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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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.