Framework Desktop Hands On: First Impressions (Benchmarks, Gaming, AI Models)
17 days ago
- #AMD STRIX Halo
- #LLM Server
- #Framework Desktop
- Framework Desktop is Framework's first mini-desktop, marking a departure from their fully upgradeable devices with soldered RAM.
- Powered by AMD's STRIX Halo APU, it offers strong compute and integrated graphics, suitable for AI models like LLMs.
- The hardware features versions with Ryzen AI Max 385 or 395 chips, differing in cores, threads, cache, and clock speeds.
- Includes a powerful AMD Radeon 8060S GPU with RDNA 3.5 architecture, supporting high-performance tasks and gaming.
- The design includes a large heatsink and a quiet 20cm fan, keeping the system cool and silent under high workloads.
- Fedora 42 is recommended for optimal out-of-the-box support, including graphics drivers.
- Benchmarks show strong performance in Blender and Unigine Superposition, comparable to mid-range discrete GPUs.
- Gaming performance is solid, capable of running demanding titles at high resolutions with tweaked settings.
- Excels as an LLM server with large memory capacity, though ROCm backend issues were noted; Vulkan is recommended.
- Potential for mixed architecture setups with Nvidia GPUs via PCIe adapters for enhanced LLM inference capabilities.