We had a chance to test AMD's latest Ryzen 9 7945HX3D inside the Asus Scar 17, and although it's the fastest gaming CPU around, you shouldn't buy it yet.
I knew when AMD announced the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D that it would be a great gaming laptop CPU. It was even more clear when AMD announced it would release first in the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, which is one of the fastest gaming laptops you can buy. I’ve tested it, and it lives up to AMD’s hype. But I still don’t think you should buy it yet. Let me explain.
Related To illustrate that point, you can see just how similar the two are in raw processor performance. We normally see AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips take a performance hit in raw CPU power, but the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is more in line with the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D. You’re not giving up much of anything in raw compute power.
So, end of story, right? The Ryzen 9 7945HX3D offers better gaming performance and nearly identical CPU performance, so the case is closed. That’s the problem with “gaming” CPUs, though, especially in a laptop like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17. Control the testing to see what the processor is doing, and it looks impressive. Once you turn to realistic scenarios, though, it doesn’t look like it’s doing much.
In games like DOTA 2, Final Fantasy 14, Total War: Warhammer III, and Borderlands 3 where AMD quotes an uplift between 5% and 10% at 1080p, I wouldn’t be surprised to see those advantages completely disappear at 1440p. Most gaming CPUs only truly shine when you intentionally create a CPU bottleneck, and the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is no different.
Based on my testing, the battery life was slightly worse, too. The Asus Scar 17 isn’t a beacon of battery life with its desktop replacement status, but the base Ryzen 9 7945HX version still lasted 30 minutes longer than the 3D V-Cache version in my web-browsing test.
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