The NVIDIA GeForce MX350 barely beats the AMD Ryzen 7 4700U's Vega 7 iGPU: Why are some OEMs using it anyway?

[K]

don't know if dx 12 and vulkan 1.2 can use both gpu together, but one thing is for sure cuda won't help to the extend price of this laptop. only reason why asus had added dGPU is just for pure marketing purpose. see this one has Nvidia GPU and most people especially people going for this fancy  piece will seldom understand difference of GPU model.

[MegTso]

Well, in heavy graphic load mx 350 beats by more than 2 times integrated gpu.
Whats wrong with article author?

[Vinh]

battery optimize, better driver. AMD needs more time for this or we have to wait for AMD getting better in this :v

[Joel]

I think many people are missing the point of this article.

The point is NOT that the MX350 is the same performance as the iGPU in a 4700U.  I think too many are getting derailed here.

The point IS that if the power budget is 15W, the power may well be better utilized by the AMD CPU+iGPU over by the AMD CPU + MX350, particularly considering price.  I think that hypothesis could be well true, but I'm not sure how we consumer-level people can prove/disprove this.

If I could spend $50-100 more on a part to pair with the Ryzen U series, it would be a very bright (500+ nit) screen, not a low-end GPU.

[A]

last table, same chassis, vega 7, second best vega versus mx350(10w version, keep in mind)
+30% fps
-5%
+95%
+60%
+41%
0 fps vs 30, not sure how to count it
+32%
+33%
+11%
+225%
10w mx is incomparably better, more than +50% avg fps, even more in 1% lows, some games are not even working on vega.
but yea,, go spread some "you dont need more fps" bullshit between noobs.

You are too stuck up on the dGPU religion that you think even a 30 year old worst dGPU is better than the latest and best iGPU.

Here is the question for you, what if you sent those 10W to the APU instead of including an extra dGPU? And then use all that extra space and cost of that dGPU for a larger heat sink?

[DavidC1]

@A Actually it doesn't work like that. The CPU will use less than rated TDP because it doesn't have to use the iGPU. It's especially the case here since low-end GPUs need only a slow CPU to max it out.

Overall the power consumption will be closer than you think.

[Valantar]

@A Actually it doesn't work like that. The CPU will use less than rated TDP because it doesn't have to use the iGPU. It's especially the case here since low-end GPUs need only a slow CPU to max it out.

Overall the power consumption will be closer than you think.

Not in cases like this - mobile chips boost aggressively based on temps and power, and in a 15W power envelope there will always be room for the CPU to push higher unless thermally constrained, even if the load is only heavy on a single core. After all, Zen2 cores in high end Ryzen 3000 CPUs go to 18-20W each when boosting high. The only exceptions to this is if you are extremely GPU bottlenecked or if your CPU is a low enough SKU that it isn't allowed to stretch its legs properly. But just take a look at the frequencies of the APU in that review - even with the dGPU running its clocking way below base clock. There is something seriously wrong there.

[Zodiacfml]

More like a business decision than a technical one. They simply had to sell the MX350 they agreed to order with Nvidia and this is just one of many Asus mobile products

[Ahmad Aizat]

It wasnt that hard to understand. AMD has been notoriously bad in their GPU driver and software. It is so badly optimized that wont even compare it anymore. Simply put, the gpu division of amd has been poorly doing its job. You won't be surprised seeing everywhere in the internet, reddit and  forums about how it is. Asus didnt want to take the gamble of having to deal with customer in gpu.

Its funny how their cpu division however, is doing a great job nowadays.

[A]

It wasnt that hard to understand. AMD has been notoriously bad in their GPU driver and software. It is so badly optimized that wont even compare it anymore. Simply put, the gpu division of amd has been poorly doing its job. You won't be surprised seeing everywhere in the internet, reddit and  forums about how it is. Asus didnt want to take the gamble of having to deal with customer in gpu.

Its funny how their cpu division however, is doing a great job nowadays.

Not sure what you mean, AMD drivers used to be terrible during the Catalyst days (the cpu drivers used to be bad too when zen first came out). But nowadays, the AMD GPU drivers are better than Nvidia. A study was done by QA consultants 2 years ago and they found that:

"In total, across both the gaming and workstation cards QA Consultants measured 31 crashes or hangs for AMD, and 76 for Nvidia, out of 432 tests carried out across each company's cards."

Of course when a new gpu is released, you will always have issues for the first few months here and there, and Nvidia being more used usually means more testing by developers. That said, AMD's drivers are a ton more stable than they used to be in the past so your reasoning is flawed.

[Valantar]

It wasnt that hard to understand. AMD has been notoriously bad in their GPU driver and software. It is so badly optimized that wont even compare it anymore. Simply put, the gpu division of amd has been poorly doing its job. You won't be surprised seeing everywhere in the internet, reddit and  forums about how it is. Asus didnt want to take the gamble of having to deal with customer in gpu.

Its funny how their cpu division however, is doing a great job nowadays.

That is pure nonsense. All GPU drivers have bugs, and while there were quite a few when Navi was launched, most were quickly fixed. The rest is a very vocal yet tiny minority with very specific issues that are near impossible to recreate for others. AMD drivers these days are stable and work just fine for >99% of users.

[DavidC1]

@A Actually it doesn't work like that. The CPU will use less than rated TDP because it doesn't have to use the iGPU. It's especially the case here since low-end GPUs need only a slow CPU to max it out.

You can see from that very link you put up that the iGPU package power is higher and the CPU frequency is lower, supporting my point that dGPU total power consumption isn't 15W + 10W but 0.x*15W + 10W.

Not to mention the 10W dGPU configuration equal/faster than the much higher power H series APU configuration and demolishes the U APU.

A capable dGPU is competitive even in perf/watt against an iGPU. Only thing its worse at it is taking up more board real estate.

[SENTHIL KUMAR N]

What else?. For Marketing purposes. If the company says it has a dedicated GPU, the common people will buy it for that.

[Tov]

What we want is unlock 4800U + 3080/3070. So we can have a laptop that last 10+hours for office work and when gaming 90% of power usage and cooling capacity can go to the dGPU.

[_MT_]

Both are thermally limited, and while the MX350 is faster overall, in lighter loads the Vega 7 does indeed seem able to keep up. There is also a serious question to be raised of whether the Vega would be able to keep up better if the thermal design of the laptop wasn't quite poor (even if the MX350 was given the same improved thermal design, obviously) as the overall thermal design of the laptop seems incapable of sustaining even 25W total load for the system.

They tested that using a Zephyrus G14 with the dGPU disabled. Yes, there was a significant improvement. No, it wasn't enough to beat MX350 (in the Zenbook). As far as I recall. G14 doesn't have the best cooling system in the world, but it's much better than what you'll typically find in ultrabooks.

Yes, it's debatable whether it's worth the space and money. And I understand that having more is desirable for gaming. But, the real question is whether you have the cooling and power capacity for a more powerful dGPU to make sense. The 1650/ 1660 are more gaming territory rather than plain Jane ultrabook territory cards (especially in this size). If you want to play games, buy a gaming laptop. The Zenbook isn't a gaming laptop. Some people might want CUDA. Some might enjoy a little bit of light gaming. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Who knows, maybe they'll offer a version without a dGPU so you can safe some money and a little bit of weight (but it also could have less capable cooling).