AMD Launches Ryzen Mobile 3000 Series, Improves Driver Support

Megalith

Megalith

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Ahead of CEO Lisa Su’s keynote at CES Wednesday (where she is expected to elaborate on the much-anticipated 7nm Zen 2 architecture), AMD has announced a range of new 12nm Zen+ Mobile processors under the 3000-series branding to better meet the expanding notebook market. This includes the Ryzen 7 3750H, a 2.3 GHz quad-core processor with 8 threads and a TDP of 35W. AMD has also made a policy change in its Windows driver line-up: all Radeon software updates will now support all Ryzen Mobile laptops.

Starting in Q1, any laptop with a Ryzen Mobile CPU that uses integrated graphics will be supported direct from AMD with a single driver package to cover all devices. This will, according to AMD, enable them with Day 0 driver support for the latest game titles and updates, as well as simplify the process between AMD, OEMs, and end users. This proved to be an especially rough point of friction with gamers and other power users on the first-generation parts, so it's a significant improvement in how AMD is going about driver support.
 
Drivers are big and will go a long way in ensuring laptop owners that they don't have to depend on shitty vendor support. Also this just means AMD didn't want to clutter CES keynote with mobile ryzen news. Looks like more time for other stuff lol
 
Megalith said:
Starting in Q1, any laptop with a Ryzen Mobile CPU that uses integrated graphics will be supported direct from AMD with a single driver package to cover all devices.
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amd finally stepping up where the oems wont.
zalazin this should make you happy.
 
glad to see AMD's taking over the driver support, was one of the big reasons i didn't end up grabbing a ryzen APU based laptop.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
glad to see AMD's taking over the driver support, was one of the big reasons i didn't end up grabbing a ryzen APU based laptop.
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No shit, I have a 2200U laptop with Vega 3 and its literally useless. Even youtube videos stutter and have audio issues with the 2 year old drivers it uses. 0 updates by Acer and AMD drivers don't work. Haven't even turned it on in a few months because its worthless, good thing it was only like $200.
 
Any idea why laptops traditionally had vendor-only drivers? It never made sense to me...
 
Its Me again .. I'll believe it when I see it. Finally AMD realized it had a responsibility to the end user. Oem only support was always a bad idea. Now If HP would fix the F19 bios( not roll backable) that screwed all of the x360 Ryzen laptops maybe the Holy Grail of a working reliable machine will happen. Oh by the way I TOLD YOU ALL SO....
 
switchable graphics exists in desktop land. So no.

there must have been a monetary reason why amd chose to allow this arrangement of vendors controlling the driver updates. Probably as a part of a larger deal with vendors.
 
Darth Ender said:
switchable graphics exists in desktop land. So no.

there must have been a monetary reason why amd chose to allow this arrangement of vendors controlling the driver updates. Probably as a part of a larger deal with vendors.
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What are you talking about? In desktop land, there are no "switchable" graphics, as it is known in laptop land.
 
you can have an apu and a discrete graphics card in a desktop and utilize both. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-dual-graphics-faq

Essentially, crossfire. You'd treat your discrete card as a secondary device that crossfire uses to compliment the primary (apu) graphics device. You wouldn't be able to fully shut one or the other off like in a laptop via the muxing circuitry that exists in laptops since they control all the hardware involved and that doesn't happen on a desktop, but the effect is very similar.

That muxing aspect seems like it would be less part of a graphics driver and more of a independent device and driver that manages suspending pci devices on demand, and switching the physical connections of the monitor without interrupting power or signal so that the handoff to the other graphics card is seamless. The transferring of data from one to the other seems like it would already be part of the crossfire spec. The mux chip would just be like a framebuffer that will continually send the monitor it's cached data until it receives new data from the graphics card (whichever) ...hiding the suspend/resume init sequence. Anyway, that's a very big stretch to think that they need specialized graphics drivers to accomplish that, rather than just have general functions in the graphics driver that you can call and a separate driver to manage the display muxer.

But yea, i was thinking crossfire type desktop setups.. which contain all the necessary features but the one hardware device only in laptops is missing ...the mux chip.
 
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Darth Ender said:
you can have an apu and a discrete graphics card in a desktop and utilize both. https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-dual-graphics-faq

Essentially, crossfire. You'd treat your discrete card as a secondary device that crossfire uses to compliment the primary (apu) graphics device. You wouldn't be able to fully shut one or the other off like in a laptop via the muxing circuitry that exists in laptops since they control all the hardware involved and that doesn't happen on a desktop, but the effect is very similar.

That muxing aspect seems like it would be less part of a graphics driver and more of a independent device and driver that manages suspending pci devices on demand, and switching the physical connections of the monitor without interrupting power or signal so that the handoff to the other graphics card is seamless. The transferring of data from one to the other seems like it would already be part of the crossfire spec. The mux chip would just be like a framebuffer that will continually send the monitor it's cached data until it receives new data from the graphics card (whichever) ...hiding the suspend/resume init sequence. Anyway, that's a very big stretch to think that they need specialized graphics drivers to accomplish that, rather than just have general functions in the graphics driver that you can call and a separate driver to manage the display muxer.

But yea, i was thinking crossfire type desktop setups.. which contain all the necessary features but the one hardware device only in laptops is missing ...the mux chip.
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Well, as enticing as the crossfire thing is, I would rather not set up my 2200G and XFX RX570 8GB system that way. For games that do not support crossfire, I am guessing the RX570 would be ignored. You understood what I was getting at.
 
Darth Ender said:
switchable graphics exists in desktop land. So no.

there must have been a monetary reason why amd chose to allow this arrangement of vendors controlling the driver updates. Probably as a part of a larger deal with vendors.
Click to expand...
In laptops, it allowed them to completely turn off the other gpu to save power.
 
zalazin said:
Its Me again .. I'll believe it when I see it. Finally AMD realized it had a responsibility to the end user. Oem only support was always a bad idea. Now If HP would fix the F19 bios( not roll backable) that screwed all of the x360 Ryzen laptops maybe the Holy Grail of a working reliable machine will happen. Oh by the way I TOLD YOU ALL SO....
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Oh, your back? So, you have not yet sold that laptop you hate so much?
 
Darth Ender said:
there must have been a monetary reason why amd chose to allow this arrangement
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No, I think this can be entirely explained with AMD incompetence and complacency.

Only after being publicly shamed for it, AMD woke up and started to act in the interest of AMD users, rather than grant OEMs their wishes.
 
chithanh said:
No, I think this can be entirely explained with AMD incompetence and complacency.

Only after being publicly shamed for it, AMD woke up and started to act in the interest of AMD users, rather than grant OEMs their wishes.
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If it was the OEM's wishes, then there was a monetary reason. Your statement suggests that AMD was just too lazy or incompetent to do the work themselves so the OEM's had to pull up the slack for them and code in support for their display MUXing hardware. More likely is that the OEM's either didn't want to adopt a standard and leveraged their use of AMD hardware on AMD giving them the drivers to modify or that OEM's wanted additional control over the drivers and their distribution for other reasons (planned obsolescence - same as laptop OEM's not updating bios's to support new cpus for those that have socketed cpu's).

Try all you want to paint amd bad but AMD bends to the will of the laptop manufacturers because of their market position. They have intel to leverage over AMD and AMD has nothing to leverage over them, and AMD wants and needs some of that mobile pie. I fully suspect the arrangement was all the OEM's doing and now the backlash has finally gotten too expensive for the OEM's and they do not want AMD getting into the laptop market directly similar to google with their pixel/chromebook hardware.
 
chithanh said:
No, I think this can be entirely explained with AMD incompetence and complacency.

Only after being publicly shamed for it, AMD woke up and started to act in the interest of AMD users, rather than grant OEMs their wishes.
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Do you realize it was the same way for Nvidia right? Also intel as well but Intel still doesn't allow you to update integrated drivers on some laptops and a pop up comes up when you try installing that tells you to go to manufacturer site to download the latest drivers. The problem is OEMs are tough to work with. Especially if you don't dominate the market. After the backlash its likely AMD was able to convince OEMs it is equally as bad for them because users want these laptops and its hurting sales. This was one of the reasons I didn't pick up AMD ryzen 2500u laptop earlier this month but after this I grabbed a lenovo 330s with 2500u for 429 on sale. Honestly great bang for buck.
 
Darth Ender said:
If it was the OEM's wishes, then there was a monetary reason. Your statement suggests that AMD was just too lazy or incompetent to do the work themselves
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Not at all. My guess would be that control over driver releases is on OEM wishlist (as any problematic driver release will upset customers and increase support burden). AMD during negotiations was just too afraid of jeopardizing design wins, so they did not insist.
Darth Ender said:
so the OEM's had to pull up the slack for them and code in support for their display MUXing hardware.
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Some inquisitive folks on AMD subreddit tried installing the Dell drivers on Lenovo laptops, Lenovo driver on HP Laptops, and so on. No new problems appeared. So the customization argument is apparently bullshit at least in many common laptops.
NKD said:
Do you realize it was the same way for Nvidia right?
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It was very different for NVidia.

AMD users were suffering through the OEM driver problems for the whole year since Ryzen mobile launch. AMD didn't care. Only after people started complaining loudly, they got a reaction from AMD, and now we have drivers directly from AMD.

NVidia users have been complaining about lack of Adaptive-Sync support since the moment that VESA standardized the technology in DP 1.2a. Nothing has changed. NVidia knows that the expensive G-Sync FPGA puts them at a disadvantage. Nothing has changed here either. The only thing that has changed is that (a) NVidia will no longer sell every card they can make thanks to the cryptocurrency decline, and (b) with Intel supporting Adaptive-Sync later this year the same trick that made FreeSync work with NVidia on Raven Ridge will also work with Adaptive-Sync on Ice Lake. So it was inevitable, the only matter of decision is whether NVidia wants to be ahead of this development or not.
 
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