We just tested our first laptop with a fourth-generation AMD Ryzen “Renoir” processor, and wow, is it fast.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a diminutive gaming rig with a 14-inch, 120Hz-refresh screen, tested in a $1,449.99 configuration that we just awarded an Editors' Choice. It's just 0.7 inch thick and weighs only 3.5 pounds, dimensions that make it one of the smallest laptops geared to hardcore gamers that we’ve ever tested. Despite its petite chassis, the Zephyrus G14 packs serious power: an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics chip.

AMD has been touting the superior performance of its coming Ryzen 4000 CPUs since they were first detailed at CES 2020 in January, so that got us wondering: Are they really a better choice than the Intel Core i7 and Core i9 processors that typically power high-end gaming laptops?

With only one AMD Renoir-based laptop sample having passed through PC Labs so far, it’s still far too early to definitively answer that question. Based solely on the ROG Zephyrus G14, however, it’s clear that AMD is off to a great start.

The CPU in the ROG Zephyrus G14 is the Ryzen 9 4900HS. In the case of this particular implementation, Asus worked with AMD for a 35-watt version of the CPU that it exclusively will have in this laptop. Here's a look at the initial lineup of chips, which is designated as the H series, to see how the 4900HS is positioned...

With the H series and fourth-generation Ryzen, this is the first time AMD has split its mobile offerings between a high-power mobile-CPU line and a lower-power (U series) one for thinner laptops. The U series chips will debut after the H series; more on them later in the spring.

Renoir's Closest Competition

AMD considers the Intel Core i9-9880H to be the closest competitor to the Ryzen 9 4900HS. The Intel CPU has eight cores and 16 threads. It runs at a base frequency of 2.3GHz and can boost up to 4.8GHz when required. It’s also got a rated maximum power consumption of 45 watts, and 16MB of total cache.

Meanwhile, the Ryzen 9 4900HS also has eight cores and 16 threads. The base frequency is higher, at 3GHz, but the 4.3GHz maximum boost speed is slightly lower. The total amount of cache is 8MB—half the Core i9’s amount. The maximum rated power consumption is also lower, at 35 watts. A lower power consumption can decrease the amount of heat a chip generates, letting it fit into smaller laptops like the Zephyrus G14.

It also tends to decrease peak performance, but AMD says the chip can still outperform the Core i9-9880H on many CPU-intensive workloads. AMD’s claims come from in-house testing it performed late last year, before the Ryzen 9 4900HS was publicly introduced. The company shared those tests with us, which were performed on a Zephyrus G14 with the Ryzen 9 and an MSI P75 Creator 9SF with the Core i9.

AMD’s tests involve rendering a complex 3D image in Cinebench R20, transcoding a video using Handbrake, rendering an image in Blender, encoding audio, and using the PCMark 10 testing suite to approximate digital content creation workflows:

According to AMD's tests, the Ryzen 9 comes out ahead in every scenario it posits, except for content creation.

Impressive, but AMD’s labs and its choice of tests are hardly an impartial source, of course. How do these results stack up with our own?

Some First Benchmark Results

Our CPU-intensive workflows are similar—but not identical—to the ones AMD uses. We also render complex images in Cinebench, but we use the earlier, less-demanding R15 version of this benchmarking staple. Our video encoding test uses Handbrake to transcode a 4K file (the open source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) into a 1080p one. For digital content creation, we apply a series of 10 filters and effects to a JPEG image using Adobe Photoshop.

We haven’t tested the P75 Creator, so for comparison purposes I selected a different gaming laptop with the Core i9-9880H. I also threw in laptops with Intel CPUs a step above and below the Core i9-9880H in terms of theoretical performance. The Core i9-9980HK is more powerful, with a higher base clock speed, while the Core i7-9750H is less powerful, with two fewer cores. (The Core i7-9750H is a CPU common in many mainstream and higher-end gaming laptops and power-minded systems for creators and productivity hounds.)

Add everything together and here are the specifications we’re looking at...

Note that two of these systems have twice the memory that the Ryzen 9-powered Zephyrus G14 does, and they all have more powerful graphics chips. Bear in mind, too, that these are larger-bodied, larger-screen machines, with presumably more thermal leeway, especially the much bigger Aorus 17, which we used as a representative of the top Core i9.

Even with these presumptive handicaps, the results below largely conform to AMD’s own test data.

The Zephyrus G14 is faster on the Cinebench test...

It’s also faster on our Handbrake test...

It does take a back seat to the Aorus 17 and MSI GE65 Raider on the Photoshop test, but the differences are small and roughly in line with the 8 percent deficiency that AMD’s content creation test shows...

Overall, this is a great showing for AMD. It’s especially impressive given that the Zephyrus G14 is a smaller and lighter laptop (with a less-powerful GPU) than the ones against which I compared it here.

Now, the Caveats

There are many caveats to the results above, of course. Perhaps most important, they only reflect CPU-intensive workflows other than games. Plenty of people use gaming laptops for non-gaming tasks, and it’s quite likely that we’ll see the H-series Renoir chips show up in some creator-class laptops in the near future.

For now, though, all of the systems above (the first Renoir, and the test comparisons I chose) are first and foremost gaming rigs. Unlike content creation, for which there are a few standard apps that many people use, there are a ton of different games, all of which perform differently and tax the CPU and GPU in different ways. Gaming performance is generally far more dependent on the abilities of a laptop’s GPU than its CPU, but the interaction of the two can come into play differently game by game.

All of this makes game testing and isolating the CPU's contribution incredibly challenging, and beyond the scope of a simple apples-to-apples comparison between two CPUs. If you’d like to see how the Zephyrus G14 performs while playing demanding games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 5, head on over to our full review.

Another big caveat is that Intel will imminently be refreshing its entire high-powered laptop CPU lineup. The company teased its new 10th Generation Core H-series chips at CES 2020, and we expect laptops using them to begin shipping sometime this spring.

Intel declined to comment on how these future chips will stack up to 4th-generation Ryzen ones, but the company did note that there are more than 30 thin-and-light gaming laptops that use the current 9th Generation Core H-series chips.

We’re looking forward to testing many more AMD Ryzen 4th-generation laptops in the near future. Up next are the lower-powered U-series CPUs mentioned earlier that will show up in ultraportable laptops. Stay tuned—the rest of 2020 is shaping up to be a banner year for mobile computing performance breakthroughs, and it also promises a new power dynamic between its two major players.

Further Reading

Processor Reviews