The 14" Defiance III with Radeon RX 550 or Radeon RX 560 GPU

kravemir

Member
I'm searching for a new laptop. I have previously considered a 'Laptop like "The 13.3" Lafité III" with Kaby Lake Refresh' to be a good option. But, I have realized, that I'm occasional gamer and a nice GPU would be good. I don't want a laptop with big screen. The maximum is 14", but the laptop might be thick though.

The 14" Defiance III perfectly fits, except it has got nvidia GPU, and open-source drivers for nvidia are in very poor shape. And, AMD GPUs have got good open-source drivers. Also, don't want anything older than Polaris.

Complete list of my requirements:

Display: max. 14" inch, 1600x900 or 1920x1080, with thin bezels,
CPU: Intel 8th-gen U-series, i5-7300HQ or better, but AMD Ryzen might be great,
GPU: Radeon RX 550 or Radeon RX 560,
Drives: 2.5" and m.2 slots, both usable at the same time,
Connectivity: at least two digital video outputs, ie. HDMI + DisplayPort.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
There are hardly any Ryzen laptops - I don't think there are any Clevo Ryzen laptops, which rules out PCS and most other custom PC builders.

As for AMD laptops GPUs, same kind of story. Nvidia tends to find its way into laptop chassis much more often, perhaps due to being more efficient for gaming. If you're an occasional gamer you'd probably want better than an RX 550, and maybe better than an RX 560 anyway.

How much worse is a 1050 ti on Linux than an RX 560? Not counting Vulkan gaming...
 

kravemir

Member
With proprietary drivers, nvidia performs great. But, proprietary drivers are usually little bit behind regarding compatibility with latest Linux releases. And, if nvidia decides to not support a gpu anymore, then user is stuck at that Linux version, because he won't have a compatible driver for newer Linux version...

Open source drivers also a much better experience for normal desktop usage, and they are supported much longer than closed source drivers, because they are included in the kernel and mesa.

AMD, and also Intel, provides specifications for their GPUs and also contributes to development of opensource drivers.

Nvidia doesn't provide anything, doesn't help with anything, doesn't contribute to opensource. Opensource drivers for nvidia GPUs wer made by reverse engineering. From GeForce 900 series, nvidia added some security features, which make it impossible to develop opensource drivers using reverse engineering.

No, I will never buy a laptop with nvidia GPU.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
That's fair enough. I'm no expert on Clevos but I'm not aware of any with an RX 560. The choice of other brands with them are quite limited, with some being paired with Bristol ridge APUs :/

Perhaps you'd want to wait for Raven Ridge APUs to be out and review your options then if it's not an urgent purchase?
 
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