AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX vs AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 8945HS

AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX

The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX is a processor for big (gaming) laptops based on the Rembrandt generation. The R9 6900HX integrates all eight cores based on the Zen 3+ microarchitecture. They are clocked at 3.3 (guaranteed base clock) to 4.9 GHz (Turbo) and support SMT / Hyperthreading (16 threads). The chip is manufactured on the modern 6 nm TSMC process. The "X" in the name indicates the overclocking capabilities of the CPU.

The new Zen 3+ is a refresh of the Zen 3 architecture and should not offer a lot of changes. The chip itself however, offers a lot of new features, like support for USB 4 (40 Gbps), PCI-E Gen 4, DDR5-4800MT/s or LPDDR5-6400MT/s, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth LE 5.2, DisplayPort 2, and AV1 decode.

A big novelty is the integrated GPU Radeon 680M, that is now based on the RDNA2 architecture and offers 12 CUs at up to 2.4 GHz. It should be the fastest iGPU of all at the time of announcement.

Performance

The average 6900HX in our database edges out the Core i7-12800H just slightly while, a little disappointingly, not quite managing to leave the 6900HS behind in the dust. Don't get us wrong; this is still a brilliant CPU for your demanding apps and games, as of late 2022. It does lag behind some of the 12th generation Intel Core i9 options, though.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of nearly 90 W, the XMG Neo 15 2022 is among the fastest laptops built around the 6900HX that we know of. It can be at least 20% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

Power consumption

This Ryzen 9 series chip has a default TDP, also known as the long-term power limit, of 45 W with the letter "X" indicating that the user is officially allowed to overclock the thing - leading to an increase in power consumption levels. Either way, a high-performance cooling solution is a must for a CPU like this.

The R9 6900HX is built with TSMC's 6 nm process making for very good, as of early 2023, energy efficiency.

AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 8945HS

The Ryzen 9 PRO 8945HS is a powerful Hawk Point family processor (APU) released in April 2024. The R9 PRO 8945HS is identical to the "normal" R9 8945HS in virtually all respects; both come with 8 Zen 4 cores running at 4.0 GHz to 5.2 GHz (16 processing threads), a 16-TOPS Ryzen AI NPU (higher clock speeds) and the top-of-the-line Radeon 780M graphics adapter. Other key features include PCIe 4 and USB 4 support, LPDDR5x-7500 RAM support and 16 MB of L3 cache. Unlike the R9 8945HS however this PRO series chip has ECC memory support and the Secure Processor feature which in a nutshell is an ARM co-processor built into the main chip.

Architecture and Features

Hawk Point APUs are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, just like Dragon Range, Phoenix and Raphael processors are. With this product family, AMD is betting big on generative AI; these chips are said to deliver an up to 40% increase in generative AI performance over 7040 series APUs making apps like DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Photoshop more powerful than ever before.

Unlike Zen 3, Zen 4 features AVX512 support and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger registers/buffers/caches (reportedly at the cost of some of them becoming slightly slower), is supposed to bring an IPC improvement of around 13%.

Elsewhere, the R9 PRO 8945HS has 16 MB of L3 cache and support for super-fast RAM (up to LPDDR5x-7500 or DDR5-5600 with ECC support optionally present depending on the socket). The processor is compatible with USB 4 and thus with Thunderbolt; PCIe support is limited to the 4.0 spec for a throughput of 1.97 GB/s per lane. 20 lanes are available.

OS support is limited to 64-bit editions of Windows 11 and Windows 10 and of course to Linux. Note that the chip isn't overclockable and neither is it user-replaceable as it gets soldered down for good (FP7, FP7r2, FP8 socket interfaces).

Performance

The 8945HS is an R9 7940HS in disguise, so it's realistic to expect the chip to be just slightly faster than the Core i9-12900HK and also the Ryzen 7 7840HS, as far as multi-thread performance is concerned.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are and how competent the cooling solution of your system is.

Graphics

The Radeon 780M has 12 CUs (768 shaders) running at up to 2,800 MHz. This is a very fast iGPU, as of late 2023. It will let you use up to 4 monitors with resolutions as high as SUHD 4320p, and it is also capable of HW-encoding and HW-decoding the most widely used video codecs including AVC, HEVC and AV1. More importantly, it is fast enough for proper 1080p gaming as long as one is fine with low to medium detail settings.

Your mileage may vary depending on how high the CPU power limits are, how competent the cooling solution of the system is, how fast the RAM of the system is (there is no dedicated VRAM here).

Power consumption

This Ryzen 9 series chip has a long-term power limit (default TDP) of 35 W to 54 W, giving laptop makers a choice between longer battery life and higher performance. Either way, an active cooling solution is a must for a system powered by this chip.

The 8945HS is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.