AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS Review: Mobile Ryzen goes full throttle

[Julio Franco]

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 laptop on the market to evaluate, so the focus will be on performance to see for the first time how Zen 2 brought across to mobile stacks up against Intel's tried and true line-up.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2003-amd-ryzen-4000/

 

[Vulcanproject]

This is the most visible consequence of intel failing to make 10nm work for mass production. On 14nm desktop you can just push the clocks, pump up the TDP, fudge the numbers for it a bit. You'll get worse power consumption but at least you can point to the extra performance. You can hold a lead and be competitive.

In notebooks, especially slim ones, it'll eventually come home to roost when your competitor has a clear process advantage. AMD can make more power efficient processors on 7nm that simply cannot be matched no matter how refined Intel make an old 14nm process.

To make a CPU that is outright at least 25 percent faster while using less power is a significant leap in this market. I expect a major surge of AMD sales in notebooks this year, a market which just 5 years ago they weren't even on the radar.

 

[EEatGDL]

I had never been interested in an AMD APU until now. This thing is damn impressive: excellent CPU and IGP performance, a "do-it-all" APU. The power efficiency is just the icing in the cake.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Very impressive stuff from AMD. But personally I’m more curious as to how the lower power chips perform (U series). H series chips are more for powerful desktop replacements and I’m much more likely to buy a thin and light type of laptop than a paving slab with a keyboard in it.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Performance seems to be there, but I'm curious to see what overall battery life is like across the lineup. Ryzen 3000 series battery life wasn't exactly amazing and neither was performance.

 

[GNelson]

I use an AMD 3500U Lenovo Ryzen 5 with 20G Ram and M.2 2x and SSD also in the laptop and will say this is Faster than my i5 6200 Acer laptop by 25% and was 40% cheaper. Is Intel dead to Laptops now as they are on Desktop? AMD is far more a better CPU processor and maybe the INTEL giant will wake up someday, but for now AMD rules it all! Keep up the great reviews Tim and Steve!

 

[Irata]

Quick question regarding Matlab: Did you use update R2020a that now uses AVX instructions on Ryzen CPU instead of SSE only ?

 

[Irata]

Very impressive stuff from AMD. But personally I’m more curious as to how the lower power chips perform (U series). H series chips are more for powerful desktop replacements and I’m much more likely to buy a thin and light type of laptop than a paving slab with a keyboard in it.

To be fair, the Asus ROG Zephyrus seems rather slim for the power it packs. It's a lot lighter than a 15 inch HP Omen with a 2060 and a Core i7-9750H.

It's 1.6 kg vs 2.4 kg

 

[wiyosaya]

I use an AMD 3500U Lenovo Ryzen 5 with 20G Ram and M.2 2x and SSD also in the laptop and will say this is Faster than my i5 6200 Acer laptop by 25% and was 40% cheaper. Is Intel dead to Laptops now as they are on Desktop? AMD is far more a better CPU processor and maybe the INTEL giant will wake up someday, but for now AMD rules it all! Keep up the great reviews Tim and Steve!

Maybe Intel will wake up when they get rid of the current business wonk who was named CEO and replace him with someone more technically astute. AMD did that going from Rory Reed to Lisa Su and that has got to be the best move that AMD made in years.

 

[Irata]

Performance seems to be there, but I'm curious to see what overall battery life is like across the lineup. Ryzen 3000 series battery life wasn't exactly amazing and neither was performance.

Hexus' review has battery life numbers for comparable laptops (beefy CPU + dGPU) plus power draw while gaming numbers. They say that "battery life is simply excellent".

 

[Black Boy]

Watching this just made me feel so happy! I always loved AMD, I'm glad for them.

 

[meric]

We need lighter, thinner, faster and cheaper laptops and this is a step in the right direction. Now let's see how R5 parts do

 

[hahahanoobs]

Hexus' review has battery life numbers for comparable laptops (beefy CPU + dGPU) plus power draw while gaming numbers. They say that "battery life is simply excellent".

Nice! Linus said his was rated for 10 hours.

 

[mat9v]

I wanted to ask for clarification. In 4900hs vs 3750H case where you stated that 4900hs offers up to 178% higher performance - were those results from long term benchmark? I mean longer then 10 minute perhaps so the 65W/54W 4900hs turbo limit did not play a significant role in the results? Because you stated they were the "stock" results so with turbo enabled. I would be more interested in results with 4900hs with forced 35W power envelope versus 9750, 9980 and 3750 processors so that we can see real long term advantage. Forcing Intel CPUs to 35W and not doing the same with 4900hs is useless (or I have missed the part where you stated you forced 4900hs also?) Opening 9980 to 90W may also be useless if it temperature throttles.

 

[Lionvibez]

Maybe Intel will wake up when they get rid of the current business wonk who was named CEO and replace him with someone more technically astute. AMD did that going from Rory Reed to Lisa Su and that has got to be the best move that AMD made in years.

I'm not sure I would call their former CFO a wonk you don't get that high up in a company if you are incompetent.

I do however get your point you want someone with an engineering background and not finance to lead intel.

 

[Evernessince]

I can see a couple situations where this will be useful but it really depends on the price.

Hopefully AMD's new laptop APU lineup is competitively priced so that more laptops can get rid of the cheap dGPU while improving battery life and CPU performance.

 

[wiyosaya]

I'm not sure I would call their former CFO a wonk you don't get that high up in a company if you are incompetent.

I do however get your point you want someone with an engineering background and not finance to lead intel.

Maybe so. However, his statement that he will trade CPU dominance for business in other areas reminds me of what Rory Reed said about AMD not competing in the CPU market and, instead, competing in the mobile market. We all know how that strategy worked out for AMD and Rory Reed.

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[Jyrkz]

Finally a good Mobile Cpu by AMD and it looks great.

 

[rgupta]

Thank you so much for the detailed review.

 

[Tom Yum]

Pretty amazing the IGP beats a dedicated MX250 when you consider the TPD of a MX250 is 25W, so you are basically getting workstation CPU performance with competent GPU performance for less than a power consumption of a ultralight (U processor) plus MX250, which would be far less powerful.

 

[Basilicum2010]

Graphics are also based on computing huge number sets (GPU mostly, but CPU plays its part, otherwise it becomes bottleneck), is it possible that Excel includes some optimization when running on Intel processors? They have a long term alliance with Microsoft, so it would make sense, even more, Microsoft compiled and optimized their code for the biggest market share holder. Just thinking out loud ...

 

[AS692313]

Now I just cant wait to see the desktop apu's using zen 2 tech, they could make budget gaming better than ever.

 

[OptimumSlinky]

Performance seems to be there, but I'm curious to see what overall battery life is like across the lineup. Ryzen 3000 series battery life wasn't exactly amazing and neither was performance.

One of those reasons is (at least in the Surface) the Ryzen APU shipped with a SMALLER battery than its Intel equivalent. Why is beyond me.

 

[OptimumSlinky]

Now I just cant wait to see the desktop apu's using zen 2 tech, they could make budget gaming better than ever.

Honestly, the 3400G is so good that you almost don't need a dGPU for 1080p gaming anymore, especially if you play mostly older games. I imagine the 4400G will put the nail in the coffin.

What I'm most curious about is whether we'll see higher end APUs emerge around the performance levels of the consoles. Coreteks has a great video in which he argues that eventually APUs will render dGPUs obsolete for all but the most hardcore tasks, and while I'm not sure if I agree with him, when you look at what the next Xbox and PlayStation are packing in terms of APU output, it's certainly food for thought.

 

[Shadowboxer]

This is great and everything and for those happy to lug around a heavy laptop it’s a fantastic CPU.

But let’s face it, unless you have a specific need for Windows, iOS knocks the spots off windows for mobile computing. Ever tried to prop a laptop on a plane tray table? Or play a game without being plugged in on a laptop? iPads are the way forward. They can actually video edit too unlike most windows ultra-books!