AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS vs Intel Core i7-8750H

AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS

The Ryzen 9 7940HS is a powerful Phoenix family APU that saw the light of day in H1 2023. Its 8 cores are powered by the Zen 4 architecture and are SMT-enabled for a total of 16 processing threads. 4.0 GHz is the base clock speed and the highest Boost clock speed achievable is 5.2 GHz.

The 7940HS introduces Ryzen AI which is AMD's answer to Intel's DL Boost and GNA technologies. The Radeon 780M serves as the integrated graphics adapter.

Architecture & Features

Phoenix family chips are powered by the Zen 4 architecture, much like Dragon Range family chips are. The latter however lacks hardware AI workload acceleration capabilities that Phoenix has. Ryzen AI is set to give applications such as DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop quite a bit of generative AI magic.

More importantly, Zen 4 introduces AVX512 support (which Zen 3 chips did not have) and, thanks to a plethora of other improvements including larger caches/registers/buffers across the board, is slated to bring a double-digit IPC improvement.

The 7940HS has 16 MB of L3 cache and support for super-fast RAM (up to LPDDR5x-7500 or DDR5-5600, including ECC-enabled memory). 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.

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 average 7940HS in our database is in the same league as the Core i9-12900HK and also, somewhat disappointingly, the Ryzen 7 7840HS, as far as multi-thread benchmark scores are concerned.

Thanks to its decent cooling solution and a long-term CPU power limit of 80 W, the ROG Zephyrus G14 GA402XY is among the fastest laptops built around the 7940HS that we know of. It can be about 15% faster in CPU-bound workloads than the slowest system featuring the same chip in our database, as of August 2023.

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 most video codecs including AVC, HEVC and AV1, but 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).

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 7940HS is built with TSMC's 4 nm process for high, as of late 2023, energy efficiency.

Intel Core i7-8750H

The Intel Core i7-8750H is a high-end processor for laptops with six cores based on the Coffee Lake architecture and will be announced early 2018. The processor clocks at between 2.2 and 4.1 GHz (4 GHz with 4 cores, 3.9 GHz with 6 cores) and can execute up to twelve threads simultaneously thanks to Hyper-Threading. According to Intel, the CPU is manufactured in an improved 14nm (14nm++) process.

The Coffee Lake architecture is similar to Kaby Lake and differs only in the amount of cores (now six cores for the high end versions) and the improved 14nm process (14nm++ according to Intel).

Performance

Due to the two additional cores, performance has increased by almost 50% compared to a similar clocked Kaby Lake processor like the Core i7-7820HQ (2.9 - 3.9 GHz). Single-core performance has not improved since its Kaby Lake predecessor. As a high-end model, the i7-8850H is suitable for the most demanding applications and games.

Graphics

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 iGPU is supposed to offer a slightly higher performance as its clock rate has been increased by 50 MHz (rumored). The architecture is identical to that of the Intel HD Graphics 630. We do expect a performance improvement, but as a low-end solution it will probably only display current games smoothly at reduced details - if at all.

Power Consumption

Intel specifies the TDP with 45 watts and therefore the i7 is only suited for big laptops with good cooling solutions. Using cTDP-down, the CPU can also be configured to 35 Watt resulting in a reduced performance.