The new Ryzen 9 5900HX is jump to be widely used across high-end gaming laptops. While not the outright fastest processor in the lineup -- that award goes to the top-binned Ryzen 9 5980HX -- the 5900HX should exist a better performer than the other Zen iii APUs we've reviewed so far, namely the 5800H and 5980HS.

The R9 5900HX has a similar layout to other Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 APUs this generation: we're getting 8 CPU cores and 16 threads, 16MB of L3 enshroud, plus eight Vega GPU compute units unlocked, all within a 45W default TDP. The 5900HX features upgraded Zen three CPU cores, which means a single-CCX design, double the L3 cache and college IPC, among other improvements.

Where the 5900HX differs compared to the 5800H is purely in clock speed: the base clock is increased by 100 MHz, indicating nosotros should become slightly improve sustained all-core frequencies at the aforementioned power level; while the boost clock has risen from four.4 to 4.6 GHz. The GPU tin now tiptop out at two.1 GHz besides, versus 2.0 GHz with the less expensive parts.

AMD as well allows overclocking with this CPU, hence the "HX" designation although it will exist upward to laptop makers to expose this functionality through their own utilities.

The test organisation we're using for benchmarking the R9 5900HX is the XMG Noon 17, an upcoming gaming laptop based on a Clevo chassis that'southward nigh identical to the Noon 17 nosotros used previously to test both the Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX 3060 laptop GPU, making this a higher-end configuration of the same system.

While the laptop is much the same on the outside, and the overall chassis, in addition to the 5900HX we accept 16GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 retentivity, a 1080p 240Hz brandish, but almost chiefly a GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU running at 115W, a GPU we'll be testing before long in a variety of games.

For testing, nosotros're running the Ryzen nine 5900HX ability normalized, which allows us to compare this CPU to others plant in totally dissimilar laptops in the nearly fair fashion we can currently achieve. This means the 5900HX is prepare to its default 45W long term ability limit. Similarly, boost behaviour is unmodified, equally is the case with all systems tested.

In this system we run across a sustained 54W boost period for several minutes -- that's typical of most Ryzen laptops we've reviewed so far. XMG too allows you to uncap the laptop to run at 54W indefinitely, if y'all so choose. Anyway, on to the benchmarks...

Benchmarks

In Cinebench R20's multithreaded test, the Ryzen 9 5900HX is currently the fastest mobile processor that we've tested at 45W. With a score of nearly 5000 points, this CPU is six percent faster than the Ryzen vii 5800H, and 15 per centum alee of the 4800H. What this allows Ryzen to practice, is extend its lead over Intel'due south electric current all-time H-series processor, the Core i9-10980HK, to the point where we are now seeing a xl per centum operation advantage to AMD.

Even when we power uncap these processors, the Ryzen nine 5900HX at 45W is still the fastest bit we've tested, sitting neck and neck with the Ryzen 9 5980HS also at 45W which makes sense every bit they're very like. The best score we've achieved from an Intel processor is either the Core i7-10875H running at 110W, or the Core i9-10980HK at 75W, both of which score in the 4000 points range.

In Cinebench R20'southward single threaded test, the Ryzen ix 5900HX surprisingly scales roughly in line with the multi-thread numbers. The CPU is 5 percent faster than the 5800H here, and it just then happens the boost clock is 5 percent higher.

We stop upwards with 15 percentage better performance here than the Core i9-10980HK, but roughly the same operation every bit Intel'due south Core i7-1185G7 which uses Tiger Lake cores.

In Handbrake the Ryzen 9 5900HX does announced to be amend binned, sustaining a marginally higher clock speed at 45W for a minor performance comeback versus the 5800H. It's 7 per centum faster in this exam, achieving a 15 percent performance lead on the 4800H and 36% versus the 10980HK.

Blender performance is null to get excited about. The Ryzen 9 5900HX delivers simply 4% better performance than the 5800H, which itself is only slightly ahead of the 4800H. The margins compared to Intel are very similar to what we've seen previously but upgrading from Zen 2 to Zen 3 for this workload isn't worth it in most cases.

Code compilation does benefit from the 5900HX's faster boost clocks, as sections of the compile are unmarried threaded. Hither the Ryzen nine part is 6 pct faster than the Ryzen 7 5800H, though that margin is reduced to 4 per centum in the longer Chromium compilation.

The Ryzen nine 5900HX is the fastest laptop processor we've tested then far for MATLAB, with this criterion benefitting significantly from the changes fabricated to the Zen 3 architecture. Higher IPC, higher boost clocks and more cache all help to deliver more than a 20 percent operation boost versus the 4800H. This makes the 5900HX 16 percent faster than the Core i9-10980HK.

Our Microsoft Excel criterion is heavy on the processor's cache. Here the 5900HX and 10980HK deliver finer the same operation, with the 5900HX barely ahead of the 5800H. However the gains versus Zen 2 processors are more meaning.

In PCMark x's Essentials examination, which measures basic application performance, the 5900HX delivers a practiced upshot at the elevation of the charts. This CPU is but a few percent faster than the 5800H, so practically negligible, however we do see eight percent meliorate functioning than the 10980HK. Overall though, most high-terminate H-series laptops deliver very similar basic app functioning and things like faster app loading is probably not a strong reason to buy a new H-serial device.

The all-time result we saw for the Ryzen 9 5900HX versus the 5800H was in PCMark x's applications examination, which measures Office and Edge spider web browsing functioning. The 5900HX is x percentage faster, giving it around an eight percent atomic number 82 on Intel'southward best processor here, the Core i7-1185G7. Thanks to better IPC and college frequencies, Zen three is much better for Function applications than past Ryzen designs, as these workloads are lightly threaded.

In 7-Zip pinch, the 5900HX and 5800H deliver the same functioning. The Ryzen 9 office is slightly alee of the 5800H in decompression but not to any groundbreaking degree, and this only extends Ryzen's pb on Intel processors for decompression workloads.

In Acrobat PDF exporting, a heavily single-threaded exam, the Ryzen 9 5900HX is slightly faster than the 5800H, and around 9% ahead of the Core i9-10980HK. Intel's Core i7-1185G7 running at 28W remains the fastest CPU in our charts for this test, thanks to Tiger Lake clocking upwardly to 4.viii GHz.

Adobe Photoshop operation scales closely to single-thread performance, so there is an advantage to getting the 5900HX over the 5800H for this application, although the 5980HS with its higher boost clock is ameliorate again. The margins between Ryzen 5000 processors are small, while it's really in a Zen 2 comparison where the 5900HX shines, equally it'south 23 percent faster than the 4800H.

Nosotros as well have Adobe Premiere's Warp Stabilizer effect, running a unmarried instance which tends to occupy 2 threads at nearly. The 5900HX is a dandy pick for this workload, but it's barely whatever faster than the 5800H. When compared to the 10980HK however, at that place'south a sizable 28 pct performance advantage.

Ryzen 9 5900HX + RTX 3070 Benchmarks

Next upwards we have some accelerated workloads showing how the 5900HX fares in tandem with a discrete GPU. Even so there aren't many comparisons to exist made here every bit our 5900HX arrangement is running aslope a new powerful RTX 3070 GPU and we haven't tested whatever other laptops with that GPU within all the same. It does show what sort of performance you lot tin can expect from a electric current-gen high-end gaming laptop.

In DaVinci Resolve, the 5900HX plus RTX 3070 combination is the all-time that we've tested so far, beating last-gen 10980HK plus RTX 2080 Super combinations. This new laptop config is actually quite a lot faster in this GPU heavy workload, fourteen% meliorate than the adjacent all-time option and nearly 30% faster than your archetype Max-Q way laptop.

The 5900HX + RTX 3070 besides delivers class leading results in Puget'southward Adobe Premiere export test, scoring to a higher place the best 10980HK configurations nosotros've tested then far. However without accelerated encoding, using a 2-laissez passer configuration instead for superior encode quality, nosotros fall back to CPU performance and the 5900HX shows itself to only be slightly faster than the 5800H, which is what we've seen across many benchmarks and so far.

And finally we have hardware accelerated Handbrake encoding, transcoding 4K H.264 into H.265 files. In terms of AMD VCE performance, the built in media encode/decode block in Ryzen 5000 APUs, there has been no performance improvement versus the previous generation – which makes sense, as AMD says this expanse of the scrap is the aforementioned every bit previous generations.

By and large speaking, in this test AMD'south VCE is as fast at transcoding every bit Nvidia's NVENC in RTX 20 and 30 series GPUs, simply beaten strangely enough by the GTX 1650 Ti equipped systems we've tested. Intel's QuickSync constitute in 10th-gen parts is much slower in this workload.

We should note that this benchmark uses a high enough bitrate for the output file that the quality is nigh identical betwixt all encoding engine choices. This benchmark does not take into business relationship which encoder delivers better quality at lower bitrates, which is often a use example for hardware encoding, so you'll have to check other sources to find out what is best – terminal we checked NVENC is the best but that may take changed. This workload is purely measuring encoding speed.

For this review nosotros decided to skip testing of integrated graphics because the results are basically the same as what we looked at in our Ryzen 7 5800H review. Nosotros'd also look almost 5900HX systems to feature a discrete GPU, making the results not that valuable for most laptop buyers.

Comparisons

Comparing the Ryzen nine 5900HX to the Ryzen 7 5800H shows that the 5900HX is just a few percent faster, whether we're talking about single or multi-threaded applications. On average, the 5900HX is four% faster across our benchmark suite, which is equally close every bit you can get for two dissimilar models with a small divergence in clock speeds.

The 5900HX does appear to exist better binned, allowing it to hitting higher boost frequencies and better sustained frequencies at 45W, but given the ii parts are both 8 cores with 16 threads, that'southward really all in that location is to information technology in terms of differences.

The Ryzen nine 5900HX is quite a bit faster than the Ryzen 7 4800H though granted, these APUs are not in the same form inside their generations. When comparing the 5800H to 4800H previously, the multi-thread gains were modest, just with the 5900HX pulling away some more, information technology helps extend the lead on the 4800H. If yous are upgrading across only i generation like this, you can expect 15 percent better multi-thread functioning and 20 to 25 per centum better single-thread performance which is great.

The Ryzen 9 5900HX is virtually always faster than the Core i9-10980HK. The large strength for the 5900HX is multi-thread performance, where the efficiency of the 7nm node allows the Ryzen processor to pull well ahead of Intel's aging 14nm process. Single thread is closer, but generally the new Zen three blueprint clocked upwardly to iv.6 GHz is able to edge out a small win.

Ignoring multi-threading performance for a second which peradventure isn't equally relevant for ultrabook-form CPUs, the Ryzen 9 5900HX delivers similar performance to Intel's Core i7-1185G7 in single-thread apps. The 1185G7 uses Intel'southward Tiger Lake cores on their 10nm SuperFin process, and there'southward non much separating these parts cadre-for-core. When Intel is able to evangelize viii-core Tiger Lake mobile processors in a few months, the battle will be quite interesting.

What We Learned

To sum up what the Ryzen 9 5900HX offers, there's two ways to expect at it: this mobile processor is the fastest that nosotros've seen yet, delivering first-class performance across the board. On the other manus, the 5900HX isn't that much faster than the Ryzen 7 5800H, and then depending on the laptop configuration, information technology may not be the best choice.

Focusing on the positives first, the 5900HX delivers everything we've talked well-nigh in previous Ryzen Mobile 5000 reviews: chart topping performance and improved single-thread operation and IPC thank you to Zen 3. This allows the 5900HX to crush Intel'southward Cadre i9-10980HK in the vast majority of applications, especially when those apps make heavy employ of multi-threading, while trading blows with Intel's newer Tiger Lake designs in single-threaded tests. Both single and multi-threading are a strength of the 5900HX, so it'south a nifty all-round mobile processor that should be upwardly to any task you throw at it.

In perspective, however, the Ryzen nine 5900HX is barely faster than the Ryzen 7 5800H on average, as both chips are fundamentally very similar. Then in terms of value, it'southward our opinion that it's not worth paying much of a premium to become a 5900HX laptop over something with the 5800H inside, unless the 5900HX system comes with additional benefits like a faster GPU, for example. The 5800H provides most of the performance that y'all get with the 5900HX.

This information we suspect will be nigh useful for people buying, say, an RTX 3070 laptop with a choice between a 5800H laptop from brand A, and 5900HX from brand B. Other factors such every bit make, build quality and display volition probably exist more important than CPU performance between these two models.

As nosotros too discussed in our review of the Ryzen 7 5800H, if you're looking for a performance laptop, at this point we would skip Intel 10th-gen models. The performance just isn't in that location relative to Ryzen, so unless an Intel machine was a decent amount cheaper, we don't think it would be worth buying. If you're interested in Intel laptops and want to get a better scope of the competition, information technology could be worth waiting a couple of months until 11th-gen Tiger Lake gaming systems with 8 cores are set up for prime fourth dimension.

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