FEBRUARY 2020 PCWorld 17RTX 2060 GPU and 8-core Ryzen 4800H
chip. On paper, that doesn’t sound like a big
deal, but the Zephyrus G14 weighs just 3.
lbs. which is far lighter than any GeForce RTX
2060 laptop we’ve ever seen. It’s also the first
14-inch RTX laptop ever.
We should also add that most lightweight
gaming laptops with beefy gaming GPUs tend
to skip Intel’s 8-core Core i9 chips in favor of
the 6-core Core i7 chips. The reason? It’s likely
due to the thermals. Although you can
shoehorn an 8-core Intel chip into a 4.5-lb. Dell
XPS 15 (go.pcworld.com/x759) or a 4-lb.
MacBook Pro 15, the performance of the Core
i9 typically suffers compared to say, shoving
the same CPU into an 8-lb. Acer Predator
Helios 700 (go.pcworld.com/h700).
The fact that Asus, AMD, and Nvidia feel
comfortable shoving an 8-core CPU into a
3.5-lb. gaming laptop just might mean the
7nm Ryzen 7 4800H is far more power
efficient than an Intel 14nm Core i9. That said,
Asus is tuning the Ryzen 7 4800H to 35 watts
and using the nomenclature of Ryzen
4800HS, rather than the full-blown chip.
Obviously, we’ll have to wait for final
products to make a final judgment.SMART SHIFT: ALL AMD
LAPTOPS GET A SPECIAL
BOOST
One feature AMD is implementing with Ryzen
4000 H-class chips is an intelligent way to shift
power around a system. AMD said laptops
Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs can talk to one
another over the company’s Infinity Fabric and
if the CPU isn’t being driven hard, more power
can be allocated to the GPU, or vice-versa.