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The GPD Win Max 2 gaming handheld sacrifices efficiency in the name of performance in a recent in-depth test, achieving marginally less battery life than its predecessor but performing better in games and synthetic benchmarks, largely due to improved high-speed RAM compatibility.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Refre...for-impressive-performance-bump.806639.0.html
EDIT: (new link)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj7eSaGkSfY
When GPD refreshed the GPD Win Max 2 for 2024, the company changed little apart from upgrading the CPU to the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U. It's been known for a while that the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U is only a small bump over its predecessor, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, but The Phawx over on YouTube has conducted in-depth testing, revealing the weird ways this minor change affects the GPD Win Max 2's performance and battery life.
In his video, Cary Golomb explains that he is testing the 2023 GPD Win Max 2 (curr. $1,369.99 on Amazon) against its more modern variant with memory speeds locked to 7500 MT/s and some rather conservative CPU power settings to maximise the GPU performance.
Golomb tests a variety of metrics, but focusses mostly on how the device's performance changes across different power settings, and it's clear that the Ryzen 7 8840U offers better performance than the 7840U, especially at lower TDP settings and with faster RAM. In most of the 10 W TDP benchmarks, the 8840U is around 10% faster than the 7840U at the same TDP, which is a respectable performance bump for a year-over-year increase. Going up to 25 W, however, the performance difference starts to become less noticeable — closer to around 5%.
In a Unigine Heaven test measuring CPU and GPU performance across different RAM speeds and TDPs, AMD's Ryzen 7 8840U CPU smashes the 7840U across the board, but what's interesting is that the 8840U offers more or less identical performance at up to 12 W whether the DDR5 is running at 6400 MT/s or 7500 MT/s. After the 12-W mark, though, the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U starts to really benefit from the higher RAM frequency, scoring significantly higher than the same CPU running at 6400 MT/s.
Where things get complicated is when Golomb compares the actual power consumption. Although the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U outclasses the Ryzen 7 7840U at all CPU power profiles, the 8840U uses around 7% more power than the Ryzen 7 7840U, making it a less efficient package and noticeably affecting the GPD Win Max 2's battery life.
Golomb reiterates that he did everything in his power to make the tests identical — identical screen brightness, running the same Windows and driver versions, and running system RAM at the same frequency — but the 7% power-draw discrepancy persisted.
Running the same test at 25 W results in a much smaller difference in the power draw, indicating that there is some sort of power draw overhead that becomes more noticeable at lower power levels.
Buyers of the GPD Win Max 2 will need to decide whether the ~10% performance bump from the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U is really worth the ~7% hit to battery life of the system. In terms of overall battery life, The Phawx claims that the system with the Ryzen 7 7840U was able to run around 15 minutes longer than the one with the 8840U.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Refre...for-impressive-performance-bump.806639.0.html
Source(s)
The Phawx on YouTubeEDIT: (new link)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj7eSaGkSfY
When GPD refreshed the GPD Win Max 2 for 2024, the company changed little apart from upgrading the CPU to the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U. It's been known for a while that the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U is only a small bump over its predecessor, the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U, but The Phawx over on YouTube has conducted in-depth testing, revealing the weird ways this minor change affects the GPD Win Max 2's performance and battery life.
In his video, Cary Golomb explains that he is testing the 2023 GPD Win Max 2 (curr. $1,369.99 on Amazon) against its more modern variant with memory speeds locked to 7500 MT/s and some rather conservative CPU power settings to maximise the GPU performance.
Golomb tests a variety of metrics, but focusses mostly on how the device's performance changes across different power settings, and it's clear that the Ryzen 7 8840U offers better performance than the 7840U, especially at lower TDP settings and with faster RAM. In most of the 10 W TDP benchmarks, the 8840U is around 10% faster than the 7840U at the same TDP, which is a respectable performance bump for a year-over-year increase. Going up to 25 W, however, the performance difference starts to become less noticeable — closer to around 5%.
In a Unigine Heaven test measuring CPU and GPU performance across different RAM speeds and TDPs, AMD's Ryzen 7 8840U CPU smashes the 7840U across the board, but what's interesting is that the 8840U offers more or less identical performance at up to 12 W whether the DDR5 is running at 6400 MT/s or 7500 MT/s. After the 12-W mark, though, the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U starts to really benefit from the higher RAM frequency, scoring significantly higher than the same CPU running at 6400 MT/s.
Where things get complicated is when Golomb compares the actual power consumption. Although the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U outclasses the Ryzen 7 7840U at all CPU power profiles, the 8840U uses around 7% more power than the Ryzen 7 7840U, making it a less efficient package and noticeably affecting the GPD Win Max 2's battery life.
Golomb reiterates that he did everything in his power to make the tests identical — identical screen brightness, running the same Windows and driver versions, and running system RAM at the same frequency — but the 7% power-draw discrepancy persisted.
Running the same test at 25 W results in a much smaller difference in the power draw, indicating that there is some sort of power draw overhead that becomes more noticeable at lower power levels.
Buyers of the GPD Win Max 2 will need to decide whether the ~10% performance bump from the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U is really worth the ~7% hit to battery life of the system. In terms of overall battery life, The Phawx claims that the system with the Ryzen 7 7840U was able to run around 15 minutes longer than the one with the 8840U.
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