Sunday, March 12th 2023
AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX Beats Core i9-13950HX In Gaming Performance, Dragon Range Equipped Laptops Available Now
AMD has announced the immediate availability of its Ryzen 7045 HX-series (Dragon Range) processors for high performance laptop devices. In a Youtube video released on March 10, AMD's Jason Banta has announced the availability of the world's most powerful mobile processor, the Ryzen 9 7945HX. He listed the OEM partners who have integrated the 7945HX into flagship level laptop models. He also declared that this range topping CPU is a competition beater. Gaming benchmark tests have demonstrated that the Ryzen 9 7945HX beats Intel's Raptor Lake Core i9-13950HX by an average margin of 10%.
The "Dragon Range" series is comprised of four processor models, the aforementioned Ryzen 9 7945HX is top dog, followed by the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7845HX, both featuring dual-CCD designs. These are trailed by the single-CCD models, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7745HX, and the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7645HX. The Ryzen 9 7945HX is clocked at a 2.50 GHz base, with a maximum boost frequency of 5.40 GHz. The 7845HX has a 3.00 GHz base frequency, boosting up to 5.20 GHz. The 7745HX ticks at 3.60 GHz base, boosting up to 5.10 GHz. The 7645HX has the highest base frequency at 4.00 GHz, but only boots up to a maximum of 5.00 GHz.
Retail listings for laptops built using the Ryzen 9 7945HX have popped up on Newegg and Amazon. It seems that ASUS is the first company out of the gate to push product to market - with various configurations of its ROG range: Zephyrus Duo 16, Strix SCAR and Strix G17 models are available to purchase right now. At the current time, a basic G17 model will set you back $1799, and the top-of-the-line Zephyrus comes in at a wallet punishing $5145.
It will be interesting to see whether supply will meet demand, as AMD has been affected by supply chain and manufacturing issues in the recent past, especially during initial product launch periods.
Sources:
AMD Youtube Channel, wccftech.com
Retail listings for laptops built using the Ryzen 9 7945HX have popped up on Newegg and Amazon. It seems that ASUS is the first company out of the gate to push product to market - with various configurations of its ROG range: Zephyrus Duo 16, Strix SCAR and Strix G17 models are available to purchase right now. At the current time, a basic G17 model will set you back $1799, and the top-of-the-line Zephyrus comes in at a wallet punishing $5145.
26 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX Beats Core i9-13950HX In Gaming Performance, Dragon Range Equipped Laptops Available Now
1) gaming performance, tested by Notebookcheck, was ~7% slower than 13950HX, not 10% faster, as claimed by AMD. I'm not sure what 13950HX laptop they picked as their competitor for their slides, but it had to be gimped one, in order to get these results that are most likely false.
2) every preview was boasting high power efficiency with load, but hiding battery life numbers at low load. Now the first review with that came out, and it is 3.5 hours of streaming video when set to be more power efficient (50% dimmed screen, iGPU use).
I'm an AMD fan, but I hate what their marketing people are doing recently, including this BS, and also claiming the 7800X3D is 20% faster than 13900K, as well as launching the 7900XT at $900 only to collect poor reviews (due to it being overpriced, when AMD knew well the performance and price of competitor 4070Ti already), and then have to drop the price to a more reasonable soon after.
s.o.s.s... yada yada yada....
Can someone please wake me up when we can buy an 8GHZ, 35W, $600 lappy ?
TIA :D
Phoenix is coming for the efficiency segment. The trouble with cutting the TDP of Dragon Range below 55W is that you begin to starve the cores of power, as the IF takes around ~20W. No doubt this could be reduced by cutting the IF speed, but RAM performance suffers.
Why are these here and Phoenix is not? These are simply the desktop processors on a different substrate. Phoenix is a completely different design, being fully monolithic.
No doubt Phoenix will also make it to the desktop, much later.
The best comparison would be on the same laptop model, GPU, TDP and just changing the CPU.
No doubt AMD will bin the best dies for Dragon Range, but binning doesn't fix IFOP's problems. The 1CCD parts are getting better but most of it comes from lower IOD power. 2CCD is always fighting an uphill battle.
Obviously, if actually rendering or gaming then both Dragon Range and Raptor Lake laptops need to be plugged in, but if Dragon Range doesn't fundamentally do something different then it will also struggle with idle power on battery. It still is a laptop after all, gotta still be able to spend *some* time away from the plug......unless they ONLY want Clevo/Sager type design wins.
I certainly wouldn't buy any laptop with this in it, if my goal was to be able to use it for emails in a coffee shop or airport. That is what the low TDP models are for - without dGPU.
Anyway these look great and Zen 4 has far better performance scaling at lower power than Raptor Lake. Keep to the 45-75W range and Zen 4 will kill RL.
Still I'm far more interested in Phoenix, 7740/7840H(S) with it's RDNA3 iGPU will do very nicely in a light and thin laptop.
Raptor Lake being 3 process nodes behind (Intel 7 is a rebrand of their 10ESF process) is really showing at both extremes, mobile (with Zen 4's impossibly good power efficiency squeezing Raptor Lake as a viable option away) and the ultra high performance desktop segment (13900KS x 7950X3D, with both tying up performance, each has its own bunch of wins but the Intel processor uses twice as much energy to do so).
AMD used a 17" Asus strix scar G17 that weights more than the dual display 16" Asus Zephyrus Duo 16 NBC used. It's pretty easy to guess which one's got the better cooling system, which will affect performance in the end.
The Zephyrus Duo 16 is probably a great machine overall, but nobody expects it to take the leads in any GPU benchmarks due to its smaller size and weight.This is all wrong. AMD said up to 20 % in games, which TPU's review already have confirmed. Yeah you have to guess which review I'm talking about.That's pretty standard IMO.
In the past two generations, I've been waiting for an AMD laptop to be released, but it only went on sale in October/November, and reached my region 3-4 months later (1year after announcement), the actual announcement was in CES with expected release in March/April.
But the only AMD laptops that were actually launched in March/April were the gaming and low end laptops, I was waiting for a prosumer/business laptop mainly, to be more exact, either ThinkBook 16 Pro, or the ZenBook Pro 16/VivoBook Pro 16, but nothing.
The intel version of these laptops were announced in September and already available in October, why AMD laptops tends to get delayed by months or sometimes a year in some regions !!
Sadly, this has been the case for a few generations now, not just 1-2. AMD seemed to be ordering low quantities to not over supply, but kept undersupplying the market each year and they just can't help to see what is the issue is. This not to mention they keep releasing old architectures with new branding, this already consume a lot of production/packaging time better tailored for more recent architectures. I know this is what some OEMs want (low prices for last gen.) but can't they just release lower tiers of the new gen in the same time, or at least soon enough?