AMD Ryzen 8000 Hawk Point in testing - Zen4 refresh outperforms Meteor Lake in number crunching and GPU performance

While Intel has adopted a tile design for its new Meteor Lake mobile processors, AMD continues to use a monolithic architecture. The integrated graphics card remains unchanged, with the classic Radeon 780M (RDNA3).

AMD only claims a considerable performance boost over last year's Ryzen 7000 models in the NPU, which is achieved through an increase in clock speed. However, we are now only able to validate these assertions with difficulty because there are no truly appropriate and standardised test procedures.

To provide a realistic comparison between different processors and graphics cards, we consider power consumption in addition to pure performance in synthetic evaluations, and then calculate efficiency. Consumption measurements are always taken on an external monitor to rule out the possibility of different internal displays impacting the results. Nonetheless, we measure the system's entire usage rather than relying solely on the stated CPU and GPU statistics.

The new Ryzen 9 8945HS has similar single-core performance to last year's Ryzen 9 7940HS and Ryzen 7 7840HS. This means that the AMD CPU lags behind Intel's previous Raptor Lake models but outperforms recent Meteor Lake chips like the Core Ultra 7 155H, which have lost part of their single-core performance. Apple was able to make a huge stride forward with the new M3 chips, which are much ahead of the Ryzen 9 8495HS in native benchmarks.

There are also no major surprises in terms of single-core efficiency. The new Ryzen 9 8945HS is on a par with its predecessors and well ahead of most Intel competitors with comparable power limits. It is remarkable that Intel was unable to improve single-core efficiency despite lower speed, and the Acer Swift Go 14 with the Core Ultra 7 155H lags behind the AMD chip and can only compete with the strong Raptor Lake CPUs. Apple is still clearly ahead of AMD when it comes to single-core efficiency.

The multi-core performance remains consistently strong, particularly considering the imposed power limits. In multi-tests, the new Meteor Lake processors from Intel are more competitive and, depending on the set power limit, may even take the lead. However, AMD is expected to maintain an advantage in most scenarios, especially in compact or thin laptops. In Cinebench tests, AMD outperforms the new Apple M3 Pro (14 CPU cores), although the Apple chip excels in Geekbench. Notably, Apple holds a trump card with the M3 Max, offering CPU performance in the 14-inch range, a feat matched by AMD and Intel only with the HX processors, albeit exclusively in 16-inch devices.

The efficiency of the HS processors is naturally lower than that of the U-series chips, a characteristic shared with Intel's counterparts. In essence, the efficiency remains comparable to the Ryzen 9 7940HS when power limits are maintained at the same level. We anticipate that the U-series processors will continue to perform at a level similar to the Ryzen 7000 processors, bringing them close to the capabilities of Apple's M3 Pro processors.

Directly comparing the performance of processors in laptops is often challenging due to the use of different power limits. As in our previous tests, we have examined the multi-core performance at various TDP values. Despite the Zephyrus G14's ability to reach a maximum of 80 watts, it struggles to maintain stability for a full benchmark run, prompting us to initiate testing at 65 watts. This analysis indicates that there is no significant difference between the new Ryzen 9 8945HS and the old Ryzen 9 7940HS, with variances falling within the normal fluctuation range. However, it's evident that the new Meteor Lake Core Ultra 7 155H holds an advantage over the older Core i7-13700H from Intel, though it still falls short of matching AMD's competition. This underscores the ongoing trend that Intel tends to require higher power limits to achieve comparable performance.

As previously stated, there have been no changes to the Radeon 780M (RDNA3) since we completed a thorough analysis of it last year. However, the comparison with Intel's new Arc GPU (8 cores) is particularly noteworthy, as performance has improved significantly for the first time in years. The two Asus laptops, ROG Zephyrus G14 (Adrenalin 24.1.1) and Zephyrus G16 (Intel 101.5126), were designed for the following testing. However, the Arc GPU in the G16 produced extremely poor performance results. To do further research, we evaluated the performance of three more Meteor Lake devices (ZenBook 14 OLED, HP Spectre x360 14 and MSI Prestige 13). Overall, synthetic testing show a substantial variance in findings.

The performance of the Radeon 780M in synthetic benchmarks is well-documented and depends on the RAM configuration. The new Arc-iGPU with 8 cores demonstrates an advantage in demanding tests such as 3DMark Time Spy and the OpenCL tests from Geekbench. There are, of course, notable differences depending on the model; for instance, the fastest Radeon 780M is 16% slower in the Time Spy test compared to the Arc-iGPU in the MSI Prestige 16.