is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Framework CEO Nirav Patel said he would deliver “the holy grail for gamers” with the Framework Laptop 16. In 2023, he suggested it’d be the first consumer notebook to fulfil the promise of modular, upgradable graphics cards like a desktop PC. We at The Verge were skeptical, because the last time we heard someone tell that story, it ended in lawsuits and forced arbitration.
But today, some eighteen months after shipping the Framework Laptop 16, the company has done what no laptop maker has done in modern memory, if ever: it’s created a newer, faster discrete graphics card you can easily swap into its existing laptop.
An exploded view of Framework’s Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics module. Image: Framework
In 2024, that laptop originally shipped with a optional AMD Radeon RX 7700S, with AMD’s support, using a clever expansion bay system designed to be futureproof. (More details here on how it works.) Now, Nvidia is on board too, letting you purchase a mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 8GB that you can physically swap in as little as two minutes.
That’s right: you can even swap between AMD and Nvidia. Framework says it doesn’t have final benchmarks, but says you’ll see a 30 to 40 percent uplift from AMD’s 7700S to Nvidia’s 5070, and it’ll come with a revised cooling solution that features fans with a new blade design and Honeywell PTM7950 thermal interface material.
Like the 7700S, the new 5070 will have 100 watts of sustained power and cooling to work with; not as much as beefier gaming laptops, but more than thinner machines typically get.
Here’s how the GPU slides in and out — after undoing six easily accessible screws. Image: Framework Image: Framework
In the end, it wasn’t that hard to convince Nvidia to sign on, Framework CEO Nirav Patel tells The Verge. “They saw the success of the company, and it was clear we were an up and coming startup worth working with,” he says. Framework began working with Nvidia in early 2024, he recalls, not long after the Framework 16 began to ship. “We were able to clear that hurdle just through the success of the product,” he says, though he won’t share any sales numbers with me.
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