AMD's new Framework mainboard is finally here. I mean, I have been very positive in the past about the company's modular laptop setup and loved the idea of a laptop that is upgradeable for several generations to come, but while it is a good office laptop, it was not very appealing to me as a device itself. However, with the new AMD Ryzen 7 7840U board installed in this old chassis, I fell in love with this laptop in a way I never could with an Intel upgrade.

In today's terms, Framework 13 is now a part of me. I regularly disassemble it, tinker with the internals, replace the screen several times, go back and forth between matte and glossy panels, and have a laptop that I know inside and out.

My first use of this laptop (Ship of Theseus) was on a Tiger Lake-based system with an 11th generation Intel chip. And it was fine; the 13-inch scale is great for a primarily office-focused notebook, the design is slim and simple, the modular ports are great, and the 16:10 aspect ratio of the sharp, glossy 2256 x 1504-resolution screen Liked.

But it is by no means a laptop for PC gamers. Even after replacing the mainboard with a new 12th generation Alder Lake and more recently a 13th generation Raptor Lake board, these updates only made this machine a better office machine. Now, I'm not saying that the new AMD Zen 4 mainboard upgrade has suddenly made this a rare 13-inch gaming laptop, but it has certainly made it a laptop that can game.

AMD now makes all the best mobile chips, and the gaming scene has been further enhanced by the flawless Ryzen 9 7945HX3D in the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17. However, the advantage is only "effective," as AMD chips are still somewhat hard to find in a wide range of mobile systems.

That amazing X3D chip, the best mobile gaming CPU ever, is only found in one Asus 17-inch machine, and few manufacturers still have a full lineup of laptops with Ryzen processors. Still, some of the best AMD-based ones, like the gorgeous Razer Blade 14 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, are available; Lenovo's Legion series is starting to boast a good enough selection; and the newest model in the Razer Blade 14 lineup is the Razer ROG Zephyrus G14.

And now Framework can boast the best AMD processors in its lineup.

The Ryzen 7 7840U is one of the AMD chips I'm most familiar with. Sure, Steam Deck is the gateway to portable gaming, but it is the current product that made full-fledged mobile PC gaming possible, and that is because of the RDNA 3 compute unit at the heart of this amazing APU and the 12 of them it contains.

This GPU power is also reflected in Framework 13, which delivers real 1080p gaming performance on Medium and sometimes even High graphics presets. games that do not use AMD's FSR upscaling technology or Intel's XeSS. AMD's FSR upscaling technology, and even more so when playing games that do not use Intel's XeSS. And this includes many of the latest PC games today.

What is not included in many games today is AMD's new frame generation technology along with FSR 3 deployment. This is unfortunate, because when tested on Forspoken, enabling both FSR 3 and AMD's Frame Generation feature significantly increased the frame rate of the game. This is a game changer for the portable gaming market, and the same can be said for this little laptop. Frankly, I'm hoping that developers will really buy into AMD's lighter touch and broader approach to frame interpolation.

Certainly not as effective as Nvidia's hardware-based frame generation technology, which can lag or float a bit if the frame rate is too low. But when it comes to the choice between having something not as good as this, but still quite good, or nothing at all, well, it's not really a choice.

Aside from upscaling and magic frames, the hardware is effective in its native settings if the image presets are a bit more modest.

However, I have tested handhelds with the same APU and noticed that they are not that fast in terms of gaming. In many cases, it is only a few frames/second ahead of the ROG Ally or OneXFly, but these dedicated gaming machines have an advantage. At this point, the on-board memory may only be slightly faster, but the difference is there.

And this is just the performance of the integrated GPU. It still has an 8-core Zen 4 CPU at its core, with 16 threads of processing power and a 4.9 GHz clock speed all packed into this slender chassis. In other words, this is a rather massive processor that just a few years ago would have been at the high-end desktop level.

Compared to the Core i7 1370P, the pinnacle of Intel mainboards for Framework13 laptops, we're talking about a 14-core chip that loses 20 threads of processing to this determined 8-core Zen 4 chip. The Intel Raptor Lake CPU's single-threaded Cinebench R23 performance ends up there, although it has a significantly higher index score than the Ryzen processor.

In multithreaded tasks, one would expect the Intel with the higher thread count to win, but the AMD chip leads in Cinebench, Blender rendering, and HD video encoding.

This AMD mainboard excels in almost every metric, pushing Framework 13 ahead of previous Intel inner boards. There is just one thing that is a bit unusual: the SSD performance is significantly lower on the exact same drive. With a 1.5 second slower load time in Final Fantasy XIV and only slightly higher latency in 3DMark Storage, it's not noticeably lower in real-world use, but it's still worth noting from the benchmark numbers.

One might think that such an increase in gaming performance and processing power would demand more power from the battery at the heart of Framework 13, but the opposite is true: I can't speak highly enough of AMD's mobile chips, and the fact that they've been able to deliver such a high level of performance in the past few years is a testament to the quality of their products. I am using a 61Wh battery, which is an upgrade over the original 55Wh option. On the Intel board, battery life increased slightly from 60 to 68 minutes in the PCMark gaming battery life test. However, the AMD mainboard recorded 86 minutes.

Incidentally, it is also inexpensive.

The Core i7 1370P mainboard is a hefty upgrade at $1,049 on its own, the equivalent of the price of one moderately specced gaming laptop. This AMD Ryzen 7 7840U mainboard is $699; you'll need some DDR5 SO-DIMMs with the AMD board, and a new WiFi module if upgrading from an older Intel Framework board, but that's still a fraction of Intel's weakened boards are not far behind in cost.

And this is the beauty of the Framework model. I bought an 11th generation Framework 13 machine a few years ago, and by adding this AMD board and new memory, all of a sudden I had a huge upgrade in performance and efficiency. While not a cheap upgrade, it was far less expensive than the cost of a comparable new laptop, and the waste was considerably less.

However, it is not a perfect small laptop. The trackpad can be a bit finicky when it comes to finding the right-click sweet spot. Also, the Ryzen chip's 30W TDP in full mode will be loud during gaming; the small fan on top of the APU is certainly not quiet in full chat. Thankfully, that's only when you're pushing it to the max, because otherwise the system is whisper quiet.

But there are other reasons to get into the framework scene. Its refurbish and previous generation sales model means that when new boards come out, you can get cheaper boards. And since few people upgrade every time Intel or AMD sneezes in the general direction of fabs, the possibility of skipping a hardware generation makes it more affordable when you really need an update or can afford it. The update could be made available.

This level of upgrade cycle is in some ways like the desktop PC market and has made me feel more attached to my Framework 13 than any laptop I have ever used. The chassis, keyboard, SSD, and screen have been Intel and AMD silicon together for generations, and I love this little system.

Maybe it's the new red border around the screen, or maybe it's the powerful gaming and processing power of the new AMD mainboard.

Whatever it is, this is a machine I would want to have with me at all times. I want to take it to the office, I want to sit on the couch, and I want to take this laptop with me on business trips and vacations.

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