Lenovo Yoga 7 14 G7 review: Multimedia convertible shines with AMD Ryzen 7 6800U

[NikoB]

NVidia/Intel have decoder H265(HEVC) with 4:4:4 10 bits mode. Intel with Ice Lake. NVidia from GTX3xxx.

[NikoB]

Surprisingly, it was AMD that turned out to be the remaining company in video technology. It didn't have TB3.0-4.0 and didn't have an 8k decoder when Intel already had one. It didn't have an AV1 decoder when Intel already did. AMD is just catching up with Intel, but not vice versa in terms of features in SoC. And starting with Alder Lake, it has nothing to offer customers except autonomy, before their processors were faster (they are now faster), and Intel they were slower even with higher consumption, but now Intel processors are faster, although they consume more. The jump in speed gain per 1W of consumption in 2021 for Intel was more than 60%+, and for AMD only a miserable 10%. AMD is rapidly losing its leadership position in the energy efficiency of cores. In fact, taking into account TSMC those processes, back in 2020 I proved by numbers that Intel processors are more efficient if they were made at 7nm. AMD was a technically lagging company, so it is. It has taken the lead by 3 years through access and skillful use of TSMC's processes, but AMD's good times are coming to an end. And investors from all over the world are sensibly assessing its chances - its shares have been plummeting for many months.

[LL]

4:4:4 is not an issue.

The preference for 4:2:2 is file size in it does have compression so can be smaller. 4:4:4 do not have compression.

[NikoB]

Almost all commercial and amateur (on YouTube) video content is in 4:2:0. People don't need the meaningless 4:2:2 either. Who needs full quality - they write in 4:4:4 without color loss. Support for 4:4:4 has long been announced by NVidia and Intel, and AMD, as usual, hides all the specifications, it's impossible to find anything on their website. They even began to publish extended data about processors from 2022 only! I somehow tried to reliably get support max mem by cpu mem controllers from them, so their support could not even clearly answer the question according to the information that Intel clearly lays out right away for all series. While Intel has begun to hide the peak bandwidth of memory controllers for a particular type of installed memory, for example, in view of the apparent inconsistency of their declarations with past practice. At AMD, it's just not healthy to get complete datasheets for fresh processor lines and their built-in igpu without wild ordeals.

Moreover, they announced 4k support back in Zen+, but in practice it turned out that their iGPU simply does not support 4k@60Hz - continuous drops and the load on the iGPU is above 60% is simply monstrous (against the background of smartphones). As a result, in 2020, AMD recognized the impossibility of hardware smooth decoding in Zen+ and Zen2 and made a hybrid decoder for them - which dramatically increased the load on the CPU part (from 5-7% to 15% and higher on YouTube in VP9). But the drops are still there in Chrome.

If we talk about absolutely smooth playback of 4k@60fps, then in practice, NONE of this trio - AMD/NVidia/Intel - provides smooth playback of 4k@60Hz with VSync on their chips. Occasionally, drops or a visible disruption of synchronization (VSync) occur (even if there are allegedly no drops according to statistics).

Until there is an ideal playback like hardware players or how the chips of this trinity can play fhd@60fps for hours without visible VSync disruptions, it is impossible for those who are in the subject to give them 100% playback quality.

[LL]

Some cameras and smartphones do not record at 4:4:4.

I am playing a HEVC Mov(mp4) 5728x3024 at 59.94fps total bitrate 295mb/s  4:2:0

5800H is at 8% , RTX3060 at 64%.
 

[Dorby]

"Radeon iGPU does support both native H265 and AV1 decoding."


It does not, it can't decode H.265 10bit chroma 4:2:2 neither Nvidias do, but Intel can . I have experience but if you doubt, go to Puget website and search for page with H.265 capabilities.
Several cameras and even smarthphones are outputting that chroma.

You want to deal with video editing you go Intel preferably 12th generation, but 11th also could do that.

Again, I am talking about decoding in terms of video consumption (both local and streaming). Maybe you are thinking about production side? (I wouldn't know) which is completely irrelevant, as ultrabooks are not designed for that kind of work anyway.

[LL]

You are right there is a difference when a player opens a movie and when put it in timeline of an editing application. The application needs to put the movie in 32 bits for editing (unless proxies and other tricks) so it is much heavier.

But...regardless of that,if the player cannot  decode from the hardware decoder it will tax the CPU normal cycles. So you can see your H.265 playing 4:2:2 probably without hiccups if the resolution is not too big but it will use the CPU heavily making it less comfortable noise experience.

Example i have
a 10bit 4:2:2 3840x2160  24 fps 89.6 Mb/s bit rate
 5800H go to 55%   3060 is at 16%

a 10bit 4:2:0  5728x3024  60fps  295Mb/s bit rate
5800H go to 9% the RTX3060 is around 60%.

[Kiran]

How well would this laptop perform in music DAWs like FL Studio? Is the CPU and video card enough to run a whole project without lag?