Gaming on a Ryzen 9 4900HS Laptop with a Discrete GPU

Following upward to our review of AMD's new Ryzen Mobile 4000 laptop CPU and having covered productivity performance and touched on gaming using the integrated GPU in our initial review, now it's time to tackle the other main use instance for these processors, and that's gaming with a discrete GPU.

This is peculiarly of import for Ryzen H-series parts as gaming laptops stick to these 45W-ish processors nearly exclusively. Nosotros know that AMD has a very compelling office on their hands, with much better efficiency plus improve multi-thread and single-thread performance for the most function, but gaming tin often exist a story of its own. Latencies, boost performance, frequency, tin can all play a office, so today we'll be doing our best to explore how the Ryzen 9 4900HS fares in games.

The biggest challenge for this exam was getting an apples-to-apples platform to compare the 4900HS against Intel processors. Our Ryzen 4000 test bed, the Asus Zephyrus G14, comes with a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q with a 65W power limit, which nosotros haven't seen in whatever other laptops.

We wanted this to be a completely fair boxing with the aforementioned GPU, but at least we managed the next best thing. We've put the 4900HS up against the closest platform we could notice, which is a Cadre i7-9750H laptop with an RTX 2060 at 80W. Unfortunately we were unable to source an viii-core Intel laptop with the RTX 2060, but that volition testify easier with the upcoming 10th-gen Intel line-up that features the 8-core Core i7-10875H.

As part of today'due south tests, we'll be looking at some 1080p results -- CPU and GPU limited scenarios to come across what the situation is there -- and and so swoop into some heavily CPU limited gaming at 720p. Along the fashion nosotros've tried to do our best to expect specifically at the impact of the CPU in games. 720p creates a CPU bottleneck with the RTX 2060 in some titles, and that allows us to isolate the touch on of the CPU.

We know near people will exist gaming at 1080p, and then let's look at that first...

Benchmarks

We decided to start with a few very GPU-limited environments, so we can get a baseline look at the differences betwixt the RTX 2060 Max-Q and the non Max-Q models. Command at 1080p Loftier settings is very GPU enervating and here nosotros see the RTX 2060 performs 9% better than the 2060 Max-Q on boilerplate, and 7% better in ane% lows.

Like story in Metro Exodus: the non Max-Q model ends upwards around 7% faster. It has a 23% higher power limit and generally clocks up to ten% higher in the situations we've seen, and then that'southward our baseline GPU limited functioning then we're all just fully aware of the differences we're dealing with.

Let's become into some less GPU limited scenarios with Grand Theft Auto V, which can become CPU limited with higher ability RTX GPUs at 1080p. Even so, the RTX 2060 isn't quite powerful plenty to deliver a consequent CPU clogging, so the Intel system with not-Max-Q graphics ends up 3% faster on boilerplate. That's non a bad result given the differences in GPU power, just let's motility on.

Watch Dogs 2 is one of the virtually demanding titles in our test line-up, hit both the CPU and GPU hard. What nosotros find hither is that unlike in our GPU limited situations, the Ryzen ix 4900HS with RTX 2060 Max-Q is marginally ahead of the Intel arrangement with the slower GPU. We're talking 1% faster here which is margin of error blazon stuff but this is definitely a promising outcome for AMD'due south Ryzen APU in gaming.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is where nosotros beginning to run into an interesting phenomenon with the Ryzen APU up against Intel's 9th-gen Core i7 offering. The RTX 2060 arrangement does push out 6% better average frame rates, just with the Intel processor it loses to Ryzen in i% lows. The Ryzen 9 4900HS is able to evangelize 2% better minimum operation here and a more stable frame charge per unit, which suggests that in sections of the game that are more CPU demanding, the 4900HS is able to keep upward.

Far Weep v and the Dunia engine is reasonably CPU bound at 1080p with high performance components, not 100% CPU limited merely information technology does benefit from a faster CPU. Over again, average frame rates were half dozen% higher with the Intel configuration that packs a faster GPU, simply Ryzen delivers ameliorate 1% low functioning: two% better as we've seen a few times at present.

And we'll proceed seeing situations like this equally we move through the residue of the games tested. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is quite enervating and hither we run into the largest performance advantage for Ryzen in one% lows. AMD's gaming APU choice is 12% better here, that's quite a significant margin, although again information technology loses in terms of average frame rates because we're not fully CPU limited throughout this benchmark pass.

Looking at Hitman ii and one time once more, like results here. This is a very CPU enervating title and it appears as though most laptop offerings deliver around the same functioning, until we get up to the viii-cadre Core i9-9880H which is able to pull away with its RTX 2080 Max-Q. I don't want to read too much into those results from a CPU perspective because the GPU differences are quite big.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider performs similarly to Assassinator's Creed Odyssey in that our AMD laptop is not outright faster in terms of average performance, merely it does clock in nearly ten% faster in terms of 1% lows. This tin can be a surprisingly CPU intensive championship so it's a stiff consequence for AMD.

Then nosotros get to Resident Evil 2 using the Balanced preset at 1080p. This is one of the few games I tested where the Ryzen system was outright faster, similar several of the games nosotros've looked at today it appears to be more CPU than GPU limited then despite the Zephyrus having a weaker GPU it actually performs better in this game thanks to the faster CPU functioning available.

And then in Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, performance is very similar between the two systems, either option here provides an equivalent feel once again in a game that has a decent CPU limitation on it at times.

A brief interruption

At this point, we accept a pretty good picture of how these systems perform. In GPU limited scenarios, the Intel combination pulls ahead due to its faster GPU. However in many games, while average performance is better on the Intel side, AMD produces amend 1% low performance, sometimes this is only marginal in the ii-3% amend range, other times the results are over x% in favor of AMD.

At that place were besides ii games: Watch Dogs 2 and Resident Evil two, where the title was CPU express enough every bit a whole at 1080p to deliver amend functioning on the Ryzen 9 4900HS system despite its weaker GPU option.

While these results are a realistic reflection of how these combinations perform, we're not entirely CPU limited in many of these benchmarks. On laptops running at 1080p is a bit of a deadline configuration betwixt a GPU or CPU limit depending on the game and hardware y'all accept. And that'south why we wanted to test 720p functioning. Let'due south really CPU limit these systems and see which configuration stacks up better when we encounter CPU bottlenecks.

Testing at 720p to simulate CPU express scenarios

In Grand Theft Machine Five, the benchmark pass is fully CPU limited at 720p, so we run into a situation where at present, the Ryzen 9 4900HS configuration is 5% faster on average and 10% faster in 1% lows versus the Core i7-9750H. This is a flip on what nosotros had previously at 1080p, where the Intel configuration was faster on average.

We knew previously that Watch Dogs ii was CPU limited at 1080p, only the margins practise grow marginally at 720p, with the AMD configuration now 6% faster on average at this resolution.

Star Wars Battlefront II is a huge swing in favor of AMD at 720p. When nosotros CPU limit the game, the Ryzen nine 4900HS ends up x to 15 percent faster. And the margins in Fary Weep 5? Very similar to Star Wars Battlefront ii with that x to 15 percent functioning advantage for Ryzen.

One of the largest performance advantages for Ryzen that I saw when benchmarking at 720p was in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. In this title, the Ryzen 9 4900HS was over 25% faster when fully CPU limited relative to Intel'south Core i7-9750H. This is approaching some of the margins we saw when benchmarking multi-core productivity workloads.

Hitman ii was slightly faster on our Intel configuration at 1080p, merely this changes to be in favor of AMD at 720p. Hither the Ryzen 9 4900HS is viii percent faster on average with like 1% low performance. Shadow of the Tomb Raider too flipped to favoring AMD when CPU limited, with 6% higher average frame rates on the Ryzen 9 4900HS system.

What about Resident Evil 2, a game nosotros saw AMD already perform better in at 1080p? Well at 720p, the margin simply grows, delivering similar results to Odyssey at 720p: over 25% amend performance when fully CPU limited like this.

In Jedi Fallen Gild we meet upwardly to an eleven% performance advantage for the Ryzen ix 4900HS at 720p, which is similar to many of the other titles nosotros've been going through.

What nigh some of the games we discussed earlier that were more GPU limited at 1080p? Well that remains the case at 720p, games similar Metro Exodus and Control withal evangelize meliorate average performance on our Intel test laptop considering the GPU is pegged at high 90s usage throughout the test.

We'll drop one more heavily CPU limited game in here earlier wrapping up this feature...

CS:Become running at 1080p with low settings. The margins here weren't huge between our Intel and AMD configurations, merely the Ryzen 9 4900HS did pull 2% ahead on boilerplate in this criterion. Information technology's no surprise that nosotros're CPU limited here when running at well above 200 FPS, and these results fit with many of our other CPU limited benchmarks.

Takeaways

That'south a decent clamper of benchmarks looking at a range of test conditions with… well, the all-time examination conditions nosotros could manage given the limitations of testing with laptops that vary so much in hardware. At that place are some interesting results here to break down.

When looking at GPU limited titles, we didn't learn much. Understandably, the Intel organisation with its faster RTX 2060 GPU performed meliorate. This will always be the case when comparing CPUs for gaming: if the title you're playing is non express by the CPU or bottlenecked, so any GPU you have is much more than important and becomes the limiting factor. Then you're not going to get better or similar performance out of a Ryzen laptop with a weaker GPU when GPU limited. Makes sense.

However in a lot of the games we benchmarked at 1080p with ultra settings, the Ryzen 9 4900HS did produce better 1% low performance than the Core i7-9750H in our Intel system. The difference was only marginal in many cases, 2-iii%, but given our Ryzen laptop was paired with a weaker GPU, this suggests the Ryzen 9 4900HS is more powerful in areas of our criterion passes that are more than CPU demanding.

And this follows through to when nosotros're seeing very CPU limited gaming scenarios. A couple of times this was the example at 1080p in games like Watch Dogs 2, Resident Evil 2 and CS:Go were all quite CPU limited at 1080p, and in each of these instances the Ryzen 9 4900HS performed meliorate.

And so at 720p we saw a significant swing in favor of AMD. With many of the titles we looked at becoming totally CPU limited at this resolution, the Ryzen nine 4900HS delivered anywhere from 5 to upwards of 25 percentage more performance on average in these games. When combined with the i% low performance nosotros saw at 1080p, this suggests that the Ryzen 9 4900HS is the faster gaming CPU when the GPU is taken out of the equation.

These results aren't overly surprising when we wait back to our productivity benchmarks. The Ryzen 9 4900HS concluded upwards v to xv per centum faster in about single or lightly threaded applications, and we know most games these days are all the same more lightly threaded than heavily multi-threaded. Notwithstanding, in some of the best example scenarios, similar Resident Evil 2's 1% depression performance at 720p which was 39% higher on Ryzen, nosotros are more in the realm of those multi-thread results.

There are plenty of caveats to this testing though. We've stressed the differences in GPU endless times already, but nosotros call up the other obvious one is that we're comparing the Ryzen 9 4900HS to the Core i7-9750H. While these CPUs are plant in similarly priced laptops, Intel does have 8-cadre Cadre i9 processors in their 9th-gen family and an upcoming 8-core Core i7 option in their 10th generation. In particular, a part like the Cadre i7-10875H does produce higher single cadre frequencies than the 9750H, so these results might change when nosotros can kickoff talking about 10th-gen benchmarks and performance.

At the end of the day, what we've learned is that Ryzen 4000 is very capable for mobile gaming. If we had two laptops that were otherwise identical bated from the CPU, the Ryzen 9 4900HS should evangelize either an equal or improve gaming experience than the Intel Core i7-9750H depending on how GPU or CPU express we are. The more CPU express, the more Ryzen benefits relative to the Intel option.

We think its reasonably impressive for AMD to spring into this market segment and provide such a competitive culling against Intel'due south most popular ninth-gen gaming laptop CPU. Intel seems to be laser-focused on frequency, while AMD is catering to that front while delivering killer productivity performance as well.

It'due south likewise impressive to see this sort of operation at 35W, not 45W like with the 9750H we tested. That extra 10W of thermal headroom is crucial while gaming. It could translate into an actress 10W of ability allocation available for the GPU in a given pattern, which in many situations could deliver 5 to 10 percent higher frame rates.

All of this sets us up for an interesting boxing between Ryzen 4000 APUs and Intel's 10th-gen H-series including that new 8-cadre. Stay tuned every bit new systems go along coming in for more testing in the weeks ahead.