It is a good value laptop for everyday use but who expects to play games on it should look into benchmarks carefully: Tomb Raider 1080p at 15.4 fps is just not cutting it.
It will at least finish the benchmarks, which is something. It won't be acceptable for someone looking at a "gaming" laptop, but if you want to be able to launch like Civ 6 or Motorsport Manager and get an acceptable experience, it'll do.
The results in the web browser tests aren't good, though. Hopefully that can be improved in the future.
Sure, but having the option to play it upscaled from 720p and lower settings is better than not having that option.
I'd like to see this laptop, but with a bigger battery and the APU configured to 25W or even 35W TDP. And USB-C charging, and a keyboard without number pad.
The USB-C thing is a deal-breaker for me. A $950 laptop should at least have USB-C charging and alt-mode DP. Thunderbolt would also have been nice, but I can at least see why that didn't happen.
Acer appears to be still hanging on to the days of taking into account the money they can make by scamming customers for $50 to $80 chargers only they can sell. Their charging barrel cable is so thin and flimsy by design.
How would the Swift 3 w/Ryzen compare to the Swift 5 w/Intel? https://amzn.to/2KvPCMS ($997 = roughly comparable price)
Personally I prefer the 14" form factor of the Swift 5, but I assume it lacks any gaming chops at all?
Also, on the Swift 3 is there a way (BIOS/UEFI etc.) to force the keyboard backlight to stay on? I know the last Acer I tried you absolutely could not force the backlight to stay on and coming from Thinkpads that really sucks :-(
So the Surface Pro with the Iris maintains ~50% performance advantage over the HD graphics in the 8550U, but the gains completely disappear at the enthusiast setting. It sounds like a configuration, or even a driver bug.
Notebookcheck's review of the DOTA 2 Reborn shows different results.
Or it hits a point where it can't fit the frame-buffer into the cache memory and has to draw it in main memory instead. I think that's pretty likely, there is only so much you can do with 128MB of memory, this is the same problem the Xbox One suffers from. Performance falls off a cliff once you overflow the eDRAM cache.
those're certainly interesting configurations. The only way to get a 512GB SSD is AMD, the only way to get 16GB of ram is Intel. The latter's especially sad since the AMD configuration's more powerful GPU is capable of using more of the system memory for VRAM.
I'll second the comment about the 3 column num-pad being an awful idea. If you're part of the majority of people who don't use one, it adds to the BOM and is guilty of putting the main keyboard and trackpad off center. If you do want a numpad, you probably touchtype it and the truncated layout means you're not able to on this one anyway.
The 15.6" laptop numpad needs to be limited to models that are either thick enough to do ports under the keyboard or that have so few ports that they can put them all in the hinge area and still run the keys out to the edge of the chassis. Or using oldschool inch thick chunky bezels I guess; but if you're making the chassis that large you might as put a slim bezel 17.3" screen in instead.
And due to the nature of these things, a bad keyboard is going to keep people from buying a given laptop. This is all about Acer, and really the few companies that are releasing Ryzen based laptops not really being focused on sales. What are the deal breakers when it comes to laptops? You have keyboard, you have screen, and you have battery life. If you don't provide good choices for these things, people will not buy the laptop, even if the CPU is amazing.
Some of this may have to do with the NVIDIA GPP and companies really trying not to get cut off by NVIDIA, or there is another reason.
What is it then? Sheer incompetence? Why can’t a laptop PC maker ever get all the parts right at the same time? Is there an in-built insecurity to actually challenging Apple with a truly thought through design?
Even when Apple really drops the ball (as they have with their current MacBook Pro) PC laptop makers still can’t even figure out a functional keyboard option... It’s embarrassing.
its called being paid by intel to make sure a specific set of components never ends up in a laptop. As the DIY market has shown.... everyone is choosing Ryzen over inferior Intel chips riddled with bugs, exploits, slowdowns and other nonsense. And Intel giving everyone the finger in terms of fixing these bugs..
Looking forward to Ryzen hitting the business line notebooks (Elitebook/Latitudes). Lot of employees at my company are still being given the woeful Elitebook 745 G3 (Carrizo) as of today, as band new laptops for a 4 year cycle...
This is very promising in terms of performance, even if AMD still needs to convince OEMs to build more premium SKUs with Ryzen mobile. Also, that base platform power draw needs fixing, for sure. Wonder how much of that is RAM, but I suppose that would be pretty much impossible to measure.
Related to that: why doesn't RAM have some sort of turbo/power saving implementation like CPUs? Given that this likely runs dual channel 1.2V DDR4 at ~2400MT/s, couldn't the base power draw benefit massively from downclocking the RAM to, say, 1600MT/s at idle and simultaneously lowering voltage? I get that this isn't part of the DDR4 spec, and that the ICs and DIMMs as such aren't tested or certified for lower voltages and speeds, but the lack of dynamism in RAM is starting to feel old. The same goes for high-speed desktop RAM, really - why run 3600MT/s RAM idling at the desktop? It can't possibly be /that/ hard to implement a two-state (e.g. "low power" and "normal") dynamic system that's directly tied to other system loads (not just CPU, but GPU, RAM, network and disk activity too). Tuning the boost/de-clock triggers and control algorithms would likely require a bit of work, but is this really that hard to do?
I suppose this could trip up a few applications that are highly reliant on timely RAM access, but those can't be very common in normal consumer usage - and I don't envision this catching on in datcenters and the like. Might that be why we still haven't seen something like this, as businesses and server OEMs don't care?
If idle link throttling of DDR ever happens, I'd expect it to happen first on mobile, and then work its way up though LPDDR, to regular DDR specs. OTOH GDDR has been able to do this for a while, so it's definitely doable without seriously impacting peak performance. GPUs are power pigs, and lower idle power has been a major improvement over the last decade; but it's a segment not willing to sacrifice performance at the top to get it.
You're probably right about it never making it to the data center. I've read that a number of the major cloud platforms have disabled CPU clock throttling and run at full speed 24/7 regardless of the actual load because serving responses at low speed and/or boosting back up from idle to full speed have measurable impacts on latency and the major web companies care about every millisecond there.
Gaming benchmarks show mobile Raven Ridge processors doing exactly that: RAM clock changes in the game, 933-1066-1200. You can see such behaviour in TechEpiphany's videos on youtube. However- because this is not something seen before- these readings are semi-discarded. In would be great if someone tested it properly, or asked AMD if this is how it really works, and is not an error by monitoring software.
I think for comparison, it would have been nice to test the Intel version of same model - I found it interesting that 2700 version was more expensive than the Intel with MX150. Also the Intel model was less weight which tells me Intel components are more compact. The 2700 model had more ssd but that should not be that way.
Its not that because the AMD machines are relegated to cheap SATA bottom of the barrel drives and ultra cheap screens. The price is just Intel making sure that nobody is going to make a competitive notebook. This laptop doesn't even land in "mainstream" it lands in "ultra budget with such a big price nobody will buy it". The screen, SSD, battery, wifi, chassis, keyboard are all unacceptable for this price range and Acer knows it aswell. But the check they receive from intel outweighs the obvious lack of sales they will have for this model.
In all seriousness, this is a midrange laptop and 8GB is midrange these days. Unless you're trying to use it for containers/VMs, 8GB is plenty for the kind of use case a laptop like this will see.
Now, if they included the right GPU to make it a gaming laptop, I'd love to see it come with 16GB with the option of 32GB. But in this case, 8GB is plenty.
That is the problem, a mid-range laptop is generally that $450-$650 range. Add the SSD and you go into the next price category. RAM being overpriced at this point is a part of the problem, but it isn't the only reason the cheapest you can find a Ryzen based laptop is $600 at this point.
Its not when its a single channel 2133mhz ram setup... Its the cheapest ram, cheapest SSD, cheapest screen, cheapest battery.... all for a price more than an i7 + dedicated GPU with double the ram!
Regarding Cinebench and system tests, it's clear that premium built notebooks like Microsoft's surface products, or even the Asus Zenbooks, will have better results than the Swift 315, as the components quality and thermal solutions are way higher than the Swift's. Most plasticky midrange notebooks with Kaby Lake R chips score lower Cinebench results than the 2700U when coupled with a random nonchalant thermal solution from the likes of Acer, Asus or any of the major OEMs. The problem with Raven Ridge, is that it can't feature on higher end designs, due to the lack of LPDDR support, and therefore it won't benefit from the advantage of being on a truly premium system, with great cooling, a big battery, full cutting edge connectivity, best-in-class NVMes etc.. It's condemned, at best, to the high midrange tier, with tradeoffs and sacrifices here and there.
I think that the Ryzen brand has proved itself over the last 12 months. There's a lot of excitement around it, and its reputation is actually sky high. That's why I don't think it's the old mindshare issue, with people automatically recognizing AMD based products as low-end. However, consumers associate high-end CPUs with the premium notebook offerings. And as long as you're unable to showcase your products in the XPS, Spectre, Zenbook, Surface etc.. lineups, you won't be granted the full recognition you deserve. And the lack of LPDDR support is the main hurdle here. Try putting a 2700U in the chassis of an XPS 13 for example. Battery life will be disappointing, but performance would be outstanding.
The battery life of the XPS13 is very disappointing... especially since the Spectre and Meltdown bugs... I can barely get 4 hours out of my XPS13 just browsing in Firefox... Its basically a useless disaster of a laptop with poor performance for anything outside of web browsing. Intel knows it and they will pay billions to keep the ryzen chips out of something like the XPS13. LPDDR vs DDR4 really isn't a major factor when it comes to notebook battery life. It may sacrifice an hour or two but considering the actual tested battery life of basically every intel machine post these patches for the CPU bugs.... well I think the two would be on par with the Ryzen maybe even pulling ahead.
Exactly! There is no disadvantage to Ryzen that keeps it out of the premium sector other than that its made by AMD and Intel is throwing marketing dollars at companies to make sure AMD doesn't see the light of day.
DDR4 vs LPDDR3 won't have a large affect on battery life. Ryzen supports NVMe, it has double the threads for a lower cost (in most cases). It has actual graphics support @ 15W TDP. It has a better overall GPU solution than anything Intel offers (outside of the new SKU's with Vega onchip). There is no excuse for a trash laptop like the one reviewed here, as the total cost of this laptop has to be around $450 for Acer max.
Actually, Dell 7375 is considered to be one of the most successful- if not the most successful RR laptop by early reviews- with excellent bios options, good hardware and pricing, and no really weak points- except the reuse of rather bulky/heavy late 2016 7368 chassis.
I for one am very disappointed by the battery benchmarks. I honestly thought that the AMD system would stomp the i7s with dedicated graphics cards, instead it gets demolished on nearly every benchmark.
What exactly is going on there? Is it that the software is completely not optimized for the AMD hardware?
I hope that there's something defective with this system, or they forgot to enable some settings in the BIOS that should have had a better effect, especially on the idle power draw. The thing is I was disappointed by all the results, not just that one.
It is not reasonable to wish an integrated GPU with ~30Gbps memory bandwidth to demolish discrete GPUs that by themselves have higher TDP than this APU, and also double or triple the memory bandwidth. Showing the same result as 940MX is a wonderful result- as AMD solution does the same with no need for extra dGPU and memory chips on the motherboard, and cooling for them. And if more GPU power is needed- then discrete GPU should be used for AMD's laptop as well- games will run great with it's fast quadcore CPU.
It's very reasonable to expect an APU system to deliver better battery life, especially in idle power scenarios, than one running a core i7 with a discrete GPU. Either something is wrong with this system, they forgot to change some setting in the BIOS, or this is a complete failure on the part. The idea that this is a gaming laptop is just stupid. It's an ultra book, with better graphics capabilities than an integrated Intel chipset, but still an ultra book. I'm not even talking about performance here, I'm strictly talking battery life.
Also, the idea of just adding a discrete GPU to an ultra book... never mind.
Discrete GPU is switched off in non-gaming, so it is basically AMD APU vs Intel APU working. It is true that Intel's chips are more efficient- after all- for many generations Intel were milking desktop with quadcores, while investing into being better at low TDP power efficiency. That is at the time when AMD was balancing on the limit of bankruptcy, and staying in survival mode till Zen arrived. So- AMD sure has a lot to improve with their design, and OEMs- with laptop designs/optimisations when using AMD APUs. As for using discrete GPU in a Ultrabook- just have a look at a ASUS Zephyrus GM501 which is 2cm thin and has a GTX1070 and other no-compromise parts. And there are at least 3 lower tier chips from nVidia alone that sip less power, making gaming on an Ultrabook possible.
That GPU power though. I can't wait to see what next year's APUs will be like with the 7nm Navi. Intel might as well just drop the R&D for integrated graphics and license from AMD like they did with the Vega.
Content Adaptive Backlight Control. It can change the brightness depending on what's on the screen as a way to cut power draw, but it can be kind of annoying especially when it can't be disabled.
That's what we thought. But everything repeatedly checks out and we can find no systematic flaws. It looks like it just takes the 2700U a bit too long to respond to short, bursty workloads.
yeah that's the thing. When you have a desktop, a laptop is just good for traveling. I realized that for that for traveling though, I rather just have a cheap tablet to watch netflix
LOL those GFX manhattan scores are more than 50% lower than those of top smartphones!!..shows just how far behind pc tech is, relatively(not absolutely, for those who need spelling it out)
PC tech is not behind even relatively, it's just that intel and AMD don't bother to put faster GPUs in their CPUs; except for a few intel laptop parts:
Nothing to do with that. AMD's OpenGL drivers are clearly behind, and there's little reason for them to focus on OpenGL on the PC side. Plus you can't compare benchmarks across platforms like that, especially on the GPU side where PCs run at full precision and smartphones still run at half precision.
Wow, what on earth is going on in the web benchmarks? An iPhone 8 scores almost 40k in Google Octane, and this can’t even get 25k. It also performs quite terribly in every other web benchmark tested.
It might be something to do with power plans. Is it running default Windows Balanced, Ryzen Balanced, or some other thing? It matters.
I know that in Linux using the standard cpufreq settings is a bad idea for Ryzen. It disables in-cpu speed setting and limits it to 2 GHz until the driver gets around to noticing the extra load. Just setting the CPU to its maximum allowed speed is better. The CPU can then decide to run slower when there isn't anything to do, but is instantly ready for high speed.
On the other hand- Acer Aspire with 2200U runs games better with it's CPU limited to 1600MHz- because then more power is directed towards the iGPU, it boosts higher, and provides better fps.
"No, it can’t compete with the GTX 1060 in the Surface Book 2, but it does outperform the GT 940MX in the original Surface Book. The GPU in the Ryzen 7 2700U is just impressive."
I'd like to see this pitted against the MX150 in its sibling Intel model. That also beats the 940MX by a fair bit per watt.
If you still have this laptop, please give us an overview of its Linux performance. Doesn't have to be anything super great and could just be a pipeline piece.
Reason I ask: old AMD laptop CPUs stunk. Intel IGPs still stink. Nvidia graphics on Linux stinks. Graphics switching with discrete AMD on Intel stinks. Net result: this might be the best option. Even if you just ran an old bench like Unigine Heaven and did web browser rundown tests or something like that, I would be extremely grateful.
I am in agreement with Imcd. Linux gets lost when it comes to the laptop. I must point out Imcd, that xonotic and openarena would be better benchmarks by far for linux than Unigine Heaven as they are native programs not requiring the luser to purchase them and are both highly optimized. As for Linux CPU benchmarks, a linux kernel compile would be standard. A web one would be firefox or webkit based. A pdf render could be done with gv. A few imagemagick benchmarks can use openmp and opencl. Blender is also a native program and can render on both CPU and GPU. You could transcode video with ffmpeg. Audio with the included tool (flac, oggenc, etc.), would also be good.
Personally.... this laptop is actually HORRIBLE for the price. Another work of Intel's anticompetitive hand in the jar.
Ryzen parts are cheaper than Intel parts.... but for some reason they have to make the laptop with bottom-tier specs and a top-tier price... FOr this price I can buy a full 15.6 i7 HQ laptop with a dedicated GPU and a nice IPS screen and M.2 or NVMe drive... Instead I get a forced 8GB soldered 2133 (probably single channel) memory to gimp Ryzen as much as possible... and atrocious screen and a subpar battery. Just so that NOBODY will actually purchase this. ANd this type of gimped trash configuration is the same across all brands. Every company is making the same overpriced garbage, meaning that nobody will buy Ryzen laptops just due to the outragous uncompetitive pricing and performance.
None of these MFG's have a justification for these prices... and every OEM that has announced any good Ryzen laptop.... well it hasn't ever shown up. Just like Acers own Nitro 5 Ryzen laptop (looking to be the first good Ryzen laptop that will launch) and they just pulled the plug on it some days ago after being 40 days late with launching it...
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milkod2001 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
It is a good value laptop for everyday use but who expects to play games on it should look into benchmarks carefully: Tomb Raider 1080p at 15.4 fps is just not cutting it.A5 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
It will at least finish the benchmarks, which is something. It won't be acceptable for someone looking at a "gaming" laptop, but if you want to be able to launch like Civ 6 or Motorsport Manager and get an acceptable experience, it'll do.The results in the web browser tests aren't good, though. Hopefully that can be improved in the future.
psychobriggsy - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Sure, but having the option to play it upscaled from 720p and lower settings is better than not having that option.I'd like to see this laptop, but with a bigger battery and the APU configured to 25W or even 35W TDP.
And USB-C charging, and a keyboard without number pad.
erwos - Monday, May 7, 2018 - link
The USB-C thing is a deal-breaker for me. A $950 laptop should at least have USB-C charging and alt-mode DP. Thunderbolt would also have been nice, but I can at least see why that didn't happen.Santoval - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
Acer appears to be still hanging on to the days of taking into account the money they can make by scamming customers for $50 to $80 chargers only they can sell. Their charging barrel cable is so thin and flimsy by design.eva02langley - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
At ultimate...mr_tawan - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
in Nvidia's title.....coolhardware - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
How would the Swift 3 w/Ryzen compare to the Swift 5 w/Intel?https://amzn.to/2KvPCMS ($997 = roughly comparable price)
Personally I prefer the 14" form factor of the Swift 5, but I assume it lacks any gaming chops at all?
Also, on the Swift 3 is there a way (BIOS/UEFI etc.) to force the keyboard backlight to stay on? I know the last Acer I tried you absolutely could not force the backlight to stay on and coming from Thinkpads that really sucks :-(
Thanks in advance for advice!
Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
The ryzen have more GPU power... and otherwise trade blows in everything else.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
So the Surface Pro with the Iris maintains ~50% performance advantage over the HD graphics in the 8550U, but the gains completely disappear at the enthusiast setting. It sounds like a configuration, or even a driver bug.Notebookcheck's review of the DOTA 2 Reborn shows different results.
Flunk - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Or it hits a point where it can't fit the frame-buffer into the cache memory and has to draw it in main memory instead. I think that's pretty likely, there is only so much you can do with 128MB of memory, this is the same problem the Xbox One suffers from. Performance falls off a cliff once you overflow the eDRAM cache.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Nope, which is why I talked about Notebookcheck's result.MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
OK "IntelUser2000". It's great to have your objective input.IntelUser2000 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Okay Mr. Objective.oynaz - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
The Internet. The place where usernames like "FartsOnChickens" are more trustworthy than ones like "IntelUser"Krysto - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Throttling maybe?DanNeely - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
those're certainly interesting configurations. The only way to get a 512GB SSD is AMD, the only way to get 16GB of ram is Intel. The latter's especially sad since the AMD configuration's more powerful GPU is capable of using more of the system memory for VRAM.I'll second the comment about the 3 column num-pad being an awful idea. If you're part of the majority of people who don't use one, it adds to the BOM and is guilty of putting the main keyboard and trackpad off center. If you do want a numpad, you probably touchtype it and the truncated layout means you're not able to on this one anyway.
The 15.6" laptop numpad needs to be limited to models that are either thick enough to do ports under the keyboard or that have so few ports that they can put them all in the hinge area and still run the keys out to the edge of the chassis. Or using oldschool inch thick chunky bezels I guess; but if you're making the chassis that large you might as put a slim bezel 17.3" screen in instead.
Targon - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
And due to the nature of these things, a bad keyboard is going to keep people from buying a given laptop. This is all about Acer, and really the few companies that are releasing Ryzen based laptops not really being focused on sales. What are the deal breakers when it comes to laptops? You have keyboard, you have screen, and you have battery life. If you don't provide good choices for these things, people will not buy the laptop, even if the CPU is amazing.Some of this may have to do with the NVIDIA GPP and companies really trying not to get cut off by NVIDIA, or there is another reason.
LarryTempleton - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
What is it then? Sheer incompetence? Why can’t a laptop PC maker ever get all the parts right at the same time? Is there an in-built insecurity to actually challenging Apple with a truly thought through design?Even when Apple really drops the ball (as they have with their current MacBook Pro) PC laptop makers still can’t even figure out a functional keyboard option... It’s embarrassing.
Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
its called being paid by intel to make sure a specific set of components never ends up in a laptop. As the DIY market has shown.... everyone is choosing Ryzen over inferior Intel chips riddled with bugs, exploits, slowdowns and other nonsense. And Intel giving everyone the finger in terms of fixing these bugs..jaydee - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Looking forward to Ryzen hitting the business line notebooks (Elitebook/Latitudes). Lot of employees at my company are still being given the woeful Elitebook 745 G3 (Carrizo) as of today, as band new laptops for a 4 year cycle...Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
They did, and the offerings are atrocious and insanely overpriced.Valantar - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
This is very promising in terms of performance, even if AMD still needs to convince OEMs to build more premium SKUs with Ryzen mobile. Also, that base platform power draw needs fixing, for sure. Wonder how much of that is RAM, but I suppose that would be pretty much impossible to measure.Related to that: why doesn't RAM have some sort of turbo/power saving implementation like CPUs? Given that this likely runs dual channel 1.2V DDR4 at ~2400MT/s, couldn't the base power draw benefit massively from downclocking the RAM to, say, 1600MT/s at idle and simultaneously lowering voltage? I get that this isn't part of the DDR4 spec, and that the ICs and DIMMs as such aren't tested or certified for lower voltages and speeds, but the lack of dynamism in RAM is starting to feel old. The same goes for high-speed desktop RAM, really - why run 3600MT/s RAM idling at the desktop? It can't possibly be /that/ hard to implement a two-state (e.g. "low power" and "normal") dynamic system that's directly tied to other system loads (not just CPU, but GPU, RAM, network and disk activity too). Tuning the boost/de-clock triggers and control algorithms would likely require a bit of work, but is this really that hard to do?
I suppose this could trip up a few applications that are highly reliant on timely RAM access, but those can't be very common in normal consumer usage - and I don't envision this catching on in datcenters and the like. Might that be why we still haven't seen something like this, as businesses and server OEMs don't care?
DanNeely - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
If idle link throttling of DDR ever happens, I'd expect it to happen first on mobile, and then work its way up though LPDDR, to regular DDR specs. OTOH GDDR has been able to do this for a while, so it's definitely doable without seriously impacting peak performance. GPUs are power pigs, and lower idle power has been a major improvement over the last decade; but it's a segment not willing to sacrifice performance at the top to get it.You're probably right about it never making it to the data center. I've read that a number of the major cloud platforms have disabled CPU clock throttling and run at full speed 24/7 regardless of the actual load because serving responses at low speed and/or boosting back up from idle to full speed have measurable impacts on latency and the major web companies care about every millisecond there.
neblogai - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Gaming benchmarks show mobile Raven Ridge processors doing exactly that: RAM clock changes in the game, 933-1066-1200. You can see such behaviour in TechEpiphany's videos on youtube. However- because this is not something seen before- these readings are semi-discarded. In would be great if someone tested it properly, or asked AMD if this is how it really works, and is not an error by monitoring software.HStewart - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
I think for comparison, it would have been nice to test the Intel version of same model - I found it interesting that 2700 version was more expensive than the Intel with MX150. Also the Intel model was less weight which tells me Intel components are more compact. The 2700 model had more ssd but that should not be that way.Cooe - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
It's because of the doubled SSD size that the 2700 model is more expensive obviously.Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
Its not that because the AMD machines are relegated to cheap SATA bottom of the barrel drives and ultra cheap screens. The price is just Intel making sure that nobody is going to make a competitive notebook.This laptop doesn't even land in "mainstream" it lands in "ultra budget with such a big price nobody will buy it". The screen, SSD, battery, wifi, chassis, keyboard are all unacceptable for this price range and Acer knows it aswell. But the check they receive from intel outweighs the obvious lack of sales they will have for this model.
Stuka87 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
I would be surprised if you could tell the weight difference between the two. Its 4 ounces. And the Intel is cheaper because its SSD is half the size.Krysto - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Still only 8GB of RAM?! Come on.kaidenshi - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
640KB is enough for anyone.In all seriousness, this is a midrange laptop and 8GB is midrange these days. Unless you're trying to use it for containers/VMs, 8GB is plenty for the kind of use case a laptop like this will see.
Now, if they included the right GPU to make it a gaming laptop, I'd love to see it come with 16GB with the option of 32GB. But in this case, 8GB is plenty.
Targon - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
That is the problem, a mid-range laptop is generally that $450-$650 range. Add the SSD and you go into the next price category. RAM being overpriced at this point is a part of the problem, but it isn't the only reason the cheapest you can find a Ryzen based laptop is $600 at this point.kfishy - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Unfortunately a side effect of Ryzen’s success is retailers can mark it up much more.Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
There are $400 Ryzen 3 laptops, its just that if its a Ryzen 5+ then its double the cost.Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
Its not when its a single channel 2133mhz ram setup...Its the cheapest ram, cheapest SSD, cheapest screen, cheapest battery.... all for a price more than an i7 + dedicated GPU with double the ram!
tn_techie - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Regarding Cinebench and system tests, it's clear that premium built notebooks like Microsoft's surface products, or even the Asus Zenbooks, will have better results than the Swift 315, as the components quality and thermal solutions are way higher than the Swift's. Most plasticky midrange notebooks with Kaby Lake R chips score lower Cinebench results than the 2700U when coupled with a random nonchalant thermal solution from the likes of Acer, Asus or any of the major OEMs. The problem with Raven Ridge, is that it can't feature on higher end designs, due to the lack of LPDDR support, and therefore it won't benefit from the advantage of being on a truly premium system, with great cooling, a big battery, full cutting edge connectivity, best-in-class NVMes etc.. It's condemned, at best, to the high midrange tier, with tradeoffs and sacrifices here and there.Spunjji - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
I'm pretty sure it's less the LPDDR support and more mindshare / marketing dollars that keep AMD out of the high-end products.tn_techie - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
I think that the Ryzen brand has proved itself over the last 12 months. There's a lot of excitement around it, and its reputation is actually sky high. That's why I don't think it's the old mindshare issue, with people automatically recognizing AMD based products as low-end. However, consumers associate high-end CPUs with the premium notebook offerings. And as long as you're unable to showcase your products in the XPS, Spectre, Zenbook, Surface etc.. lineups, you won't be granted the full recognition you deserve. And the lack of LPDDR support is the main hurdle here.Try putting a 2700U in the chassis of an XPS 13 for example. Battery life will be disappointing, but performance would be outstanding.
Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
The battery life of the XPS13 is very disappointing... especially since the Spectre and Meltdown bugs... I can barely get 4 hours out of my XPS13 just browsing in Firefox...Its basically a useless disaster of a laptop with poor performance for anything outside of web browsing.
Intel knows it and they will pay billions to keep the ryzen chips out of something like the XPS13.
LPDDR vs DDR4 really isn't a major factor when it comes to notebook battery life. It may sacrifice an hour or two but considering the actual tested battery life of basically every intel machine post these patches for the CPU bugs.... well I think the two would be on par with the Ryzen maybe even pulling ahead.
Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
Exactly! There is no disadvantage to Ryzen that keeps it out of the premium sector other than that its made by AMD and Intel is throwing marketing dollars at companies to make sure AMD doesn't see the light of day.Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
DDR4 vs LPDDR3 won't have a large affect on battery life.Ryzen supports NVMe, it has double the threads for a lower cost (in most cases).
It has actual graphics support @ 15W TDP.
It has a better overall GPU solution than anything Intel offers (outside of the new SKU's with Vega onchip).
There is no excuse for a trash laptop like the one reviewed here, as the total cost of this laptop has to be around $450 for Acer max.
martixy - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Some might find the keypad a welcome feature, or lack of one a show-stopper. ^^^TheBarron - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Sigh, seems single channel RAM for an APU...again.TheBarron - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Nevermind, it seems not to be the case (although apparently the memory is soldered). Still a bit disapointed in the results.Yomama6776 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
its nice that someone made a nice AMD laptop, all the others are crap*cough* Dell *cough*
neblogai - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Actually, Dell 7375 is considered to be one of the most successful- if not the most successful RR laptop by early reviews- with excellent bios options, good hardware and pricing, and no really weak points- except the reuse of rather bulky/heavy late 2016 7368 chassis.mr_tawan - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Now I want a Spin with Ryzen :)niva - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
I for one am very disappointed by the battery benchmarks. I honestly thought that the AMD system would stomp the i7s with dedicated graphics cards, instead it gets demolished on nearly every benchmark.What exactly is going on there? Is it that the software is completely not optimized for the AMD hardware?
Brett Howse - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Re-read the page. There's a lot of idle power draw.niva - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
I hope that there's something defective with this system, or they forgot to enable some settings in the BIOS that should have had a better effect, especially on the idle power draw. The thing is I was disappointed by all the results, not just that one.neblogai - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
It is not reasonable to wish an integrated GPU with ~30Gbps memory bandwidth to demolish discrete GPUs that by themselves have higher TDP than this APU, and also double or triple the memory bandwidth. Showing the same result as 940MX is a wonderful result- as AMD solution does the same with no need for extra dGPU and memory chips on the motherboard, and cooling for them. And if more GPU power is needed- then discrete GPU should be used for AMD's laptop as well- games will run great with it's fast quadcore CPU.niva - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
It's very reasonable to expect an APU system to deliver better battery life, especially in idle power scenarios, than one running a core i7 with a discrete GPU. Either something is wrong with this system, they forgot to change some setting in the BIOS, or this is a complete failure on the part. The idea that this is a gaming laptop is just stupid. It's an ultra book, with better graphics capabilities than an integrated Intel chipset, but still an ultra book. I'm not even talking about performance here, I'm strictly talking battery life.Also, the idea of just adding a discrete GPU to an ultra book... never mind.
neblogai - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
Discrete GPU is switched off in non-gaming, so it is basically AMD APU vs Intel APU working. It is true that Intel's chips are more efficient- after all- for many generations Intel were milking desktop with quadcores, while investing into being better at low TDP power efficiency. That is at the time when AMD was balancing on the limit of bankruptcy, and staying in survival mode till Zen arrived. So- AMD sure has a lot to improve with their design, and OEMs- with laptop designs/optimisations when using AMD APUs.As for using discrete GPU in a Ultrabook- just have a look at a ASUS Zephyrus GM501 which is 2cm thin and has a GTX1070 and other no-compromise parts. And there are at least 3 lower tier chips from nVidia alone that sip less power, making gaming on an Ultrabook possible.
samal90 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
That GPU power though. I can't wait to see what next year's APUs will be like with the 7nm Navi. Intel might as well just drop the R&D for integrated graphics and license from AMD like they did with the Vega.keg504 - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
What is CABC?Brett Howse - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Content Adaptive Backlight Control. It can change the brightness depending on what's on the screen as a way to cut power draw, but it can be kind of annoying especially when it can't be disabled.keg504 - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Oh, thanks.Is this a recent feature OEMs have started implementing? This is the first time I'm seeing it in a review
iwod - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
I think there is something wrong with Ryzen JS vm benchmarks.Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
That's what we thought. But everything repeatedly checks out and we can find no systematic flaws. It looks like it just takes the 2700U a bit too long to respond to short, bursty workloads.iwod - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Interesting. Would there be a small pieces on this topic specifically?Or in other words, Intel is very aggressive with their Turbo?
Also wondering if the Adrenaline drivers made any difference.
Brett Howse - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
Intel is very aggressive on Turbo and Speed Shift has been a big improvement on their CPUs. Here's an article:https://www.anandtech.com/show/9751/examining-inte...
The U series quads can ramp up to 30W for small workloads to get them done quicker. They've worked hard on this feature and it shows.
uberDoward - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
'with one CPU Complex (CCX) of four course' Should be 'four cores'.haplo602 - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Hello Anandtech, which drivers did you use ? I'd suggest trying the latest Adrenaline drivers, you should see a 15-20% GPU performance increase ....jcc5169 - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
This is what you get when a bunch of Intel fanboys review AMD products ....Da W - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Funny, these scores made me love my surface pro even more.Too bad it sits on the desk taking dust while i'm always on my desktop
samal90 - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
yeah that's the thing. When you have a desktop, a laptop is just good for traveling. I realized that for that for traveling though, I rather just have a cheap tablet to watch netflixdarkich - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
LOL those GFX manhattan scores are more than 50% lower than those of top smartphones!!..shows just how far behind pc tech is, relatively(not absolutely, for those who need spelling it out)eddman - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
PC tech is not behind even relatively, it's just that intel and AMD don't bother to put faster GPUs in their CPUs; except for a few intel laptop parts:https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx40&a...
Brett Howse - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
Nothing to do with that. AMD's OpenGL drivers are clearly behind, and there's little reason for them to focus on OpenGL on the PC side. Plus you can't compare benchmarks across platforms like that, especially on the GPU side where PCs run at full precision and smartphones still run at half precision.Farfolomew - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
Wow, what on earth is going on in the web benchmarks? An iPhone 8 scores almost 40k in Google Octane, and this can’t even get 25k. It also performs quite terribly in every other web benchmark tested.Zan Lynx - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
It might be something to do with power plans. Is it running default Windows Balanced, Ryzen Balanced, or some other thing? It matters.I know that in Linux using the standard cpufreq settings is a bad idea for Ryzen. It disables in-cpu speed setting and limits it to 2 GHz until the driver gets around to noticing the extra load. Just setting the CPU to its maximum allowed speed is better. The CPU can then decide to run slower when there isn't anything to do, but is instantly ready for high speed.
neblogai - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
On the other hand- Acer Aspire with 2200U runs games better with it's CPU limited to 1600MHz- because then more power is directed towards the iGPU, it boosts higher, and provides better fps.darkich - Saturday, May 5, 2018 - link
See my comment above..the iPhone also crushes it on GPU side.tipoo - Monday, May 7, 2018 - link
"No, it can’t compete with the GTX 1060 in the Surface Book 2, but it does outperform the GT 940MX in the original Surface Book. The GPU in the Ryzen 7 2700U is just impressive."I'd like to see this pitted against the MX150 in its sibling Intel model. That also beats the 940MX by a fair bit per watt.
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lmcd - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
If you still have this laptop, please give us an overview of its Linux performance. Doesn't have to be anything super great and could just be a pipeline piece.Reason I ask: old AMD laptop CPUs stunk. Intel IGPs still stink. Nvidia graphics on Linux stinks. Graphics switching with discrete AMD on Intel stinks. Net result: this might be the best option. Even if you just ran an old bench like Unigine Heaven and did web browser rundown tests or something like that, I would be extremely grateful.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - link
I am in agreement with Imcd. Linux gets lost when it comes to the laptop.I must point out Imcd, that xonotic and openarena would be better benchmarks by far for linux than Unigine Heaven as they are native programs not requiring the luser to purchase them and are both highly optimized.
As for Linux CPU benchmarks, a linux kernel compile would be standard. A web one would be firefox or webkit based. A pdf render could be done with gv. A few imagemagick benchmarks can use openmp and opencl. Blender is also a native program and can render on both CPU and GPU. You could transcode video with ffmpeg. Audio with the included tool (flac, oggenc, etc.), would also be good.
Jimster480 - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
Personally.... this laptop is actually HORRIBLE for the price.Another work of Intel's anticompetitive hand in the jar.
Ryzen parts are cheaper than Intel parts.... but for some reason they have to make the laptop with bottom-tier specs and a top-tier price... FOr this price I can buy a full 15.6 i7 HQ laptop with a dedicated GPU and a nice IPS screen and M.2 or NVMe drive...
Instead I get a forced 8GB soldered 2133 (probably single channel) memory to gimp Ryzen as much as possible... and atrocious screen and a subpar battery.
Just so that NOBODY will actually purchase this. ANd this type of gimped trash configuration is the same across all brands.
Every company is making the same overpriced garbage, meaning that nobody will buy Ryzen laptops just due to the outragous uncompetitive pricing and performance.
None of these MFG's have a justification for these prices... and every OEM that has announced any good Ryzen laptop.... well it hasn't ever shown up. Just like Acers own Nitro 5 Ryzen laptop (looking to be the first good Ryzen laptop that will launch) and they just pulled the plug on it some days ago after being 40 days late with launching it...