The first reviewer benchmark of the RX 7900M is out, and its score is 4% higher than the average RTX 4080 for laptops in 3DMark's Time Spy test. It's a result that's remarkably in line with AMD's benchmarks, which showed the RX 7900M is 7% faster on average than the RTX 4080 Mobile.
AMD has never competed in high-end laptop graphics, but the RX 7900M is the company's attempt to change that. It's a cut-down RX 7900 GRE, coming with 72 compute units, 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM, a 256-bit memory bus, and clocking in at 1,825 MHz in games.
This benchmark comes from reviewer GizmoTechSlip, who has a sample of the Alienware m18, the only laptop to feature the RX 7900M. His machine achieved a graphics score of 19,743, and the median laptop RTX 4080 scored 18,923. That's not a huge difference, but previously, AMD didn't even have a mobile GPU remotely as fast as this.
However, we don't know anything about power consumption, which is crucial for laptops; power turns into heat, and notebooks have minimal cooling, so less energy is better. However, we know that with SmartShift Max enabled, the RX 7900M can boost up to 200 watts or 180 watts without SmartShift Max.
For comparison, the RTX 4080 Mobile for laptops is usually rated up to 150 watts or up to 175 watts with Dynamic Boost. AMD's benchmarks compared the Alienware m18 with the RX 7900M to the Aorus 17H with the RTX 4080 Mobile, and according to Kitguru, the 4080 in that machine caps out at 150 watts. That's significantly lower than the 180 to 200 watts the RX 7900M might consume for just 7% better performance.
The picture isn't clear yet on AMD's first high-end laptop GPU in who knows how many years, and although performance looks good, power and efficiency might not be. AMD's advantage here is, of course, SmartShift, and it could use it to even the playing field against Nvidia.
