If they do that, they very likely lose me as a customer.

Hey, where are all the people asking if batch 8 was going to be Q4 2024?

Elevated Systems did a comparison of gaming on the FW13 natively, docked, and with an eGPU. Short answer: you can game on it, but this is not a gaming laptop, and shouldn’t be treated as one. For starters, the 60 Hz display will cause ghosting if you’re pushing high frame rates (though you still have the option of playing docked to an external gaming monitor). You can get decent performance on some games with the graphics dialed down, but the fan will spin up like crazy for demanding titles.

If gaming is important to you, the 7840U has 50% more GPU compute units compared to the 7640U - and while performance doesn’t scale linearly, that does represent a pretty significant difference.

I was evaluating different specs for a Thinkpad T-14 when Framework started taking pre-orders, and that is the only other laptop I’d even consider now. I still miss the trackpoint & physical buttons, but I love my Framework and have no regrets about my decision.

I still hold out hope for a third-party Thinkpad lower clamshell for us trackpoint addicts.

Since upgrading from Tiger Lake to the AMD 7640U, my two biggest gripes (loud fan and short battery life) have been resolved to my satisfaction. That leaves only the more minor issues:

1. Speakers are not great. Generally not an issue since I’m usually on headphones (thank you, FW, for including the 3.5 mm headphone jack!), but when I do use the speakers, they often sound pretty muffled.
2. After two years, I have still not gotten used to using the Function keys in order to page up/page down. A six-key layout for the arrows would have been far superior.
3. Trackpad button click is still unreliable. Yes, you can tap the trackpad for the same effect, but that feels unintuitive to me and I would still greatly prefer physical mouse buttons that I can feel.

That’s unexpected. I had been consistently getting 8+ hours of video playback (some local, some streamed) on battery power during a recent trip to visit family.

Don’t overthink it. In your situation, I would upgrade to a new Mac Pro because:

1. You’re using it in a professional capacity
2. You can buy one off the shelf immediately.
3. It’s really tough to beat a Mac Pro for video editing.

The Framework 16 is a really exciting product, but it’s not going to be available for several months yet, and there will inevitably be some early adopter penalties. Buy one later as a personal machine, exactly as you planned, and then tinker with it to your heart’s content. There are some really exciting things coming from AMD in the mobile space, so you’ll probably have access to an even better machine when the time comes.

So… does this mean batch 8 is likely to ship in Q4 2024?

The AMD FW13 was announced in March of 2023, and Batch 3 is currently being shipped. So there are two possibilities here:

1. Framework is going to ship them in Q4 2024, roughly 18 months after they were announced, a full year after Batch 3 started shipping, and probably three months after the Zen 5 APUs are released.
2. Framework is going to ship them in Q4 2023.

I can see it going either way.

I’m also not a fan of the trackpad, but mostly that’s because I hate the ergonomics of trackpads in general and am still praying for a Thinkpad keyboard mod; I haven’t experienced the lag you’ve described. Have you tried updating the firmware?

I have that exact kit and can confirm it works with the AMD 7640U board. A lot of us bought that one when it went on sale a few weeks ago.