AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS Torpedoes Intel's Core i9 Mobile Lineup, Fastest Mobile Processor

[TheLostSwede]

Sadly the Zephyrus G14 is WAY too expensive in Sweden once you add the local markup and VAT. Was going to get one, but I can only afford the base config and I'm not interested in the GTX 1650 Max-Q. For some reason the Ryzen 5 4600H is not available with a better GPU option. Thanks Asus...

 

[ARF]

An integrated webcam would be useless when a streamer/collaborator would just use a higher-quality USB 3.0 device that you can freely position.

14" is a good portable size. I've been waiting for more powerful, compact solutions, similar to the Razer Blade Stealth with a GTX 1650.

The panel in this is a 144 Hz IPS, albeit slower response time. May not be used for competition, but it's still manageable for on-the-road gaming.

For a traveller who is a streamer as you've described, yes.
But for someone like me, these ones without a webcam are no-go. No integrated webcam, no fun, just more problems because you need to occupy a USB port.
Come on, look at how smartphones develop in recent years - top notch, integrated in the screen camera, integrated and invisible fingerprint scanner, etc beauties.

I need the webcam for messaging and chat apps.
Skype, conference calls, meetings, etc stuff.

Sadly the Zephyrus G14 is WAY too expensive in Sweden once you add the local markup and VAT. Was going to get one, but I can only afford the base config and I'm not interested in the GTX 1650 Max-Q. For some reason the Ryzen 5 4600H is not available with a better GPU option. Thanks Asus...

You can always buy it in Germany or another country where it's cheaper. From some US states, you can take it with 0% VAT.

 

[TheLostSwede]

You can always buy it in Germany or another country where it's cheaper. From some US states, you can take it with 0% VAT.

Very funny dude...


On the other hand, it does come with a GTX 1650Ti, but is it the TU117 or TU116 based GPU? I thought it was the Max-Q, but apparently I was mistaken.

 

[Cheeseball]

For a traveller who is a streamer as you've described, yes.
But for someone like me, these ones without a webcam are no-go. No integrated webcam, no fun, just more problems because you need to occupy a USB port.
Come on, look at how smartphones develop in recent years - top notch, integrated in the screen camera, integrated and invisible fingerprint scanner, etc beauties.

I need the webcam for messaging and chat apps.
Skype, conference calls, meetings, etc stuff.

Implementing a higher-quality front-facing webcam is just added cost, especially if one won't be using it often. Heck, the majority of laptop webcams are only 2MP (720p) or 5MP (1080p) with no special controls.

The Zephyrus G14 is probably not aimed at your general usage, but the upcoming Lenovo Flex 14/15 with the U-series would be.

 

[watzupken]

I didn’t have much doubt that the performance would be there, as the process advantage should play out. Intel is probably pushing its 14nm+++ beyond the optimum power mark to keep performance gains (and sales) coming. What I am the most curious about is battery life and power efficiency. If that is good, then AMD has finally arrived in the mobile space. Again, with a process advantage, there’s no reason this shouldn’t be the case, but that is all in their execution.

The battery life should be good assuming laptop manufacturers don't gimp the battery in the first place.

I agree that Intel is out of ace in their sleeves in this case. The 14nm is clearly outclassed by 7nm no matter how you cut it. On the desktop space, Intel may still be able to push clockspeed and get single core advantage, but at the expense of immense power requirement which I believe is closing in on 300W with an all core turbo. On the laptop space, they do not have the luxury of pulling ridiculous amount of power. So try as they can with ridiculous boost marketing, independent benchmarks will reveal the weakness, especially when the load is sustained.

In this case, I feel torpedoed is a mild way of putting it. If we look at pricing and performance as a whole, AMD basically just nuked Intel. I believe Intel can only respond with price cuts since they lost the performance crown.

Looks like that Gigabyte Aero 15 is throttled badly. The GE65 does have good thermals (similar to the Acer Predator Helios 300 with the same specs) from what I've read about it.

This highlights the problem that Intel is facing now. As they bump up clockspeed to try to compete, their processor will increasingly not suit a light weight laptop.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Damn!!!!!!!!!

From PCworlds review

I had to go look back at 9700k results out of curiosity since it seems none of their owners took part in the R20 benchmark..... it seems to score less than 4000 at stock.

Pretty impressive for a 35w part in a 3.5lbs laptop

 

[HossHuge]

 

[ARF]

Implementing a higher-quality front-facing webcam is just added cost, especially if one won't be using it often. Heck, the majority of laptop webcams are only 2MP (720p) or 5MP (1080p) with no special controls.

The Zephyrus G14 is probably not aimed at your general usage, but the upcoming Lenovo Flex 14/15 with the U-series would be.

U-series is not fine because it is 15-watt and less performance. This thing has revolutionary performance (real desktop replacement in 14-inch bezel-less notebook?! ) exactly because it is not limited by the TDP.

 

[Valantar]

It seems the Notebookcheck.net review unit (the one that with the poor battery life) didn't deactivate the dGPU, sounds like a bug.

Other than that, this looks absolutely fantastic. Hoping for a follow-up with RDNA 2 GPUs and a faster freesync-equipped display. Other than that this looks frighteningly close to my dream laptop. Just 1.6kg with that kind of performance and that battery life? Insane.

 

[ratirt]

Nice numbers for the 4900HS. The time to change my laptop is coming in really fast.

 

[LutinChris]

Please do me a favor Intel, go back to your lab and let me enjoy AMD during this time

 

[SL2]

21 models listed here, looking forward to some better GPU options tho.

Notebooks mit CPU-Serie AMD: Ryzen 4000 Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

Preisvergleich und Bewertungen für Notebooks mit CPU-Serie AMD: Ryzen 4000

geizhals.eu

 

[HwGeek]

Der8our for some reason confused this 4900HS 3.0/4.3Ghz with the 4900H 3.3/4.4Ghz specs and was impressed that it was able to achieve the 4.4Ghz ST boost like it should, but in fact its getting 100Mhz Over the 4.3Ghz spec .
Also he was impressed that on stress it was able to boost ~3.8Ghz and he was saying that it's impressive that it's boosting 500Mhz above the base clock while this HS model has 3.0Ghz as base -not 3.3Ghz like 4900H.

I don't get it how they can make mistakes like that while the software's used to bench clearly shows 4900HS 3.0Ghz.
Now he should be even more impressed .

Also- I am really interested how thin and light could 4900HS ultrabook without dGPU gonna be... imagine this CPU with slim 99WH Battery ultrabook

 

[R0H1T]

I'm waiting exactly for that, imagine 4900H(S) or 4800H(S) with 16/32 GB LPDDR4x @4266 MHz in a 15 or 17 inch chassis. For those who don't need a dGPU but a beefy CPU it's almost like a dream come true

 

[Valantar]

Der8our for some reason confused this 4900HS 3.0/4.3Ghz with the 4900H 3.3/4.4Ghz specs and was impressed that it was able to achieve the 4.4Ghz ST boost like it should, but in fact its getting 100Mhz Over the 4.3Ghz spec .
Also he was impressed that on stress it was able to boost ~3.8Ghz and he was saying that it's impressive that it's boosting 500Mhz above the base clock while this HS model has 3.0Ghz as base -not 3.3Ghz like 4900H.

I don't get it how they can make mistakes like that while the software's used to bench clearly shows 4900HS 3.0Ghz.
Now he should be even more impressed .

Also- I am really interested how thin and light could 4900HS ultrabook without dGPU gonna be... imagine this CPU with slim 99WH Battery ultrabook

I would really like a dGPU-less 4900HS laptop, but AMD was pretty clear at CES that their OEM partners aren't interested in anything above U-series without a dGPU (likely a very small market for laptops with high CPU performance but low GPU performance). As such we'll likely have to settle for a 25W-configured 4900U instead. Though I would still be really interested to see what a 4900HS with LPDDR4X could do if the iGPU was given the power headroom to really stretch its legs.

 

[R0H1T]

Without a viable alternative from Intel I'm willing to bet they'll give it a go, unless of course Chipzilla's marketing fund is at play!

 

[HwGeek]

Maybe new LG Gram? they will be perfect with 4900HS.

 

[Xajel]

Here's your 35W:
View attachment 149780

There's nothing with that, where's your point?

Most mobile chips behave like this, boosting higher while the things are cool then stable down to it's official TDP (35W)...

The 3900H is a 45W part, it will behave same as the 3900HS except that when it stables down it will be 45W instead.

 

[Vayra86]

Tell me again those super low baseclock Intel mobile CPUs are a great thing. Tell me again 5.0 Ghz turbo is more than stupid marketing...

Tell it again. I dare you, I double dare you!

*I'm actually starting to consider a laptop now for decent gaming. FINALLY some real CPU power in a small package. Intel hasn't managed to do this for any continuous workload in the past decade... go figure. This is a landslide right here in AMD's favor. Even the faster Intel HQ quads I had can't hold a candle to this. DAYUM.

It even solidifies the idea that the 9900K, top end desktop MSDT performance, mind you, is within reach of smaller form factors. Crazy

I wonder if this sudden surge of enthusiast-favourite CPU brand will make reviewers learn how to test laptops.

At very least, they could say which laptop is used with each CPU.
It's certainly not in the text:

AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS Review

Mobile computing has become the next big target at AMD with its new series of Ryzen 4000 APUs. Today we have the first retail Ryzen 9 4900HS...

www.techspot.com

Youtube video description says which laptops were used, but without the CPU info...

Here's your 35W:
View attachment 149780

You wonder but when asked to the reason why you wonder or whether you had a point, all we heard was crickets.

And I understand why, given your usual stance on laptop CPUs. This one right here blows all your arguments away in one fell swoop. Live and learn. Intel isn't making fantastic laptop CPUs, it was shit and we could all see why, and was quickly deteriorating too with those abysmal clocks.

These benches point it out perfectly. You speak of testing properly, but it is well known among reviewers by now that laptop CPUs have predefined TDPs and reviews handily go around that, they even SPECIFY the TDP budgets now - and test it.

And as for that boosting behaviour you linked... I'll refrain from putting an Intel graph next to it, because that would just be too brutal. What I'm seeing here in your link is, by definition, a boost as you would want it. Long sustain at very good clock, only to drop down to somewhat lower performance to land at a highly efficient, but STILL performant clockspeed. And not slow down to a crawl instead. Oh, and idling? Apparently it does that better, too.

This underlines how archaic Intel's Turbo really is, even with the stupid bandaids they applied. AMD learned, clearly, from Nvidia's GPU Boost and managed to transplant most of that to its CPUs, adding even more smart logic underneath. Navi is fast going the same way, already doing most of what GPU Boost does as well. They finally got the memo. And how!

 

[Valantar]

Maybe new LG Gram? they will be perfect with 4900HS.

As I said, it's not going to happen, OEMs don't want high power CPUs/APUs for anything dGPU-less. AMD confirmed that this is also why H/HS chips have lower-tier iGPUs than comparably named U-series chips (except the 4900H/HS). This is likely partly due to marketing (hard to sell a high-performance laptop that doesn't have a dGPU/can't play games/won't do well in GPU-accelerated workloads, difficult to convince customers that this doesn't result in bad battery life compared to a thin-and-light) and partly due to market segmentation. As I said, 25W-configured U-series chips is likely as good as we're going to get without a dGPU. Oh, also, the HS series is Asus exclusive for at least 6 months.

 

[ppn]

Good to know, but it is already outdated or soon to be, waiting for EUV N5P Zen3+Rdna3.

 

[Dredi]

Good to know, but it is already outdated or soon to be, waiting for EUV N5P Zen3+Rdna3.

It will be outdated in 2021 when the next gen AMD mobile chips get here. Nothing new and better is coming between this and then in the mobile space.

 

[Vayra86]

I would really like a dGPU-less 4900HS laptop, but AMD was pretty clear at CES that their OEM partners aren't interested in anything above U-series without a dGPU (likely a very small market for laptops with high CPU performance but low GPU performance). As such we'll likely have to settle for a 25W-configured 4900U instead. Though I would still be really interested to see what a 4900HS with LPDDR4X could do if the iGPU was given the power headroom to really stretch its legs.

I smell a market for a very sweet Kickstarter here supported by AMD. No OEMs? Make your own

It baffles me why OEMs would not want to present such a sweet spot, honestly. Too disruptive?

 

[yotano211]

Normally, the modules are CAS16 DDR4-3200, and most of the available sticks on the market are such..

View attachment 149797

Those are all desktop ram. This is a laptop

 

[londiste]

Also, try to find some of these CAS16 DDR4-3200 modules that would run at 1.2V...