AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX, first third-party performance tests

Ryzen 9 6900HX is one of the new processors created by AMD under its new generation of APUs, codenamed ‘Rembrandt’. The series is intended for the notebook and convertible market and will be available from February.

Although the future of AMD processors goes through the new generation ZEN 4, AMD has created a product line as a transition. They use an improved revision of the ZEN 3+ architecture, are manufactured on 6nm technology processes, and will replace the current Ryzen 5000 ‘Cezanne’. In addition to increasing performance, AMD is taking the opportunity to support the new generation of DDR5 memory and its version for laptops LPDDR5, as well as the latest connectivity standards, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 and the latest version of the USB4 peripheral port.

Another outstanding aspect comes from the improvement of the graphic section with the ‘Navi2’ chips, which use RDNA 2 technology to improve the veteran ‘Vega’. For the rest, they are manufactured under an APU (accelerated processing unit) format that adds the CPU, GPU, memory controller and other chipset components in the same package to gain integration, lower consumption and reduce costs.

Ryzen 9 6900HX, performance

In its presentation at CES 2022, AMD talked about a performance increase of double digit process and even more in the graphic section. Now, from Geekbench we get the first data from third parties, specifically about a Lenovo laptop with Windows 11.

The Ryzen 9 6900HX is one of the most interesting models of the dozen ‘Rembrandt’ APUs that AMD will market. Although above it it will have two other processors, it is a development with 8 cores and 16 processing threads with working frequencies from 3.3 to 4.9 GHz. Its multiplier is unlocked for a TDP of 45 watts, whose maximum level of power will establish each manufacturer according to the positioning they want for the equipment where they install it and the cooling system they use.

In this case, Geekbench does not establish it, although it does offer benchmarks that can give us an idea of ​​its performance. This CPU scores 1593 points in the single-core test and 10151 points in the multi-core test. This implies an increase in 12% and 33% respectively vs. Ryzen 9 5900HX based on Zen3 ‘Cezanne’ silicon.

Worse news arrives if we compare it with the true competition which is none other than the new Intel Alder Lake. AMD’s APU falls well short of the Core i9-12900H’s scores (7 to 21% single threaded and 37 to 42% multicore). It must be said that the maximum frequency used by the Ryzen 9 6900HX for these tests is not known and that we need others beyond synthetic tests to verify its real performance. Also, the Intel CPU has significantly more cores (14) and threads (20) and will be priced higher as well.

Where does this leave us? In a medium term. There is no doubt that these 6000 series APUs are competent developments and a significant improvement over the previous ones, especially in the graphic section with the new RDNA 2 chips. Another thing will be to compete with Intel. The chip giant has done a good job with Alder Lake and AMD may not be able to compete on performance until its next ZEN 4 architecture arrives.

Of course, we still need to know the pricing and how they affect the final cost of the laptops and convertibles where they will be installed. There is ground there for AMD to have convinced the OEMs. We will know soon. We expect release from next month. In case you didn’t see it at the time, we leave you with the official list of these ‘Rembrandt’ APUs.

AMD Ryzen 6000 series