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

[GodisanAtheist]

As stated previously, AMD has an uphill battle against Intel for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with performance or any actual tangible metrics.

The ASUS is interesting because it sort of targets an undeserved niche at a very reasonable price point: 14" (and smaller) gaming laptops.

Most gaming laptops start at 15.6" and the really powerful ones practically require a 17" chassis to move enough air around.

I wonder if it would make sense for AMD to work with OEMs to squeeze their chips into form factors that Intel is unwilling or unable to pay much attention to.

 

[SPBHM]

very impressive stuff, even compared to the previous Zen laptops this looks like a big improvement,
personally I don't see that much of a point in 8c/16t for a laptop, but those models with lower core count and price are looking very interesting, even the 4c/4t with those clocks should be a really good chip for 99% of the laptop users.

hopefully AMD will enjoy a lot of success with this CPU family

 

[AtenRa]

I would really like AMD not cutting the iGPU in lower models.

 

[DisEnchantment]

Going by the looks of how 4600U performs, I want my next laptop to be based on TSMC 5nm or Intel 7nm
I love my 2019 XPS 13, it has an i7 8565U with 4K display.
But man it cannot run all the engineering software I need. Everytime I launch something the fans scream and it slows down in no time.
I am also worried if the fans spin too fast it sucks up dust over a period of time degrading cooling which reduces performance again like my old XPS 15.
My dual core Lenovo 14" Thinkpad T460 with i5 6300U performs better than my XPS 13 with i7 8565U

I want a laptop with more than 4 cores under 12 watts with sustained performance which can run Engineering SW like MATLAB, IBM Rhapsody and weighs under 1.5kgs.
Also my mistake with the 4K display in 13". I wish they have a 1440p or 1600p but nope only 4K in a tiny 13" screen. 1080p is not that crisp for the SW I am running.
Going to be a long wait.

 

[moinmoin]

Going by the looks of how 4600U performs, I want my next laptop to be based on TSMC 5nm or Intel 7nm

The 4600U looked so bad to you you want one of two unproven nodes in your next laptop? Should have gone with a Cannon Lake laptop then.

 

[LightningZ71]

I wish there was something like a 4650U or S or whatever they want to call it. Make it Target 35w, give it six cores, twelve threads, as high of a single core boost as they can manage AND give it 8CUs with the 1750mhz speeds of the 4800. The 6 cores will have the highest cache per core of the larger chips, the smt can better hide memory latency, the fewer cores will maximize boost power budget, and won't swamp the chip in heat as bad as an eight core, allowing the iGPU to maintain a higher boost.

 

[lobz]

I wish there was something like a 4650U or S or whatever they want to call it. Make it Target 35w, give it six cores, twelve threads, as high of a single core boost as they can manage AND give it 8CUs with the 1750mhz speeds of the 4800. The 6 cores will have the highest cache per core of the larger chips, the smt can better hide memory latency, the fewer cores will maximize boost power budget, and won't swamp the chip in heat as bad as an eight core, allowing the iGPU to maintain a higher boost.

U -> 15W (max 25W). What?

 

[DaaQ]

The CPU we are talking about is a Coffee Lake mobile CPU. Not talking, at all, about desktop CPUs in laptops. Chassis design has nothing to do with it. Again, the review was strictly on CPU performance.

Product Specifications

quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Post #11 in this thread has that very comparison.

 

[DisEnchantment]

The 4600U looked so bad to you you want one of two unproven nodes in your next laptop? Should have gone with a Cannon Lake laptop then.

I just bought an XPS 13 with 8565U last year. So I am not in the market for a new device for a year at least.
By the time I will be looking for a new device I hope there is some Windows based device with a 5nm APU or a 7nm Intel APU.
I need thin, light, and battery life without compromising performance. I hardly game at all. I need it to do stuffs on the go.

 

[coercitiv]

I need thin, light, and battery life without compromising performance.

You won't find that, ever. Engineering software will always scale past what a 12W CPU can do, and thin & light notebooks will always have poor cooling, always built for burst loads. What you need is a 14" unit that is still reasonably light but also built for gaming or CAD, with shared heatpipes for CPU & dGPU. That's the only way you'll get proper cooling for CPU only operation... buying a dGPU model only for it's better cooling. Weight will end up in the 1.5-1.9kg range.

Meanwhile, your notebook option may not have been optimal either, at least in terms of sustained performance. The 2019 XPS 13 was simply not built with sustained performance in mind.

CB15 runs from noteboocheck.net on both Ultra Peformance and Optimized presets. The XPS is running your CPU at 25W TDP but cooling is obviously unable to keep up, hence your observation of the system slowing down fast under stress.

I am also worried if the fans spin too fast it sucks up dust over a period of time degrading cooling which reduces performance again like my old XPS 15.

The oldest trick in the book to keep laptops clean on the inside is the good old vacuum cleaner: suck air from the exit vents while the unit is off, maybe even use your hand to create a seal. You'll never have to worry about dust build-up again.

 

[DisEnchantment]

You won't find that, ever. Engineering software will always scale past what a 12W CPU can do, and thin & light notebooks will always have poor cooling, always built for burst loads. What you need is a 14" unit that is still reasonably light but also built for gaming or CAD, with shared heatpipes for CPU & dGPU. That's the only way you'll get proper cooling for CPU only operation... buying a dGPU model only for it's better cooling. Weight will end up in the 1.5-1.9kg range.

Well it is a compromise that we have to make for now. I have to carry a heavier laptop whenever I want to do something productive.
With the next node advances, an APU with such a power and thermal envelope is bound to be there surely.

If the 4600U can sustain its clocks of 2.6GHz in the 15W TDP envelope then we might be able to get a 12W 5nm APU which can do the same (or a 15W @ 3 GHz, which would be like R7 1700 territory which should be about enough)

I mean looking at my laptops below you can imagine which one I would rather carry. The one on the left will break your shoulder.

But for now I am working from home so maybe the need may not even arise by the looks of how things are going.

 

[lobz]

You won't find that, ever. Engineering software will always scale past what a 12W CPU can do, and thin & light notebooks will always have poor cooling, always built for burst loads. What you need is a 14" unit that is still reasonably light but also built for gaming or CAD, with shared heatpipes for CPU & dGPU. That's the only way you'll get proper cooling for CPU only operation... buying a dGPU model only for it's better cooling. Weight will end up in the 1.5-1.9kg range.

Meanwhile, your notebook option may not have been optimal either, at least in terms of sustained performance. The 2019 XPS 13 was simply not built with sustained performance in mind.

CB15 runs from noteboocheck.net on both Ultra Peformance and Optimized presets. The XPS is running your CPU at 25W TDP but cooling is obviously unable to keep up, hence your observation of the system slowing down fast under stress.

View attachment 19471



The oldest trick in the book to keep laptops clean on the inside is the good old vacuum cleaner: suck air from the exit vents while the unit is off, maybe even use your hand to create a seal. You'll never have to worry about dust build-up again.

pretty much all this

 

[lobz]

Well it is a compromise that we have to make for now. I have to carry a heavier laptop whenever I want to do something productive.
With the next node advances, an APU with such a power and thermal envelope is bound to be there surely.

If the 4600U can sustain its clocks of 2.6GHz in the 15W TDP envelope then we might be able to get a 12W 5nm APU which can do the same (or a 15W @ 3 GHz, which would be like R7 1700 territory which should be about enough)

I mean looking at my laptops below you can imagine which one I would rather carry. The one on the left will break your shoulder.

But for now I am working from home so maybe the need may not even arise by the looks of how things are going.


View attachment 19475

photoshop

 

[lopri]

Battery test results are nothing short of shocking. I have an i5-1035G based Surface laptop 3, and its battery life is appallingly bad. I wish I had waited.

 

[Gideon]

Battery test results are nothing short of shocking. I have an i5-1035G based Surface laptop 3, and its battery life is appallingly bad. I wish I had waited.

Agreed, my wife just bought a HP Spectre x360 with i7-1060G7 and I also was very surprised how bad the battery life was. Not terribe, butstill WAY worse than I assumed when comparing to my Coffee-Lake 6-core Macbook. IMO no real battery life improvement compared to previous gens other than connected idle, which is useless.

 

[Gideon]

A 15" version is coming as well. Still With HS processors and with a RTX2060 (not max-q). Sadly no beefier GPUs yet it seems:

Amazon.com: ROG Zephyrus G15 (2020) Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 240Hz FHD, GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, 16GB DDR4, 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, Windows 10 Pro, GA502IV-XS76: Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: ROG Zephyrus G15 (2020) Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 240Hz FHD, GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, 16GB DDR4, 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, Windows 10 Pro, GA502IV-XS76: Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

 

[uzzi38]

A 15" version is coming as well. Still With HS processors and with a RTX2060 (not max-q). Sadly no beefier GPUs yet it seems:

Amazon.com: ROG Zephyrus G15 (2020) Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 240Hz FHD, GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, 16GB DDR4, 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, Windows 10 Pro, GA502IV-XS76: Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: ROG Zephyrus G15 (2020) Ultra Slim Gaming Laptop, 15.6” 240Hz FHD, GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, 16GB DDR4, 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD, Windows 10 Pro, GA502IV-XS76: Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

ASUS's site says it is Max-Q

ASUS United Kingdom

ASUS is a worldwide top-three consumer notebook vendor and maker of the world’s best-selling, most award-winning, motherboards. Driven by innovation and committed to quality, ASUS won 4,256 awards in 2013 and is widely credited with revolutionizing the PC industry with its Eee PC™. Company...

www.asus.com

 

[eek2121]

photoshop

I don't know what this was in reference to, but I'll add that all of the U series CPU benchmarks thus far have shown that the U series is able to sustain 3.9-4.3 GHz. What they'll actually run at during longer workloads is another question, but I suspect that non-GPU demanding tasks will have just as great of performance as the H-series, while tasks that involve the integrated GPU and CPU will cause CPU clocks to fall. I could be wrong though.

ASUS's site says it is Max-Q

ASUS United Kingdom

ASUS is a worldwide top-three consumer notebook vendor and maker of the world’s best-selling, most award-winning, motherboards. Driven by innovation and committed to quality, ASUS won 4,256 awards in 2013 and is widely credited with revolutionizing the PC industry with its Eee PC™. Company...

www.asus.com

Yes, that is correct. The specs are identical. The laptop is simply larger.

 

[Topweasel]

I don't know what this was in reference to, but I'll add that all of the U series CPU benchmarks thus far have shown that the U series is able to sustain 3.9-4.3 GHz. What they'll actually run at during longer workloads is another question, but I suspect that non-GPU demanding tasks will have just as great of performance as the H-series, while tasks that involve the integrated GPU and CPU will cause CPU clocks to fall. I could be wrong though.


Yes, that is correct. The specs are identical. The laptop is simply larger.

Well U chips are going to be a lot more chasis dependent. H is pretty much going to be silicon limited, HS because of the requirements of implementation is probably going to be a little more limited by GPU usage, but in CPU primary tasks is going to be more silicon limited. U in something like an Mac Air probably wouldn't be able to run that high for very long without any active cooling, I wouldn't be very hopeful in 15w implementations. 25w Thin and light implementations should easily be able to maintain the high clock low core usage.

 

[stockolicious]

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".

you are probably one of 5 people that Francois has not blocked. lol

 

[stockolicious]

I find that a little sad too. I wonder what kind of contracts nVidia has with Intel regarding their mobile GPUs. It might have even made perfect sense at the time. We knew zen 2 in mobile was going to be great, but I never expected it to be this good. Even with the best mobile processors on the market, though, there's just no way AMD laptops can out bench a 2080 with a 2060. Maybe the upcoming Supers won't be exclusive?

AMD mentioned 135 Mobile design wins - that is MUCH more then anytime I can remember - AMD will have high end models NVDA would be stupid to price them self out with a more expensive INTC CPU.

 

[Panino Manino]

you are probably one of 5 people that Francois has not blocked. lol

Actually, I was blocked one time that I laughed at him, but this means nothing if access to the tweets aren't restricted and by the way, you can always use www.twipu.com.
A shame that Covid is taking almost all his attention.

 

[JustMe21]

I just can't consider it a gaming laptop since half of the memory is soldered in. It's possible to have 2 memory slots at that small of a form factor, so why not do it that way so we can put the memory modules we want into it.

 

[RetroZombie]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1244760414145019904

The guy is really funny.

Skylake problem is not the per core performance or gaming performance as he point it out, it's the competition that has doubled the cpu cores and at half the power consumption.
Just only one of the achievements is already amazing, now two is...

What i would like him to explain is the huge skylake vulnerabilities since according to him it's 'his team creation'.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I didn't know Piednol worked in Haifa.