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

[Redaktion]

A new ASUS ZenBook 14 model sports the Ryzen 7 4700U APU, together with an Nvidia GeForce MX350 discrete graphics card. However, considering the narrow performance difference between the MX350 and the 4700U's iGPU, why does ASUS bother with a discrete GPU?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-NVIDIA-GeForce-MX350-barely-beats-the-AMD-Ryzen-7-4700U-s-Vega-7-iGPU-Why-are-some-OEMs-using-it-anyway.464274.0.html

[LHPSU]

Jesus, way to cherry-pick stats. Actually, that's putting it kindly; most of this article is a flat-out lie, intentionally trying to deceive people who don't take the effort to read the linked article.

[Rick]

To provide a real dGPU performance boost, I propose to combine a 15W AMD APU (like the 4800U) with the GTX 1650ti max-Q, in a 13" or 14" package. Users should be able to turn ON the dGPU "on demand", and the laptop should run silent when the dGPU is turned off.

Of course, a 50W TDP (15W APU + 35W dGPU) comes with a penalty in terms of size and battery endurance. But this penalty is not too large: Asus was able to fit a 100W TDP (35W APU + 65W dGPU) in a 1.8mm thin 14" laptop, and this laptop has almost 10 hours of battery endurance under a light load.

[Harakiri Cat]

Because they have contracts

[ed]

Jesus, way to cherry-pick stats. Actually, that's putting it kindly; most of this article is a flat-out lie, intentionally trying to deceive people who don't take the effort to read the linked article.

Just to add on that here the short conclusion of that article:

In conclusion, both the Vega7 and the MX350 chips cannot run at their full potential on this ZenBook UM433 implementation, and we'll update our findings if we get to test a final unit.

We know for a fact that both can perform better in higher tier thermal designs

As many laptop reviews have shown [Asus G14, TUF A15, Yoga 14s (Slim 7), s540-13are05], the general conclusion is that they all need better cooling to have both cpu and gpu perform to their full potential, even though right now they already outclassed higher powered Intel cpu's.

Less optimal solutions are undervolting the dGPU or tweaking the cpu frequency with tools like Armoury Crate.

[Tov]

Asus plz, just remove mx350 and put 2 more heat pipe in the space for more powerful ultrabook.

[cmiiw]

Cuda cores?

[william blake]

another attack by religious igpu believers? lol
lets check the data
https://www.ultrabookreview.com/38004-amd-vega-7-8-mx350-benchmarks/
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.

[ed]

To provide a real dGPU performance boost, I propose to combine a 15W AMD APU (like the 4800U) with the GTX 1650ti max-Q, in a 13" or 14" package. Users should be able to turn ON the dGPU "on demand", and the laptop should run silent when the dGPU is turned off.

Of course, a 50W TDP (15W APU + 35W dGPU) comes with a penalty in terms of size and battery endurance. But this penalty is not too large: Asus was able to fit a 100W TDP (35W APU + 65W dGPU) in a 1.8mm thin 14" laptop, and this laptop has almost 10 hours of battery endurance under a light load.

I had same idea like you, as these midrange thin laptops with GTX 1650 are now difficult to find. I asked someone who had a Asus G14 14 inch 4800HS+RTX2060 to tweak the APU at 15W tdp max at full load, and using the iGPU at low fan speed, however the laptop still feels warm.

I mean the thermal design of the G14 is not bad, but to have fan control software, the drivers of the Ryzen APU and Nvidia RTX work in sync and use minimal power at idle time needs some maturing probably.

[Rick]

I had same idea like you, as these midrange thin laptops with GTX 1650 are now difficult to find. I asked someone who had a Asus G14 14 inch 4800HS+RTX2060 to tweak the APU at 15W tdp max at full load, and using the iGPU at low fan speed, however the laptop still feels warm.

I mean the thermal design of the G14 is not bad, but to have fan control software, the drivers of the Ryzen APU and Nvidia RTX work in sync and use minimal power at idle time needs some maturing probably.

That's interesting, as I am also considering the G14. Check with your friend, there's an AMD app which keeps on the dGPU even at light loads. It's a software glitch that hopefully Asus will correct, and the reason why battery life is so different across reviews.

If I go the G14 route, my idea, similar to your, is to set an "ultrabook mode", with the dGPU disabled and the TDP set at 15W. I need the PC to be silent, or almost silent, as I work in a room with other people. How can you tweak the TDP?

[Grinnie Jax]

As an owner of two laptops, one with Vega 10 igpu and one with MX250 gpu, I can say it is a more complicated question than it looks. But in most cases the performance is limited by cooling capacity / RAM bandwidth & latency, in case of igpu. When I experimented with my EliteBook 745G, opening the back panel and placing it over coolpad reduced drop of fps completely, even Forza 4 was playable at 720p (doesn't look as bad on 14"). However, when used w/o additional cooling, I noticed statters after just couple of minutes. Mind you, I used very high-quality HyperX DDR4 in dual-channel (best possible latency at 2400 MHz).

To some degree, this happens to my Lenovo Yoga S740 with MX250. After some time, again, I get framedrops in Forza 4. Overall - all these comparisons are very hard to perform, because they may be tons of factors:
1) How many pipelines per APU/GPU in each case.
2) What fans and how arranged with radiators.
3) Area and arrangement of radiators.
4) Thermal interface.
5) Case: internal space/how thermally insulative or not, etc.
6) Single-channel or dual-channel RAM, latency - below 100 ns has great impact, etc.
7) Specific BIOS issues, drivers, etc.

Even in the same version of laptop, they may not take full advantage of using great APU, as you see above...

[ed]

That's interesting, as I am also considering the G14. Check with your friend, there's an AMD app which keeps on the dGPU even at light loads. It's a software glitch that hopefully Asus will correct, and the reason why battery life is so different across reviews.

If I go the G14 route, my idea, similar to your, is to set an "ultrabook mode", with the dGPU disabled and the TDP set at 15W. I need the PC to be silent, or almost silent, as I work in a room with other people. How can you tweak the TDP?

You can check out this guy yourself, he made a review and shared it at reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/gemov7/review_2020_asus_g14/.

I shared him my scenario and he "disabled the turbo by setting the max cpu at 99%" [in Armoury crate I think]

[Valantar]

Jesus, way to cherry-pick stats. Actually, that's putting it kindly; most of this article is a flat-out lie, intentionally trying to deceive people who don't take the effort to read the linked article.

I read the review, and they do seem to agree:

In conclusion, both the Vega7 and the MX350 chips cannot run at their full potential on this ZenBook UM433 implementation, and we'll update our findings if we get to test a final unit.

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.

[Pope Francis]

The fact is, both Intel and Nvidia have the vendors, the bloggers and pretty much everyone by the balls. The list of anti-competitive tricks employed by the companies is huge. It would be naive to think laptops utilizing AMD hardware are all imperfect, in one or more ways, because of mere negligence. On the contrary, the vendors appear to be putting quite a bit of effort into making AMD-based products unattractive by design (by putting the components into an old chassis or limiting the RAM configuration to single channel only, among other things). Call this a conspiracy theory if you like.

[delluser]

For my job this laptop is not bad. I need a small, lightweight laptop with CUDA support and OK battery.