With the emergence of powerful APUs from AMD based on Vega, RDNA2, and most recently RDNA3 with the Radeon 780M GPU, compact mobile products are currently thriving in the gaming sector.
ETA PRIME is a tech reviewer specializing in everything limited by power. This YouTuber has shared many reviews of handheld gaming consoles, Mini-PCs, and laptops over the past few years.
The latest review of the ASUS TUF laptop using the Ryzen 9 7940HS by this reviewer is one of the first of its kind. AMD has provided very little information regarding the HS variants of the Ryzen 7040 series, with only a few details listed on their official website.
The AMD Phoenix APU is the latest processor introduced by the company at CES this January. This chip is powered by the Zen4 architecture and combined with the RDNA3 GPU. The GPU is what makes this APU interesting because it features the same number of cores as the previous Rembrandt generation, but with higher clock speeds and a newer architecture. This, combined with high-speed DDR5 memory, could once again transform mobile gaming capabilities.
The device tested by ETA Prime is an ASUS TUF A15 with a discrete graphics card RTX 4060, but his review is not about the RTX, but entirely dedicated to the Radeon 780M integrated GPU.
The Ryzen 9 7940HS is an 8-core Zen4 CPU with a base clock of 4.0 GHz and a boost clock of up to 5.2 GHz. This system allows for a TDP adjustment of up to 80W. The ASUS gaming laptop is equipped with dual-channel DDR5-5600 memory and has up to 4GB of dedicated shared memory for the GPU. This memory capacity may increase on other systems with higher RAM amounts.
The Radeon 780M GPU base clock is up to 2.8 GHz; the 3.0 GHz boost clock is not available with default settings.
In 3DMark, the Radeon 780M GPU is 12% and 15% faster than the 680M in 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy, respectively. Notably, the 680M system was using faster LPDDR5 memory.
According to ETA Prime, the initial drivers for this setup were not ready for many games. The system encountered issues in titles like Spider-Man 1 and 2, but it is worth noting that official drivers for the Phoenix Radeon 780M were not yet available.
AMD Radeon 780M (RDNA3) iGPU Average Gaming Performance with 80W CPU Limit:
- CSGO (1080p High): 130 FPS
- GTA (1080p Very High): 81 FPS
- Forza Horizon 5 (1080p High): 86 FPS
- Fortnite (1080p Medium): 78 FPS
- Doom Eternal (1080p Medium): 83 FPS
- Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Performance): 69 FPS
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare (1080p Recommended/FSR Perf.): 106 FPS
- Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium/Low Mix): ~70 FPS
The Radeon 780M is capable of delivering playable performance in popular games at 1080p resolution. The system was tested with Performance mode enabled via the ASUS Armoury Crate software. Handheld gaming consoles will be limited to 15-35W depending on the settings.
Interestingly, the integrated Radeon 780M GPU can be overclocked. ETA Prime encountered no issues overclocking the graphics to 3 GHz, which was demonstrated during gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077.
The Radeon 780M clock speed can even reach 3.25 GHz, though it was unstable. Hopefully, there will be better compatibility and overclocking features with official drivers once AMD Phoenix is released.
Watch ETA Prime’s full test details at:
