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How is it possible that this performs worse in games then Z1 extreme?

Thank you for a great write-up and analysis of this brand new platform. All of the information is there and this does look to be a step forward for AMD in some capacities. However, there are a few tidbits one should consider when looking in comparison.

1 - Processor runs at 33/28 W as noted in article. When comparing this to the 7840U in the HP Elitebook 845 G10 in which the 8-core processor runs at 30/25 W, things don't look as rosy as one expects. In particular, the new 12-core Ryzen 9 HX 370 scores 2407 vs 1925 in CBR15. Thus the new R9 HX 370 consumes 10% more power and has 50% more cores for a 25% increase in score. Not the best. This is further backed up by the CBR23 scores of 16522 (Ryzen 9 HX 370) vs 12385 for the 7840U. Better with a 33% gain for the increase in cores and nominal 10% increase in power consumption.

2 - There are several older 8 core Ryzen 7X40/7X45/8X40/8X45 (e.g., ROG G14 2622 CBR15 = +10%, 17079 CBR23 = +3.4%) series laptops that outperform this new Asus S16 in terms of total performance albeit at a higher power consumption (65/45 W sustained) vs 33/28 W for the new HX 370. So almost the same performance at 62% the power consumption (almost 40% reduction in power consumption). Platform and laptop looks waaaay better. U series power consumption for almost H series performance in terms of *relative* performance. But total performance stays the same.

3 - However, the one caveat that makes me think this Asus still needs some driver or low level updates and will improve in time is the battery consumption tests. The HP Elitebook 845 G10 (or the Lenovo T14s G4 has very similar performance) achieves 760 min of H.264 video playback and 779 min of wi-fi time on a very small 51 Whr battery compared to 1204 min of H.264 playback and ONLY 640 min of wi-fi time from a 78 Whr battery. So for slightly over a 50% increase in battery capacity, the H.264 time increased by 58% (so there is a system level improvement) but a substantial decrease of over 2 hours in wi-fi time despite a much larger battery!! Something is totally wrong there. My thoughts are this severe decrease in wi-fi time is due to their power control features. The core clocks and package power graphs remind me of the old power consumption graphs of several older Dell laptop models you reviewed. They should be constant and not fluctuating between max and 0.

Thank you again for all of your detailed information and reviews. Looking forward to the Asus ProArt 16 series review.

Quote from: Nedim Tabakovic on July 28, 2024, 15:38:48How is it possible that this performs worse in games then Z1 extreme?

Asus doesn't have the power control/profiles worked out yet properly. See my other comments regarding total performance and especially those when looking at battery lifetimes.

There is something wrong with your multi-core Cinebench R15, R20 and R23 scores.

All three show around 40% less performance than the ProArt PX13 when the multi-core Cinebench 2024, Geekbench 6 and Geekbench 5 show only 12-15% better performance for the ProArt PX13 which is what you expect due to the difference in TDP between the two laptops.

Please check you power settings (e.g. 17 watt or 28 watt?)

There's something seriously wrong with this laptop. That other Proart HX 370 is 41 % faster in Cinebench R23.

Typical Asus fumble...

By the looks of it, soldered RAM is the only available future and other brands have to wait until the fall to get their "hands" on this chip.

This chip is another reason to hate the AI bandwagon.

QuoteFor example, the X1E-80-100 in its direct competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16, was slightly slower during the multi-core tests, but the X1E-78-100 inside the Asus Vivobook S 15 was slightly faster in standard mode.

No, X1E-78-100 inside the Asus Vivobook S 15, 15-20% slower in CBR15 and let's not forget about Arm's poor compatibility with the x86 code base.
Also consider that the X1E-78-100 consumes more than 35W in PL1 mode, instead of 28W for the AI 9 HX 370.

Quotecomfortable keyboard

It's a shame for NB to list the cut-down keyboard as a plus for the laptop. Obviously, for a 16" model, this is a shameful keyboard without a classical numpad, which excludes effective work in the office and at home. Well, except for those who just write texts...

Quotebrilliant 120-Hz OLED

For IPS, even if it is semi-matte, yes. But for AMOLED, where "super" contrast of 1M:1+ is advertised, this is a shameful panel.

Note that the laptop screen does not even have a True Black HDR certificate - precisely because of the shameful contrast of 20,000:1, instead of 1M:1+ minimum.

I wonder how the manufacturers managed to raise the PWM frequency on AMOLED to 480Hz+ (240x2, which immediately leads to some bad thoughts), instead of 200-240Hz? What new achievements in AMOLED panels allowed to improve the frequency exactly 2 (two) times? The authors of NB need to explain this change in the last year in the reviews.

Although, as I already wrote, the minimum PWM frequency, which is considered safe, is 1.2 kHz according to the international standard.

CPU part:
Compared to 7945HX with Zen4 cores "5/6nm" (4900-5000 points in CBR15 at 85W in PL1 from www.notebookcheck.net/Minisforum-AtomMan-G7-PT-review-Compact-gaming-mini-PC-with-AMD-Ryzen-9-7945HX-and-Radeon-RX-7600M-XT.859693.0.html) the real increase in energy efficiency is approximately +40-45% for Zen5 cores (~2380@28W in PL1), which is quite good. It is clear that this is a thin and extremely light laptop (for 16") with a weak cooling system, but to get the performance of Zen4 7940HS again, albeit with minus 7W of consumption in PL1 (2330@35W from www.notebookcheck.net/Geekom-A7-with-0-5l-case-in-review-Premium-mini-PC-with-AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-32-GB-DDR5-RAM-and-2-TB-SSD.811438.0.html) - this is just boring and not impressive...

The real leap (for AMD) is finally a much more efficient memory controller with the same boring LDDR5 7500, which was finally fixed (as they previously claimed - supposedly there were problems with Zen4 with 7500, but in reality there were models in which it worked, it's just that other manufacturers, like Lenovo, were not qualified enough at the level of development departments to make motherboards with working LDDR5 7500 + Zen4 Phoenix). Finally, we see numbers close to 100 GB / s. Although from the point of view of the efficient operation of DP2.1 (UHBR20) and igpu, this bandwidth is obviously not enough, you need 3 times more, at least. That is why this junior line of Zen5 Strix does not support DP2.1 with UHBR20, because there is not at least a 256-bit memory controller with twice the bandwidth. We are waiting for Zen5 Strix Halo, the release of which was postponed, as usual - another "paper" AMD family, to its shame. Although it should be the most popular in business laptops without dGPU, but with real support for 8k monitors and igpu at least at the level of GTX1650.

I still naively expect that they will finally unsolder the HBR3 in SoC with a 512-1024 data bus and 8-32GB as VRAM. This will be a real breakthrough for AMD igpu...

But the memory latency is again depressing - more than 100ns even for the HX series 9

I don't like that the hot air exhaust on the screen exceeds 47C - this can have a bad effect on the AMOLED panel, although I did not look at the critical temperatures for it, but most likely they also do not exceed 50C.

Battery life with Wi-Fi (and this is an openly fake test, the time in which for real surfing should be immediately divided by 1.5-2 times) is not impressive. There are no stable 8 hours+ with real work and load.

Considering the stated price, 32 GB of soldered RAM is too little - there should be at least 64 GB (and they are 100% supported in Zen4/Zen5, as we have already found out earlier).

Because even taking into account the novelty, but taking into account all the shortcomings and slightly high performance of last year's 7940HS with slightly lower consumption at -7 W, not a very good offer for more than $2200. What are the extra 800$-900$ for, Asus?

If there were 64GB/4TB here, it could still be justified somehow, but as it is... until there is a 30-40% discount, it is unlikely that there will be many people willing to buy the already flawed series, both in terms of the keyboard and the glossy flickering screen without real support for HDR10 and 8k monitors on USB-c ports (where we were waiting for USB40 V2 at 80Gbps)...

Thank you for your attention.

No touchscreen? The ASUS website says it does ! It even comes with a stylus. You sure you have the right one?

Quote from: NikoB on July 28, 2024, 23:12:10unsolder the HBR3 in SoC

Sorry, typo - HBM3

How can they call it ryzen NINE if it gets completely raped by passively cooled M4 tablet in geekbench.

Quote from: NikoB on July 28, 2024, 23:12:10Asus Vivobook S 15, 15-20% slower in CBR15

CBR 15 is a 2013 test with zero support for 2024 platforms, welcome to reality

Was hoping these would be priced more competitively being soldered RAM machines...

Also what's the point of cramming a non low power chip inside a chassis that clearly can't take the heat? And since 90% of reviewers got this laptop only it doesn't look good.

Pretty sure it's another Asus fumble but clearly AMD were aware...

Quote from: lolryzen on July 29, 2024, 00:04:09CBR 15 is a 2013 test with zero support for 2024 platforms, welcome to reality

Welcome to reality, IT amateur - the code used in CBR15 is the code of 95% of modern software. All the "new" extensions are used in 5% of software and less than 5% of cases in practice among most buyers.

About the same as the 99% useless NPU block in 99% of everyday tasks, as well as another scam with "AI" and "Co-pilot+".

It is software like CBR15 that shows the real multi-threaded performance of hardware.

And in CBR2024 there are few changes in this regard. As Asus S15 was weaker with Qualcomm against Zen5, so it is in any x86 code, because the second-level x86 emulator will never be faster than the first-level emulator from Intel/AMD, because RISC cores have long been used there, which emulate a significant part of the x86 instruction set at the microcode level.

Quote from: lolryzen on July 29, 2024, 00:00:53if it gets completely raped by passively cooled M4 tablet in geekbench.

This is absolutely not a relevant test for x86 code. It is more tailored for web surfing than for heavy real-world floating-point loads. Arm has always lost, even without emulation, because x86 processors scale much better with increasing TDP in desktops and laptops. The tablet's destiny is banal content consumption, not serious workloads and tasks.

Quote from: lolryzen on July 29, 2024, 00:00:53How can they call it ryzen NINE if it gets completely raped by passively cooled M4 tablet in geekbench.

+1 Have to agree even being an anti-apple / apple hater.

Can't believe how we got here. Apple is light years ahead of BOTH arm and x86. Mentioning x86 vs arm wars no longer matters anymore and is irrelevant.

What have all the other companies (and the entire industry) been doing the last 4 years? Sleeping?

When the M4 MBP's release, I think we can finally stop and put to rest the whole arm vs x86 battle. It's going to completely destroy everything.

Conclusion: Just go Apple and if you can't everything else is bad so get whatever is cheap < $699. Spending > $1400 in the pc ecosystem no longer makes sense anymore.

For the price of these strix laptops you can get a well specc'd MBP + a dedicated gaming console and get a far better experience as well.

How could you miss the touchscreen? I have the laptop in front of me here and it is touchscreen, along with all the media saying it's touchscreen...

Also, the battery tests are fair, been using the laptop for two days, I get 10+ hours on light use, lol to the guy who says divide that by 2. Only things I don't love about it are mushy keyboard, trackpad could be clickier, and honestly, the bottom of the laptop does get quite hot with medium use, like lots of chrome tabs and videos running. Besides that, everything else good. Surprised display only got 85% while something like a macbook pro gets a 94%

Our particular review unit was not equipped with a touchscreen.

Quote from: IT amateur on July 29, 2024, 13:13:36When the M4 MBP's release, I think we can finally stop and put to rest the whole arm vs x86 battle. It's going to completely destroy everything.

It will release with 8/256 base spec and for 32/1T you will have to shell out $3000+. 8/256 will be way cheaper, it will be the fastest media consumption / typewriter device out there but for that you don't need so much "performance".

Quote from: rk on July 29, 2024, 16:25:46It will release with 8/256 base spec and for 32/1T you will have to shell out $3000+. 8/256 will be way cheaper, it will be the fastest media consumption / typewriter device out there but for that you don't need so much "performance".

Then you'd better start working and saving for a proper new macbook instead of yapping on the internets.

Typical windows->mac immigrant:
"why mac is too expensive"
buys his first crappy windows laptop
"why mac is too expensive"
buys his second crappy windows laptop
"why mac is too expensive"
buys his third crappy windows laptop
tired of windows bullshit and finally buys mac
"ah now i get why"

The lack of TB4/5 is a dealbreaker for me.

Quote from: jdrch on July 29, 2024, 23:41:01The lack of TB4/5 is a dealbreaker for me.

In fact, TB4 vs USB40 V1 have one hidden advantage. Most monitor models with 144Hz+ and HDR do not work at these frequencies without DSC (lossy compression), because HDMI 2.1 on their input ports is cut exactly 2 times to 24Gbps, which the vile manufacturers keep silent about in the specifications.

As a result, today you can connect such a monitor only if the monitor has a TB4 input, as far as we could find out from the reviews of competent buyers. It is in this mode that you get a 40Gbps band, which is enough to output 4k@165Hz + HDR (30 bit in 4:4:4 in lossless mode).

Therefore, the lack of a TB4 port is a death sentence for any desktop and laptop, if you plan to buy current monitor models 4k@144Hz+.

But you still won't be able to play effectively on them for a simple reason - most often the TB4 port is switched to igpu, not dgpu, i.e. the frame buffer is rendered in the system memory, which dramatically reduces fps in games and 3D software.

That's why DP2.0+ with UHBR10 at least is so important, which officially appeared in Zen4 Phoenix igpu, but it is still not there, to the shame of NVidia/AMD, in their discrete video chips. AMD has DP2.0+/UHBR20 only in professional video cards since last year.

As soon as you have a DP2.0+/UHBR20 interface, the topic of extremely clear (almost like a laser printer) fonts on screens up to 32" will be closed forever, because 8k monitors will immediately give 250ppi+ even on 32".

But even UHBR20 is already morally obsolete because it cannot provide smooth rendering in dynamics even in 2D, because 60Hz+ is not available there. Formally, TB5 is cooler than DP2.0+/UHBR20, but the nuance is that 120Gbps there is made for a different reason - because there is support for 2xDP2.0+, even in 120Gbps mode, one monitor will only have 60Gbps (as now on DP1.4b in TB4 there are shameful 20Gbps in 2-monitor mode, although DP1.4b, the full version, requires 32Gbps), which is 20Gbps less than the full version of DP2.0+/UHBR20 with 80Gbps.

Thus, today there is simply nothing to connect potential 8k@120Hz models to - even TB5 cannot deliver 160Gbps.

Despite the fact that DP2.0/UHBR20 was released in another era, in 2019(!), i.e. exactly 5 years ago, to the shame of the IT industry, it has not yet been put into mass operation. And at the same time, it was already morally obsolete at the start for the reason stated above...

That is why the days of copper wires are numbered - at distances of up to 2m and above, the only solution can be optics with a bandwidth of 160Gbps+.

And that's why I've been writing for a long time about the need to sharply increase the bandwidth of the x86 memory system - to service such heavy configurations with 8k monitors and other equipment, the RAM bandwidth has long been above 200 GB / s since 2019, but only now, to the shame of AMD / Intel, we saw boring and slow 100 GB / s with LPDDR5 7500 in Zen5 Strix. And we need 2-3 times more! That's why Zen5 Strix does NOT support DP2.0 / UHBR20 - for this, AMD will release Zen5 Strix Halo with a 256-bit memory controller, although the question is whether the controller efficiency will be around 80% ... Apple, to its shame, failed to ensure the memory controller efficiency even in the region of 40%, with top M3 / M4 with theoretical 400 GB / s at a 512-bit bus.

And of course igpu suffers greatly compared to dgpu from very slow RAM even in Zen5. You need much more bandwidth or dedicated HBM3/GDDR6 with 256+ bit bus on the SoC crystal for VRAM.

Quote from: Jedy on July 29, 2024, 15:04:08Also, the battery tests are fair, been using the laptop for two days, I get 10+ hours on light use, lol to the guy who says divide that by 2. Only things I don't love about it are mushy keyboard, trackpad could be clickier, and honestly, the bottom of the laptop does get quite hot with medium use, like lots of chrome tabs and videos running. Besides that, everything else good. Surprised display only got 85% while something like a macbook pro gets a 94%

I think by "divide by two" he meant that intel traditionally reduces performance on battery, because according to review on AC this laptop uses avg. 8.5-10W in idle, so on AC power it mathematically can't even idle for 10hrs on 78Wh battery, and yet it gets 20hrs of video playback on battery, which is 3.9W consumption.

Macbooks' displays were rated on "v7" rating and this one is "v8", I think PWM now weights display score down more.

QuotePlease note: We have recently updated our rating system and the results of version 8 are not comparable with the results of version 7. More information is available

errr, not "intel" but "x86"

Quote from: batury on July 31, 2024, 10:29:34, and yet it gets 20hrs of video playback on battery, which is 3.9W consumption.

There is in reality a pulse load on the SoC, which is extremely dependent on the complexity of the information being processed.

In general, when the SoC consumption is less than 10W, other system components become significant factors - the screen, the motherboard with other devices.

The problem with x86, to their complete shame, is that they cannot even decode 4k@60fps on YouTube in VP9 with a total consumption of the SoC and SoC power supply of less than 5W. This is simply ridiculous against the background of smartphone consumption under the same load...

Quote from: Real NikoB (old name bl) on August 01, 2024, 13:56:26In general, when the SoC consumption is less than 10W, other system components become significant factors - the screen, the motherboard with other devices.

NBC measures consumption on wall socket.

It looks like there's a driver issue with the wifi card.
ASUS just released an update for the driver.
Can you update the battery runtime after the update?
The WIFI runtime seems to be too low.

Quote from: IT amateur on July 29, 2024, 13:13:36

Quote from: lolryzen on July 29, 2024, 00:00:53How can they call it ryzen NINE if it gets completely raped by passively cooled M4 tablet in geekbench.

+1 Have to agree even being an anti-apple / apple hater.

Can't believe how we got here. Apple is light years ahead of BOTH arm and x86. Mentioning x86 vs arm wars no longer matters anymore and is irrelevant.

Basically, Intel went to sleep from 2014 until 2020.  MBAs took over the company, laid off half the VLSI designers in 2014, and literally rebranded everything annually from 5000 - 10000 series - thats all the same pokey useless stuff. 

Apple decided to give Intel the middle finger with ARM.  Google internally (as #5 computer maker on earth) literally hated Intel's guts (trust me i was there) and wanted to switch so desperately and finally began its Ryzen switchover in 2020.

Thats what happens when you let under educated suits run your company into the ground for half a decade ...

I think this is great laptop.Design and weight is great. But i am worried about overheating. How comportable  is this laptop for office work. How heat is this with avarege work.

Quote from: MGaama on August 30, 2024, 04:22:44I think this is great laptop.Design and weight is great. But i am worried about overheating. How comportable  is this laptop for office work. How heat is this with avarege work.

I own the Asus S16 365 model now.  802.11b range is a tiny bit limited (maybe 5db less range than most phones or laptops, 10ft less range).  While web browsing the laptop gets warm when i rest it on my stomach, enough that I will put it between my legs to cool the backside for 10m until it cools down again, on balanced mode, no lagginess.  Unfortunately it truly needs the top and bottom in the open air to stay cool.  Fans are never audible.  Not ideal but much much better than my last 2019 intel laptop which was NEVER placed anywhere near my body to avoid skin burns at 165F...

To enhance my Zenbook S16 hx365 my first two purchases are a 2TB Crucial T500 SSD (2x the performance of the p3 plus class 1TB SSD supplied) and a $45 asus 203 Pen #2 on EBay to play around with the touch screen.  Not owning a touch screen before i get in trouble repositioning the display (often scrolling or closing a window) or trying to wipe specs of dirt off the beautiful screen.

This is the #2 thinnest laptop on the market with the #1 coolest finish and logo to let you show it off.  Consequently, there are compromises. 

It's so thin because it tries to radiate all the heat vertically and it has very tiny, very spindly fans to save energy.  It has a very hard limit of 34w and many reviewers can't even figure out how to set it above 28w.  As a result, the 890m and/or 880m are badly gimped by about 15% due to power and cooling limits.  So the 880m performs like the Z1 extreme (780m) GPU while sipping power, driving a spectacular 3k OLED display, at 2/3rds the watts.

I realized I needed a laptop mostly for text editing (programming) and some light esports gaming.  I wanted the coolest looking and coolest performing (on my lap) laptop on the market, so i got the hx365 version.  I am through with intel powerpig thighburner laptops, even the new lunacy lake CPUs are only 4 cores 8 threads (**) and we moved beyond that in 2011 didn't we?

You can set the laptop to the efficiency mode and it runs incredibly cool like a snapdragon, although sometimes it glitches / stalls and i assume its the many bugs in windows 11.

(**) One e-core is the equivalent of 1 secondary thread ...