I’m currently on an MSI GF65 Thin 9SEXR. It has a 9th gen core i5, 8GB RAM, and a geforce rtx2060 graphics card. While it’s been a great daily driver for several years now, it’s definitely starting to show it’s age with newer games and such.

I’ve currently got my eyes on the ASUS TUF series of laptops, because they seem like pretty decent quality. The chassis design seems more intuitive with where the ports are located, and other small details that make ease of use a priority. I like that it has a numberpad as well, and I’d consider this one of my necessities going forward.

My main uses will be moderate gaming, 3D design, and general browsing/productivity. I’d also like to dump windows for Linux as well, but I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready to make that jump yet. I’ve got very minimal experience with alternative operating systems to windows.

I don’t know much about AMD’s hardware, so I’m not sure how the designations compare to what I currently have. If anyone could give me an easy rundown to get me up to date I’d appreciate it too.

  • @[email protected]English
    6•8 months ago

    I would recommend going for an all-AMD laptop, with a Ryzen 7xxx/8xxx series CPU, such as the Framework 13/16. You can go for either the APU version (integrated graphics) or one with a discreet Radeon card if you’re a serious gamer (the 16" Framework comes with a Radeon RX 7700S). If you’re unsure about the gaming performance, you can look up your respective APU/GPU model on YouTube - there should be plenty of videos demonstrating GPU performance. notebookcheck.net is also a good site to check.

    Also, with an all-AMD setup, you’ll have very little issues with Linux compatibility. AMD Linux drivers have been making some great progress thanks to the Steam Deck and Valve (and also AMD’s recent opensource initiatives - like the plan to opensource ROCm and even GPU firmware), so it’s a pretty exiting space to be in.

    But whatever option you end up going for, avoid nVidia - you’re just asking for trouble, if you plan to run Linux with it. Now there are some interesting opensource driver projects such as Nova and NVK, but it’s still a while (years?) away before they may reach maturity, so I wouldn’t recommend them at this stage.