Any news on good Ryzen mobile APU or Intel w/Vega Laptops?

[Shmee]

I am a bit out of the loop on laptop offerings, and was wondering what was available with these parts or with similar perfomance. I currently have a 17" Sager NP8170 with a 2630QM and a GTX 560M, so my laptop is kinda dated, especially GPU wise.

I would be looking for likely a 15" 1080p screen, preferably IPS. High refresh rate would be awesome. I would like to keep price down to around $1000 or less if possible. Must be easy to work on with good upgradeability and customization/tweaking options, not too heavy would be nice.

I am very open to getting one with just an HDD and upgrading with retail SSD, to save cost.

Obviously it would not be my main system, so a next gen APU sounds ideal for lower cost as long as the performance is decent. hopefully. I would also be fine with a 1060 or higher at that price range, though this may be wishful thinking.

Any news on the offerings or suggestions for laptops?

 

[richaron]

I've been half keeping an eye on this, and it seems AMD is having the same old problems in the segment. So far there have been a few (3 or 4?) publicised marketing products announced late last year. But I have yet to see the wider range of products which should come from a price and performance competitive product like Raven Ridge.

I was also watching the Kaveri and Carrizo mobile launch pretty closely because I was in the market and sadly this doesn't look much better, in fact it looks exactly the same with a few (relatively) expensive systems to put on the marketing slides and no actual product range. I would hate to think Ryzen APUs are stuck with a few relatively expensive and/or gimped products like we've seen OEMs providing AMD in the past... It just doesn't make sense to me, but maybe a few will come out in the near future. Let's hope so. And please do tell if you see any.

 

[Shmee]

I did a little research, and found this which should come in early April. https://www.anandtech.com/show/1228...ing-laptop-with-amd-ryzen-mobile-radeon-rx560

Starting at $799 is good, and specs state up to 32 GB of DDR4, meaning most likely 2x SODIMM slots. If reviews and teardowns look good, it could be a good contender.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hey, thanks for that AT front-page link to that Acer Nitro 5 laptop. Looks really slick! Would love to get one of those, with just the Ryzen Mobile APU, with quad-core, on-chip Vega graphics, and dual-channel DDR4 (hopefully removable/upgradable, with dual-channel). Along with a 256GB / 512GB M.2 PCI-E NVMe, or even just a SATA SSD, would be fine with me. Bonus if it has both a M.2 and a 2.5" SSD bay.

Been looking for a newer Ryzen-based laptop, that I can "max out" on RAM, and have a decent SSD in there.

I current have a Lenovo B45 or B50, something like that, with one of their "small core" quad-cores, maybe a Beema or Puma core or whatever. It's got some form of Turbo, which is nice, but it only has 4GB of RAM, which runs out fairly quickly with the number of tabs that I have open in Firefox. (I do have a 2x4GB kit of DDR3 to throw in, I just haven't bothered.) When I got it, I put in a 256GB Team Dark SATA SSD (MLC), which is working out just fine so far, and keeps it usable.

Edit: By way of comparison, though, the laptop was $200, the SSD was $60, and the 8GB RAM kit was like $80.

 

[richaron]

I did a little research, and found this which should come in early April. https://www.anandtech.com/show/1228...ing-laptop-with-amd-ryzen-mobile-radeon-rx560

Starting at $799 is good, and specs state up to 32 GB of DDR4, meaning most likely 2x SODIMM slots. If reviews and teardowns look good, it could be a good contender.

Seems OK...

But on principle I hate when they *only* bundle "APUs" with discrete cards. Generally the main advantage of an AMD "APU" is the integrated graphics. And the greatest advantage of modern Raven Ridge "APUs" is that they have a competitive CPU as well as the iGPU. So an APU with a dGPU seems silly to me.

If you're looking for a proper gaming system obviously a dGPU is needed. But throwing in average dGPU just to fill in some purchase quota or tick a marketing check box does not impress me.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you're looking for a proper gaming system obviously a dGPU is needed. But throwing in average dGPU just to fill in some purchase quota or tick a marketing check box does not impress me.

The article seemed to indicate that the dGPU would only be on certain SKUs? The cheaper ones would just have the APU? I hope that they don't tier them, such that you have to spring for the dGPU, just to get an SSD in there. That would indeed be a shame. As long as the bays are accessable, though, it wouldn't be too horrible to buy one with an HDD.

 

[kmmatney]

Dell has a laptop with Ryzen and Vega, but the higher end is pricey:

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell...00/spd/inspiron-17-5775-laptop/dncwlgamd7001s

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell...00/spd/inspiron-17-5775-laptop/dncwlgamd7003s

 

[Shmee]

Looking for a 15". But after looking again on Dell's site I noticed they now have a Inspiron 15 with the 2700U listed starting at $949. That may be a good way to go.

 

[Topweasel]

I think AMD is stretched too thin or having a hard time getting usable chips with little enough leakage for these 15w chips. But 2 SKU's for mobile really isn't enough to get OEM's to design platforms for the CPU's if they can only have a handful of variants. Really surprised we haven't seen 35-45w versions yet.