PC World - USA (2020-05)

MAY 2020 PCWorld 101

find a good deal on existing models? We’ll
help you decide by going through the pros
and cons for each generation.

WAIT: IF YOU WANT A
HIGH-END RYZEN LAPTOP
The biggest problem for those excited to buy
a Ryzen 4000 laptop today is there just aren’t
that many available, let alone with the
hardware you might want.
The first Ryzen 4000 laptop out the gate,
the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, went from
preorder to sold out at Best Buy.com
seemingly overnight. At $1,450 with a Ryzen
9 and RTX 2060 Max-Q chip, it’s not even
high-end, but it was the only game in town.
You can still click the link and gaze sadly at
the Sold Out button (go.pcworld.com/
gg14), the same way you look at the empty
toilet paper shelf.
Gamers set on a GeForce RTX 2080
Super Max-Q or a 17.3-inch HDR screen
pretty much have no choice today but to
reach for Intel’s new 10th-gen CPU. While
Ryzen 4000 is easily the superior CPU in many
tasks, if you can’t get it with the GPU you
want, the Thunderbolt 3 you want, or the
screen you want, then it doesn’t mean
much. To be honest, you’ll be
happy with either CPU.
If you’re dead-set on
Ryzen 4000 in your laptop
with a checklist of features,
you should definitely wait.

Oddly, we haven’t seen Ryzen 4000 chips

announced with Nvidia’s fastest GPUs just yet,

but we fully expect them to materialize.

WAIT: IF YOU’RE A GAMER

(UNLESS YOU LIKE GOOD

DEALS)

While AMD and Intel got a lot of the glory this

round, the other shout-out should go to

Nvidia with its new GeForce RTX Super series

of GPUs (see page 21), as well as the updated

version of Max-Q.

Both RTX Super GPUs and Max-Q labels

bring a hefty uptick in performance. Although

we’re still waiting to see more

implementations in production laptops,

Super seems to increase performance across

the board. A GeForce RTX 2070 Super

Max-Q, for instance, seems to run as well as

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 features AMD’s new 8-core Ryzen 7

4800HS as well as a GeForce RTX 2060 GPU in a 3.5-pound package.