If you look at the archived CoreBook X product page , Chuwi previously marketed the laptop as the "CoreBook X 7430U" with mentions of the Ryzen 5 7430U plastered all over the marketing. The company now advertises it as the "CoreBook X Ryzen 5," but the URL still has the original model name. Furthermore, the company changed the chip's specifications to a Ryzen 5 processor with six cores and 12 threads, up to 4.3 GHz, without mentioning the Ryzen 5 7430U specifically but still citing its boost clock speed.
Understandably, manufacturers sometimes have to swap out original components because of supply shortages. It happens more than you think, especially with SSDs. These situations are never ideal, but you should notify the customer of the changes. It's wrong on all levels to go out of the way to blatantly deceive customers. The fiasco will cast a shadow over the entire brand and make customers wonder whether the same practice is occurring with its other products.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom\u2019s Hardware. Although he loves everything that\u2019s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-18/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Zhiye Liu News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
abufrejoval As Zhiye writes, the actual performance difference may be relatively small in terms of CPU power, it's on the iGPU side where things might be a bit different, as the 5xxx chips are still pre-RDNA VLIW or VEGA. Mostly you'd have to use old drivers, that are no longer actively maintained, but these aren't gaming machines and thermal budgets might kill all fun. It's also DDR4 vs DDR5, single channel is crippling for both iGPUs, soldered RAM sounds likely. I've got Mini-ITX boards with both generations as 8-cores and a bit more flexibility on the TDP settings side and those older Barcelos are really not bad at all… at the proper price which was very close to Intel Atoms much slower when I got mine. While cheating like that is quite simply criminal, if they are cheap enough, you might still not be able to get something better elsewhere. Don't count on BIOS updates, software support or spare parts, so going for a used laptop may be another way to get something you can still afford. Reply
Spuwho If you understand how many of these Chinese brands work, their feedback makes sense. Chuwi simply contracts out production of their designs to some fabrication facility, and they contract out to another company for fulfillment. One of the issues is, no one at Chuwi is doing any kind of QA and based on the BIOS changes,or they probably didn't even know they had been duped. Bribery is huge in this production market. Remember what happened to Abbott Labs when they sourced heparin from a Chinese supplier. When they had a swine flu epidemic, they tried to substitute it with geese liver byproducts and didnt tell anyone. Several people died in the US and EU. When SpaceX had a helium bottle break loose on a Falcon 9, it was traced to a US supplier who had received its bulk alloys from a Chinese supplier who bribed the import agent to waive it through, even though it was substandard. Back to Chuwi, they probably aren't set up to deal with large returns (most arent) as they usually only allocate a small percentage of production for warranty returns to keep the prices down. So to process a large block of returns like this, they have to pay for another batch from a new supplier and then probably find a new fulfillment operator since they may have been involved. I wouldnt expect anything to happen quickly on the customers behalf. It might take Chuwi 6 months just to get a new production contract in place. Reply
usertests abufrejoval said: As Zhiye writes, the actual performance difference may be relatively small in terms of CPU power, it's on the iGPU side where things might be a bit different, as the 5xxx chips are still pre-RDNA VLIW or VEGA. Nope. The 7430U is Barcelo-R, a refresh of a refresh of Cezanne (Zen 3). It's essentially a Ryzen 5 5625U. While the 5500U is Lucienne, a Renoir (Zen 2) refresh. So both of these are using DDR4 (or maybe LPDDR4(X)). They both have Vega 7 graphics clocked at up to 1800 MHz, perhaps with identical performance. So it is the CPU side where you'll see the performance difference. The 7430U has 16 MiB L3 cache and a unified CCX, while the 5500U has 8 MiB L3 cache split into two CCXs. So a single core can only access 4 MiB of L3 on the 5500U, but that quadruples to 16 MiB with the 7430U. Reply
abufrejoval usertests said: Nope. The 7430U is Barcelo-R, a refresh of a refresh of Cezanne (Zen 3). It's essentially a Ryzen 5 5625U. While the 5500U is Lucienne, a Renoir (Zen 2) refresh. So both of these are using DDR4 (or maybe LPDDR4(X)). They both have Vega 7 graphics clocked at up to 1800 MHz, perhaps with identical performance. So it is the CPU side where you'll see the performance difference. The 7430U has 16 MiB L3 cache and a unified CCX, while the 5500U has 8 MiB L3 cache split into two CCXs. So a single core can only access 4 MiB of L3 on the 5500U, but that quadruples to 16 MiB with the 7430U. Should have checked… completely forgot about that nasty AMD habit of mixing older stuff into those renamings. And these are both previous gen chips… I never had a Zen 2, my points of comparison are 5800/5825U (Cezanne/Barceló) vs a Phoenix/Hawk Point, where I have two 15 Watt laptops (Cezanne+Phoenix) and two 25-45 Watt Mini-ITX boards (Barceló+Hawk Point)to compare generational differences and TDP scaling. There the CPUs showed much less generational differences than TDP budgets, while RDNA vs. VEGA was more noticeable. It means I also never had dual CCX CCDs/APUs, started Zen on Zen 3, haven't got beyond Zen 4 yet, but to my understanding all L3 caches are shared, not just across CCX but also CCDs, even at EPYC proportions. Latencies are bound to increase, but it's still way faster than RAM so cache difference is 1:2 not 1:4, but 16MB total does seem awfully small on a Zen. So yes, more of a cheat, at the right price perhaps still not a disaster, unless they are single channel or stuck at 8GB. I have an Alder-Lake laptop that came with 8GB DDR4 3200 soldered and a single SO-DIMM slot with an 8GB module installed. I replaced the latter with a 32GB module for a total of 40GB, but the important part was that the iGPU is exclusively using the dual channel lower part of the physical RAM, while the single channel upper parts still run VMs much batter than NVMe paging. I run Windows 11 IoT LTSC (and Kubuntu) on my Chuwi 12.1 with 6GB of RAM and a quad 2GHz Goldmont Atom mostly to prove that it can be done and because that screen makes it a great Kindle e-Book reader, even a Lucienne will rip it apart. Haven't had a look at Chuwi for years now and I am quite surprised how big and local (e.g. Germany, Spain Italy, but not France!) they've become. But with supplies drying up even up at the bottom, where they drew their original strength from left-overs, Chuwi is bound to hit an existential wall. It's sad they waste their engineering and creative talent for desperate measures, I'm afraid they won't be alone or last much longer. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/popular-budget-friendly-chinese-brand-exposed-for-shocking-cpu-scam-in-its-laptops-advertised-cpu-secretly-swapped-for-an-outdated-chip#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.