CPU AMD APU Raven readying for launch

[Soul_Est]

I'm talking about what makes sense financially and wasn't referring to you specifically, your situation is clearly unique.

No they are not as you can see below. There are many ThinkPad, Latitude, and EliteBook users that only use the older keyboard layout because it works for them. I am also one of them.

I'm so glad reading this.. I thought I was the only one

As someone who type a lot, having those Home-End-PgUp-PgDn button is a life saver.

It pisses me off that most small to medium sized laptops today no longer have those as dedicated buttons.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

Portability is feasible but absolutely not practical or sensible financially for nearly everyone. The only worthwhile type of eGPU is one that uses standard cards and can be upgraded by the user but that has the compromise of being far less portable. It's a novel idea to have a compact eGPU but for the price you'll pay and no upgrade path you'd be better off buying a laptop with the same tier of dGPU and trading up every year.

Disagree with this. A GTX 950 didn't become obsolete the day the 1050 came out. I am still using a GTX 750 ti at work and a GTX 650 at home because its good enough for me. A GTX1050 egpu that is ultra portable would easily be worth $300-400 to me. I don't think I am a unique case either as many people have been buying laptops with non upgradeable GPUs for years. The fact the eGPU can easily be replaced as a whole makes it upgradeable as well.
edit: @RushNY - sorry I just read your previous mention about how you use an eGPU dock. I agree that most users will probably want a dock like that, but I don't think low end ultra portable eGPU is unheard of, as some already have demonstrated they can make them.
A quick example:
If I want an onboard GPU from most brands, it costs me $300 extra and requires an upgrade from a 13in to 15in laptop. This usually adds around 1 pound of weight, and as you mentioned the GPU cannot be upgraded (and most in this class are MX150). In 3 years my only solution is to upgrade the laptop. If I were able to get a portable MX150 card for the same $300, it'd be a much better alternative as I can replace it later and don't need to carry it around always.

BTW how the hell did a discussion about Ryzen APU turn into egpu and laptop keyboards? Think we are a bit off topic...

 

[BirdofPrey]

In other words, I am not buying a keyboard or a laptop if it doesn't have dedicated Home-End-PgUp-Pgdn keys in a square.

Same here. This is why I don't buy 60% keyboards. Even my current is annoying since home and end are on a function layer.

It seems using hotkeys and nav clusters is a dying art for people from the MSDOS era

 

[stree]

Why are we talking about laptops? This thead is about Raven Ridge...........Desktop APU...........Laptops can have their own thread.

 

[stree]

BTW how the hell did a discussion about Ryzen APU turn into egpu and laptop keyboards? Think we are a bit off topic...

Thank you Puma.......

 

[K888D]

Any more info anywhere on whether this leaked benchmark is something we can expect to see on the AM4 socket?

 

[stree]

Second para of link on first post of this thread.....................

"AMD are expected to launch AM4-compatible desktop APUs in the new year, but we’ve had very little insight into their potential performance - until now. The latest entry into the SiSoft Sandra database marks a possible new entry into AMD’s Raven Ridge lineup - a 28 Compute Unit processor with 2GB of memory."

Not seen anything else yet.............Have you googled it yet?

 

[chx]

Here's how we got off topic: If this is true, kills a lot of cases for eGPUs, plain and simple, as it will be cheaper and smaller to just buy a separate gaming desktop and then people said I should rather buy a gaming laptop and I pointed out the keyboard problems. That's the history. Sorry

To stay on topic, the watts don't add up. The Vega 56 is 210W, the RX 570 150W. Half of Vega 56 would still be 100W and that reaching the performance of the 150W RX 570 is impossible. Shrink it down to the level where it fits a 65W envelope alongside a CPU and even more so.

So what's up with these reports? How does the graphics performance / power consumption ratio of these chips reach such levels?

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

You misread graphics performance. No analysis shows RX570 performance, only RX570 number of streamcores. This thing probably will barely match a GTX1050 in gaming performance, so the eGPU will still definitely be relevant.

 

[K888D]

I think the Vega 56 and 64 are basically heavily overclocked chips in order to try and compete on some level with NVidia and therefore its power consumption is extremely high. When Vega is scaled back it's quite power efficient as shown by the recent Mobile Ryzen APU's.

 

[K888D]

You misread graphics performance. No analysis RX570 performance, only RX570 number of streamcores. This thing probably will barely match a GTX1050 in performance, so the eGPU will still definitely be relevant.

Yeah I think TPU are reporting it as "555 MHz engine clock" compared to the RX 570 which has a core clock speed of around 1250 MHz. So perhaps they are going for many cores clocked at lower speeds for really high power efficiency?

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

Yeah I think TPU are reporting it as "555 MHz engine clock" compared to the RX 570 which has a core clock speed of around 1250 MHz. So perhaps they are going for many cores clocked at lower speeds for really high power efficiency?

Sounds about right. I guess this thing could be a real powerhouse for video editing, especially if using Resolve 14 or After Effects. The CPU should be as good as last years i7 but a good GPU boost for 3d effects. I can't wait for tests.

 

[chx]

Last I heard Davinci Resolve was the boogeyman for CPUs, practically the only piece of software that actually sped up -- for example on exports -- when using a high end i9 vs a ThreadRipper.

And hey! An 1050 performing APU is just fine by me I for myself would've been happy with the Shuttle DKA1GU if it were available anywhere and that's just RX 460. I am, in general, happy with anything around that performance and 1L

 

[stree]

Totally agree with chx, anything like 1050 performance will be great! What other APU gets near that?.....I suppose some folk are just never pleased though . I think it will not be long at all before AMD get way beyond whatever limits they are hitting now with APUs, after all look at the pace they have picked up recently in all sorts of directions and couple that with the fact that Raven Ridge is not even on the shelves yet!.....................

 

[rcodi]

No they are not as you can see below. There are many ThinkPad, Latitude, and EliteBook users that only use the older keyboard layout because it works for them. I am also one of them.

Most people aren't stuck with a $1800 Thinkpad without a good dGPU though, there are plenty of laptops with good keyboard configurations out there with better dGPU than a 940MX for under $1000, so yes he is a special case. You guys are being such sticklers for details my point wasn't this deep it's just about what makes financial sense.

Disagree with this. A GTX 950 didn't become obsolete the day the 1050 came out. I am still using a GTX 750 ti at work and a GTX 650 at home because its good enough for me. A GTX1050 egpu that is ultra portable would easily be worth $300-400 to me. I don't think I am a unique case either as many people have been buying laptops with non upgradeable GPUs for years. The fact the eGPU can easily be replaced as a whole makes it upgradeable as well.
edit: @RushNY - sorry I just read your previous mention about how you use an eGPU dock. I agree that most users will probably want a dock like that, but I don't think low end ultra portable eGPU is unheard of, as some already have demonstrated they can make them.
A quick example:
If I want an onboard GPU from most brands, it costs me $300 extra and requires an upgrade from a 13in to 15in laptop. This usually adds around 1 pound of weight, and as you mentioned the GPU cannot be upgraded (and most in this class are MX150). In 3 years my only solution is to upgrade the laptop. If I were able to get a portable MX150 card for the same $300, it'd be a much better alternative as I can replace it later and don't need to carry it around always.

BTW how the hell did a discussion about Ryzen APU turn into egpu and laptop keyboards? Think we are a bit off topic...

My point is even low end ultra portable eGPU aren't going to be cheap because they'll be extremely low volume, and they won't be upgradable unless they use MXM which is going to be even more expensive. I'm speaking from experience when I say it doesn't make sense to get a low end or midrange eGPU, light gaming can easily be handled by a modern iGPU for the rare times you need to game on the go.

I'd also like to mention the drawbacks of eGPU's currently and issues it has with TB3, it seems like everyone has a misunderstanding of how they work because it's not as simple as plug and play to get a full desktop GPU. You're going to take a 20% performance hit if you're using your internal laptop display on top of 5-10% decrease depending on the PCIe lanes available to your Thunderbolt 3 port.

 

[stree]

And exactly how does that relate to Raven Ridge APU?

 

[rcodi]

And exactly how does that relate to Raven Ridge APU?

Ask the people that keep responding to me and chx who brought eGPU up in the first place. I was just giving my opinion on eGPU after he brought it up and it spiraled into this nonsense and misinformation.

 

[stree]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

 

[Soul_Est]

Sorry about my part in the derailment. Back on topic.

I do hope that desktop Raven Ridge APUs do perform much better than previous generations. Hopefully RTG will enable as many performance improvement functions in the driver as possbile to eek out the best efficiency for it.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

I'm sure it will perform better but even the best case for that rumored one is RX560 level performance. I remember when I bought my A8 7600 & R7 240, it was supposed to offer close to R7 260 level but the memory bandwidth kept it far away from there. If they can solve the memory bandwidth issues for the APU they should get good frame rates. The 2500U laptop APU seems to perform about the same as the i5 8250u + MX150 which isn't a bad sign, but MX150 is a long ways off from a GTX 1050 or 1050 ti.