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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ses1984 - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
All those leds are probably 1w or actually a fraction of a watt.ingwe - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
Definitely fractions of a watt. If they were 1 W, I doubt manufacturers would include them. Though I might be wrong on that one given how things seem to be going.N8SLC - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
The LEDs are an option if so concerned.sonny73n - Saturday, April 11, 2020 - link
Yea, LEDs is in trends nowadays, for dumb kids.Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
The market for this is people who are really into the performance enhancing RGB LEDs - and once they can actually buy and drive a car they will have the performance enhancing stickers on their 6th hand Gold HondaGreenReaper - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link
Hopefully they only light up by default if plugged in. Sure, they would still decrease charge rate, but I imagine that would be an acceptable cost for the target audience.BigMamaInHouse - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
CB R20 results are wrong, Great Review like always :-)Ian Cutress - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
Good catch, I think I typed in the PCMark numbers by mistake there.Retycint - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
Probably mixed up the numbers for the Intel and AMD. From what I've seen the AMD should be getting 4000+ for Cinebench R20anactoraaron - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
That's exactly it. My I7-9750h gets around 2200 at 35w and near 3000 at 65w. These are flipped.