issues with this laptop which wasn't highlighted in this review:- The display is really bright and all, but I had issues with screen colour uniformity -- on my set, there were two vertical "bars" where the colour had a little bit of green tint to it, noticeable on white or grey backgrounds. I had my display replaced twice before getting a decent one. After the lockdown was lifted, I went to look at display units in shops and it appears many of the Full HD and 4K sets had the same issue. Perhaps it's my eyes, or maybe panel lottery is particularly bad on this laptop.
- For some reason, my microSD card kept getting stuck in the slot (slot seemed misaligned or something, causing the spring mechanism to get stuck). In the end, I had to get a replacement laptop from Dell.
- The current firmware, 1.0.11 (and the previous, 1.0.10), has issues outputting video with certain USB-C to HDMI adapters. This has been going on for two months with no fix in sight, despite bringing it up to Dell's attention: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9300-BIO... . Further, users are also reporting issues connecting to certain LG and Samsung USB-C/ TB3 monitors (issue reported at launch but no fix yet -- apparently, you need to plug a separate power cable into the laptop and then plug the LG/ Samsung monitor into the other port just to get it to work, notwithstanding that the Samsung/ LG monitors are supposed to do PD passthrough). TB3/ PD support is really buggy on the XPS 9300 at the moment, and I wonder if they will ever get it fixed.
- If you have the Fast Startup option disabled (which is essentially hibernation in a different form), or restart the laptop, the laptop takes about 1min to startup, even on a whooping fast SSD. No fix in sight despite a 10-page+ long thread on the Dell forums: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Bug-New-XPS-13-...
- The laptop gets hot very easily at the palmrest area. I think this is a byproduct of the carbon fibre palmrest which kinda traps heat.
Overall, I found the laptop to be of rather good build quality and very good to look at. However, the flaws and lack of after-sales support (in terms of fixing BIOS/ firmware issues) from Dell has left me somewhat disappointed and I decided to cut my losses and sold it. Now I'm holding out for Renoir options...
trenzterra - Friday, July 17, 2020 - link
To clarify on the boot times, the laptop gets stuck on the Dell "loading" logo for about 40 seconds, even on a fresh install without bloatware. It seems like a BIOS bug (where something is being stuck) more than anything else, but since Fast Startup is left enabled by default (I prefer to disable it to reduce unnecessary writes to the SSD), Dell doesn't seem keen to fix it.Spunjji - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
These issues remind me of most of Dell's high-end releases since at least 2008. Shame :/edved - Saturday, July 18, 2020 - link
I rec'd this Dell i7 with 16GB yesterday on the 16th and saw this review! Excellent write-up. Thanks for putting in the time & effort. Certainly reassures my purchase. It replaced a 5 yr old XPS 13.Pixelpusher6 - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I've currently started looking for a new laptop. I'm leaning towards the Ryzen mobiles. One thing I've noticed though is the disappointing RAM options. For my use I need a minimum of 16GB. Using Win10 at work I'm averaging around 12-15GBs of usage, at home it is usually less around 7-10GB unless gaming. I don't understand why OEMs feel the need to solder RAM - do SODIMM slots really take up more space? The laptop I'm replacing is an older laptop that has a 24GB cache ssd soldered on which is failing, (in addition to a 512GB 860evo) and as a result Windows install hangs up, so I can only run Ubuntu. I love this laptop but I need to run Windows. What if you have soldered RAM and it fails outside of warranty?ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I've had this laptop for 5 months and actually have lots of problems with it that Dell just refuses to fix. Their answer to all of the following is that it's "by design".- Custom charging. If you set the charging to stop at, say, 80% or 90% (to prolong the life of the battery), reach the desired level (so that it stops charging), and then stress the CPU, the charging will continuously start and stop at a 1-5 second interval. Because of this, the charging light at the front of the laptop will keep turning on and off, which is very annoying in a dark room.
- Every time the battery starts charging, the screen's backlight will flicker for one second, like there's some instability with switching from battery power to AC. This combined with the issue above makes the custom charging level pretty useless.
- When Panel Self Refresh is turn on (in Intel's settings), the screen will randomly insert black frames once or every 10mins to 10 hours. It's very random. Solution is to just turn off PSR.
- The fans will run when nothing in the laptop is above 60 degrees C. Once they turn on, they will keep spinning for a while even if everything cools down to under 50 degrees C. My experience with the laptop is that the fans just keep running almost all the time when just browsing the web. My cooling setting is set to "quiet".
- Mayor problems with sleep mode. The laptop occasionally wakes up and just loads up the CPU and overheats everything to 100 degrees C when inside my backpack. I've had to hack Windows to re-enable S3 sleep (instead of modern sleep). Since Dell can't handle "Modern standby" correctly, they could at least have a BIOS option to disable to altogether (in fact they have an option to disable S3), so the user wouldn't have to hack-enable it with Windows.
- Home and End button placement is horrible. I've asked to enable Fn+left and Fn+right in a BIOS update, as they used to be in older XPS laptops, and the technician thought it was a good idea, but there's nothing he could do because people higher-up didn't want this.
ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
Though in spite of all of these problems, I still like this laptop, and I don't know of a better one. The 16:10 screen alone makes this an obvious choice, and I just have to learn to live with (and work around) all the other issues.nfriedly - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
I love the idea controlling charging in software to extend the longevity of the battery!I'm not sure how you could feasibly report this, but I'd like to know how much difference it makes after a few years of use. Does Dell make any claims?
ajp_anton - Sunday, July 19, 2020 - link
There are problems with this particular laptop's custom charging. Read my comment above yours, the first two points.I've used this feature in an older XPS laptop (max charge at 80% except for long flights and such), the Skylake version, which is ~4 years old. It's been in pretty much constant use on-the-go, and battery wear is at 1%.
vermaden - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Just get Chuwi Aerobook 13 instead.Bigger and better keyboard (along with more keys) and also TWO USB A 3.x ports and USB C port.
... and it costs about $450 new.
This Dell XPS 13 looks lame to say the least with these only two USB-C ports ...
ajp_anton - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Um, what?A Skylake-Y CPU with max turbo at 2.2GHz? That's your alternative to a 4-core Ice Lake? And possibly the slowest iGPU in existence, compared to one of the fastest. 1920x1080 screen. The speakers are "bad, even by laptop standards". And despite the extremely slow and low-power CPU, battery life is also bad.
Yeah, totally comparable.
velanapontinha - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
If only this was bases on a Ryzen 4700u...Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Well ... Duh!
;- )
Down With The King, Dell
Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Yeah ... there is no royalty, here.
Unless Brett means Kings of the Hill _ DrSu and TMSC
LPDDR4-4266MHz Vega 7 to ?? new VCN for AMD ??
Can't wait to see what's next ...
Dell / Intel - big yawn
Chipzillah market heft is the poo-King, here
darkich - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
I love how the review completely ignores the fact that Intel's latest and greatest mobile chip is absolutely destroyed by AMD.vol.2 - Thursday, July 23, 2020 - link
So I guess this display is a TN display with horrible viewing angles?fliptwister - Saturday, August 1, 2020 - link
Looks like a very good notebook. It is a shame that Dell does not offer it with an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU. I have never understood why Dell only offers AMD in their Inspiron laptops. Let consumers make their choices. I expect Zen 3 will be dropping about the same time as Tiger Lake. I also expect Zen 3 will trounce Tiger lake. Intel must be offering a huge discount/rebate (Marketing Development Funds) to be exclusive. If they offered the 4700U in this notebook I would buy it.