Hey, where are all the people asking if batch 8 was going to be Q4 2024?
Hey, where are all the people asking if batch 8 was going to be Q4 2024?
Elevated Systems did a comparison of gaming on the FW13 natively, docked, and with an eGPU. Short answer: you can game on it, but this is not a gaming laptop, and shouldn’t be treated as one. For starters, the 60 Hz display will cause ghosting if you’re pushing high frame rates (though you still have the option of playing docked to an external gaming monitor). You can get decent performance on some games with the graphics dialed down, but the fan will spin up like crazy for demanding titles.
If gaming is important to you, the 7840U has 50% more GPU compute units compared to the 7640U - and while performance doesn’t scale linearly, that does represent a pretty significant difference.
I was evaluating different specs for a Thinkpad T-14 when Framework started taking pre-orders, and that is the only other laptop I’d even consider now. I still miss the trackpoint & physical buttons, but I love my Framework and have no regrets about my decision.
I still hold out hope for a third-party Thinkpad lower clamshell for us trackpoint addicts.
Since upgrading from Tiger Lake to the AMD 7640U, my two biggest gripes (loud fan and short battery life) have been resolved to my satisfaction. That leaves only the more minor issues:
That’s unexpected. I had been consistently getting 8+ hours of video playback (some local, some streamed) on battery power during a recent trip to visit family.
Don’t overthink it. In your situation, I would upgrade to a new Mac Pro because:
The Framework 16 is a really exciting product, but it’s not going to be available for several months yet, and there will inevitably be some early adopter penalties. Buy one later as a personal machine, exactly as you planned, and then tinker with it to your heart’s content. There are some really exciting things coming from AMD in the mobile space, so you’ll probably have access to an even better machine when the time comes.
If they do that, they very likely lose me as a customer.