Minisforum Venus Series UM790 Pro review: Better than its competitors thanks to an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and a Radeon 780M

[Redaktion]

Minisforum's Venus series now has a new member: The UM790 Pro. This device makes use of AMD's newest CPU generation in the form of the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS. Its iGPU, the AMD Radeon 780M, is super up-to-date, too. In this review, you can read about everything this combination has to offer - including a variety of measurements and benchmarks.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Minisforum-Venus-Series-UM790-Pro-review-Better-than-its-competitors-thanks-to-an-AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-and-a-Radeon-780M.735424.0.html

[spuwho]

7945HX please!

[Sinocelt]

Good to know they solved the overheating issue of their previous model in this series.

The model I'm really waiting for, though, is the Mercury EM780, hopefully with LPDDR5X (8500 MBP/S).

They supposedly introduced the EM780 at Computex, but the fact that they didn't show the computer in action suggests it wasn't really the EM780. Probably the EM680 instead.

[DAVID salsero]

These new miniPc Zen 4 7040 Phoenix with RDNA 3 + Artificial intelligence are what many people were waiting for, since they will be the replacement for many consoles such as Xbox and PS5, there is a large market and AMD with Zen 4 has built in this 2023 a processor that adapts to all audiences.

[heffeque]

Great piece of hardware.
Under load, the UM790 is just a tad slower than Beelinks offering, but with less power consumption and much less noise, so it's better for living rooms, bedrooms, etc.
Too bad the antenna seems to be a bit poor quality, because the AX1675x is more than capable of performing better.

My main issue right now is with AMD:
They still haven't released official drivers for the 780M GPU, neither for the motherboard, neither for the AI chip.
AMD really needs to step up.

Anyway, outstanding performance coming from such a small mini-PC, both on CPU side and on iGPU side.
Hopefully we have good news with "FSR 3" and performance on newer games will still be manageable for this iGPU.

[Hotz]

My main issue right now is with AMD:
They still haven't released official drivers for the 780M GPU, neither for the motherboard, neither for the AI chip.
AMD really needs to step up.

Incoming déjà-vu: Remember when you could only use custom Ati Radeon drivers from laptop sellers 20 years ago? And you were stuck with them the whole life of your laptop because the sellers never cared to update it. Now it's at the exact same point again... Almost unbelievable...

[Fake HDMI 2.1' bandwidth?]

The HDMI Forum allows calling any HDMI 2.0 port HDMI 2.1 now (true HDMI 2.1 is called HDMI 2.1a). So what's the bandwidth of these HDMI 2.1 ports?
I want to connect a LG OLED C3 42" to watch 4K60Hz HDR content and use full/normal 4:4:4 chroma. This requires 15.68 Gbit/s: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Refresh_frequency_limits_for_HDR10_video, which the HDMI 2.0 can NOT provide.

This is how one calculates this value btw:
15.68 Gbit/s (15.678432 -> 15.68) = ((3840+80)*(2160+62)*3*10*1*60)/10^9.
* 3 is bits per pixel
* 10 -> 10 bit (required for HDR)
* 1 -> full 444 chroma (for 422 use 2/3 and for 420 use 1/2)
* 60 means 60 Hz
* +80 and +62 come from the CVT-R2 timing format

For full 120Hz 10bit HDR 444chroma 32.27 Gbit/s are required.
((3840+80)*(2160+127)*3*10*(1)*120)/10^9 -> 32.27 Gbit/s.
HDMI 2.1 FRL4 (32G) can only do 104.7 Hz in this case.
HDMI 2.1 FRL5 (40G) can do 129.3 Hz, so would be enough in this case.

[NikoB]

For full 120Hz 10bit HDR 444chroma 32.27 Gbit/s are required.
((3840+80)*(2160+127)*3*10*(1)*120)/10^9 -> 32.27 Gbit/s.
HDMI 2.1 FRL4 (32G) can only do 104.7 Hz in this case.
HDMI 2.1 FRL5 (40G) can do 129.3 Hz, so would be enough in this case.

HDMI 2.1 uses DSC lossy compression for transmission modes exceed the maximum bitrate for the transmitter/receiver.

HDMI 2.1 uses DSC lossy compression for transmission modes at the maximum bit rate for the transmitter/receiver.

In theory, if there is a smart scheme, it should remove service traffic and even 144Hz / 30 bit 444 should pass almost without compression, because. for this mode, you need 35.871Gbps, i.e. it lacks quite a bit when compressed with DSC and even 40Gbps (and you are always talking about the bandwidth with service traffic by encoding 16/18, not pure user data).

40Gbps x (16/18) gives ~35.55Gbps of pure data.

Additional synchronization data can be added by DSC compressor (and unpack/restore) at the end at the HDMI chip logic level according to any CVT(-RB)/GTF/DMT video modes scheme. This is exactly what I would do with lossless compression or packaging - why transfer data outside the frame for synchronization, if all modes are standard and all that is required is only data with a control flag with what delay and how to draw?

[Josh F]

with a Sabrent Rocket 4 2TB, and 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 5600 I can running Star Citizen w/6gb vram in 1080p  high detail level, medium volumetric clouds. In Arena Commander free flight 60 fps,  on Area 18, 40-45fps avg,  Lowest Frame Rate 30.  In diablo 4 with FSR 2 set to qualit and everything else set to ultra I'm getting  50-70fps with 45 being the low end.  Color me impressed.

[hornedfrog]

with a Sabrent Rocket 4 2TB, and 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 5600 I can running Star Citizen w/6gb vram in 1080p  high detail level, medium volumetric clouds. In Arena Commander free flight 60 fps,  on Area 18, 40-45fps avg,  Lowest Frame Rate 30.  In diablo 4 with FSR 2 set to qualit and everything else set to ultra I'm getting  50-70fps with 45 being the low end.  Color me impressed.

Thank you, good to know.  Is this a great improvement over the RAM and SSD as shipped to you?

[overflash]

My main issue right now is with AMD:
They still haven't released official drivers for the 780M GPU, neither for the motherboard, neither for the AI chip.
AMD really needs to step up.

Maybe something was released by AMD... I just saw the AMD Ryzen™ 7 7745HX drives published on 7/25/2023

Do you think the UM790 Pro can be a good machine for photo and video editing with Adobe PS and Premiere?

[Skeptical Anonymous User]

Can somebody give a review of this device's retail unit? Because if Notebookcheck received a review sample, I can bet they beefed it up with the QC to make sure they get a great glowing review...like every reviewer on uTUbe.