ASUS China has distributed Tianxuan 5 Pro laptop review samples to media outlets in the region—a video evaluation was uploaded to Bilibili yesterday, as discovered and shared by 9550pro. The reviewer, "Wheat Milk Mitsu," put his sampled laptop's AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX processor through the proverbial wringer—with benchmarking exercises conducted in Cinebench R23, PCMark 10, Counter Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro Exodus and more. The Ryzen 9 7940HX "Dragon Range" APU was last spotted in the specification sheets for ASUS TUF Gaming A16 (2024) laptop models—the mobile processor is essentially an underclocked offshoot of Team Red's Ryzen 9 7945HX. AMD's Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" series has received most of the attention in Western markets—we only see occasional coverage of older Zen 4 "Dragon Range" parts.

AMD's slightly weaker Ryzen 9 7940HX processor is no slouch when compared to its higher clock sibling, despite a lower base clock (2.4 GHz) and Turbo (5.2 GHz)—the Tianxuan (China's equivalent to TUF Gaming) branded laptop was outfitted with a GeForce RTX 4070 mobile GPU and 16 GB of DDR5 5600 RAM. Synthetic benchmark results in Cinebench R23 indicate a marginal 3.7% difference, and multi-core figures show an even smaller difference; 1%. The two Dragon Range APUs exhibited largely the same performance in gaming scenarios, although the 7945HX pulls ahead in Counter-Strike 2 frame rate stakes—328 vs. 265 at 1440p, and 378 vs. 308 at 1080p. AMD's convoluted naming schemes make it difficult to keep track of its many mobile offerings—a 7840HX SKU could join the Dragon Range family in Q1 2024. A few Western media outlets believe that a smattering of these parts are destined for global markets, but Team Red's Marketing HQ has not bothered to announce them in any official capacity. Strange times.

The recently leaked Windows 11 build appears to include certain optimizations for hybrid architecture processors. The developer preview provides a small improvement to Intel Lakefield processors and that boost will likely increase when Windows 11 officially launches. The Intel Lakefield processor family features a hybrid core design with 1 big core and 4 small cores, this is similar to the Apple M1 and similar hybrid designs are expected from AMD in the future. The Intel Lakefield Core i7-L16G7 CPU was tested by HotHardware and they measured performance improvements of 2% - 8% in various synthetic benchmarks including GeekBench 5, Cinebench R23, and PCMark 10. These performance improvements will benefit Intel's upcoming 12th generation Alder Lake processors and their Raptor Lake successors along with AMD's rumored Strix Point APUs.

UL Corporation today announces that two new benchmark tests that will soon be coming to PCMark 10. The first is our eagerly awaited PCMark 10 battery life benchmark. The second is a new benchmark test based on Microsoft Office applications.

PCMark 10 Battery Life benchmark
Battery life is one of the most important criteria for choosing a laptop, but consumers and businesses alike find it hard to compare systems fairly. The challenge, of course, is that battery life depends on how the device is used. Unfortunately, manufacturers' claims are often based on unrealistic scenarios that don't reflect typical use. Figures for practical, day-to-day battery life, which are usually much lower, are rarely available.

Futuremark today rolled out a minor update to PCMark 10. Version 1.0.1403 does not affect comparability to benchmark scores from previous versions of PCMark 10. It includes an updated SystemInfo to version 5.3.629 with support for newer hardware, and three bug fixes. To begin with, a bug that prevents the Web-browsing video workload test from starting in some cases, was addressed. A bug that prevented the Web-browsing test series to start on some machines with proxy-server configuration, has been fixed. Data-logging for App Start-up, Spreadsheets, Writing, and Web Browsing workloads, has been improved. Grab the update from the link below.DOWNLOAD: Futuremark PCMark 10 v1.0.1403

Futuremark, a UL company, has made available today the much-awaited update to their PCMark 8 benchmark suite. PCMark benchmarks measure complete system performance using tests based on real-world apps and activities. In PCMark 10, these tests include everyday tasks such as browsing websites, video chats, written documents and spreadsheets, photo and video editing, 3D modelling and simulations, and for the first time a full gaming benchmark.

PCMark 8 catered more to the day-to-day working professional than the ever-growing PC gaming market, and their own 3DMark program thus more popular in usage among enthusiasts - including here on TechPowerUp. With PCMark 10, Futuremark has added 3DMark Firestrike as part of the PCMark 10 Extended benchmark. Currently missing from the suite however is a dedicated storage and battery test which Futuremark clarified is "being worked upon", and which will be released as an update shortly.

The PC Mark benchmarking software is one of the mainstays of system benchmarking. Although it isn't as attractive to enthusiasts and gamers due to the lack of such visually impressive showcases like Time Spy, it stands as a more complete suite for users looking to thoroughly examine their systems' performance. And it now offers a more complete package even for gamers and enthusiasts, since it does include a graphical, game-like benchmark in FireStrike.

Based on real-world apps and activities, the tests in PC Mark 10 work with some included third-party programs as part of the benchmark suite to reflect common tasks performed in the modern workplace. Futuremark is releasing three versions of PCMark 10, the Basic, Advanced, and Professional Editions, with different tiers of features for each. The Basic version will be free of charge (available to download on June 22nd), while the Advanced version will retail for $29.99 (and will be available on Steam.) You can read our review of PCMark's latest iteration right here, courtesy of our own VSG.