Yeah I was looking at those specs, and these seems very overpriced no?
If you spec a Tuxedo Aura 15 Gen2 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...) to the same level (not sure what the equivalent to the CPU is for Ryzen though), and although the display isn't 4K its still much less (just over 700, so around half the price...). There are nice features that the StarFighter has than the Aura 15 Gen2 doesn't, but are those features worth basically 2x the price..?
While the StarFighter is a much more expensive product, I think the argument would be that it's fairly unique, arguably the highest end Ryzen 6000 developer laptop that an end-user can order globally (but not get delivered, sadly) atm. Comparing the Aura 15 Gen 2:
* One of the biggest spec differences is that the Aura uses a Zen2 based 5700U (Lucienne) vs the StarFighter's Zen3+ based 6800H (Rembrandt) so expect a +50% performance difference on MT workloads: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4156vs4749/AMD-Ryzen-7-...
* iGPU is also a big improvement. The 6800H's GPU is about 70% faster on synthetic and 90% faster on gaming benchmarks: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Vega-8-vs-Radeon-680M_10313_11... - it also has a newer VCN engine that supports AV1 decoding among other things
* The Aura has USB3 vs the Starfighter w/ USB4 (again, thanks to the new Ryzen generation), which will give you 40Gbps transfer rates, support for eGPU enclosures, etc
* Better display panels can be hundreds of dollars more expensive (here's a discussion of a $250 price gap for upgrading to a 4K panel from a few years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/izg598/no_4koled_pa...) - a 600nit vs 300nit display btw, is a world of difference
* 49Wh vs 85Wh battery is a 73% bigger capacity battery. At an equivalent power usage, that'd be the difference between 7h vs 12h of light usage for example and IMO isn't something to scoff at.
* Due I expect primarily due to it's Mg alloy chassis, the Starfighter is actually 250g lighter - 1.4kg vs 1.65kg, which is actually quite impressive for its size and battery capacity. The pogo-pin/removable webcam leads to a sleeker and compact frame that probably helps in shaving off size/weight even if you don't care about the privacy aspect
* While I prefer replaceable SO-DIMMs on my laptops, the Starfighter at least lets you configure w/ 64GB of LPDDR5 so you get the better power efficiency, performance, and weight savings w/o sacrificing upgradability (64GB is the max the Ryzen 6000 platform supports)
* coreboot option vs AMI BIOS - to me this is more of a neat nice to have, but I understand the sort of development commitment/investment in the future this thing is. Here's a discussion on Coreboot for Framework from their forums: https://community.frame.work/t/coreboot-on-the-framework-lap...
* Having been using a Framework w/ a fingerprint sensor that works in Linux for the past half year+ now, I will admit that it's hard to go back to something that doesn't have this, and I'd pay a fair amount extra for this...
Anyway, while you do pay a hefty premium for maxing out the specs (more than the cost of each individual improvement), it actually seems not so egregious when I add it ll up, if only because it seems like no one else is doing it. Of course, this calculus I think changes if delivery gets delayed and/if someone were to release a high-end Ryzen 7040 Linux-friendly laptop (Zen4, RNDA3, Xilinx AI accelerator) before then.
Do you know where there's any hard data on the actual speed of AMD's USB4 implementation in the 6xxx series? Everywhere I've looked, I get "USB4" then a blurb that USB4 can be "up to 40Gb/s" with the more honest stating that only 20Gb/s is actually required to meet the spec requirements.
What does AMD actually implement?
While we're on the topic, why is there basically no public information about Socket FP7 or it's chipset? Nothing on FP7r2 or FP8 either (by the way, upcoming 7xxx mobile chips support all three of these with likely different levels of motherboard capabilities). Why is there not much public for mobile AMD chipsets newer than a decade ago?
I haven't seen benchmarks, but my understanding is to officially claim USB4 support with Windows, 40Gbps and PCIe tunneling support are both required. This PC World article has some real world testing w/ a Ryzen 6000 laptop: https://www.pcworld.com/article/703578/usb4-support-amd-ryze...
I'm sure you can get a BSP contract w/ AMD to get implementation details (or simply have a relationship with a board design partner, but I'm not really sure why there would be an expectation for public information on something that's not really relevant to the general public).
If you spec a Tuxedo Aura 15 Gen2 (https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Linux-Hardware/Notebooks/...) to the same level (not sure what the equivalent to the CPU is for Ryzen though), and although the display isn't 4K its still much less (just over 700, so around half the price...). There are nice features that the StarFighter has than the Aura 15 Gen2 doesn't, but are those features worth basically 2x the price..?