Many OEMs including ASUS and Lenovo are pairing AMD’s Ryzen 4000 “Renoir” mobile processors with dedicated graphics parts that are slower or near-about as powerful as the accompanying integrated graphics solutions. While this normally wouldn’t be an issue with the 45W high-performance H series, many vendors are doing the same with low-power 15W (cTDP: 25W) Renoir APUs, pairing them with low-end discrete GPUs such as the MX350.
Update: Please check the end of the post for gaming benchmarks comparing the Ryzen 7 4700U iGPU (Vega 7) to the MX350.
Ultrabooks and 14″ notebooks already have a limited thermal envelope and stuffing a dGPU that doesn’t add any meaningful performance or value is a borderline anti-consumer practice. Not only does this increase the BOM and thereby the MSRP, it also has a negative impact on efficiency and form-factor.
A very good example is the ASUS Zenbook which packs a Ryzen 7 4700U and Vega 7 integrated graphics. Although the iGPU hasn’t been gimped by the use of sub-par memory (LPDDR4-4200MHz), the inclusion of a discrete graphics part such as the MX350 makes little to no sense. In recent benchmarks, we’ve already seen that the MX350 is slower than the Vega 8 iGPU. That puts it nearly on the same level as the Vega 7 graphics solution featured in the above mentioned Zenbook.
We’re not sure whether this is the result of an OEM deal or just an oversight by ASUS’ design team, but it’s hard to ignore. We’ll update this post as soon as ASUS or AMD respond to our query.
Update:
Here is a video that simulates a Ryzen 7 4700U using a TDP-bound 4800HS:
Eight games have been tested using the Vega 7 iGPU featured on the 4700U/4800HS. You can compare the results with the MX350 benchmarks from NBC below:
