AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX chip failed to outperform Intel in Geekbench leak — but it could be a battery-saving beast

AMD Ryzen (Image credit: AMD)

AMD announced its brand-spankin' new line of Ryzen 6000 mobile chips at CES 2022, and of course, we can't help but wonder how they'll stack up against Intel, its fiercest competitor. Thanks to a new Geekbench leak, we've got a glimpse of how well AMD's Rembrandt-H line can perform — and perhaps Intel may not have to worry.

The results show that Intel has the leg up over AMD performance-wise, but as Digital Trends pointed out, it's not over for AMD just yet. It may have the edge over Intel in other ways.

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AMD Ryzen 6000 chip bested by Intel counterpart

On Tuesday, BenchLeaks tweeted that they spotted AMD's 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 6900HX mobile chip on the Geekbench database. The forthcoming APU features a new six-nanometer architecture and Zen 3+ cores. The base clock speed for the processor chips is 3.3 GHz; it climbs to 4.9 GHz in boost mode.

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[GB5 CPU] Unknown CPUCPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX (8C 16T)Min/Max/Avg: 4744/4845/4826 MHzCPUID: A40F41 (AuthenticAMD)Scores, vs AMD 5800XSingle: 1593, -7.8%Multi: 10151, -5.5%https://t.co/LEl7Z9roUiJanuary 25, 2022

The AMD APU, packed inside a Windows 11 Pro Lenovo laptop with 32GB of RAM, scored 1,616 points and 10,151 points for the single-core and multi-core tests. This is impressive when you compare these results to its predecessor (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX), which notched 1,417 points (single-core) and 7,685 (multi-core) points. The Ryzen 9 6900HX chip is 14% faster with single-core processes and 33% zippier for multi-core operations.

Geekbench results (Image credit: Future)

However, when stacked against its Intel counterpart (Core i9-12900H), the Ryzen 9 6900HX chip got crushed. The flagship Intel processor achieved scores of 1,962 (single-core) and 14,542 (multi-core). The Core i9-12900H chip bested the Ryzen 9 6900HX APU by 21% and 44% for single-core and multi-core performance, respectively. Yikes!

Despite this, the AMD APU has an edge in other aspects, especially when it comes to energy consumption. The Intel Core i9-12900H processor is less power efficient than its AMD rival. As such, gaming laptops with the new AMD chip will likely offer a longer battery runtime and better thermal performance.

As a cherry on top, the Ryzen 9 6900HX chip is an APU, which means its Intel counterpart can't compete with its graphical processing power. According to DigitalTrends, the Ryzen 9 6900HX APU has gaming power that aligns with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1650 GPU.

AMD may have gotten crushed by Intel this time, but you've got to admit: the Ryzen 6000 mobile chips' power efficiency and graphics power are pretty good selling points, too.

Kimberly Gedeon, holding a Master's degree in International Journalism, launched her career as a journalist for MadameNoire's business beat in 2013. She loved translating stuffy stories about the economy, personal finance and investing into digestible, easy-to-understand, entertaining stories for young women of color. During her time on the business beat, she discovered her passion for tech as she dove into articles about tech entrepreneurship, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the latest tablets. After eight years of freelancing, dabbling in a myriad of beats, she's finally found a home at Laptop Mag that accepts her as the crypto-addicted, virtual reality-loving, investing-focused, tech-fascinated nerd she is. Woot!