AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS Cezanne Review: Ryzen 5000 Mobile Tested

IGP: 720p Gaming Tests

Testing our Cezanne sample for integrated graphics is a double-edged sword – AMD fully expects this CPU to be paired with a discrete solution in almost all notebook environments, whereas mini-PC designs might be a mix of integrated and discrete. The integrated graphics on this silicon is more geared towards the U-series processors at 15 W, and so that is where the optimizations lie. We encountered a similar environment when we tested Renoir at 35 W last year as well.

In order to enable the integrated graphics on our ASUS ROG Flex X13 system, we disable the GTX 1650 through the device manager. This forces the system to run on the Vega 8 graphics inside, which for this processor runs at 2100 MHz, a +350 MHz jump from the previous generation based on the improved power management and minor manufacturing improvements. We did the same to the other systems in our test suite.

Integrated graphics over the years has been built up from something barely useable in a 2D desktop environment to hardware that can competitively run the most popular eSports titles at good resolutions, medium settings, at playable framerates. In our recent review of AMD’s Ryzen 4000G Desktop APUs, we noted that these were the best desktop APUs that money could buy, held back at this point mostly by the memory bandwidth, but still enabling some good performance. Ultimately modern day integrated graphics has cannibalized the sub-$100 GPU market, and these sorts of processors work great in budget builds. There’s still a way to go on performance, and at least mobile processors help in that regard as more systems push to LPDDR4X memory systems that afford better memory bandwidth.

For our integrated graphics testing, we’re using our lowest configuration for our game comparisons. This typically means the lowest resolution and graphics fidelity settings we can get away with, which to be honest is still a lot better visually than when I used to play Counter Strike 1.5 with my dual core netbook in the late 2000s. From there the goal is to showcase some good graphics performance tied in with CPU performance to see where the limits are – even at 720p on Low settings, some of these processors are still graphics limited.

Despite the Ryzen 9 5980HS having LPDDR4X memory and extra frequency, the performance uplift against the Ryzen 9 4900HS is relatively mediocre – a few FPS at best, or losing a few FPS at worst. This is except for GTA, where the uplift is more ~20%, with the Zen 3 cores helping most here. In most tests it’s an easy win against Intel’s top X^e solution, except in Gears Tactics, which sides very heavily with the Intel solution.

With all that being said, as mentioned, the Ryzen 9 parts here are more likely to be paired with discrete graphics solutions. The ASUS ROG Flow X13 we are using today has a GTX 1650, whereas the ASUS Zephyrus G14 with the 4900HS has an RTX 2060. These scenarios are what really dictate the cooling solution in these systems, as well as how they are both used in workloads that requires CPU and GPU performance.

For any users confused as to why we run at these settings; these are our low 'IGP'-class settings in our CPU Gaming test format. As mentioned in our new CPU Suite article in the middle of last year, our CPU Gaming tests have four sets of settings: 720p Low (or Lower), 1440p Low, 4K Low, and 1080p Maximum. The segment above our lowest this in our suite is 1440p, which for a lot of these integrated GPUs would put numbers into the low double digits, if not lower, which something we've done in the past to massive complaints about why even bothering with such low framerate numbers. The point here is to work from a maximum frame rate, see if the game is even playable to begin with, and then detect where in a game the bottleneck can be; in some of these tests we're still dealing with GPU/DRAM bottlenecks. I've played CSS1.5 and other games at a Lan party on dual core AMD netbooks in the late 2000s, having to use low resolution texture packs to get it even 20 FPS playable. I still had masses amount of fun. From these numbers you can see the best possible frame rates for a given title and engine, and work down from there. It provides a starting point for further directions. These processors more often being paired with discrete solutions anyway, making discussions about IGP performance almost somewhat trivial compared to the rest of the data/