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 ESTGPU Benchmarks
Graphics is going to be a bit more challenging than the CPU tests. Games that test both the CPU and the GPU to the limits are going to find different tradeoffs with each of these systems.
The ASUS Zephyrus G14 is smaller and more thermally limited. It doesn’t have an AMD GPU, so it can’t take advantage of AMD’s new features like SmartShift that can manage power between the CPU and GPU. It technically has the stronger CPU, and while the graphics card is the same, ASUS has the Max-Q version of the RTX 2060, which is optimized for power and efficiency, and exhibits lower clocks. Technically the base frequency of this configuration is higher, at 975 MHz, the turbo is lower at 1185 MHz, and the GDDR6 memory is a lot lower at 1375 MHz (11Gbps/pin).
The Razer Blade 15 has the bigger chassis, and we assume is built for a larger overall TDP. While it has the ‘weaker’ CPU of the two, with fewer cores and lower frequency, it is paired with a full-fat GTX 2060 graphics card. We looked at the data for this card, and it exhibits a lower 960 MHz base frequency, it has the higher 1200 MHz turbo, 1750 MHz memory, and has a direct PCIe 3.0 x16 connection with the processor, while the ASUS system is only an x8.
For our tests, I’ve taken an older test (CS:Source), a couple of modern tests (Civ 6, FFXV) and a new test in Borderlands 3. We used the following settings:
- Final Fantasy, 1080p Fullscreen, Standard Quality
- Borderlands 3, 1080p, Medium Pre-Set
- Civilization 6, 1080p Maximum Preset No MSAA / 1K Occlusion Textures
- Civilization 6, 1080p Maximum Preset 8x MSAA / 2K Occlusion Textures
- Counter Strike Source, 1080p Maximum
In Final Fantasy, the results were around 10% different, favoring the AMD system.
Borderlands 3 was actually fairly close, with less than 5% between them, but still favoring AMD. I did notice that we were fairly close to the cutoff here between being CPU limited and GPU limited.
Civilization 6 is well known for constantly updating and being optimized, and here it seems the more powerful GPU wins out by a large 10 FPS margin.
However, if we add in some more compute and detail, we move to a more GPU limited scenario where the results are essentially equal.
Counter Strike is an odd one, given how old the game is. Here the game favors the Intel machine, with a ~10% advantage.
Like in the CPU tests, I did some of these gaming tests with the power cord removed and on battery saver mode. Results were interesting, to say the least, and can be found on the next page.
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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....