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Thread: Acer Swift 3

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by 3dcandy View Post
    It's only got a 45w psu as well...it's not going to have a huge battery pack compared to a lot of the other laptops in that range that all have 65w psu's. I'd guess it's configured at 25w with a slightly smaller battery giving 6 hours ish real battery life. Intel do have the lead in ultimate power saving if they're configured down that way
    The 48 Whr pack is the same as the spin 5, which gets 11 hours use. Wouldn't surprise me if it was the exact same pack, since they seem to share the screen

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Aye but the Spin 5 is configured at 15w...
    You could configure this at 15w but it would not be that great a jump up from the others - this is AMD's problem, although the chip is good people want everything. I'm cool with 6 hours, it's more than I'd ever need as things stand but others aren't. I guess if they went 15w it would be say 8 hours and not noticeably quicker so would still not appeal
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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by outwar6010 View Post
    Considering you get a proper am4 socket on ryzen laptops it would be nice to see some clevo ones(I just love their designs).
    AFAIK the laptop-specific Raven Ridge don't use AM4 (I suspect the packaging requirements are too thick for laptops) - I can't remember if they use a separate socket or if they're BGA, but I suspect the latter. That makes it unlikely that we'll see the OEM barebones laptops like Clevos, unless they decide to do "mobile desktop" versions like that ASUS.

    That said, and being fair, a Ryzen 5 2400G configured down to a 45W TDP would be a perfectly reasonable fit for a 17" desktop-replacement laptop.

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by 3dcandy View Post
    Aye but the Spin 5 is configured at 15w...
    You could configure this at 15w but it would not be that great a jump up from the others - this is AMD's problem, although the chip is good people want everything. I'm cool with 6 hours, it's more than I'd ever need as things stand but others aren't. I guess if they went 15w it would be say 8 hours and not noticeably quicker so would still not appeal
    Letting it suck more juice when under full load shouldn't correlate with idle consumption - it's still a laptop chip, so should aggressively gate off CPU area that isn't being used. When it's just looping a video, 25 W and 15 W chips should both be clocked down to the minimum needed to run that video - the only difference in battery life would be for demanding tasks, like gaming or looping a benchmark

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    It's not idle consumption though is it? Why would you check for idle consumption that's a pretty useless metric. For example the Hexus test was using the laptop, so a 25w chip would use more than a 15w as it's under some load. Ryzen can be configured for a load like that, you could set it up to be a 15w chip and you'd get a better battery life but then it wouldn't perform any better than the equivalent Intel gfx in many tests so what would the point be? I couldn't care less about idle battery power as I never leave a laptop idle. Yes the Hexus test is only looping a video but it still puts the chip under load and if you clock it down to 15w it would do better but I doubt it would beat Intel as it's more powerful in many ways
    Last edited by 3dcandy; 04-03-2018 at 07:18 PM. Reason: useless fat fingers
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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by 3dcandy View Post
    It's not idle consumption though is it? Why would you check for idle consumption that's a pretty useless metric. For example the Hexus test was using the laptop, so a 25w chip would use more than a 15w as it's under some load. ...
    I don't think TDPs work how you think TDPs work.

    The higher TDP configuration is used to allow the CPU to run at higher boost clocks for longer periods of time. They only kick in when the chip is running at or close to 100% load. For something like playing back a video file, the chips should essentially run at idle - try monitoring CPU usage when you're watching a HD video clip some time; I'll be surprised if the CPU gets out of its base idle clock (certainly my old socket AM3 HTPC didn't).

    The only reason video playback would load the CPU - making cTDP an issue - would be if the decode wasn't being hardware-accelerated properly. Normally I'd handwave that, but given AMD's recent launch drivers, it might actually be something of an issue - I'd be interested to know what the CPU load was for the different laptops during the battery life test - any chance Parm?

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    The only reason video playback would load the CPU - making cTDP an issue - would be if the decode wasn't being hardware-accelerated properly. Normally I'd handwave that, but given AMD's recent launch drivers, it might actually be something of an issue - I'd be interested to know what the CPU load was for the different laptops during the battery life test - any chance Parm?
    I would also like to know what the date of the IGP driver too is! If the mobile APU drivers are behind that of the desktop versions,it might be that the Vega based IGP,is also sucking down more power than it needs to be. Looking at the Acer websites its months behind the desktop APUs,unless Windows downloads newer ones,which you can't get on the AMD site for the Ryzen Mobile APUs for some weird reason(can get them for mobile BR APUs though!).

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Hahaha no I get how it works but I generalised that you'd be thinking along the same lines as me with drivers and not being 100%. Also I know that Windows is currently not playing brilliantly with Ryzen throttling down all the time. I also think that setting the tdp to 25w is not going to make it throttle down like it should do... I assumed that we'd be thinking that way. I get your point..I do, but design choices like keeping the tdp at 25w against chips that are set at 15w is not really fair, and need a lot more investigation to see what's happening. I'd also assume that you think like I do and believe that if it's set to 15w then there is next to no delta in performance between the Intel and AMD options, thus rendering the AMD option pretty pointless
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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by scaryjim View Post
    I'd be interested to know what the CPU load was for the different laptops during the battery life test - any chance Parm?
    Unfortunately one of the downsides to laptops, compared to desktop chips, is that we tend not to have as much time with the sample. Swift 3 has already been returned to Acer, but I'll keep an eye out and check for this on the next Ryzen laptop.

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    I would also like to know what the date of the IGP driver too is! If the mobile APU drivers are behind that of the desktop versions,it might be that the Vega based IGP,is also sucking down more power than it needs to be. Looking at the Acer websites its months behind the desktop APUs,unless Windows downloads newer ones,which you can't get on the AMD site for the Ryzen Mobile APUs for some weird reason(can get them for mobile BR APUs though!).
    The IGP driver was dated December 2017 (gpuz.PNG). Out of curiosity we did try to install the latest desktop driver but it wouldn't take. Windows Update didn't have anything newer to offer, and as you say, the AMD website hasn't caught up to Ryzen Mobile yet.

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by Parm View Post
    The IGP driver was dated December 2017 (gpuz.PNG). Out of curiosity we did try to install the latest desktop driver but it wouldn't take. Windows Update didn't have anything newer to offer, and as you say, the AMD website hasn't caught up to Ryzen Mobile yet.
    Thanks for confirming this! It seems people who bought the HP X360 are in a worse situation than Acer users,and even have older drivers for their laptop:

    https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebo...6490614/page/5

    It does seem another case of AMD again not learning from prior launches.

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Decent wee laptop. Performance - Bang-per-Buck: Knocks the rest out of the park. Pity about battery life, but it's a larger screen than most.
    A bit confusing though...according to the 'Test Methodology' the rest of the pack are running Intel IGP's?? Doesn't Vega make mincemeat out of Intel IGP's?

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    Re: Acer Swift 3

    Quote Originally Posted by ohmaheid View Post
    Decent wee laptop. Performance - Bang-per-Buck: Knocks the rest out of the park. Pity about battery life, but it's a larger screen than most.
    A bit confusing though...according to the 'Test Methodology' the rest of the pack are running Intel IGP's?? Doesn't Vega make mincemeat out of Intel IGP's?
    Vega Vs the intel IGP? Yep, no contest

    https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/lapto...wift-3/?page=6
    A decent showing from the iris IGP in the surface pro (which needs 64MB of on-package eDRAM for that performance), but still bested by AMD

    To avoid repeating themselves, the rest of the gaming tests were against a different laptop with a geforce 940MX since that's a more interesting pairing

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