Knowledge VS linuxlaptops

tkaiser has some additional information from his initial testing at https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articl... if people are curious to know more, though it should be noted these were early release samples and as such, software/firmware isn't exactly perfect at the moment

"Armbian recommends A1 rated SD-Cards only now (A2 rated cards need yet lacking driver support and therefore show lower overall and especially random IO performance)."

From: https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articles/Quick_Preview_of_ROCK_5B.md

Yes and no, in this articleguy tests A1 and A2 cards and on non compatible reader some A2 cards are slower than A1 cards.

One thing worth noting is that basically, even now (almost 10 months post announcement), almost no one has a 6000U laptop outs (a search on Amazon and Best Buy shows two 6800U laptop models total, one Asus and one Lenovo). Two niche vendors, XMG and Star Labs, have both publicly stated that they would have loved to have offered Ryzen 6000 laptops, but couldn't get any allotments. There are were also well documented chipset issues - even into the summer Lenovo and Asus talked about requiring firmware updates to enable their USB4 ports.

That being said, starting w/ Rembrandt, AMD now has full 40Gbps USB4 controllers built on-chip. I'm really looking forward to Ryzen 7040 because Phoenix looks great (Zen4 + RDNA3 on TSMC N4 - yes please) and hopefully USB4 support has matured enough on the AMD side that Framework is able to release something.

My understanding is that the I/O limitation is in the re-timers - currently the Framework uses 4X JHL8040R's (labeled as Burnside Bridge) directly connected to the iTBT: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Mainboard/blob/main/Ele... Apple used these for their first M1 MBAs as well: https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articl...

But both Apple and AMD are now using Kandou retimers:

* https://www.gizchina.com/2022/07/25/apple-completely-got-rid...

* https://kandou.com/matterhorn.html

* https://kandou.com/assets/downloads/product-briefs/KB8001-Pr...

Some early A2 cards were implemented poorly and actually had worse IOPS than A1 cards, as they used a worse onboard controller in the hopes of the system making up for the deficiency. See here. Reputable large A2 cards no longer have this issue but it's still a minefield.

In addition to this, the A2 standard requires hardware/driver support of Command Queuing and Write Caching, and without proper support A2 cards can and will perform worse than their A1 counterparts

The UM790 is pretty quiet under normal use, but has about a +7dB wooshing when maxed out (not too annoying, but definitely noticeable - it's a bit quieter than my Framework laptop under stress testing). Notebookcheck has a full review and has measured noise emissions: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Minisforum-Venus-Series-UM790-...

I've been using this as my home workstation for the past month or so and have been keeping my own notes. The biggest caveat is that there are stability problems (mine and others seem to be lockups w/ C6 on Ryzen, there are others where lowering RAM speed (from 5600 to 4800 or 4000) clear things up, and for some people, it's with multiple monitors plugged in). There was a recent BIOS upgrade that updated AMD's AGESA and GOP but that doesn't seem to have helped much.

* https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/Minisforum-UM790-Pr...

* https://bbs.minisforum.com/forums/ryzen%E2%84%A2-9-7940hs.19...

Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) USB4 support was generally underwhelming. Some of it may have been FP7 limitations, but some of it may have been lack of AMD board support (eg, the ZenBooks were supposed to have USB4 support, don't have a dGPU so not a board layout issue, but was held up by BIOS issues as well). Supply chain may have played a part as well - a lot of ODM/OEMs skipped it due to parts shortages (retimers or power delivery components?). These issues are still a problem for Ryzen 7000 mobile (Phoenix). For some more color, see this Framework update for example: https://community.frame.work/t/responded-amd-batch-1-guild/2...

I did a lot of research on the G14, but actually I ended up not getting one and going for a 12th-gen Intel Framework instead: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...

I had a Batch 1 AMD motherboard pre-order but ended up cancelling for reasons, although I did end up deciding to get a 7940HS mini PC, which I'm running as my main desktop computer now and that I've documented here: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/Minisforum-UM790-Pr...

I have it connected w/ a LINKUP Thunderbolt 3 dock now and it seems fine, but I don't have auto-suspend on and don't suspend the device.

Also, the main issue w/ the device is that it suffers from crashes/reboots unless either PSS is disabled in the BIOS or C6 is disabled (after which it's stable). This is likely an AMD AGESA issue (this seems to be a recurring forever bug w/ Zen processors) and an upcoming BIOS update is promised to fix it.

A few years ago I did a bunch of poking w/ a 4800H, you can see the actual mechanics of using RyzenAdj. There are also Geekbench 5 benchmarks linked from the doc at different power limits which you can compare to 4800U devices on Geekbench's site: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2020-MECHREVO-Code-...

Note, each laptop manufacturer may choose their different power limits (and like Intel, AMD's curves are largely driven by temperature, so dependent on cooling solution and other settings).

This is a good summary of some of how Ryzen Mobile's power limiting works (actually, read that whole wiki if you're interested in the topic): https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide

I'd also look up "AMD PMF" (their equivalent of DPTF) which only recently made it's way to the Linux kernel (but of course, that will include loads of details anyone can look through): https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-PMF-CnQF-Linux-6.1

I'm always surprised on r/linuxhardware (another good resource) the number of people that ask questions without doing basic searches online. I'd definitely second the Arch and Gentoo Wikis as excellent community maintained resources. Also:

* https://linux-hardware.org/ - this is where uploaded `hw-probe` results are collected and shared. It's easy to search for your exact model #/SKU and get a very detailed compatibility list, eg: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=6677ca6be8

* Reddit is actually one of the best general sources for people talking about Linux compatibility issues, especially as most laptop OEMs don't have dedicated Linux support forums (only Framework and Lenovo do, AFAIK), so searching for "[model] linux report/review/compatibility/issues reddit" is usually a good sanity check as well.

* Oftentimes doing a search for the exact model and adding "linux bug" is the best way to get any bug reports that are in kernel, distro, or package trackers.

* IMO Notebookcheck is the best general/objective review site for laptops. While there are usually some more in-depth reviews that might give additional color on a laptop, the Notebookcheck reviews cover most of the important points with some very objective, and more importantly, standardized tests, whose results can be compared against their gigantic database of other reviews. Important things like screen quality (brightness, color gamut, PWM flicker), speaker quality (I find the percentile vs other laptops most useful there), and power usage (most importantly IMO, their WiFi v1.3 rundown test). While it's not the easiest to link to, they allow you to add comparisons to arbitrary laptop models for any of their numerical results. It's fantastic.

* Lastly, for Linux laptop compatibility in particular, I've found there a lot of documents in single developer/user's wikis, or as Github repos/gists writing up their experiences. I've done two of them myself since I found the other ones I've found to be so useful: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops

Idle power consumption is good, but sadly as soon as you get into near-idle/light usage (eg, listening to Spotify in the background, or even running a bash script echoing to your terminal, the power jumps a lot (I place the blame mainly on Intel 12th Gen). In my experience, despite also having extremely long idle battery life, for regular web browsing, watching YouTube, light typing tasks, my 12th-gen Framework tends to get about 5h of battery life (I tested a number of scenarios including seeing how little load was required to reduce battery life here for those that are interested: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...)

On Notebookcheck's standardized WiFi v1.3 test, the Framework gets 447 minutes while an 8C MBA M2 gets 910 minutes (just over double).

On my most recent trip, I ended up throwing the towel and getting an MBA M2 since my Framework's battery life really wasn't cutting it and for my use cases, MBA gets over double the runtime, making it a lot more suitable for all-day travel days/transcontinental flights, media offloads, etc.

Last year I made a list of options when I was looking: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...

These are basically the same laptop. They're both based off the same 2nd gen refresh of the Tong Fang PF5NU1G ODM chassis. Your choice between the laptops will largely be based on what company you'd rather get support from, and maybe if you have a strong preference on the colorway. If you're interested in reading more about the PF5NU1G, I wrote a resource/review of the original 2020 version: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2020-MECHREVO-Code-01-PF5NU1G

If you're running on Linux, almost all of this is completely configurable using ryzenadj for AMD laptops or powercap and thermald for Intel chips. Here's a document on how you might go about adjusting this w/ powercap: https://github.com/junaruga/framework-laptop-config/wiki/Imp...

For anyone looking for a good summary of the knobs available for AMD: https://github.com/FlyGoat/RyzenAdj/wiki/Renoir-Tuning-Guide

Or for Intel: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...

While the Framework maybe isn't 100% Linux first, Linux is definitely treated as a "first class citizen": https://frame.work/linux with active (dedicated) first party support: https://community.frame.work/tag/linux

(Matt Hartley, the new Linux Support Lead was formerly providing technical support at System76)

I ended up going with a Framework last year as an upgrade since I liked the display (3:2 HiDPI 400nit+ 13.5") and form upgradability, but also because the official Framework forums was by far the best Linux laptop forum I've seen online. As long as you can deal w/ 5-6h of battery life, I can highly recommend it as one of the best Linux ultraportable laptops (although I'm really hoping that there's a Ryzen 7040 motherboard upgrade coming...). My review/notes on the 12th Gen Framework w/ Arch Linux: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...

Oh, since we are here on r/framework, here's my review of my 12th gen Framework. The current battery life issues are the main caveat, but there are some good reason to get one: https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Laptop-DIY-Edition-12th-Gen-Intel-Batch-1