Review: Framework Laptop finally gets an AMD Ryzen config—and it’s pretty good

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Specs at a glance: Framework Laptop 13 (2023)
OS	Windows 11 22H2
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 7840U (8-cores)
RAM	32GB DDR5-5600 (upgradeable)
GPU	AMD Radeon 780M (integrated)
SSD	1TB Western Digital Black SN770
Battery	61 WHr
Display	13.5-inch 2256x1504 non-touchscreen in glossy or matte
Connectivity	4x recessed USB-C ports (2x USB 4, 2x USB 3.2) with customizable "Expansion Card" dongles, headphone jack
Price as tested	$1,679 pre-built, $1,523 DIY edition with no OS included

The Framework Laptop 13 is back again.

My third review of this laptop is probably the one that I (and many Framework-curious PC buyers) have been the most interested to test, as the company has finally added an AMD Ryzen option to the repair-friendly portable. Updates to the Intel version of the Framework Laptop have boosted CPU performance, but its graphics performance has been at a standstill since the Framework Laptop originally hit the scene in mid-2021.

Even AMD's latest integrated graphics won't make a thin-and-light laptop a replacement for a gaming PC with dedicated graphics, but a bit more GPU power makes the Framework Laptop that much more versatile, making it easier to play games at reasonable resolutions and settings than it is on Intel's aging Iris Xe graphics hardware.

Whether you hopped on the Framework train early and have been waiting for a motherboard that felt like a true all-around upgrade or you've been on the fence about buying your first Framework Laptop, the new Ryzen version makes a good case for itself. If you want to order one, there's currently a backlog—all versions are shipping at an unspecified date in "Q4."

Meet the Ryzen-powered Framework 13

The Ryzen version of the Framework Laptop's system board has the same shape and layout as the Intel versions, preserving full compatibility with older Framework Laptop 13 enclosures. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

I won't spend a lot of time talking about the design of the Framework Laptop 13 again, except to say that it remains a competent ultraportable, and there's nothing that feels dated or clunky about its design now that didn't already feel a little dated and clunky two years ago (the relatively thick display bezel is the main culprit here). Another laptop in this category we generally like, Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon, has been using the same basic design for years, so it's not like Framework is in danger of falling behind in a chaotic and fast-paced industry.

The Ryzen version of the mainboard looks mostly identical to the Intel version, given that it needs to fit in all the same cases with all the same connectors. It dropped directly into the same case I've also used for the Intel versions of the Framework Laptop, and moving from Intel to AMD is as easy as it is in a desktop tower with standard parts.

The label on the board is one of the few indicators that you're using an AMD board. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

But it wouldn't be a Ryzen system if there weren't a couple of weird, fiddly things about it! All the Intel Framework Laptops have supported the same specifications for all four ports (USB 4 for the 11th-gen, Thunderbolt 4 for the newer ones), allowing you to install the expansion card modules wherever you want them without worrying about the particulars.

The Ryzen laptop supports USB 4 in the rear-left and rear-right ports, USB 3.2 and DisplayPort for the front-right slot, and only USB 3.2 on the front-left slot (all four ports support USB-PD for charging, though). Framework also says the rear ports enter a "high-power mode" when USB-A modules are connected to them, which can reduce battery life.

So yes, the Framework Laptop's ports are still customizable, and you can still have a lot of flexibility when installing expansion modules. But some modules are better fits for specific ports, and you'll have to be a bit more careful about where you put things if you want the best performance and battery life.

Component considerations for upgraders

All Intel Framework boards so far have been fully swappable with little need to worry about other components. RAM, SSDs, and Wi-Fi could simply be swapped from the old board into the new one. The Ryzen board is a little different.

The most significant change is the upgrade from DDR4 RAM to DDR5. DDR5 SODIMM modules use a bit less power than DDR4, and they run faster—AMD and Framework support up to DDR5-5600, faster than Intel models' peak DDR4-3200 speeds. As with DDR5 on the desktop, laptop DDR5 SODIMM modules cost more than the same amount of DDR4. There are also, as of this writing, just not that many options, since so many laptops use soldered-on LPDDR5 instead of socketed memory. The only 16GB DDR5-5600 kit currently listed on Newegg is from Crucial, and it costs $55, though you do have a handful of additional options if you opt for a 32GB or 64GB kit instead. There are dozens of options for DDR4 modules, starting at around $30.

While any M.2 SSD from an Intel Framework Laptop will pop right into the AMD version, based on my experience with desktops, I would generally recommend a clean Windows or Linux install when jumping from one company's products to another's. It's not always strictly necessary, but the drivers and other low-level bits of software needed for each platform are different, and a reinstall is the best way to avoid weird bugs or performance problems.

Some Intel Wi-Fi modules that work with Intel versions of the Framework Laptop won't work with Ryzen boards. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The last thing to be careful about if you're upgrading a current system or putting together a DIY edition is Wi-Fi compatibility. Though all modern Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards use the same physical M.2 slot, some of Intel's Wi-Fi boards use a proprietary protocol called CNVi, which relocates a lot of the actual hardware in a given Wi-Fi expansion card to the processor and chipset instead. The actual M.2 cards merely handle RF and signal processing.

Recent Intel Wi-Fi modules like the AX201, AX211, and AX411 all use CNVi and won't function with an AMD board since the Intel networking hardware isn't present in a Ryzen chip. Models like the AX200 and AX210 still have all the networking hardware on the actual M.2 expansion card and communicate over the PCIe/USB buses, and they'll work fine with any Framework motherboard. Framework sent us a Mediatek-developed RZ616 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth card with our Ryzen board, which should end up in all the prebuilt Ryzen Framework laptops.

Performance

The board Framework provided for this review is the high-end version, with an 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7840U and a Radeon 780M GPU with 12 graphics cores. We compared it to the top-tier versions of the last two Intel Framework Laptops, with Core i7-1280P and Core i7-1360P CPUs. We don't have 11th-gen Intel hardware on hand to test, but we've included a similarly specced ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a Core i7-1185G7 as a comparison point.

In our desktop CPU reviews, Intel can often beat AMD’s multi-core performance by sheer brute force, adding gobs of E-cores that AMD’s fewer, larger cores can’t quite keep up with. But that’s in a desktop, with a much larger power budget.

In the Framework Laptop, where CPU power consumption peaks at around 30 W instead of 250 W, AMD manages to beat the i7-1360P by a respectable amount in both single- and multi-threaded tests, even though the Core i7 has 14 cores (6 P-cores, 8 E-cores) instead of 8. It's not a night-and-day difference, but it's enough that it's clear which one you should buy if you're choosing between the two. It also goes without saying that the upgrade from a quad-core first-gen Framework Laptop motherboard is pretty striking. It's 20 or 30 percent faster at single-threaded tasks but over twice as fast at multi-threaded work.

Upgraders may be more intrigued by the Ryzen Framework’s Radeon 780M. While still integrated rather than dedicated, this is an RDNA 3-based GPU with all the benefits that entails, including hardware-accelerated encoding for AV1 videos and hardware ray-tracing support (not that you'll be tracing a ton of rays with an integrated GPU, but in games with subtle effects, you might be able to get away with it).

The 780M stacks up well to Intel's Iris Xe, which hasn't seen a significant update in three years. AMD's GPU is a little over twice as fast as Intel's in some of our tests (mostly GPU-compute-intensive ones, like the Geekbench tests) and not quite twice as fast in 3D gaming benchmarks.

Both are still thoroughly outclassed by older low-end dedicated GPUs like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050, but "twice as fast as Iris Xe" is enough to be the difference between playable and unplayable for a whole bunch of games. The 780M is similar to the GPU in that Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld we reviewed recently and a bit better than the one in the Steam Deck, so game developers are actively targeting playable performance (and increasingly adding pre-configured graphics presets) for exactly this class of GPU.

If there's anything a bit disappointing about the GPU's performance, it's that it shows only a mild increase compared to the RDNA 2 Radeon 680M that we've tested in some older Ryzen laptops. I'm inclined to blame the Framework Laptop's SODIMM slots for this, which only support DDR5-5600 memory, where the ThinkPad Z13 uses soldered-on LPDDR5X-6400 memory. Increasing memory bandwidth is the best thing you can do for an integrated GPU's performance. The entire point of the Framework Laptop is that it's modular and repairable, but it's not entirely without downside.

Don’t forget “Ryzen AI”

One feature of the Ryzen 7040 series that Intel doesn't currently have an answer for is "Ryzen AI," a dedicated block on the processor that can handle certain kinds of machine learning tasks better and faster than a CPU or GPU. Intel and Qualcomm call this a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), and Apple calls it the Neural Engine—either way, we can expect some features in operating systems and third-party apps to only work (or to work best) on PCs with this kind of hardware in them.

For now, in Windows 11, the only native features of note are the webcam-enhancing Studio Effects. And as of this writing, Framework says this feature isn't available for Ryzen CPUs yet, even though the Framework Laptop does enable the NPU. Studio Effects—and other, future NPU-using features—will presumably be enabled for these CPUs later.

Efficiency and battery life

If there's one drawback to the Ryzen version of the Framework Laptop, it's that battery life is... fine. In our PCMark-based battery life test, it settles in at a little over 8 hours, a bit better than the 12th-gen Intel version's 7 hours and 41 minutes of battery life but a lot lower than the 9 hours 45 minutes that the 13th-gen Intel version gets.

All of these tests were run with the 11 percent larger 61 WHr battery that Framework released earlier this year, so they represent a best-case scenario; if you're still using the older 55 WHr battery, our testing indicates that battery life should decrease more or less proportionately with capacity.

Eight hours of battery life is enough to get through a workday or a cross-country flight without plugging in, so it does hit an important baseline that some versions of the Framework Laptop don't measure up to (the 12th-gen i7 version with the 55 WHr battery being a worst-case scenario). But it's still less than other laptops we've tested, and it continues to be a weak point of the Framework Laptop relative to something in the Thinkpad family. It's also the only place where the 13th-gen Intel version is categorically better than the AMD version.

In terms of power efficiency, Ryzen still punches above its weight here. Our CPU-based Handbrake video encoding test isn't forgiving; it pegs all available CPU cores at or near their maximum capacity for the duration of the encode, not giving the CPU an opportunity to switch to an idle mode or ramp down its speeds.

The Ryzen 7840U runs at a higher wattage than Intel's CPU here—an average of 33 W, around 5 W higher than the i7-1360P. It finishes the work much faster, making it more power-efficient overall. But that slightly higher average power draw might be partially responsible for the so-so battery life. Apple's M2 is still the efficiency leader here, though it does take a lot more time to do the same amount of work in this case.

Conclusions: Mostly worth the wait

The Ryzen version of the Framework Laptop 13 has slightly less flexible ports than the Intel versions, though there are still plenty of workable port layouts. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 Series

From $1,049 at Framework

For basically as long as the Framework Laptop has existed, people have been asking about a Ryzen option. Now that we have one, we can recommend it (mostly) enthusiastically.

Ryzen brings a new level of GPU performance to the Framework Laptop 13, its first significant graphics upgrade since the first version launched two years ago. And while people with powerful gaming desktops still won't find much to get excited about, the GPU's similarity to those in handheld consoles like the Asus ROG Ally and Steam Deck means that the Framework Laptop should be capable of playable frame rates in lots of games, especially those that support FSR upscaling.

Two things keep it from being a slam-dunk universal recommendation, one in the annoying-but-minor category and one in the possible-dealbreaker category. The four recessed USB-C ports that connect to the expansion modules, perhaps the Framework Laptop's signature feature, are not quite as universal or as flexible as the ones in the Intel version of the laptop. And the battery life is only OK, saved by the slightly larger 61 WHr version of the battery but well short of the runtime that the 13th-generation Intel version of the laptop gets with the same battery.

Still, if I were buying my first Framework Laptop or considering an upgrade for a first-gen model, the performance would probably be enough to sell me on the Ryzen version. Mainly, though, it's just great to have options, and the Framework Laptop 13 continues to offer more of them than any other laptop you can buy.

The good

Great CPU performance that outdoes the Core i7-1360P version of the Framework Laptop.
Customizable ports, easily replaceable and upgradeable components, solid Linux compatibility, and all the other stuff we like about the Framework Laptop 13.
Solid screen, comfy keyboard, reasonably good trackpad, fingerprint sensor, and webcam.
Decent game performance if you calibrate your expectations properly. Most modern games should be playable, especially once FSR is enabled.
Pricing competitive with high-end ultraportables from the likes of Dell, Lenovo, and Apple.

The bad

Passable-but-mediocre battery life, and not as good as the 13th-gen Intel version of the Framework Laptop. The entry-level option only comes with a smaller 55 WHr battery.
Plenty of heat and fan noise while gaming or fully utilizing the CPU.
DDR5 pricing and selection leaves something to be desired.
Less port flexibility than Intel Framework Laptops.

The ugly

Relatively long wait times for all Ryzen Framework models. Order one today and it will ship at some unspecified point in "Q4."

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Andrew Cunningham Senior Technology Reporter

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

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