AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Review: Can Ryzen 6000 series CPU beat Intel Alder Lake?

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AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Review: Can Ryzen 6000 series CPU beat Intel Alder Lake?



Intel created huge waves in the industry with the launch of its 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs, but AMD isn’t giving up just yet. The AMD Ryzen 6900HX represents the best of what AMD has to offer in terms of the performance with new Ryzen 6000 series chips. This 45W chip managed to deliver reliable performance in both benchmarking as well as real-world tests.

I’ve been testing the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop powered by the AMD Ryzen 6900HX for the better part of a week now, and I can safely say that this machine is incredibly powerful. The Ryzen 9 6900HX is on par with the Core i9-12900HK’s performance in most tasks, if not better. It also puts better numbers on the scoreboard than Apple’s M1 Pro. This new processor, along with the other high-performance chips from AMD’s Ryzen 6000 series, is going to be used widely across high-end gaming laptops this year, and they’re definitely something you should be on the lookout for.

While the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX put up a great fight against Intel, I think the Core i9-12900HK is the overall winner if you take all the scores into consideration. That doesn’t mean the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX is a bad chip. It just so happens that Intel’s new hybrid architecture yields better results in most cases and is more reliable to deliver good results consistently across different use-cases. That being said, both high-end chips from Intel and AMD are better than anything we’ve in the mobile computing space, and it’s hard to go wrong with either of the chips.

• ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022)
  
  

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• The ASUS ROG Strix G15 is one of the first gaming laptops to pack AMD's new Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU along with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card.

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• • Pros:
    
    
  • Cons:
    
    

• See at ASUS

Navigate this review:

• Pricing & Availability
• ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) gaming laptop
• Performance: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 16GB DDR5 memory, & more
• Should you buy it?

Pricing & Availability

ASUS hasn’t shared the pricing and availability details of the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop powered by the new AMD and Intel chips in the US, just yet. You can buy some other variants of the laptop including one with a 17-inch display and Intel Core i9-12900HK CPU for around $2,500. In India, however, you can buy the new ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop starting at ?1,06,990 from Flipkart, ASUS E-shop, and other offline retail stores.

ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) gaming laptop

Here’s a quick look at the specifications of the ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) gaming laptop:

ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) CPU AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Graphics Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 8GB GDDR6 (125W TGP +25W Dynamic Boost) Body 354.9 x 259.9 x 22.69 ~ 27.2 (mm), 2.3KG Display IPS WQHD 165Hz (3ms) 100% DCI-P3 Memory Up to 16GB DDR5 4800MHz SDRAM Storage 2* PCIe SSD Slot M.2 1TB
1TB+1TB (Raid 0) Webcam N/A (Separate camera included in the box) Keyboard Backlit Chicklet Keyboard with Per-Key RGB Connectivity Wi-Fi 6E 802.11AX (2×2) +BT 5.2, supports Range Boost Ports

• 2 x USB3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
• 1 X USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C (support Display Port & 100W PD Charger)
• 1 X USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C
• 1x LAN RJ-45 jack
• 1 x HDMI 2.0b
• 1 x Audio combo jack
• 1 x Keystone

Battery 90Whr AC Adapter 240W OS Windows 11
Before we dive deep into this performance review, let’s take a look at the ROG Strix G15 (2022) gaming laptop that I’ve been using as my daily driver for the better part of a week now.

• The ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) gaming laptop features a 15.6-inch WQHD 165Hz display.
• The laptop has a great build quality and a stylish design with tons of RGB lighting.
• You also get plenty of ports, decent speakers, and support for features like WiFi 6E, MUX Switch, and more.

Right off the bat, the first thing you’ll notice about the ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop is its striking design. This is one of those machines that are not shy of showing off its “Gamer” aesthetics. From an RGB light bar along the front of its body to RGB lighting on the keyboard, the Strix G15 is ready for a light show every time you open it. Even the ROG logo on the lid also lights up as soon as you power on the device.



The overall build quality is also pretty great, which isn’t surprising given the laptop belongs to the ROG series. The ROG Strix Scar laptops tend to be more premium but the Strix G series laptops this time are also well-built and have a great design overall. ASUS has put a lot of effort to make sure you’re getting a premium notebook for price.

The display on the sample unit I got for review is a WQHD panel with a 165Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. You can also buy a variant of this laptop with a 300Hz 1080p panel too, so the choice is yours, really. My review sample, as you can tell, was fully kitted to handle 1440p gaming, so I had absolutely no issues pushing a lot of games at high frame rates to fully take advantage of the display. Both displays — be it a WQHD or a high refresh rate 1080p panel — are optimized for gaming. It’s a standard 15.6-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and support for Dolby Vision and Adaptive-Sync technology. There’s also an anti-glare coating on the top to avoid reflections.



As for the display quality itself, I had no issues during my testing period. My overall experience was pretty great when I used it for both gaming as well as some slight video and photo editing workloads. This isn’t one of those highly color-calibrated panels from ASUS’ ProArt laptop series, so it’s probably not the best display out there for content creators. ASUS, however, says it covers up to 100% of DCI-P3 color space. One of the most important things to highlight about this laptop is that it comes with a MUX Switch, which is essentially used to make sure the display is directly connected to dedicated graphics for the best experience. You can change this setting by going to the Armoury Crate software.

As far as the ports are concerned, you get two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports with support for DisplayPort/PD, and two USB USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. There’s also a single HDMI 2.0b port, a 2.5G LAN port, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. All the ports except for the two USB Type-A ports are the back, so keep that in mind. It would’ve been nice to have an SD card reader on this machine, but you’ll have to rely on an external dock for that. The laptop has a chicklet style keyboard with a decent amount of space between the keys and RGB lighting. I am not a huge fan of chicklet-style keyboards but typing on this keyboard was a good experience and I got used to it pretty quickly. You also get customizable keys on the top, which is a nice addition this time around. These keys would usually be bound to a specific action like increasing/decreasing the volume, launching armoury crate software, and more.

Performance: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070Ti, 16GB DDR5 memory, & more

• The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX matches the general performance of the Intel Core i9-12900HK.
• Ryzen 9 6900HX runs a little hot, especially in this particular chassis.
• The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti handles 1440p gaming very well.

If you don’t want to get into a detailed analysis of the Ryzen 9 6900HX and other components, and just want a quick summary of the performance, then let me tell you that you will not be disappointed by the overall performance. I’ve been using this laptop as my daily driver to get through day-to-day work and play games on it on a daily basis, and I’ve never been disappointed. This is one of those machines that’ll get through you pretty much any task you throw at it. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti combo works very well to power through even the most demanding workloads without flinching.

AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX – Rembrandt at its best

The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX features eight cores based on the Zen 3+ architecture. We’re looking at a 3.3GHz base clock and a 4.9GHz turbo frequency, with support for SMT/Hyperthreading with 16 threads. This ‘Rembrandt’ APU is manufactured using the 6nm process at TSMC, and the ‘X’ in the name indicates that it’s a fully unlocked CPU for overclocking. The Zen 3+, in case you don’t know, is* Zen 3 refresh with plenty of noteworthy features including support for DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen 4, USB 4, DisplayPort 2, and more. You can learn more about the Ryzen 6900HX and the other mobile chips in the family by heading over to our dedicated Ryzen 6000 series page.



Having used plenty of laptops with the AMD Ryzen and Nvidia GeForce RTX discrete GPU combo in the past, my expectations were pretty high going into this review. Well, the ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) didn’t disappoint. I did have my doubts about the thermal performance of Ryzen 9 6900HX, but the Strix G15 gaming laptop handled it very well to deliver good overall performance without choking at any point during the review. More on the thermals a bit later in this review, because it’s now time to show you what this processor is capable of.

I ended up running a lot of benchmarks on this machine to test the Ryzen 9 6900HX, but I’ll only be producing a few of them to keep this review short. We’ll be taking a look at some performance comparison figures to see how this chip performs while going against the likes of Intel Core i9-12900HK, Apple’s M1 Pro, and more. To test the CPU, I fired up Geekbench 5 to begin the process. Here’s how Ryzen 9 6900HX’s Geekbench scores stack up against the results of some competing chips on the market.

Note: The laptop was set to “Turbo” mode to allow both CPU and GPU to run at the best possible settings with the fan speed set to max.

Geekbench 5

Product Specs Single-core Multi-core ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, RTX 3070 Ti 1,573 9,912 MSI Raider GE76 Intel Core i9-12900HK, RTX 3080 Ti 1,774 12,630 HP OMEN 45L Intel Core i9-12900K, RTX 3090 1,921 15,723 MacBook Pro M1 Pro 1,755 9,954
As you can see, the Ryzen 9 6900HX couldn’t match the 12900HK’s performance in the multi-core test. The Alder Lake part even managed to beat the Ryzen 9 6900HX in a single-core test, so it’s safe to say that the Geekbench 5’s results are in favor of Intel’s Alder Lake chips. The Ryzen 9 6900HX was able to match the general performance of Apple’s M1 Pro chip, however, the M1 Pro is a much more power-efficient chip.

Cinebench R23

Next up, I have some Cinebench R23 numbers to see how the Ryzen 9 6900HX performs in a widely popular benchmark test. In this test, the Ryzen 9 6900HX managed to perform well. While it didn’t quite beat the score we recorded on using the 12900HK CPU, it did come very close. It managed to beat Apple’s M1 Pro chip rather convincingly this time, so that’s a good sign. The HP Omen 45L desktop powered by the Intel Core i9-12900K desktop part easily beats the mobile part, although that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Product Specs Single-core Multi-core ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, RTX 3070 Ti 1,545 14,343 MSI Raider GE76 Intel Core i9-12900HK, RTX 3080 Ti 1,833 14,675 HP OMEN 45L Intel Core i9-12900K, RTX 3090 1,894 23,659 MacBook Pro M1 Pro 1,530 9,552
PCMark 10

The PCMark 10 is next in the line which essentially puts your computer through a series of tasks, including day-to-day workloads, 3D applications, and more. This is a great way to test your computer for performance, and well, the results speak for themselves here.

Product Specs Score ASUS ROG Strix G15 (2022) AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, RTX 3070 Ti 7,311 MSI Raider GE76 Intel Core i9-12900HK, RTX 3080 Ti 7,820 HP OMEN 45L Intel Core i9-12900K, RTX 3090 9,012 Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3070 6,800
While the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX managed to put up pretty good numbers on the board while against the competition, it did fall a bit short when it comes to the overall performance. This is evident, especially while going against the Core i9-12900HK CPU, which we think is the closest competition for the 6900HX. That being said, a lot of different factors affect the overall performance of a chip inside a laptop, so there may be some external factors in play including the thermal performance of the machine.

ASUS says it has used liquid metal on the CPU instead of regular thermal grease. Liquid metal is highly conductive but it’s also known to perform better than most other thermal paste solutions out there. In terms of the thermals, I was able to record an average CPU temperature of around 85°C under heavy load. Here’s a graph that shows thermal readings while running the Cinebench R23 in a loop. It’s worth pointing out that the Ryzen 9 6900HX has a max operating temperature (Tjmax) of 95°C, so I’d say it was well under the acceptable limits. The fans, especially at max RPM get extremely loud, but it’s good to see that they’re at least working as intended.



The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti’s temperatures were also under the acceptable limits when I recorded some readings while running a stress test. The Ryzen 9 6900HX tends to run a bit hot, but the laptop didn’t have any issues handling the thermal output. It’ll be interesting to see how the chip will perform inside a different chassis, though.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is yet another test that I run on all the PCs to test the storage performance. This will give you a good idea of the kind of performance you can expect from your storage, which is mostly just an NVMe SSD in modern computers. The ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop is using a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD module with 1TB storage.



3DMark

Moving on to some 3D workloads, I first ran a series of 3DMark before moving on to the real-world gaming tests. Here’s a quick look at the 3DMark scores of the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop running an RTX 3070 Ti GPU:

Test Total Score CPU Score GPU score Time Spy 11,188 10,412 11,338 Time Spy Extreme 5,458 5,022 5,544
As for the gaming benchmark, I ended up running some of the recent AAA titles to see how the Ryzen 9 6900HX and the RTX 3070 Ti combo handled the demanding titles in 2022. I am happy to report that both the CPU and the GPU managed to keep their heads up while pushing through each title. I was able to experience a smooth 60FPS+ gaming experience even at 1440p while running some demanding games like Dying Light 2, Forza Horizon 5, and more. If you are not chasing high-resolution gaming, then I recommend picking the variant with an FHD 300Hz panel.

Games ASUS ROG Strix G15
(Ryzen 9 6900HX, RTX 3070 Ti) Dying Light 2
(1440p High Quality) 57 FPS Halo Infinite
(1440p Ultra Quality) 68 FPS Forza Horizon 5
(1440p Extreme Quality) 62 FPS GTA V
(1440p Ultra Quality) 123 FPS Red Dead Redemption 2
(1080p Ultra Quality) 58 FPS
It’s worth pointing out that the new Ryzen 6000 series only support DDR5 memory modules, which means all the new AMD laptops powered by these new chips will have DDR5 RAM sticks, including the ROG Strix G15 showcased here. While there isn’t a significant performance difference between DDR4 vs DDR5 memory modules to warrant an upgrade to DDR5 modules. In fact, the DDR5 modules suffer from high-latency issues. You can check out our DDR4 vs DDR5 memory comparison to learn more about the differences between each memory standard.

Should you buy it?

Well, that pretty much sums up the overall performance testing of the Ryzen 9 6900HX-powered ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop. If you’ve read through the whole performance section with all the benchmark numbers, then you probably have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this particular notebook and the 6900HX APU. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX is an excellent chip that’s suitable for high-performance gaming laptops. This Rembrandt APU can yield some incredible performance when paired with the right cooling solution and capable discrete graphics, both of which the ASUS ROG Strix G15 does. There’s a lot to like about the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, but it’s not for everyone.

Who should buy a laptop with Ryzen 9 6900HX:

• Those who want the best-in-class performance from a laptop.
• Gamers who want to play a lot of games on the go, and creators who want quick render times.
• Enthusiast users who want high-end components including the best discrete GPU, DDR5 memory, and more.

Who should not buy a laptop with Ryzen 9 6900HX:

• Users who don’t mind using a desktop computer instead of a portable machine in favor of more performance.
• Those who don’t play games or create media content on laptops. Both AMD and Intel have relatively less powerful processors for more thin and light form-factors or business notebooks, so be sure to look around for options like the Dell XPS 13 Plus or the Lenovo ThinkPad Z16.

In case you are still on the fence about buying the ASUS ROG Strix G15 gaming laptop, then we suggest you check our collection of the best laptops out there right now. Alternatively, you can also check out our collection of the best ASUS laptops or the best AMD Ryzen laptops to check out your available options.


The post AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX Review: Can Ryzen 6000 series CPU beat Intel Alder Lake? appeared first on xda-developers.



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