HP Reveals Envy x360 15 Laptops with AMD's Latest Ryzen APUs

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• jeremyshaw - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  Are you certain about the inaccessible 8GB single channel ram? It sounds like a rather strange limitation. Either AMD's platform specs really suck, to the point where escape routing two DDR4 channels off the package is stupidly difficult, or AMD just isn't providing any engineering help. If there ever was a time when AMD actually needed to package 4GB or more of on-package memory, Ryzen APUs were it.

• Mr Perfect - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  My guess is that HP is just being cheap here. The same thing has happened to previous AMD notebook generations, OEMs viewed them as the budget option and started cutting costs. Which had the effect of turning them into budget machines, something like a self fulfilling prophecy.

• jeremyshaw - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  I've taken a look at service manuals of prior Envy x360 AMD laptops, those seem to have dual slots.
  
  http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06172053.pdf
  http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06001791
  
  However, the datasheet for that model also explicitly listed dual channel DDR4...
  http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA7-2465...

• Dragonstongue - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  this is NOT AMD making such "choices" never is, they do the base "spec" which they have approved, their various partners can and do constantly muck with amount of ram, soldered or not etc etc etc.....they are not as "iron fist" as Intel would be, nor do they ultimately have a heavy enough hand to force any major OEM to bend over and do it the way they tell them to... unlike Intel, Nvidia, Apple and some others who can tell the OEM to "do it this way or else"
  
  All that being said, many many times OEM or whatever such as Dell, HP, Acer etc "cut down" the AMD offering and yet "up" the Intel offering in regards to possibly soldered or non soldered components (including ability to add) battery size, thermal limits, cooler design/capacity etc etc.
  
  I had a few times seen more or less Intel v AMD offering that the Intel one had more memory, was allowed to use wider range of tdp for the cpu-gpu etc, and often enough (mostly HP actually) that they gimp the AMD offering by memory selection but the Intel offering does not, converniant to make the AMD system appear "slower" or less capable?

• jeremyshaw - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  Which is why I believe AMD should have preempted all of this and released their APUs with HBM sideport memory, or at least higher specced versions of their APUs with HBM. Instead, Intel beat them to the punch (using AMD's own GPUs!), and the remaining laptops are at the mercy of ODMs.
  
  Not that Ryzen APUs are blameless, I have a Thinkpad E485 (a very good implementation of an AMD notebook, especially compared to the Intel version), and up until last month, it was littered with countless little problems w.r.t. video playback, color profiles, general stability of the ancient AMD drivers, etc. Last month, AMD's driver website finally admitted they have been making Ryzen laptop chips for the last year or so (yay!). Now I have to chase down why a 45Whr battery only lasts 3.5 hours, worse than my 6 year old Sony Vaio with a 48Whr battery and a dGPU (with wear, it only holds about 4.0 hours nowadays).

• PixyMisa - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link

  Cost.

• IGTrading - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

  This is NOT about cost.
  
  The "savings" are less than minimal.
  
  Actually , considering that the past 2 versions of AMD-based HP Envy x360 already HAVE dual DIMM slots, HP would actually have to SPEND MORE money to change the design, test & certify the new version.
  
  IF this has happened (I don't believe it) it might as well be a personal discussion between Intel's HP contact and HP's guy responsible for the the development and design of the Envy x360 line.
  
  Intel might have offered something to HP and asked HP to handicap the Ryzen Mobile systems, because the systems released last year, trounced most of the HP Intel-based lineup.
  
  I have been in this industry for more than 23 years now and I've been part of such "dirty" discussions.
  
  No matter if this actually happened or not, trust me : it costs HP MORE money, to change and re-certify the design, than reuse the old one.
  
  We all know that AMD Ryzen benefits from better memory bandwidth & latency, therefore it would be a simple thing for Intel to ask HP.
  
  Single channel for Intel is not a big problem compared with AMD and for HP this would be beneficial, because it would push clients to go for a higher grade (more expensive product line) to get Dual Channel and most likely, that higher product line doesn't even have an AMD Ryzen option.

• patel21 - Sunday, March 24, 2019 - link

  Or a customer can go for a different brand rather than going for higher product line.

• supdawgwtfd - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

  Issue with battery life is the CPU has high power draw when idle.
  
  I don't believe there is any fix for this.
  
  Is an inherent issue with the CPU itself.

• neblogai - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

  That is probably not true. Matebook D with 2500U is one of the best performing Ryzen mobile laptops, it comes with 53Wh battery, and also offers great (6-9h) battery life- much better than others. So, it must be laptop components and laptop configuration at fault, not the AMD APU.