Review Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Review: AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS Tested

[Gideon]

So for most benches, it's running @ 54W.

Yet the 45W 4800H still performed better (possibly boosting at even higher wattage for a short while?)

, forget about 35W no way in hell that the CPU is running at 35W while the GPU is not in use, thats why it performs so close to a 3700X

Anyway, that behaviour is quite similar to how Intel CPUs operate and it's not like the 15W 4800U running in lenovo 25W chassis is performing that much worse:

 

[mopardude87]

Boosting algo for the G14 is as follows:

65W for 10 seconds.
54W for 150 seconds.
35W indefinitely.

Check Hardware's Unboxed's review for this:

Yeah i love how that functions cause with luck most things you do will certainly be done in 150 seconds. Not a bad way honestly to handle things. Good job AMD.

 

[Shivansps]

And it dosent drop to 35W after 150 seconds, it goes down gradually over the course of another 50 seconds.

Well this explains why it benches so closely to a 3700X.

 

[Hitman928]

And it dosent drop to 35W after 150 seconds, it goes down gradually over the course of another 50 seconds.

Well this explains why it benches so closely to a 3700X.

EDIT: That Handbrake test image seems to show 80W for 10 seconds 72-75W for 150 seconds and around 65W after that, what im missing?

Blue is clock speed, yellow/brownish is power.

 

[Shivansps]

Blue is clock speed, yellow/brownish is power.

Yeah got it right after i wrote that.

 

[Saylick]

That's impressive. It just takes 35W to maintain ~3.3 GHz indefinitely for 8 cores.

 

[moinmoin]

The meaning of TDP gets tweaked constantly, lol. Yeah, it's essentially the way Intel does it already so OEMs should feel right at home with it. And by offering a way to connect external sensors to keep track of the chassis temperature AMD may even stay in more control of not artificially limiting the CPU too much due to conservative configuration by the OEM like happened in the last several gens.

Computerbase had a table of the different modes offered by Asus' software:

Modus	CPU Package Power (permanent)	CPU Package Power (peak)	Frequency (permanent, ca.)	Noise
Asus Zephyrus G14 „Silent“	25 Watt	50 Watt	2,95 GHz	31–38 dB
Asus Zephyrus G14 „Silent“ (on battery)	15 Watt	20 Watt	2,40 GHz	31–33 dB
Asus Zephyrus G14 „Performance“	35 Watt	65 Watt	3,25 GHz	31–44 dB
Asus Zephyrus G14 „Performance“ (on battery)	20 Watt	25 Watt	2,90 GHz	31–37 dB
Asus Zephyrus G14 „Turbo“	35 Watt	65 Watt	3,25 GHz	37–45 dB

I don't know if you remember that fiasco but yeah they went out of their ways to call HWUB trolls when the dude over there asked for a meeting, that is beyond disrespectful. He simply wanted to meetup and compare data cause obviously something was way off given Toms was the outlier while the rest of the people found similar issues with cheap motherboards.As someone about to buy a B450 and prob 3900x/4900x before end of year, if i listened to Toms i would be on one heck of a flakey motherboard instead of settling on a B450 Tomahawk Max. That one has been proven at least.

I will buy whatever HWUB sells before Toms, they did out of the case and in the case testing, they went up and above the call of duty with their testing. Heck i will buy TPU before Toms.

Edit: Yeah here is the video where he calls Toms out. Yeah NEVER again.

I remember the fiasco well. My two points were: It's easy to ignore Toms since there are plenty reviews to choose from anyway. And the blame for the unprofessional handling of said fiasco is down to its author Luke Hill. Toms review of the ROG Zephyrus G14 is by Andrew Freedman, after a quick look across his articles he seemed fine.

 

[IEC]

Well, I may have finally found a replacement for my 6700HQ laptop.

 

[amrnuke]

Well, I may have finally found a replacement for my 6700HQ laptop.

Dell XPS 15?
I have the same CPU. Honestly surprised it's feeling so old already. I got it in late 2017 and it just feels sluggish at times, despite 4C/8T, a decent SSD, and 16GB RAM. It does have a 4K touchscreen which I suspect causes some of the lag.

 

[ElFenix]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1244753398349484032

Francois watched Linus video?
I can't believe that "he is still in denial".
Seriously, he was not joking that "AMD still didn't beat Skylake".

who?

 

[moinmoin]

Impressive. Here's Linus on it. Perhaps one day they'll have a Radeon in there that also is as competitive.

The worthy opponent to that 9980HK in a monster package will be 3950X in a monster package, lol.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yet the 45W 4800H still performed better (possibly boosting at even higher wattage for a short while?)

Depends, I'm not sure how they have Renoir set up. On desktop, all the 105W TDP CPUs can boost up to 142W, and I've seen my 3900x sustain that power draw easily. It really never goes any higher than that. Mobile is going to be different, and it'll be limited by cooling solution. That Asus lappie is not going to offer thermal limits when the GPU is out of use.

Really, each individual implementation would have to be reviewed for power usage.

That's impressive. It just takes 35W to maintain ~3.3 GHz indefinitely for 8 cores.

That IS pretty damn good. Realistically-speaking, most benches/workloads are going to be finished in under 150s (especially on a laptop) so I don't expect it to sit there too often.

 

[uzzi38]

-U series starts off with a similar hyper-agressive boost.

All the way up to 80W perhaps? Would only be that initial 10s boost though.

There is at least one 1 4800U that scores around 1800CB in CB15, which is short enough for them to boost so hard.

 

[Panino Manino]

The channel Tech Epiphany is posting a lot of videos of games running from the Vega 7 and the performance is very impressive.
AMD already have a killer APU for next year just switching Vega for Navi.

 

[mopardude87]

I think for what the 4900hs does,i am simply impressed. Thing destroys last gen and its prob gonna be cheaper then current Intel while being faster.

 

[Shivansps]

The channel Tech Epiphany is posting a lot of videos of games running from the Vega 7 and the performance is very impressive.
AMD already have a killer APU for next year just switching Vega for Navi.

The 4800HS can mantain 1600mhz for Vega7 that puts it between margin of error of a desktop 3200G at 1600mhz, witch is impressive to say at least.

 

[Arkaign]

An absolutely stellar SKU. When paired with a dGPU, these mobile Zen2 CPUs bring just absolutely monumental performance. I feel they should have even pushed this lineup first over the desktop variants to be honest.

 

[JujuFish]

I've been considering a laptop for a couple months now. The battery life on that G14 is exactly the kind of thing I'd love. Long lasting battery for low intensity use while having real power in reserve when needed.

 

[DrMrLordX]

An absolutely stellar SKU. When paired with a dGPU, these mobile Zen2 CPUs bring just absolutely monumental performance. I feel they should have even pushed this lineup first over the desktop variants to be honest.

Margins are probably lower on the mobile parts. Also, Matisse is like Rome's toenail clippings. Once you have Rome, it's easy enough to cobble together Matisse for the desktop crowd. Renoir obviously re-uses the same IP, but design-wise it's much more involved.

 

[Gideon]

and here is the TDP of Comet lake cpus for comparison. suddenly brief 65w bursts on renoir don't seem so bad?

Intel's recommended PL2 (turbo power) for the Core i9 is 135 W, and Intel says the recommended 'Tau' is set to 56 seconds for the i9, and 28 seconds for all the other CPUs. OEMs don't often adhere to these values for notebooks, but they are provided as a guide. It does mean that in order to hit 5.3 GHz, the Core i9 is by default allowed to take 135 W across two cores, or 67.5 W per core. Even at 60W per core, you're looking at 50A of current per core... in a laptop.

from Anandtech article:

Intel Details 10th Gen Comet Lake-H for 45 W Notebooks: Up to 5.3 GHz*

www.anandtech.com

 

[lobz]

and here is the TDP of Comet lake cpus for comparison. suddenly brief 65w bursts on renoir don't seem so bad?



from Anandtech article:

Intel Details 10th Gen Comet Lake-H for 45 W Notebooks: Up to 5.3 GHz*

www.anandtech.com

135 W & 50A

 

[uzzi38]

Please don't tell me anyone thought CML-H was going to be any different to this?

It's more 14nm, a node they've already pushed to the very limit. To be honest, getting another +100mhz year on year was already impressive, getting any more than that was simply not happening.

CML-H is a housefire, and we all knew and saw it coming.

(Note: I'm not including TVB, but just TB2.0 rated frequencies)

 

[coercitiv]

Intel's recommended PL2 (turbo power) for the Core i9 is 135 W, and Intel says the recommended 'Tau' is set to 56 seconds for the i9

Finally, a true Desktop Replacement.

 

[lobz]

Finally, a true Desktop Replacement.

True desktop replacements has been utilizing non-mobile CPUs successfully for years. These CML-H i9 CPUs don't make even a tiny bit of sense.

 

[DrMrLordX]

suddenly brief 65w bursts on renoir don't seem so bad?

They only last 10 seconds, too. 56 seconds @ 135W? Please. Intel wants to win some benchmarks.