First AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX Benchmarks Beat Intel’s While Using Less Power

(Photo: Notebookcheck.net) Both Intel and AMD are almost done battling with their new desktop architectures. One more X3D V-Cache CPU is still coming out in April, but aside from that, both companies have all their chips on the table [Seriously? -Ed.]. With the desktop portion of this battle wrapped up, the next front in this skirmish is on mobile. Intel has already launched its high-powered HX series of mobile CPUs. AMD has taken a bit more time, though, and is just now starting to send laptops to reviewers with its latest silicon. Now we have the first benchmarks for AMD’s mobile flagship. Although it loses to Intel in single-core performance, it beats it in multi-core benchmarks. Even more impressive, it does so while consuming less power.

The notebook review site Notebookcheck.net tested an Asus laptop sporting AMD’s top-tier Dragon Range CPU. This is a 16-core, 32-thread CPU dubbed Ryzen 9 7945HX. It can boost a single core to 5.4GHz, and its base clock is 2.5GHz. The CPU has 64MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 55W, though it can go as high as 75W if a vendor wants to do so. However, the reviewer states it can consume up to 120W when all 16 Zen 4 cores are under full load. In the blue corner is Intel’s Core i9-13980HX. This is its flagship Raptor Lake mobile CPU with 24 cores and 32 threads (8P+16E). It can boost a single core a bit higher than AMD’s chip, running at 5.6GHz. However, it also consumes more power. Intel says it can guzzle 157W with all cores engaged.

In testing, Intel’s CPU edged out the Zen 4 CPU in single-threaded benchmarks, including 7-Zip, Cinebench, etc. The delta between the two was roughly 3%, due mainly to Intel’s higher boost clock speed of 5.6GHz. It uses more power as well. The site estimates the Zen 4 cores consumed around 27W of power, with the P-cores in the 13980HX requiring 34-36W. The Ryzen 9 7945HX is also 27% faster in single-core performance than its predecessor, the Zen 3+ Ryzen 9 6900HX. That’s an impressive uplift.

When it comes to multi-core performance, though, the tables turn. The Ryzen 9 7945HX nudged past Intel’s CPU by a small margin through a range of multi-core benchmarks. For example, in Cinebench R23, AMD’s chip scored 34,521 compared with the Core i9’s score of 33,052. It also achieved that victory using less power, as it tops out at 120W. The reviewers estimate the Raptor Lake CPU will suck down around 180 to 190W under full load.

AMD’s 7000 series mobile lineup. (Image: AMD)

To even the playing field, they also ran the Core i9 at the same wattage as the Ryzen CPU for an apples-to-apples comparison. Lowering the amount of power the Intel CPU can receive will impact performance, making the comparison more interesting. In that scenario, the Core i9-13980HX achieved a Cinebench score of 28,333 compared with AMD’s original 34,521 score. That’s a 21% percent delta at the same power draw, so a convincing win for AMD.

The news isn’t all bad for Intel, though. The site also ran gaming tests at 1080p and found the Intel CPUs topping the charts with the same RTX 4090 GPU. The Ryzen 9 7945X placed just mid-pack overall, likely due to its lower power consumption. Still, AMD’s Dragon Range will be a formidable CPU for high-end gaming laptops. What its RDNA 3 mobile GPUs will offer remains to be seen, but they’re not expected to challenge the RTX 40-series at high resolutions. When it announced them at CES, the specs indicated they were made for midrange laptops, as the two top-tier GPUs have a 128-bit memory interface and 8GB of VRAM.

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