Ryzen 9 4900hs reviews are out. AMD finally caught up to Intel IPC

I had AMD stock back when it was $4, and no magic crystal ball ever told me it would rise this high.

Wish i had a time machine so I could hold it from $4 all the way to $57.

I'm too afraid to buy now with astronomical PE ratio


Intel is still going to play its retail/sales games, just like they did when Athlon64 kicked their ass. Despite having inferior cpu, Intel still outsold AMD 10x
 
Iratus said:
Er, I'll be right back. Need to buy more stock.
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In this climate? AMD stock isn’t assured to go up if they were 2x as fast as anything Intel offered.

In 2008 when the markets crashed Tech comanies crashed hard. So far AMD hasn’t performed a repeat, but theres still plenty of time.
 
These new cores can really stretch their legs at very low power. Even the desktop chips are amazingly good at low power. I think those of us who waited so patiently have been well rewarded for our loyalty. Wish I could build my wife one today.
 
Archaea said:
In this climate? AMD stock isn’t assured to go up if they were 2x as fast as anything Intel offered.

In 2008 when the markets crashed Tech comanies crashed hard. So far AMD hasn’t performed a repeat, but theres still plenty of time.
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Time in market not timing market etc
I’m comfortable enough with my portfolio. If anything I’m still under using my margin. I’m just looking at another 10% to my holding.

I’m no savant but I’ve done pretty well after some early twenties fuck ups (offset by using most of my 9/11 redundancy to buy amazon shares I still have). Plus managed to time both Oct 2018 and this latest one to a tee with preparation.

My basic strategy is buy products and companies I believe in. I think there’s still upside on a long enough time line. Just wish they’d sort the gpu shit out.
 
AMD laptops just overtook Intel. Great to see some competition. That 14" Asus Zephyrus G14 with the Ryzen 9 and 2060 Max-Q looks excellent for portability. Biggest downside in AMD laptops will likely be the lack of TB3.
 
obs said:
AMD laptops just overtook Intel. Great to see some competition. That 14" Asus Zephyrus G14 with the Ryzen 9 and 2060 Max-Q looks excellent for portability. Biggest downside in AMD laptops will likely be the lack of TB3.
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manufactures can still use TB3, it'll just require them to pay a fee to intel and use an add-on controller.
 
N4CR said:
Caught up in IPC moniker thrown around lol, they were there last gen. Now they have the fastest desktop and laptop CPUs, period. Not 'caught up'. Overtaken.
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Its still too tough of a pill for some to swallow.
 
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tangoseal said:
Its not the process. its the architecture.

You can shrink a single transistor from 14 to 7nm and its still just a transistor.

It still functions as a transistor... so is shrinking a transistor going to make a transistor do something better than be just a transistor?

nope ....
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so when amd says it squeezed out 2x performance per watt by going to 7nm, it's the architecture?
 
N4CR said:
Caught up in IPC moniker thrown around lol, they were there last gen. Now they have the fastest desktop and laptop CPUs, period. Not 'caught up'. Overtaken.
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i remember ryzen 3000 was slightly behind on single core performance.
 
Kdawg said:
so when amd says it squeezed out 2x performance per watt by going to 7nm, it's the architecture?
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They are making a ratio of performance : power

If performance could be measured as say ...

100 points
Then AMD is stating that at 100 points performance it consumes 100 watts

then AMD changes the process from 14 to 7nm and states that 100 points performance still remains but now consumes 50 watts

They were not claiming that 100 points performance at 100 watts at 14nm is now 200 points performance at 7nm at 50 watts.

The actual performance increases came from architectural changes and the drop in process size allowed them to push higher counts of transistors and higher clocks because the thermals are lower.

So I get what your tryring to say but simply dropping a transistor size in half doesn't automatically assume double the performance.

If size was the metric of performance then the 7nm Radeon VII should have obliterated the 2080ti with its 12nm gargantuan size in comparison. But nvidia architecture was superior even at a higher node size.

Kdawg said:
i remember ryzen 3000 was slightly behind on single core performance.
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Yeah but it wasnt much and in some limited cases it actually exceed Intel's
Im excited to see what Intel has for its 10nm and below stuff.
 
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obs said:
AMD laptops just overtook Intel. Great to see some competition. That 14" Asus Zephyrus G14 with the Ryzen 9 and 2060 Max-Q looks excellent for portability. Biggest downside in AMD laptops will likely be the lack of TB3.
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TB3.. for what purpose? TB docks absolutely suck. USB-C docks aren't much better if at all.

I guess maybe for multi-gig Ethernet and external drive arrays it may be good but those are a pretty small market for most people that have laptops.

I haven't had a chance to try a TB external GPU enclosure though.

One of the biggest problems I have with the connector is that it looses tightness after a while and stuff plugged in gets very flakey and the slightest movement will make it disconnect.
Apparently nobody did any actual wear testing on the plugs or the sockets before they threw that crap on the market.
 
cyclone3d said:
TB3.. for what purpose? TB docks absolutely suck. USB-C docks aren't much better if at all.

I guess maybe for multi-gig Ethernet and external drive arrays it may be good but those are a pretty small market for most people that have laptops.

I haven't had a chance to try a TB external GPU enclosure though.

One of the biggest problems I have with the connector is that it looses tightness after a while and stuff plugged in gets very flakey and the slightest movement will make it disconnect.
Apparently nobody did any actual wear testing on the plugs or the sockets before they threw that crap on the market.
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to the contrary.. they did do testing, to find what the shortest possible time the connector will survive to get outside of warranty.. ;)
 
N4CR said:
Caught up in IPC moniker thrown around lol, they were there last gen. Now they have the fastest desktop and laptop CPUs, period. Not 'caught up'. Overtaken.
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THANK YOU. I've been seeing people throw IPC around for a while and I'm like "I don't think that means what you think it means"

ZEN+=Intel in IPC (instructions per clock)

Zen 2 > intel in ipc (it outperforms intel with a lower clock speed)
 
cyclone3d said:
TB3.. for what purpose? TB docks absolutely suck. USB-C docks aren't much better if at all.

I guess maybe for multi-gig Ethernet and external drive arrays it may be good but those are a pretty small market for most people that have laptops.

I haven't had a chance to try a TB external GPU enclosure though.

One of the biggest problems I have with the connector is that it looses tightness after a while and stuff plugged in gets very flakey and the slightest movement will make it disconnect.
Apparently nobody did any actual wear testing on the plugs or the sockets before they threw that crap on the market.
Click to expand...


I have tb3 on my laptop and not once have i used TB for anything.
It's so niche.

The external gpu enclosures were hyped at one time, but since then, no one seems to be talking about or promoting them anymore. They handicap the full fat gpu with the TB bottleneck, giving external GPUs a terrible cost/performance ratio.
You spend all the money for a rtx2080, only to get like 1660ti performance.

Even worse, faster and faster gpus keep coming out for laptops, so by the time you need to upgrade, there's something relatively affordable that is much faster, without needing to use a clunky external box.

tb3 has been out for ages, and just stagnated, with no tb4 in sight.

TB3 is only relevant for dongle lifers who are forced to use the TB3 ports.

For my pc laptop, with its abundance of ports.... dual displayport, hdmi 2.0, usb3/c, I have no need for my TB3 port
 
Kdawg said:
I have tb3 on my laptop and not once have i used TB for anything.
It's so niche.

The external gpu enclosures were hyped at one time, but since then, no one seems to be talking about or promoting them anymore. They handicap the full fat gpu with the TB bottleneck, giving external GPUs a terrible cost/performance ratio.
You spend all the money for a rtx2080, only to get like 1660ti performance.

Even worse, faster and faster gpus keep coming out for laptops, so by the time you need to upgrade, there's something relatively affordable that is much faster, without needing to use a clunky external box.

tb3 has been out for ages, and just stagnated, with no tb4 in sight.

TB3 is only relevant for dongle lifers who are forced to use the TB3 ports.

For my pc laptop, with its abundance of ports.... dual displayport, hdmi 2.0, usb3/c, I have no need for my TB3 port
Click to expand...

My Titan Xp is working fairly well as an external GPU when connected to my laptop, beats the the RTX 2060 I have in the laptop by a fair margin. I would say very useful when needed. Negated the need for me to spend an additional $1000 on a laptop for the added GPU power.
 
Still super niche. Only beneficial if you already have the desktop gpu with a very underpowered laptop.

Otherwise,
Just doing some fuzzy math based on passmark composite scores,
a titan xp scores 15900
rtx2060 mobile scores 11400
rtx2060 maxq probably 10700

titan xp / 2060 = 1.43, x 25% TB bottleneck, 1.43 x 0.75= 1.07...... I'd expect the titan xp to be 10% faster than a mobile 2060.

Cost of titan xp = $1200, + $300 TB gpu box = $1500 investment for a 10% gain.

rtx2070 laptop msrp ~$1500 on amazon right now, and that will give you a much greater gain than an egpu.
 
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From my own gaming experience and running benchmarks between the two gpus I have to say you are incorrect with your numbers. I generally see 50% to 100% performance improvement when using my Titan Xp over the RTX 2060 mobile for gaming purposes.

While I am sure there is a bottleneck when using the external GPU via TB, it is not as nearly bad as you make it out to be.

I'm glad to see AMD doing this well in the laptop segment. My other laptop with a 2700u Ive found to be capable. I can only imagine how a 4900 and a dedicated gpu would work together.
 
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Kdawg said:
i remember ryzen 3000 was slightly behind on single core performance.
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Depends on the bench but there are CB SC scores at 5ghz for Zen+ (not even zen2) which beat that of Intel at same clock.. so IPC is higher last gen, let alone now. All Intel has is clock speed to even it out and only in certain edge cases. Overall now with zen2 amd takes the win.
 
xBanzai89 said:
From my own gaming experience and running benchmarks between the two gpus I have to say you are incorrect with your numbers. I generally see 50% to 100% performance improvement when using my Titan Xp over the RTX 2060 mobile for gaming purposes.

While I am sure there is a bottleneck when using the external GPU via TB, it is not as nearly bad as you make it out to be.

I'm glad to see AMD doing this well in the laptop segment. My other laptop with a 2700u Ive found to be capable. I can only imagine how a 4900 and a dedicated gpu would work together.
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interesting.

i guess you're right, some games don't see that big of a drop.
only one that suffers is ghost recon... 20-35% penalty

https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-thunderbolt-3-egpu-internal-display-test/
 
I kind of get the external gpu enclosure, but at this point the pace of laptop improvement is high enough (thanks AMD!) that a whole new laptop every 2 years is better than trying to milk a cpu for longer than that with egpu. Case in point, I bought the thick boy helios 500 with desktop r7 2700 and vega56 a year and a half ago and the 4900HS beats it on the cpu side, handily, and matches it on the gpu side...The cpu is more of a limit in that and it has the full on desktop ryzen, an rtx 2080 laptop will run into cpu limits before gpu due to the low (intel) clocks when loaded, especially as games start levearaging all 8 cores and 16 threads fully thanks to the new consoles being an influence.

They made sense when cpu's had stagnated for 5 years, but that's no longer the case.
 
bobzdar said:
I kind of get the external gpu enclosure, but at this point the pace of laptop improvement is high enough (thanks AMD!) that a whole new laptop every 2 years is better than trying to milk a cpu for longer than that with egpu. Case in point, I bought the thick boy helios 500 with desktop r7 2700 and vega56 a year and a half ago and the 4900HS beats it on the cpu side, handily, and matches it on the gpu side...The cpu is more of a limit in that and it has the full on desktop ryzen, an rtx 2080 laptop will run into cpu limits before gpu due to the low (intel) clocks when loaded, especially as games start levearaging all 8 cores and 16 threads fully thanks to the new consoles being an influence.

They made sense when cpu's had stagnated for 5 years, but that's no longer the case.
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I think you missed the best use case scenario.
There are quite a few people that have single system setups, as in: laptop only. No desktop. If you have an eGPU, you can have your single laptop that travels with you and "docks" to the eGPU while at home.
But more critical is the type of laptop is purchased. For people that do have to travel frequently getting a desktop replacement isn't ideal, in fact quite the opposite. So, it's better to get a laptop that weights 4-6lbs (rather than 10-15) and is small and light for travel (preferably with a reasonably fast CPU/APU). And then at home the eGPU gives all the GPGPU/compute performance.
This mostly eliminates the need to replace laptops as often, but more to the point also allows desktop graphics cards that can either be sold and upgraded as needed independently of the hardware inside the laptop. But even if you wanted to flip your laptop every 2 years just for CPU improvements, you could still hang on to the graphics card in the eGPU enclosure.

The other major use for Thunderbolt is a DAS. But it really seems like there aren't that many folks here on the [H] who do work with high data needs. However if you're involved in video editing as an example a DAS is going to be the preferred form of storage for low-medium cost ($500-$3000) setups as it will give the most speed and largest platters at a reasonable cost. 10Gbps Nas obviously not being as fast as 40Gbps and if you're working with raw 4k/6k/8k video you'll need those increased data rates.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
I think you missed the best use case scenario.
There are quite a few people that have single system setups, as in: laptop only. No desktop. If you have an eGPU, you can have your single laptop that travels with you and "docks" to the eGPU while at home.
But more critical is the type of laptop is purchased. For people that do have to travel frequently getting a desktop replacement isn't ideal, in fact quite the opposite. So, it's more feasible to get a laptop that weights 4-6lbs (rather than 10-15) and is small and light for travel (preferably with a reasonably fast CPU/APU). And then at home the eGPU gives all the GPGPU/compute performance.
This mostly eliminates the need to replace laptops as often, but more to the point also allows desktop graphics cards that can either be sold and upgraded as needed independently of the hardware inside the laptop.
Click to expand...

GPGPU compute is already a niche use case, at least those that need a really heavy duty GPU - so needing a partially portable setup (where the GPU doesn't come with you for it) is even more niche. Those that are going to spend $1-3k on a GPU will have no issue putting it in an actual desktop or server for when they're home vs. plugging into a laptop.
 
bobzdar said:
GPGPU compute is already a niche use case, at least those that need a really heavy duty GPU - so needing a partially portable setup (where the GPU doesn't come with you for it) is even more niche. Those that are going to spend $1-3k on a GPU will have no issue putting it in an actual desktop or server for when they're home vs. plugging into a laptop.
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It's literally the use case that I'm in now. If you have the money to buy a $1-$3k laptop every 2 years as you've expressed then it's a non issue. But some of us also don't want to or can't keep buying at that rate.
I'd say it's far more unreasonable for most to keep at that pace versus buying every 3-5 years and only upgrading when necessary.

I can't afford to have a desktop and a laptop. Let alone a desktop and a laptop that I sink $1000-$3000 x2. So that might sound niche to you, but it's certainly way more cost effective and cost conscious.

Money solves a lot of problems. If you have tons of money to throw at every problem then sure an eGPU doesn't make sense. Just buy a $5000 laptop and a $15000 workstation whenever you want.
 
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UnknownSouljer said:
It's literally the use case that I'm in now. If you have the money to buy a $1-$3k laptop every 2 years as you've expressed then it's a non issue. But some of us also don't want to or can't keep buying at that rate.
I'd say it's far more unreasonable for most to keep at that pace versus buying every 3-5 years and only upgrading when necessary.

I can't afford to have a desktop and a laptop. Let alone a desktop and a laptop that I sink $1000-$3000 x2. So that might sound niche to you, but it's certainly way more cost effective and cost conscious.
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I just don't know of many uses cases that are going to saddle a high end GPU with a mobile 8 core cpu (at best). If you're doing that type of compute, you're likely going to want to feed it with a high end, high power cpu. I'm not sure what your use case is, but a $2000 desktop you can upgrade in stages and $500 laptop you carry around for 3-5 years might be a much more effective setup than a $1500 laptop and $1000 egpu enclosure setup...And the storage can be directly attached to the desktop motherboard, no need to saddle yourself with TB3.
 
bobzdar said:
I just don't know of many uses cases that are going to saddle a high end GPU with a mobile 8 core cpu (at best). If you're doing that type of compute, you're likely going to want to feed it with a high end, high power cpu. I'm not sure what your use case is, but a $2000 desktop you can upgrade in stages and $500 laptop you carry around for 3-5 years might be a much more effective setup than a $1500 laptop and $1000 egpu enclosure setup...And the storage can be directly attached to the desktop motherboard, no need to saddle yourself with TB3.
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There isn't much of a point taking this any further. If you don't see a point, that's fine. But there are plenty who do. This is why there is choice in the market.
I made my points, I stand by them. You did the same.
 
Bet we still won't find these in premium level laptops for reasons.

I hope I'm wrong.

I havn't booted to OSX on this MBP in 4-5 months. It's falling apart and I'd like to replace it.
 
Arcygenical said:
Bet we still won't find these in premium level laptops for reasons.

I hope I'm wrong.

I havn't booted to OSX on this MBP in 4-5 months. It's falling apart and I'd like to replace it.
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you're probably not wrong about that.. but who knows, if intel can't supply the cpu's it's possible OEM's might actually produce some good products using the 4000 series mobile chips. if i actually had a need for a 4900hs the asus Zephyrus G14 looks pretty damn nice though.
 
It's not IPC.

In laptops its perf/watt.

There is no doubt that with 7nm process, AMD has passed Intel Perf/watt.
 
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bobzdar said:
I just don't know of many uses cases that are going to saddle a high end GPU with a mobile 8 core cpu (at best). If you're doing that type of compute, you're likely going to want to feed it with a high end, high power cpu. I'm not sure what your use case is, but a $2000 desktop you can upgrade in stages and $500 laptop you carry around for 3-5 years might be a much more effective setup than a $1500 laptop and $1000 egpu enclosure setup...And the storage can be directly attached to the desktop motherboard, no need to saddle yourself with TB3.
Click to expand...

If you look at Nvidias mobile GPU numbers, they are making a killing, and A LOT of those systems are paired up with expensive Intel CPUs toward the middle/high end of the stack. A significant number of working gamers that make real money need a laptop and want the best they can get inside the power envelope of mobile. This has been an absolute cash cow segment for Intel and Nvidia for a long time, and AMD has forever been trying to get back into the fight on either end. Just look at Ananadtechs article about the chip to see how disrupting it could potentially be.
 
Snowdog said:
It's not IPC.

In laptops its perf/watt.

There is no doubt that with 7nm process, AMD has passed Intel Perf/watt.
Click to expand...
AMD already surpassed Intel with perf/watt, in laptops, during the zen+ APUs. With the Zen APUs (nominally called 2000 series), they were at least matching it.

However, AMD had some seriously high static power (idle power was much higher than Intel), which sapped away any of the power efficiency of the Zen cores themselves. In mixed use and max power loads, even the horribly designed and constructed first/second gen APU laptops showed a lot of promise.

Another factor that made buying their APUs a poorer choice in high end laptops (where idle power isn't a big problem) was AMD's decision to limit their APU platform to 12 PCIe lanes. That simply isn't enough. GPU takes at least 4 (2 is doable, but the low end GPUs that work well with that + optimus, aren't worth pairing with an APU), NVMe takes 4 (again, 2 lanes is doable; consider that many higher performance laptops have 2 or even 3 M.2 NVMe slots...), leaving just 4 for everything else. GbE LAN? WWAN? WiFi? Any super high speed USB-C or SD card reader? The mythical TB3 AMD laptop (the Thinkpad was just confirmed to NOT have TB3 at all)? So AMD wasn't set out well for high end laptops, either.

With Zen2 APUs, they seem to have fixed the idle power draw. Mixed use and max load power draws are still better than Intel. There have been hints, that AMD has upped the PCIe lane count (maybe to at least 16?), but I haven't been able to find solid numbers.

Either way, I'm excited!
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Money solves a lot of problems. If you have tons of money to throw at every problem then sure an eGPU doesn't make sense. Just buy a $5000 laptop and a $15000 workstation whenever you want.
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If this were 1990, that really is what a laptop and a workstation would cost, for real!
 
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