Redefining the laptop business with the Ryzen 9 4900HS (a review)

At every moment in the history of AMD’s notebook portfolio, we’ve been there to document the ups and downs. Five years ago, AMD was definitely suffering from a combination of poor platform and poor laptop designs for the market budget. Last year, AMD won a design victory on Microsoft Surface, and now 2020 is set to be another significant step in this market, with the new Ryzen Mobile 4000 series. With more than 100 designs won this year for the new line of processors. At 7nm, we have the first halo product under review: the ASUS Zephyrus G14, with an 8-core Ryzen 9 4900HS under the hood. We are comparing it to an equivalent 15-inch Razer Blade, and it is very clear that AMD can take the lead in many tests and be very competitive in others.

The Laptop and Ryzen Mobile 4000 Market

One of the strongest elements for the growth of the PC market in recent years is the notebook market. Users have been updating their mobile PCs more frequently than their desktops, especially when new form factors deliver more performance in thinner, lighter designs, with new features like faster Wi-Fi, high-resolution displays, and storage. fast high capacity. All of which, in turn, has led to a faster update cycle.

These new form-factor designs, such as slim and lightweight, or 2-in-1, are powered by high-performance components that can operate efficiently at a wide spectrum of performance levels, to deliver performance for games and work when as needed, or to turn off to save energy when on the road or on an airplane. The cost of these new form factor devices has dropped to something more palatable to the average user, but for quite a few years AMD hardware wasn’t even in this market.

Dr. Lisa Su in an AMD Ryzen mobile presentation

By 2020, AMD expects to be at the forefront of victories in notebook design, due to two main features of the new Ryzen Mobile 4000 strategy: high-performance components and OEM co-design. When OEMs start spending more money on designing higher profile systems for a specific processor, such as the ASUS Zephyrus G14 with a Ryzen 9 that we have to test, it is clear that the hardware underneath should offer something the market wants.

In total, there are eleven of AMD’s new Ryzen Mobile 4000 “Renoir” CPUs, divided into the 15W and 45W markets. The main CPUs of each offer up to eight Zen 2 cores, integrated Vega 8 graphics and the main differences between the two sets will be the base frequencies.

All 15W CPUs are commonly known as “U Series”, while 35-45 processors are known as “H Series”. We can use these terms interchangeably.

Ryzen 7 15 W processors offer eight cores in that little thermal envelope. This means that, in full use, each core will only have access to less than 2 W of power, and the system is still expected to be north of 2.2 GHz. We have seen that Ryzen desktop processors reach 3.0 GHz at less of 3 W each, and these moving parts are likely to be the best containers for energy efficiency.

45W processors are primarily aimed at higher performance systems, and the earliest laptops with this hardware will be combined with discrete graphics, providing systems that add up to 100W or more. For each H processor there is a corresponding HS processor, which offers similar or nearly similar specifications to the H processor, but at 10W less. As mentioned above, these CPUs are “special” as OEMs have to work with AMD and meet specific hardware design criteria that will be given to HS models. ASUS has an exclusive through Q2 and Q3 of 2020 in these with the Zephyrus G14, however, we hope that more models will come for the Christmas system. These HS systems will be part of AMD’s Continuous Validation Laboratories project, with a laboratory in Austin and a laboratory in Shanghai, which pre-tests the compatibility of any drivers or software updates before they are distributed, to maintain device performance .

AMD didn’t just magically get here. There have been several difficult years in the last decade on your notebook platform.

2016: A record low for AMD on laptops

In 2016, we reviewed five laptops at the same time, all with the latest AMD mobile platform at the time, Carrizo. These systems were built by AMD’s key OEM partners at the time, such as HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba, and were targeting the $ 500 to $ 900 market. At the time, AMD was struggling with a product that wasn’t as good, and although it was better than the previous generation, it still struggled to be competitive.

One thing that shot AMD in the foot was that AMD unified the design between its dual-channel memory Carrizo parts and the low-cost, single-channel Carrizo-L parts, allowing original equipment manufacturers to build Regular systems with a single memory channel to save costs. The OEMs were aware of this paralyzed performance, but allowed the main processors in cheaper devices. These devices also ended up with low-quality displays, mechanical hard drives, and were large and bulky because the user on a low budget could only afford this level of design. It ended up being a vicious circle of negative comments – we covered the entire story in a 24-page deep dive that you can read here.

A slide from AMD in 2015, showing the target markets

As part of that analysis, we provided a number of possible solutions to the problem, including the fact that AMD should design its platforms for different segments and define its own market, rather than merging them into one. We also suggest that AMD should take a leap and create iconic $ 1,500 referral systems for its OEM partners to provide a foundation on which to build high-end designs. I also suggested that original equipment manufacturers not come cheap and see how $ 10 more in SATA storage can really affect the user experience.

A primary solution to this problem was that AMD should build a portable processor that is not only competitive, but also aims to beat the competition. At the time of Carrizo, we were still wondering what AMD had up their sleeve: The company had started talking about Zen and returning to the high-performance market, and we heard promises that it would also hit the laptop form factor. The company received high praise for its first-generation Zen desktop product, which increased when we saw the launch of Zen 2 on TSMC’s leading 7nm process node. Mobile chips, by contrast, have been the last of each generation to show, as desktop and server products take advantage of multiple chiplet designs, taking advantage of benefits such as increased performance and frequency grouping at reduced costs, while that mobile processors remain monolithic.

The first new mobile APUs, known as Raven Ridge and Picasso, combined Zen cores with Vega graphics, in a 14nm / 12nm process, and headed into the 15W laptop market. These achieved a variety of successes, by virtue of carrying performance at a more enjoyable level, and AMD partners using the hardware in some major key designs, such as the Lenovo Thinkpad. The Thinkpad is one of the biggest wins here, because AMD has always been very successful in the commercial market – this is where a company could buy 2,500 laptops for its employees to work on, but they also require additional layers of management and administration to work. within the corporate environment. Despite the successes, Raven Ridge and Picasso still had two key downsides compared to Intel’s equivalent hardware: raw performance and battery life. This was shown in one of the last products to appear on Picasso, making Microsoft Surface 3 available in AMD and Intel formats with identical battery size and chassis.

Our review of Microsoft Surface 3, which compares AMD’s Picasso-based Ryzen 7 with Intel’s 10nm-based Core i7, has been one of the best A vs. laptop comparisons. B in recent memory. For the 16GB / 512GB variants, Intel got a premium of $ 100 but offered Windows 10 Pro, Wi-Fi 6, and LPDDR4X-3733 memory, compared to Windows 10 Home, Wi-Fi 5, and DDR4-2400. The overall conclusion was firmly on Intel’s side, in terms of CPU performance, power efficiency, and battery life. But ultimately, here was AMD’s big design victory, a premium laptop model.

In for victory: 2020

This brings us to today’s new hardware. AMD has sparked the “Renoir” platform since CES earlier this year, combining its new Zen 2 cores with updated Vega graphics in TSMC’s cutting-edge 7nm process. What surprised us about the original announcement was the depth AMD wanted to drive – up to eight cores in a 15W design, also at competitive frequencies. The only way Intel can put more than four cores in a portable processor is to go up to 45W support. AMD has been presenting us with some big benchmark gains over Intel, along with a 2-fold increase in efficiency generation in generation and new power management technology that will eliminate the issues that plagued battery life in previous iterations of designs using AMD processors.

At CES, AMD boasted that the company would have a dozen Ryzen Mobile 4000 ‘Renoir’ systems on the shelves within the quarter, and more than 100 designs by the end of 2020. Recent global events may have lengthened that somewhat. Time, but we did see what these Ryzen Mobile 4000 laptops would look like. AMD put their cards on the table and made it very clear that their laptop partners were now fully on board the Ryzen Mobile train, after successfully delivering Raven Ridge and Picasso. at a regular cadence, with much better performance and increased demand, OEMs were better suited for AMD’s roadmaps and what the performance claims are, enough to put significant resources into halo hardware development From first line. If Microsoft were confident enough to put a Picasso to the surface, then other OEMs should line up. And at CES in January, everyone did, and OEM partners were eager to showcase the new AMD systems.

One of the highlights of CES was the ASUS Zephyrus G14. This device, even without being for sale, won numerous media awards for showcasing what the new AMD platform can do. In a 14-inch chassis, the hardware combined a top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 4900HS processor with 8 cores, an NVIDIA RTX 2060 with Max-Q graphics card, Wi-Fi 6, NVMe storage, and a 1080p 120Hz IPS display with FreeSync support. , all within a small form factor. AMD wanted to point out that users would have to invest in a more bulky 15-inch laptop from Intel to get this performance, while ASUS focused on the new ‘HS’ processor model, which essentially meant that the company worked with AMD to Design the device, but it also conforms to a series of AMD standards and will be part of an AMD standards program. Not only that, but ASUS has an exclusive on HS processors for six months. The benefit of the HS is a 35W power envelope, with a frequency similar to that of the 45W hardware, but at a lower power. It also has 6536 holes in the top cover, which will have adjustable LEDs to run animations or logos.

This is also the system that AMD was able to test for our first review. We are going to compare it with a very similar system from Intel, a 15-inch Razer Blade with a Core i7-9750H and RTX 2060.

Dell G5 15 SE with 45 W Ryzen-H

Other devices shown at CES include ASUS TUF laptops, which were more of a 15-inch style gaming laptop, so we’ve also heard of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7, which uses the Ryzen U-series 15W processor. first line in an ultra portable Design like. There’s also the Dell G5 15 SE, which looks like a workstation system paired with a Radeon RX 5000M series graphics card, as well as the Acer Swift 3, which is another ultra-portable 15W design. You can see the range of laptops that were part of the launch cycle in our coverage here:

A quick overview of Ryzen Mobile 4000 laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell and MSI

In our review today, we are testing the Ryzen 9 4900 HS, inside the ASUS Zephyrus G14 that AMD has supplied for review. This unit is a 14-inch device with a Pantone-Calibrated 1080p 120Hz display with Freesync, featuring an RTX 2060 with Max-Q discrete graphics card, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 1TB Intel 660p NVMe SSD, Intel Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and a 78 Wh battery.

The ASUS Zephyrus G14, as tested, is priced at $ 1,449. There is a 4K version with Ryzen 7 for £ 1600.

For comparison, we chose one of the most successful Intel comparison units, the 15-inch Razer Blade. This device has a 45W Core i7-9750H, with the complete RTX 2060, 16GB of DDR4-2666, a 512GB NVMe Liteon SSD, a 15-inch G-Sync 1080p 144Hz display, Thunderbolt 3 and 80 Wh battery.

This 15-inch Razer Blade is currently for sale for $ 1679.

These two systems are similar, with a few key differences. Where the Razer Intel has six cores, the ASUS AMD has eight, but the Razer Intel has a higher TDP CPU and graphics card. The ASUS AMD has faster memory and a larger SSD, but the Razer Intel has a higher refresh rate display. Both are designed as systems that can provide power when working or gaming, with AMD arguing that Intel cannot provide this level of performance in the ASUS Zephyrus G14’s 14-inch form factor.

This review will look at the Ryzen 9 4900 HS processor, how it works under different workloads and with different memory configurations, as well as an analysis on the new AMD halo system.