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Comment by imiric | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely love this chipset. It powers my favorite tech of 2023.

The 7840U is a beast in handhelds, and the 7940HS likewise in laptops and mini PCs. They're great for gaming, media, productivity, and anything you throw at it. Intel cannot compete with the performance and TDP of these. AMD is completely dominating the portable x86 segment, so much so, that I'm not envious of Apple's dominance of ARM. Can't wait to see the next generation of this chipset, as well as whatever Intel can produce in response.

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Just wish I could find a 7840U in a flagship ~13” ultrabook with a big battery. That’s surprisingly hard to find, for some reason AMD tends to get relegated to second-tier models and paired with middling batteries.

Not far off: https://frame.work/products/laptop-diy-13-gen-amd?q=processo... Impressive, especially for the price.

I wish I could get the lower specced CPU with the bigger battery :/

The Thinkpad z13 (gen 2) hasn't released yet, but is probably the closest thing to what you're looking for

Current ThinkPad T14 has 7840U. This is the same width/length as my "13 inch" Skylake ultrabook (Asus UX305UA) and only 3mm thicker.

ThinkPad T14s Gen 3 has a 6850U and is ~1mm thinner than T14.

You're right though, none of them are superthin (<15mm) like ThinkPad X1 Carbon or Dell XPS 13. Maybe it's not possible to cool these faster AMD CPUs in such a small volume? Nobody wants to type on a space heater.

Edit: found these pages with complete lists, hell yeah

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/36030-amd-ryzen-7-u-laptops/

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/35985-amd-ryzen-9-laptops/

The T14s Gen 4 AMD has been released¹; it ships the 7840U, and it's close to the X1 in terms of portability (16.6mm/1.21kg, vs 15.36mm/1.12kg).

¹: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/th...

Offtopic: Sorry, but I can't stand those laptops which vent the hot air on the right-hand side, right on my mouse-hand, cooking it nicely till golden perfection.

It's an absolutely infuriating UX fail which seems to stick to Lenovo's business line for some reason. I wanted to throw my work provided T14 out the window so there's no way I'm giving them my money for this design failure.

Why can't they blow the hot air towards the back/display like most other laptops? Can you imagine Apple ever selling laptops venting the hot air on one side instead of out the back?

Even my ancient HP ProBook I had would at least vent the hot air on the left side, so at least us righ-handed users were spared, so Lenovo seems to be the last and biggest offendant of this "crime".

I'm right-handed but ambidextrous with a mouse (preferring mouse on the left side). That's been a useful skill in many occasions. I learned it as a kid, but definitely can be learned as an adult too. Though there will be a good deal of very awkward mouse shaking first, no way around that.

i guess the thinkpad division forgot mice existed since they installed keyboard embedded trackpoint :)

Looking into P14s with 64gb of ram https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/16j6375/p14s_gen_...

I use the T14s 3rd gen and I find its two USB type A and two USB type C super useful for connecting a suite of external devices. I prefer wired devices over wireless hence my need for ports.

I have a work provided X1 Carbon with an Intel that often overheats and throttles. Would an AMD solution be better?

Much better. These chips are fabbed using much better node. Intel is matching the performance of these bad boys using much more power.

In Germany we have the Lenovo Yoga with a 7840U.

I have a Ryzen 5000U Yoga and very happy with it. Cheap and rock solid.

You may or may not know that the term ultrabook is an intel trademark, so you are not going to find an ultrabook branded machine with AMD in it.

I'm sure intel is pumped that the term is being genericized.

I am aware, but there’s not really a better term for “laptop that’s analogous to a MacBook Air but not made by Apple”. There’s “thin and light” I suppose but that tends to include models that either cut corners on various aspects (build quality or battery life usually) or lean more towards traditional laptops with chunkier dimensions and weight. For that reason I think it was inevitable that the word became genericized.

Its funny the word "Chipset" being used here. ( As it used to mean something different ). But yes I Love these AMD SoC. And it is a truly general purpose PC SoC with wide availability. Sometimes I just wish to stick one in a Smartphone ( Or should I say a Pocket Computer ) just for the sake of it. Especially when Zen 5 is suppose to be much closer to A16/A17 in terms of IPC.

I do wish AMD GPU department could work better though. Not just on ROCm but the overall GPU market shares. They have the advantage of being in the console but on PC they are still a minority.

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