So today I bought a new laptop at BestBuy – Asus G14 2023 model, with a CPU (Ryzen 9 7940HS) that apparently has the new AI instructions. (@Roleplayer FYI – turned out that AMD AI instructions were in this chip from a year ago, I didn’t realize that. So agonizing over my choice there was moot – the 2024 has the same CPU and Nvidia GPU, just in a sleeker package with less upgradeability.) My kid doesn’t know it yet but he’s going to inherit my 2022 shortly.
To the point, though: I’m trying to figure out the real use cases for the AI instructions in mainstream and gaming machines. I feel like this is premature, we have to just watch for new capabilities to emerge. I see mentions of a lot of really silly things like “improved performance on blurring backgrounds in Zoom” – what?!? There has to be more, a lot more.
Also, for perspective: I still have a 16 core Xeon workstation in the garage. Sandy Bridge. 192GB of RAM which I care about more than the cores.
1 Like
Upgrading already? I’m jealous 
My 16" Lenovo Ideapad 5 Pro from November 2022 is still chugging along and I barely notice the fan noise caused by too aggressive CPU cooling any more.
Upgrading because kiddo has a machine we bought for him 3+ years ago during pandemic/distance learning etc. – he has evolved into a gamer and a four year old midrange Lenovo with Zen 2+ and no dGPU is not up to his requirements… He already borrows my system for the weekends. I need him not to install games and misc. cr*p all over my system. So I get a new toy and he gets my handmedown…
$1100-ish for my last machine, almost exactly the same for the new machine. I’m going to throw a 2TB SSD I have on hand into the handmedown, and upgrade my new system with a 4TB I bought myself for Christmas.
And in my defense, I will say that until I bought the 2022 G14 a little over a year ago, I had lived only on refurbs/used machines for the previous 20 years. It was something of a treat to get a new-in-manufacturer’s-box system from a normal retailer instead of eBay or DellRefurbished.com …
My ASUS Ryzen 7 gaming laptop I bought in 2020 is still sufficient for my gaming needs. But Windows updates that can no longer be prevented have disrupted or destroyed some of what I do on a regular basis.
1 Like