Hardware Canucks - The Subtle Sabotage of AMD Gaming Laptops
Posted by Antonis_32@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 92 comments
Posted by Antonis_32@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 92 comments
theholylancer@reddit
Finally someone said it, it make no sense to not have a 9800HX3D for just gaming, it would power a 5090 mobile or hell desktop likely no problem.
but AMD for some reason just dont want it to happen
Gloriathewitch@reddit
x3d in a 1600/2160p computer where it is least effective? they're best at 1080/1200/1440p.
theholylancer@reddit
Most laptops would have a screen that isnt that high res natively? esp a lot of gaming laptops uses 1080p but like 200+ or 400+ hz
The goal is to have a reasonable gaming laptop that isn't overly expensive, one of those coupled with a mobile 5080 would likely hit under 2k new and because the 5090M don't use the real 5090 chip it won't be a lot of loss.
also, if it has any way to do external GPU at all, then again that X3D would come in handy, esp if it ever got more than just X4 speeds
constantlymat@reddit
Maybe things have changed within the past 12 months but AMD has had a long history of failing to provide laptop manufacturers with contractually guaranteed high volumes of its most performant chips. According to Ian Cutress this was due to a lack of cashflow combined with the fact that they were low margin parts for AMD due to the amount of money TSMC was charging them for it.
How does this impact who gets a vapor chamber and cool features and who doesn't? Economies of scale do.
I don't see collusion or foul play on the laptop market until AMD can actually provide the same guaranteed delivery volumes as Intel
Highborn_Hellest@reddit
You know it's BS, because if it was true amd would not provide semi-custom solutions for handhelds and consoles.
Front_Expression_367@reddit
Definitely not handhelds, some manufacturers have complained about that part. For consoles like PS5, they are using hardware from like 2020. They better hard the supply in control if they had already been around for that long.
constantlymat@reddit
The volume they provide for handhelds is much lower than what laptop manufacturers need and console chips are produced on ancient nodes that have completely different economics than the ones discussed here.
SkillYourself@reddit
ASUS shared the G16 Strix platform between Dragon Range Refresh 8940HX and Fire Range 9955HX, so the platform baseline needs to be low-cost to hit the Zen4 price points and that means corners cut on peripherals, cooling, and power delivery.
People that think there's a conspiracy behind ASUS's decision needs to look at the expansive Zephyrus and Flow laptop lines. ASUS is a very AMD friendly OEM but they can't fix the fact that Dragon/Fire Range is desktop-chip-on-BGA and making a laptop with it results in a DTR. They don't expect good sales based their experience with Dragon Range so they aren't making a separate high-cost platform for Fire Range.
Ironically, the "anti-AMD" MSI is the only major OEM that went all out for Fire Range and their effort got panned for terrible battery life and always-on fans.
VenditatioDelendaEst@reddit
I mean, the 275HX is too, and it gets reasonable battery life. AMD just doesn't have a handle on their desktop parts' idle power.
dnyank1@reddit
?
DeliciousIncident@reddit
Dental Tooth Reconstruction
JuanElMinero@reddit
DTR = Desktop Replacement
A laptop with high performance parts (often the respective desktop versions), but generally not optimized for low-power operation and mobility.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
I really wished ASUS released an updated G14 with their 4090. Instead of more powerful GPUs each year, the 4090 model was for just 1 year and the later years were capped at 4070.
You might think a 4070 or 5070 is not bad, but if you wanted more than 12GB VRAM on a 14”, that was the only model and it still is
JakeTappersCat@reddit
Then why lock out the 5080? That is an obvious move to restrict sales for AMD
SkillYourself@reddit
Why does the low-end G16 platform for Raptor Lake Refresh and Dragon Range Refresh lock out the 30% higher TGP, 33% higher pin count, and 50% larger GPU? Hmm...
Qaxar@reddit
It's not just Asus, it's almost all the laptop manufacturers that cap AMD laptops to 5070Ti.
YeshYyyK@reddit
You don't have to run it at higher TGP, '23 model did 125W 4090L
Earthborn92@reddit
It doesn't seem like AMD fails to provide Sony and Microsoft millions of low margin chips for their consoles. This isn't a good explanation.
Present_Hornet_6384@reddit
Uh it took like 3 years for ps5 supplies to be steady
You are paying 1500 for a ps5 to scalpers first year it was released
Earthborn92@reddit
To be fair, it was launched during the peak silicon shortage. Everyone was having trouble supplying chips for every application.
I'm guessing the PS4/XbOne launch didn't have that issue, but AMD also didn't sell much of anything else during those days.
constantlymat@reddit
Xbox and PS5 are based on RDNA 2.5 and manufactured on TSMC N7.
That's basically ancient.
Earthborn92@reddit
The original ones, yes. The ones you can buy now are node shrinks, and the Pro is 4nm.
But yeah, even the node shrunk ones are old at this point.
iDontSeedMyTorrents@reddit
Single SKUs that are guaranteed to sell millions no matter what versus entire ranges of SKUs for many many different laptop designs that don't.
bubblesort33@reddit
Used to be the case that high end AMD stuff simply didn't sell in pre-builds and laptops. No one made them, because they were just unpopular with the mainstream, because people stick to the Nvidia and Intel they are used to. I wonder how much of that still remains with AMD CPUs in the laptop space. Maybe a high end Intel laptop with the same GPU, still out sells a high end AMD CPU system. But I also can't imagine a 5080 option for the AMD CPU option would require more engineering, because it's the die same and memory config as the 5070ti.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
I have seen companies like XMG complain about poor supply
Qaxar@reddit
Yet somehow Chinese manufacturers have tons of supply of these chips. Something seems off.
madn3ss795@reddit
The scale is very different. A single laptop series sell globally by the like of Lenovo, Dell or HP will need more chips than those Chinese manufacturers' orders combined.
Superb_Raccoon@reddit
Lenovo is a Chinese comppany.
mrstoffer@reddit
That only enforces his point, not contradicts it.
It's not a China thing, its handheld markets being low volume
DerpSenpai@reddit
and handhelds can compete in price because while being low volume, they are direct to consumer
awayish@reddit
they produced a lot of dragon range intending for mobile but the chip is not suitable for mobile largely because of the idle power problem. so a lot of them got dumped into minipcs and the like.
Geddagod@reddit
Didn't a chinese handheld manufacture complain publicly about not getting enough Zen 4 volume once?
AK-Brian@reddit
GPD:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/1793j94/gpd_accuses_amd_of_breaching_contract_by_not/
gomurifle@reddit
I think this might be due to locked in contracts with intel or something.
shugthedug3@reddit
It's not sabotage. AMD have just been extraordinarily bad at doing the necessary to get their chips in machines.
You have to partner with the big ODMs like Compal, Winstron etc and do a lot of the heavy lifting for them. Intel have been very good at this.
One niche that AMD have been good at - for whatever reason - is mini PCs. They can certainly build on this and do the same for laptops but don't seem overly interested.
CulturalCancel9335@reddit
Because the mini-PC manufacturers in China are (mostly) operating on a much smaller scale (thousands) compared to the big laptop manufacturers (millions).
A Minisforum or Beelink doesn't care if AMD can only provide a few thousand particular chips, as long as it's cheap. (Or they're just reusing chips from somewhere else)
masterfultechgeek@reddit
mini-PCs don't have nearly as tight of tolerances as laptops.
Air gaps are expected in mini-PCs, they're a design flaw in laptops.
CulturalCancel9335@reddit
And to go on a tangent.
If a mini-PC has a badly configured bios and has a 15 watt chip idling at 10-13 watt then it's no big deal. Maybe it gets mentioned in a review, but really what's the big deal?
A laptop that idles too hot will have a shitty battery life and will absolutely lose sales.
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Meanwhile Intel even made and sold their Mini PCs under the NUC brand and it failed
logosuwu@reddit
Intel also basically spoonfeeds designs to OEM/ODMs.
DYMAXIONman@reddit
I think the biggest thing for awhile, was that AMD laptops did not support EGPUs, which If I were to game on a laptop, I'd really want that feature.
DeliciousIncident@reddit
External GPUs are the biggest thing only in size, compared to the laptop they are attached to lol
shugthedug3@reddit
USB4 mostly negated this as an issue... but of course there's Thunderbolt 5 now which makes it an issue once again.
Impossible_Suit_9100@reddit
Thunderbolt 4 killed many eGPU hardware use because it enforced power delivery through it
imaginary_num6er@reddit
Thunderbolt is owned by Intel, that’s why
JUSTsMoE@reddit
Thats really niche tho.
Good_Season_1723@reddit
The only sabotage im seeing is AMD's chips sabotaging battery life. WTF is this? How did they manage to fail that bad?
derpity_mcderp@reddit
the HX chips use the chiplets+io die setup. To power the connections to each other takes a significant minimum power consumption even if the cpu itself is idle doing absolutely nothing. The H/HS and ryzen ai x yyyy chips are monolithic and dont have this issue.
Good_Season_1723@reddit
I understand the why, I just don't understand why they are pushing these CPUs to laptops and desktops. These are server chips first, keep them at servers.
DuranteA@reddit
It's just an anecdote, and not at all about gaming laptops at that, so sorry for the not-particularly-topical rant. Anyway, I've been buying ThinkPads for ~2 decades now, and for my most recent one I bought the AMD CPU model variant since all the reviews indicated that in the given performance class it was simply better in almost any conceivable metric than the Intel alternative.
I've never had half as many issues with any ThinkPad before. Not waking up from sleep sometimes, not going to sleep (and heating up to 80° in my backpack) at others, and even audio breaking randomly from time to time. Now, since this is an anecdote with a sample size of one, I have no idea how widespread any of this is, or even whether ThinkPads are just generally getting worse, or perhaps Microsoft is breaking Windows 11 even more than usual, or if it's really only this AMD model (though, FWIW, a co-worker has a similar vintage Intel model without any of these issues).
I also obviously don't know if this is due to Lenovo messing up the implementation or some inherent issues with AMD's HW/SW stack. What I do know is that the next time I have to make this choice I'm heavily disinclined to go AMD again -- and that is of course a shame for them if they aren't responsible, but I really can't be bothered to deal with a buggy laptop in the name of some sort of hardware fairness doctrine.
kyralfie@reddit
Make sure you have the latest BIOS version installed. It doesn't always auto-update via windows update on thinkpads - sometimes it's disabled for security on them. Updating it could make a lot of a difference.
shugthedug3@reddit
And on Dell the biggest culprit I have found as far as causing issues with sleep is their "Power Manager" service that comes preinstalled.
dfv157@reddit
I had a Alderlake (127HX???) thinkpad from work that had all of these issues, plus the added problem of thermal throttling that i just gave up and had them swap it up a M1 Mac. I do not regret my choice at all.
MikhailT@reddit
Had the same issue with ThinkPad Extreme G1 with Intel, so it is not always about AMD itself.
Windows itself was known to have a lot of problems with waking/sleeping on various chipsets.
kyp-d@reddit
Windows 11 is completely bonkers with audio recently (saying this using an Intel 275HX Laptop)
Maybe it's related to using multiple audio interfaces (Internal, USB Wireless, Bluetooth, HDMI/DP) and switching between them for Teams / Video / Games separately, but it's a shit show.
Few_Net_6308@reddit
Those aren't AMD related issues. Like the other poster, I have an Intel 13th Gen company laptop and all of what you listed is what I deal with every week, including the "standby but it's secretly still on" and I don't realize it until I pull it out of my backpack and the battery is dead.
GenderGambler@reddit
I think it's a windows issue more than an AMD issue. I have an intel laptop provided by my job (Dell Latitude 5430) with a 12th gen intel CPU, and I have all those issues minus the audio breaking randomly - at most, it's an annoying stutter.
Ontological_Gap@reddit
Damn. I run Linux on a modern AMD think Thinkpad, and a framework 16, and I have all these issues. My old haswell Intel gear didn't have these problems....
Apocryptia@reddit
The not going to sleep issue is a known windows bug, but I’m not sure about the others.
Present_Hornet_6384@reddit
Intel provides the better laptop platform
Gloriathewitch@reddit
i tend to disagree though i might not be the target demographic,
i much prefer amd as their battery life is top notch and intel doesn't offer a true 16c32t option only ones with diet cores.
radeon 890m and 8060s are just superb and intel doesn't have an answer
advantage editions are much nicer to deal with on linux too.
makistsa@reddit
But the intel 275hx has better battery life in every review. Amd was better in the previous generation
Gloriathewitch@reddit
the 275hx is a desktop replacement chip, so we're talking maybe 20 mins to an hour at best.
the real comparisons come at the 370hx and 285h and 258v regions where intel shines with their 258 but the ryzen ai is just as good if not better in many tests
makistsa@reddit
intel 13:18
amd 9:30
amd 3d 7:15
in chrome refreshing every 15sec
It's in the video
Gloriathewitch@reddit
I just don't see much use in comparing the HX chips this way as they are desktop replacements, and you'll have a charger with you. the system will throttle without it anyway, the only one that wont is a macbook by design.
its much less useful to compare HX 370 to 285/275, as they are not designed for battery life, it's a side effect of nanometer design improving.
people buy 258v, ai350 etc if they want battery longevity typically. or a 285h/hx370 in something like a proart, zephyrus or asus zenbook.
ThinkinBig@reddit
That's the thing though, Jerrod did comparisons between the Intel Core Ultra 9 275hx and both the 9955hx as well as 9955hx3d and Intel offered literally double the battery life, double the igpu performance and significantly better performance while on battery than either AMD CPU. All that and the gaming performance was essentially identical on the 9955hx, the 9955hx3d did offer an average of 8% higher fps at 1440p resolutions
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
The only thing that matters is desktop gaming performance of the halo SKUs.
ResponsibleJudge3172@reddit
Mindshare.
Like how on mindfactory zen 3 outsells any Intel chips
Affectionate-Memory4@reddit
I totally agree on thunderbolt 5. I have no practical use for that much bandwidth, and usb4 has all the capacity I need from my laptop for one-cable docking.
Intel very much has an answer to the 890M. The 140V and 140T are quite competitive. The former draws especially close and even pulls ahead as the TDP gets lower. Fair enough on the 8060S, though I think we all should hope NVL-AX comes out. More big iGPUs for everyone!
As for battery life, last I checked Lunar Lake is still doing very well and ARL-HX is well ahead of Fire Range. In the middle AMD is often stronger here, but ARL-H isn't far behind.
I'm also not sure I understand where the hang up is on "diet cores." If the performance is there, what does it matter how the cores are shaped? I'd understand the criticism on lack of threads, 24 vs 32, as some people do need as many as they can get a hold of, but I don't see how E-cores are a detriment.
Linux has definitely been in AMD's favor on account of things like Bazite and just the general GPU driver situation.
Better-Struggle9958@reddit
burnt chip
Qaxar@reddit
How does that explain Intel laptop getting vapor chamber while AMD laptop gets heat pipes? Also why do mostl laptop manufacturers cap AMD laptops at 5070Ti while Intel ones get up to 5090?
Present_Hornet_6384@reddit
Same reason why asus doesnt make a strix/tuf amd graphic card
dfv157@reddit
Nevermind the fact you didn't answer his question and deflected with a nonsequitor, even that was in fact, a load of BS https://rog.asus.com/graphics-cards/graphics-cards/rog-strix/rog-strix-lc-rx6950xt-o16g-gaming-model/
DecompositionLU@reddit
The 6950xt is 2 gen old. He is wrong about TUF, but they're indeed no Strix Radeon card since RX 7000.
GhostMotley@reddit
Aside from the garbage Killer 'Performance' Suite, Intel's Wi-Fi cards have so much better support than the stuff from Realtek, MediaTek or Qualcomm.
omega552003@reddit
not on Linux since Radeon cards never get paired with intel chips.
makistsa@reddit
And battery life
bluexy@reddit
I was 6/8. The two I had wrong were Story #1 and Story #5. I had #5 as my favorite story of the bunch and #1 as one of my least favorites. Which, of course, is the trick. That how much you enjoy a story may matter very little in helping discover whether something is AI-created or not. An infinite amount of monkeys with typewriters will inevitably write the works of Shakespeare, after all.
What I personally used to "evaluate" whether something was AI wasn't necessarily whether a story had a point or theme, but rather how coherent it was in capturing its point or theme to the extent that each story had them.
The first story I struggled to find that point or theme. The bulk or the text focused on establishing the village and its 10-yo "hero," all with details that felt arbitrary and that I didn't feel contributed to any specific idea. The conclusion didn't come across as particularly interesting or meaningful. I think I must have missed the point, which made it impossible for me to fit the story into my criteria for human. It wasn't the author's job to meet my criteria for human, of course. It's just the nature of the project.
Story #5 I had the opposite problem, I connected with it too much. The twist of the demon disappearing the president, allowing the story's main character to sleep again, got me. It felt like someone living in this moment would want to write. In retrospect, yeah, it's a pretty shallow way to convey that idea. And that would have bothered me more if the rest of the story wasn't solid, too. The nontraditional demon meeting someone for coffee, pushing the "customer" to say the name but not writing it -- as if it's a cursed or censored word. It seemed layered and intentional in a very human way. That probably speaks more to my sensibilities as a reader than anything else. I should have seen this one as AI, based on my standards of evaluation. Not seeing Story #1 as human likely contributed, as I wasn't necessarily looking especially hard for another AI story.
Otherwise, overall, I think my judgment was sound. Story #4 was tonally all over the place. Not at all cohesive, in my view. Similarly, while I didn't enjoy story #8 as much as others on the list, it had a richness and cohesiveness I couldn't find in the more obviously AI stories. It was just simple, unambitious, and trying to be fun. Then again, maybe my results were purely random. I don't want to believe that's true, but I can't deny it's possible.
omega552003@reddit
I can answer some of these questions and address some of the points brought up as a user of the Dell G5se-5055 and a Framework 16, both AMD Advantage hardware.
Capping GPU options
See chassis design below, The heatsink in both ASUS laptops is different and unique to the chassis. It seems that ASUS deliberately targeted wattage limit with this series. Note that +180w AMD systems existed before, but ASUS made the choice for their AMD systems specs. Also to note, the Intel CPU is more power hungry.
Limiting Features - Most are due to Intel owning a technology and AMD not wanting or can't get access to.
Wireless Options - Intel has an entire Wireless division, AMD doesn't and relies on non-intel third parties for their Wifi/BT support. With their AMD Advantage program, they dictated specific hardware to be paired with thier CPUs, for the Ryzen 7040 series it had to also have a AMD RZ600 Series WiFi module in the system, this is actually a MediaTek Filogic 330P. Most users swap it out for a non-CNVi Intel WiFi card.
Thunderbolt 5 - Intel and Apple are the owners of Thunderbolt technology. Intel used to not allow non-Intel platforms to us Thunderbolt, but since Apple has moved away from Intel CPUs, it has since been integrated into the USB standard as of USB4.
Older Designs
Chassis Design - I blame AMD on this as they are slow to roll out hardware, so the ASUS having two different chassis is probably down to longer design time for AMD systems.
Ultimately for these laptops I blame ASUS for the odd design choices, but AMD is also to blame for not having a robust offering that would better match the 5070Ti. Also some of AMD's platform requirements are bad for users.
Qaxar@reddit
Except this isn't the only laptop that caps AMD at 5070Ti. Hell, this isn't the only laptop generation where we've had this issue. AMD laptops, even if they're the most powerful available, rarely get paired with x080/x090 graphics cards.
A lack of Thunderbolt 5 or Wifi 7 isn't the issue. It's the fewer USB ports and a 1gbe port while the intel one got 2.5gbe. Don't think anyone could claim that AMD laptop chips doesn't support those options.
That's just baseless assumptions. How do you explain mini PC manufacturers having their hands on these chips right away? I'd concede the point if this was one off thing but it's been happening for years.
ThinkinBig@reddit
You also have to keep in mind that AMD's Ryzen AI lineup (max of 16 PCIE lanes, https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/ai-300-series/amd-ryzen-ai-9-hx-375.html) this generation has lower PCIE bandwidth than Intel (up to 24 PCIE lanes, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/242293/intel-core-ultra-9-processor-275hx-36m-cache-up-to-5-40-ghz/specifications.html), as well as maxes with gen 4 vs Intel having gen 5.
It's only the 9955hx or 9955hx3d that have both more PCIE lanes as well as bandwidth, but also higher costs already
mi7chy@reddit
Intel has been known to undermine the competition with incentive pay.
makistsa@reddit
Recently they won this case. They were giving better deals to exclusive partners which isn't illegal.
Wasn't at that time Amd giving better binned chips at Sapphire?
Isn't TSMC helping more their exclusive customers?
Nicholas-Steel@reddit
The real issue was threatening to withdraw Intel products if they sold AMD products. Intel was so popular that it would be unthinkable to not have Intel products to sell at your store.
LAwLzaWU1A@reddit
If they are talking about the AMD v. Intel lawsuit that Intel lost then it happened in 2005. It's been 20 years and people still like to bring it up.
Marv18GOAT@reddit
Part of the reason why I’m hoping Intel goes under. Tired of being forced to deal with their shitty CPUs if I want a good laptop gpu
soggybiscuit93@reddit
Couldn't the better QOL improvements on the ARL-HX system also be explained by the fact that a new board and design was necessary moving away from RPL-HX?
Like the new Zen5 G16 could just be a mild upgrade from the old Zen 4 G17, reusing a lot of the same internals, doing the laptop equivalent of a drop in updgrade?
xeroze1@reddit
Heh. Kinda rich coming from hardware Canucks considering I stopped going through their videos due to a very terribly done laptop review. Where they straight up did a side by side comparison of an asus laptop with both amd and intel variant and skipped the mentioning of the amd variant having their side vents straight up blocked, and have no comparison between the two in terms of thermal performance and no mention throttling.
AnechoidalChamber@reddit
The limitations are real...
Capped at 5070Ti, older thermal solutions, older components, etc.
DistantRavioli@reddit
And worse screens. You can get the higher tier GPUs sometimes but you can't really get AMD+5080+OLED
Due-Ambition-7385@reddit
it only comes down to price, intel gives manufacturers good discount on for bulk order, amd doesn't and this is the most basic reason
Bananoflouda@reddit
One small correction when he says that Asus is running a ton of juice into the Intel laptop. From other reviews we know that at 140w setting the 9955 uses 20-30w more than the 275. So Asus is probably running them at the same power.