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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Dodozoid - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
Yes, to the external one. Vega 8 gpu-z screen says pci-e 4.0 16x.realbabilu - Saturday, April 11, 2020 - link
I saw the absent of hdd 2.5 inch tray. Maybe it is why asus can have 14 inch form instead usual 15 inch form i7-9750H. The weight almost same with my cheap Msi 9RCX i7-9750H notebook around 1.6-1.7 kgs. Still 10H battery life and those raw power nailed it.oleyska - Saturday, April 11, 2020 - link
On the IGP page (first) you say L3 cache, it has bigger L2 cache and not L3 :)Also, what IF\Memory frequency does the 3950X run at in the latency test ?
Could it be compared at 1600 vs 1600 ? what if IF and memory is at 1800 ?
really good write-up!
Hrel - Saturday, April 11, 2020 - link
I wonder how much of this battery life gain that's being attributed to AMD is actually thanks to Nvidia. RTX 2060 shouldn't be compared to RTX 2060 MaxQ, that's pretty ridiculous. I'm willing to bet that's most of that extra 5 hours. Still, good on AMD, but why misrepresent it?SolarBear28 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
You think 12 hours of battery life is possible using the discrete GPU? Its using the integrated vega graphics for the video playback and web battery tests.Santoval - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
It is extremely disappointing that a laptop of the caliber of Zephyrus G14 has a QLC based SSD. Who cares about the 1 TB of storage when as a trade-off you get piss-poor performance and the piss-poorest of endurance? QLC was originally employed in largely read intensive servers and now it shows up in SSDs for ... gaming laptops. Seriously Asus?Deicidium369 - Monday, April 13, 2020 - link
I have one of Samsung's first QLC drives, it has been used continuously since new, and has zero issues. Also have one the early OCZ 120GB drives - bought the day it dropped - has been used continuously since new - pulled it and reformatted it and tested - still 0 bad cells. So the whole endurance thing is WAY overblown...AntonErtl - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
Thank you for the review. A very good showing for the Ryzen 4xxxH series, now awaiting U reviews:-).There is one thing that I find disappointing: If I understand your review correctly, both memory controllers run at the same clock, so putting in a slower DIMM also slows down the soldered-in RAM. With the memory controllers and the infinity fabric clocks locked together, I should have expected that, but has AMD not loosened the lock recently? In any case, what I would love to see from laptops with partially soldered-in memory in the future would be that they soldered in LPDDR4x memory for better bandwidth (not sure if it saves power), and an independently clocked DDR4 DIMM. Maybe we will see it in Ryzen 5xxx APUs.
Curiousland - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
A general comment that most people missed the point -- Ryzen 4000 shows the potential of some optimization work on 7nm process as well as on the zen2 design and can improve when comparing the performance to the early version of zen2 on desktop ryzen 3000!This implies the further potential performance improve of zen3 ryzen 4000 can bring to the market even before they jump on TSMC 5nm for zen4.
Curiousland - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
I guess this is why Dr. Su said they are focusing on chip design architecture now more than rushing to next 5nm node. They must have seen plenty of potential of improvement along on 7nm for now already.