AMD’s Mobile Revival: Redefining the Notebook Business with the Ryzen 9 4900HS (A Review)
by Dr. Ian Cutress on April 9, 2020 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
Comparison of these two CPUs is going to be interesting. Both laptops being tested excel in different ways:
| ASUS Zephyrus G14 vs Razer Blade 15 | ||
| ASUS Zephyrus G14 |
AnandTech | Razer Blade 15-inch |
| Ryzen 9 4900HS | CPU | Core i7-9750H |
| 8 / 16 | Cores / Threads | 6 / 12 |
| 1400 MHz | Idle Frequency | 1100 MHz |
| 3000 MHz | Base Frequency | 2600 MHz |
| 4300 MHz | Rated 1T Turbo | 4500 MHz |
| 4500 MHz | Measured 1T Turbo | 4200 MHz |
| 35 W | TDP Listed | 45 W |
| - | TDP Measured | 35 W |
| - | PL2 Listed | 60 W |
| - | PL2 Measured | 45 W |
| 16 GB DDR4-3200 22-22-22 1T |
DRAM | 16 GB DDR4-2666 19-19-19 2T |
The ASUS device has more cores, and by the looks of our testing, actually turbos to a higher frequency, regardless of the sticker on the box. We’ve already shown that AMD’s Zen 2 can have comparable if not better IPC than Intel’s Coffee Lake refresh, so add that to the more cores, should put every test in AMD’s camp.
What should benefit Intel here is the on-box TDP, of 45 W, compared to the AMD 35 W. When we fired up our usual program for monitoring Intel frequencies, it showed that there is a hard coded BIOS boost up to 60 W, which we thought should give some extra power. However, when the system was actually set to a workload, the peak turbo power was only 45 W, which the system was able to keep for 10-15 seconds. Then it sat back at 35 W, which makes it in line with AMD. This is odd performance from the Intel CPU, however we assume at this level that Razer has made the decisions in order to fit within the thermal profile of the Blade 15 chassis.
If Intel has a lower frequency, fewer cores, and a lower frequency, all for the same power envelope as AMD, then it looks like a slam dunk for AMD.
It is. These systems are built with productivity in mind, and even with benchmarks that are bursty like PCMark, AMD takes the win.
I also took some time to run the Civ 6 AI benchmarks, which performs 10 turns of a late game and averages the turn time. Intel won this test, but I performed it again with the power unplugged and on battery saver mode in Windows. The results were reversed:
This led me to do some more tests without power connected. I’ve separated these out into a different page, combining some CPU and some GPU data.
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Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
Nah you and I know it's not about hiding something - I have those Samsung TVs and they get the same round piece of black tape that all of my Webcams get unless they have a shutter.shady28 - Saturday, April 11, 2020 - link
^^That. Outside of playtime, nobody uses webcams.
That's that moment that you realize 90% of the people here haven't worked much more than burger flipping. Where I work and none of our vendors use them when doing presentations or meetings. It is all screen sharing, file and folder sharing, team or skype chat, etc. In fact, most developers I know actually put a piece of tape over their webcam, just in case.
Icehawk - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
With our push to WFH due to C-19 everyone and their mother is asking us to enable their cameras but I agree, in actual meetings it’s maybe 10% at best that use it. Hell 1/3rd of the people don’t even login properly so you can see who they are.If you are going to include a camera at least integrate a shutter.
shady28 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
I don't even see 10%. I see near 0%, when someone turns on a web cam they instantly get messages saying 'Hey, you know your webcam is on?' - because it serves no purpose in most settings except to distract, annoy, disrupt, and lag.The only place I see it having value are people who want to 'face chat' 'facetime' etc type of scenarios with friends / family. Those are entirely social, and I would say 90% of people using the laptop for personal use don't care about that either (I don't, nor do many others I know). That's what the 2nd cam on your phone / tablet is for - that's where I see it being used, for family and friends.
erple2 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link
Unless there's more than about 15 people in a telecon, we _usually_ always turn on the webcam. In a WFH situation where there's really only 1-3 other people that you see on a daily basis, I find it helpful to continue to "see" my coworkers. I'm older than most of my coworkers (work in software), and I prefer in-person talking than slack or text-based communication, and I find that webcams help keep me more engaged in the particular meeting. Note - most of what we do with a "telecon" includes screensharing, too, but I find it much easier to gauge reactions and the the other non-verbal communications if you can also see each other. So I would agree that a webcam is important.That having been said, I find basically all of the webcam that exist on laptops to be pretty crummy, and thus I use a separate webcam than the one that comes on my work computer (Macbook Pro). Though that doesn't stop my coworkers from using the terribad one that comes on their laptops.
Irata - Friday, April 10, 2020 - link
Even on laptops that have one built in, I used a USB webcam. Much better quality and I know when I can be filmed and when not.The downside is that you are losing a USB port.
Qasar - Friday, April 10, 2020 - link
which could be gained back, and a few more by getting a small usb hub like i did from kensington, 4 ports, 1" x3 " and a short 6 " cable, nice little portable usb 3 hub, and works just fine :-)yeeeeman - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
How is the fan noise situation?1_rick - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
According to a review elsewhere noticeable but not obnoxious (no coil whine etc., just air whooshing). YMMV of course.rrinker - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
Impressive machine - but I have to laugh. OK, they get the (S)pecial 10 watt lower CPU - and then shove about 10 watts of LEDs on the cover....