Rare Ryzen and Polaris gaming laptop shows how far behind AMD is against Nvidia

[Redaktion]

Based on the very few Polaris-based gaming laptops we've tested, they're just not worth the errors, crashes, and glitches when gaming especially when an equivalent Intel/Nvidia gaming laptop is available for the same price.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Rare-Ryzen-and-Polaris-gaming-laptop-shows-how-far-behind-AMD-is-against-Nvidia.376061.0.html

[86lappytester]

AMD may have impressive hardware but the only letdown is the drivers.
There was a article AMD mentioned about providing driver update.
However if update were from OEM, will OEM even update their driver from time to time or when there is a issue.
Sorry AMD, I just brought a Intel/Nvidia gaming laptop. No annoying issue especially with stable drivers. If there is issue I can install generic driver from either Intel/Nvidia without any issue. AMD still have a long way before it can appeal to mobile gamers.

[ark]

MMM.... well, the Nvidia 960 M drivers of my laptop brings blue screens of death... how about it?

[Appolon]

AMD may have impressive hardware but the only letdown is the drivers.
There was a article AMD mentioned about providing driver update.
However if update were from OEM, will OEM even update their driver from time to time or when there is a issue.
Sorry AMD, I just brought a Intel/Nvidia gaming laptop. No annoying issue especially with stable drivers. If there is issue I can install generic driver from either Intel/Nvidia without any issue. AMD still have a long way before it can appeal to mobile gamers.

So,  let me check,  you've actually never had an AMD configuration,  but you are complaining about their products?

[jeremy]

AMD may have impressive hardware but the only letdown is the drivers.
There was a article AMD mentioned about providing driver update.
However if update were from OEM, will OEM even update their driver from time to time or when there is a issue.
Sorry AMD, I just brought a Intel/Nvidia gaming laptop. No annoying issue especially with stable drivers. If there is issue I can install generic driver from either Intel/Nvidia without any issue. AMD still have a long way before it can appeal to mobile gamers.

Yup. I drunk the kool-aid for years before finally waking up. ATi Radeon fans long brayed "Nvidia driver advantages were all just myth, and that 'recent' Radeon drivers had long since caught up." This was 2010. I made the mistake of trying a Nvidia card, and I realized AMD (nee ATi) wasn't even in the same universe when it came to actual, working, stable drivers. Their marketing hasn't changed, either. Goto the AMD website today, and we're greeted with an advertisement about how AMD drivers are more stable (especially if you force install an old Nvidia driver meant for 1709 on Windows 1803).

I still buy a Radeon product every once in a while, just to see if anything has changed. First a HD6990, now a Thinkpad E485 Ryzen. Nothing has changed. The first day I booted the E485, the Radeon control panel crashed. I still cannot get driver updates from AMD for my laptop. Unlike the HD6990, there is no excuse for AMD - the entire ecosystem of the E485 is AMD all the way. In the end, I only paid >$300 for a secondary laptop, so I'm not too disappointed.

[Deks]

Wow... such ignorance.
Did you even bother installing latest gpu and chipset drivers from AMD website?
No?
Well, you should have because the hardware in GL702ZC is desktop based, so AMD official latest drivers from their website work easily with this laptop.

I've had this machine for a year now, and apart from Asus messing up quality control, its a really good machine.

Also, this laptop has RX 580 in it... and its comparable to mobile 1060 in performance.

Finally, if you have been experiencing software issues, you should have reinstalled Windows.
OEM installations are usually botched to begin with.

[BobWellington]

I've had an RX 470 for 2 years now and it's been completely trouble free and has had a good amount of driver updates (not too few and not too many). I'm quite happy with it.

[jeremy]

Find me the Ryzen APU mobile drivers from AMD. Find them. I've already scoured their site. AMD Ryzen mobile drivers simply aren't available from AMD's website.

Don't be an apologist for AMD. Demand better from the Texas based company. It's not a cult and it's not a religion. You can question them and demand more from them.

AMD dropping the ball on mobile drivers is unacceptable, especially since they used to provide direct support for their 10h/Bulldozer based mobile APUs.

[Assembler]

Find me the Ryzen APU mobile drivers from AMD. Find them. I've already scoured their site. AMD Ryzen mobile drivers simply aren't available from AMD's website.

Don't be an apologist for AMD. Demand better from the Texas based company. It's not a cult and it's not a religion. You can question them and demand more from them.

AMD dropping the ball on mobile drivers is unacceptable, especially since they used to provide direct support for their 10h/Bulldozer based mobile APUs.

There are no Radeon drivers for Notebooks with Raven Ridge APUs directly from AMD. All other chips are not affected (including older APUs). This is a "known" issue and recently AMD promised to push their partners to release regular updates.

Until now Acer, HP and Lenovo seemed to not care about providing up-to-date drivers, while others do (at least Huawei released a new Radeon driver for their Matebook/Magicbook a few days ago).

It should be noted that notebooks with Intel CPUs share the same troubles. The only difference is that Intel allows the download of driver files that can be used to manually update the iGPU drivers from Device Manager (at own risk).

Back to Topic: Interesting that the author leaves out the fact, that there is another option of the Acer Nitro 5 with 2500U that is much cheaper (and not really slower). This model is priced on line with Notebooks that are equipped with MX150 GPUs at best.

The problems with the aforementioned laptops are classic AMD. The Radeon RX 560X in the Nitro 5, for example, is comparable to the GeForce GTX 1050 in 3DMark benchmarks but real-world gaming performance is about 15 percent slower.

Compared to what ? Notebooks with 45W TDP CPUs that naturally perform better due to higher CPU clocks, but with (usually) lesser battery runtime and more heat ? There are actually Notebooks with 1050 (non Max-Q) that perform worse than the Acer Nitro in Witcher 3 (Asus Strix GL753VD-GC045T or MSI GV72 7RD-1048XPL).

Furthermore, we encountered a handful of crashes, errors, stutters, and other driver-related issues when trying out different games. The gaming experience continues to be smoother and much less of a headache on Intel and Nvidia hardware.

Are they ? Then why is every Nvidia driver release thread on the notebookreview forum full of reports and issues (f.e. the ever broken G-Sync notebook support), while those do never occur on a review here on NBC ?

Or let's take the famous error 43 with Geforce driver 397.31, that rendered all 1060s (including mobile) useless until a hotfix was available. That isn't called a "glitch" ?

[Saur]

Here in India i bought
acer nitro 5 with ryzen5/rx560x/1TBHDD for ~685$
while intel i5(8G)/1050 go for ~860.

here a ryzen 5 2500U chip is competing with i5(8G)+mx150 which i find ludicrous, why will anyone buy this.

Though i am happy with my acer nitro 5 and i dont agree with the driver remark but price matters the most and i wouldnt go for AMD when Intel/Nvidia equivalent  for same price.