Yesterday AMD unveiled two new processors along with expanding upon their new standard. The new standard is called “AMD Ryzen™ 4000 H-Series HS Design Standard”. This new standard represents their efforts to maintain processing performance while increasing battery life. Each of their current, including the newly announced 4900H, 4000 series processors will have a HS variant. The HS variants differ from their H cousins in that they have a 35-watt TDP. By comparison the non-HS processors have a TDP of 35-45 watts. Some simple math means that the new HS standard could potentially use roughly only 77% of power than the previous H series did. These lower power consuming chips do have lower base clocks but often the same boost as non-HS versions.
From AMD,
“Paired with high-performance discrete graphics cards, AMD-approved HS gaming laptop designs deliver outstanding gameplay powered by up to 8 ultra-responsive AMD Ryzen™ 4000 H-Series processing cores at only 35W.”
Live long and process
This obviously is an effort by AMD to address an area they have not always won in, battery life. For those on the go longevity is the name of the game in the mobile market. Most recently AMD claimed estimates of up to 18 hours while ASUS stating a more conservative 10 hours on a single charge. Some of the discrepancy between these claims can be the result of testing methods. In recent years others have spoken up regarding possible unrealistic claims over battery life and a lawsuit has even been filed over them. Often at the center of this controversy is a benchmark tool called MobileMark. Without getting too far into the he said/she said sides of MobileMark’s involvement in the industry one thing all can agree on is that mileage varies on usage.
In moving forward with this AMD has published their testing approach. Their testing methods use a variety of benchmarks to represent a larger picture for total battery life. Another very important detail is WHr or watt hour. They do compare the Ryzen 7 4800U processor in a Lenovo Yoga Slim to a Dell XPS 13 with a i7-1064G7. Initially the Yoga Slim pulls ahead with a gain of 2.4 hrs. AMD does factor in the battery WHr difference for a third test which decreases the lead to around 30 minutes. It is very possible that the new HS standard will have even greater gains with their 35-watt TDP.