Low Power Performance

Truth be told, I didn’t go into this review with low power testing in mind. These sorts of laptops, while capable of driving high performance on the go, are essentially expected to be connected to the power socket when performance is needed. Even the best ultraportables struggle for battery life when everything is whirring at full tilt. Nonetheless, after my own experiences of 3 hours of gaming on power with a Matebook X Pro and a high screen brightness, it is a genuine use case.

For these tests, the settings and software are the same as normal, but the only change is that the power cable has been removed and the power setting in Windows has been moved to ‘Best Battery Life’. We’re still in the Recommended Power Plan and not the Battery Saver Plan. What this does is force the OS and system to manage its power appropriately between CPU and GPU. In these circumstances being able to distribute the power where it is needed most can be a very critical factor in getting a project finished, or having a game that is playable.

Our tests here, due to time, are the following:

  • Civilization 6, 1080p MSAA 8x, AI Test (On Battery, Battery Saver)
  • Borderlands 3, 1080p Medium (On Battery, Battery Saver)
  • Counter Strike Source, 1080p Max (On Battery, Battery Saver)

Civilization 6 AI Test Low Power

So previously Intel had a very slight advantage in AI turn time here, but as we move to a power limited scenario, AMD takes a more substantial lead – over 10%.

Borderlands 3 (1080p Medium) Low Power

Where we had a small 5% win for AMD in the full power scenario, the gap is a bit bigger percentage wise for AMD in the low power scenario. It is still under 30 FPS, which is probably unplayable for BL3.

Counter Strike Source (1080p Max) Low Power

Now CSS is a little odd. When I’m in Battery Saver mode but plugged in, I get the full power FPS value. But the minute I take it out, on the Razer Blade, something goes a bit mental and we end up being limited to 60 FPS. V-Sync is disabled in every setting I think of, and yet there doesn’t seem to be a way of getting off of 60 FPS.

Ultimately in every scenario, in a few small tests, where Intel might have been ahead on wall power, AMD pulls ahead on limited power.

ASUS Zephyrus G14 (Ryzen 9) vs Razer Blade (Core i7): GPU Testing the Ryzen 9 4900HS Integrated Graphics
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  • Curiousland - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link

    US is adding more restrictions on TSMC to ship chips to Hwawei which is one of the biggest 7nm and 5nm customers of TSMC. So like it or not TSMC will have a lot more capacity and to rely on AMD's business. So, yeah, TSMC and AMD will work more closely ever before.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/us-prepares-crackd...
  • Namisecond - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Like your article link says, that's more likely to hurt TSMC and it's western customers like AMD, Nvidia and Apple more than it will Huawei. At this point, I don't think it's going to happen. Even if it does, it won't affect contracts already in place and products already in production. Remember, 18 month lead time.
  • JayNor - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link

    this is partially an Intel product, and they thank you.

    " a 1 TB Intel 660p NVMe SSD, and an Intel Wi-Fi 6 solution."
  • dguy6789 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    What do you mean? Intel's 9900K is faster than anything AMD has in gaming including AMD's 4 grand CPU. And that is just 14nm vs 7nm.

    AMD won't have a better gaming CPU than the 9900K 2 years from now.
  • Qasar - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    and the 9900k only has the performance lead for one reason, clock speed, which is the only reason intel has any performance lead right now, while using more power to get that performance. clock the cpus at the same speed, and see what happens.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Outside of gaming, the 3700X performs as good or better than the 9900k more often than not, all while the 9900k draws a massive 60% more power. In gaming benchmarks the 9900k is ahead by about 5% at 1080p using a 2080Ti. At that point it is the difference between 300fps & 315fps. No way that you or I will ever be able to tell the difference.
  • schujj07 - Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - link

    Edit: The 9900k has a 3.6GHz base and 5GHz boost clock. 3700X has 3.6GHz base and 4.4GHz boost. Even with a 13.5% higher boost clock, see typically in single threaded applications, the 9900k is only barely able to beat out the 3700X in some single threaded applications. Difference is usually 3% on average. Normalized for clock speed Zen 2 has about an 8% IPC advantage over Sky Lake and its derivatives.
  • marrakech - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    https://www.dell.com/en-nz/work/shop/workstations/...
    https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Xeon-W-...
  • marrakech - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link

    nice prediction ,
    just as an information i seen some dude soend 6000 $ for an intel xeon w workstation the best 8 core mobile intel and its still slower then my 4800H cpu
    total cost of laptop after ram upgrade 1180$
  • jgood13 - Monday, February 22, 2021 - link

    I don't think this is going to prove to be true...

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