AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS Cezanne Evaluation: Ryzen 5000 Cellular Examined

Since AMD’s introduction of its latest Zen 3 core for desktop customers, the implementation for notebooks and cellular customers has been eagerly awaited. In a single technology, on the identical manufacturing course of, AMD extracted +19% extra efficiency per clock (we verified), so for any system that’s energy restricted, additional efficiency is usually very nicely acquired. AMD introduced its new Ryzen 5000 Cellular processor household firstly of the yr, with processors from 15W to 45W+ within the pipeline, and the primary cellular techniques coming to market in February. AMD despatched us a peak instance of Ryzen 5000 Cellular for at this time’s overview, the 35W Ryzen 9 5980HS, as contained within the ASUS ROG Move X13.

Ryzen 5000 Cellular: Eight Zen 3 cores and Vega 8 Graphics

For people who didn’t catch the unique announcement a few weeks in the past, here’s a recap of the Ryzen 5000 Cellular household in addition to the important thing factors from the announcement.

The Ryzen 5000 Cellular processor sequence is an improve over final yr’s Ryzen 4000 Cellular processor sequence. AMD co-designed each of those processor households to re-use key elements of the chip design, enabling a quick time-to-market and faster improve cycle for AMD’s pocket book manufacturing companions (OEMs), like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others. The key distinction between the 2 processors that the majority customers will encounter is that the brand new {hardware} makes use of eight of AMD’s newest Zen 3 CPU cores, which is an improve over the eight Zen 2 cores from final yr. The spotlight is the +19% uncooked efficiency uplift when evaluating the 2 on the identical frequency.

Below the hood, there are just a few extra key adjustments that fans might be all in favour of. The brand new 8-core Zen 3 design shares a mixed 16 MB L3 cache, which allows any of the eight cores to entry the complete cache, lowering latency to major reminiscence (from 4 MB to 16 MB) in comparison with the earlier design which had two clusters of 4 Zen 2 cores, every with 4 MB of cache.

The brand new processor is 180 mm2 in measurement, in comparison with 156 mm2 of final technology, however nonetheless suits into the identical socket. It comprises 10.7 billion transistors, which is up from 9.8 billion. This implies an efficient lower in transistor density, though we all know that Zen 3 cores are barely bigger than Zen 2 cores, and a few further safety measures have been added (extra on this on the subsequent web page).

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su Showcasing Ryzen 5000 Cellular at CES

Customers could also be upset that the brand new processor vary solely options Vega 8 graphics, the identical as final yr’s design, nonetheless a part of the silicon re-use is available in right here enabling AMD to come back to market in a well timed method. The Vega 8 design within the earlier technology already had an enormous enhance in effectivity and frequency, and this time round we get one other +350 MHz on the high-end. Customers who need to see RDNA in a cellular processor might have to attend longer. AMD’s re-use technique might lend itself to altering CPU one technology, GPU the subsequent – we should wait and see.

There are different SoC adjustments, which we’ll get to later on this overview.

The Ryzen 5000 Cellular household is break up into two broad product ranges, however each ranges use the identical underlying silicon. On the high is the normal 45 W H-series processors, geared toward productiveness pocket book designs. For this technology, AMD is pairing the normal 45 W elements with a variety of 35 W ‘HS’ fashions, optimized for extra environment friendly designs – this might be AMD’s second technology of 35 W ‘HS’ class processors. AMD can be introducing a brand new vary of ‘HX’ processors at 45 W and above which is able to permit AMD’s companions to co-design high-performance and/or overclockable AMD pocket book options.

When HS was launched final yr with Ryzen 4000 Cellular, it was an AMD-OEM partnership-only co-designed product requiring AMD approval with a purpose to have entry to them. This yr nonetheless, they appear to be a part of the complete stack, indicating maybe that demand for these HS designs was larger than anticipated.

The brand new HX fashions are right here to allow high-end gaming, workstation, and desktop-replacement techniques, in addition to enabling distributors to provide overclockable laptops into the market with enough cooling offered. Overclockable laptops isn’t a brand new idea (Intel has been doing it some time), however evidently AMD’s companions have requested larger energy elements with a purpose to allow this market on AMD. The official TDP for these processors is 45+ W, showcasing that companions can alter the sustained TDP values north of 45 W if required, seemingly as much as 65 W as wanted. Prior to now, if OEMs needed to go down this route, they would want to construct a transportable chassis able to supporting a desktop processor.

There may be some slight deviation from the common H-series, in that there isn’t a Ryzen 9 normal ‘H’ processor. The Ryzen 7 5800H will sit on the high of that exact market, however the best way these numbering techniques work signifies that the Ryzen 7 nonetheless has the complete eight cores and quick built-in graphics. In that occasion, Ryzen 9, with solely HS and HX fashions, are arguably for extra ‘specialist’ centered designs.

AMD is promoting the Ryzen 9 5980HS as the very best processor for transportable gaming efficiency, whereas the Ryzen 9 5980HX is ‘the very best cellular processor for gaming’. As a part of the launch day supplies, AMD showcases the Ryzen 9 5980HS as scoring 600 pts in Cinebench R20, which might put it on the identical stage of efficiency as AMD’s desktop-class Zen 3 processors. We didn’t fairly rating 600 on this overview with the R9 5980HS (we scored 578).  

The standard 15 W processors, used for ultra-thin and light-weight transportable notebooks, type a part of the Ryzen 5000 Cellular U-series. AMD is enabling quite a few elements with up to date Zen 3 cores, but additionally introducing a number of processors based mostly on the older Zen 2 design, albeit with updates.

The straightforward method to establish that is with the digit after the quantity 5. Even digits (5800, 5600, 5400) are based mostly on Zen 3, whereas odd digits (5700, 5500, 5300) are the up to date variations of Zen 2. Loads of customers will contemplate these latter processors an identical to the earlier technology, nonetheless now we have discovered that there are a variety of key variations which we’ll cowl in a separate article.

Nonetheless, AMD is selling the highest Ryzen 7 5800U as the corporate’s most effective cellular processor so far. Based mostly on quite a few enhancements to the silicon design, AMD is claiming a +2hr battery life from a easy processor swap from Ryzen 4000 to Ryzen 5000, even when all the things else within the chassis is identical. Nonetheless, AMD is stating that it has labored with controller corporations, energy supply suppliers, and pocket book designers with a purpose to be sure that these OEMs that need to construct techniques with greater than 20+ hours battery life have the instruments to take action. Different OEMs nonetheless, notably for low price designs or maybe schooling fashions, can freely change the processor from previous to new with solely a firmware replace, as each Ryzen 4000 and Ryzen 5000 are pin suitable.

Total AMD is claiming 150+ designs with Ryzen 5000 Cellular to this point, a major step up from the 100 designs on Ryzen 4000 Cellular. These are set to incorporate high-end gaming designs with the newest premium graphics playing cards, a market that AMD has had issue breaking into to this point.

Here’s a useful desk of processor codenames we would use at varied elements of those overview. These seek advice from AMD’s inside codenames for the silicon designs, and act as a neater method to speak concerning the {hardware} with out consistently referring to the branding (particularly if sure silicon is utilized in a number of product ranges).

Testing AMD’s Claims: The Pocket book

For this overview, AMD provided the Ryzen 9 5980HS contained in the ASUS ROG Move X13 laptop computer. It’s considered one of AMD’s key design wins, with a 35 W-grade processor in a smooth design aimed for mobility. As a reviewer who in a standard yr spends a number of time travelling, the specs on the field make a number of sense to my common workflow.

The system includes a 13.4-inch 360º hinged show, which as an IPS touchscreen with a 3840×2400 decision (16:10, lastly) working at 120 Hz with adaptive sync, Pantone colour licensed, and coated in Corning Gorilla Glass. The show is rated for 116% sRGB, 86% Adobe, and 85% DCI-P3.

Below the hood is that AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS processor, with eight Zen 3 cores and sixteen threads, with a 3.0 GHz base frequency and a 4.8 GHz single core turbo frequency, rated at 35 W. ASUS says that they purchase the very best variations of the 5980HS for the Move X13 to make sure the very best efficiency and battery life. This processor has Vega 8 graphics, nonetheless ASUS has paired it with a GTX 1650 4 GB discrete graphics processor, enabling CUDA acceleration in addition to larger efficiency gaming when wanted.

Our unit comes with 32 GB of LPDDR4X-4267 reminiscence, in addition to a Western Digital SN350 1TB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe storage drive. Each of those would seem like the usual set up for the Move X13.

ASUS claims the 62 Wh battery is nice for 18 hours of use, and the Move X13 is considered one of a handful of units that helps 100 W USB Sort-C energy supply. ASUS claims the bundled charger can cost the unit from 0% to 60% in round 39 minutes.

Different options embrace a back-lit keyboard with constantly sized arrow keys, a full-sized HDMI output in addition to a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Sort-A port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Sort-C ports, a 3.5 mm jack, and a customized PCIe 3.0 x8 output connector to be used with ASUS’ XG Cellular exterior graphics dock. This tradition graphics dock can include a customized RTX 3070/3080, and together with graphics energy additionally supplies the system with 4 extra USB Sort-A ports, HDMI/DP outputs, and Ethernet. With this dock put in, technically the system would have three graphics playing cards.

All of this is available in at 2.87 lbs / 1.30 Kg, all for underneath 16mm thick. That is typically a key class for each AMD and Intel on the subject of mobility mixed with productiveness. ASUS has not introduced pricing of the ROG Move X13 but – the opposite mannequin within the vary relies on the Ryzen 9 5900 HS, however is in any other case an identical.

This overview goes to be largely concerning the processor slightly than the Move X13, as a consequence of time constraints (our pattern arrived just a few days in the past). Nonetheless, it’s value noting that as with most notebooks, the ROG Move X13 comes with a number of energy and efficiency modes.

In reality, there are two: Silent and Efficiency. In every mode there are totally different values for idle temperature, with a purpose to preserve the any audible noise decrease, after which totally different values for energy/thermals for turbo and sustained energy draw.

These two differ primarily within the sustained energy draw and thermal limits:

*The idle temperature right here is so excessive, as you may see later within the overview, as a result of AMD’s high-frequency levers are very aggressive such that our sensor monitoring instruments are activating excessive frequency modes, regardless of the small load.

Testing AMD’s Claims: The Ryzen 9 5980HS

Just like the launch of Ryzen 4000 Cellular, the unit AMD has provided us is their high of the road however most effective H-series processor. For the final technology it was the Ryzen 9 4900HS discovered within the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. The Zephyrus G14 is barely larger than the ROG Move X14 now we have at this time, however the GPU can be higher on the G14 (2060 vs 1650). Each processors are rated at 35 W, and each showcase a number of the finest design AMD needs to steer with firstly of a technology.

The primary competitors for these processors is Intel’s Tiger Lake. A few weeks in the past Intel introduced its new line of H35 processors, whereby they enhance the 15 W U-series processors as much as 35 W for added efficiency. We now have no phrase on when these items might be out there (we’re informed quickly), nonetheless now we have managed to safe an MSI Status 14 Evo which comprises Intel’s finest U-series processor (Core i7-1185G7) and permits for sustained efficiency at 35 W.

Alongside these numbers we even have historic knowledge from Intel’s Tiger Lake reference platform which ran in 15 W and 28 W modes.

However first, allow us to talk about the brand new options in Ryzen 5000 Cellular.