At Computex 2024, AMD announced the new Strix Point chipsets for laptops – and this new ASUS Vivobook S 16 M5606W is equipped with it.
Now, I know that the ASUS Vivobook S’s lineup of rather confusing. We have an Intel version, Snapdragon version, and actually two AMD versions – one older generation and another is the latest Strix Point version. You have to pay attention to the codename of the laptop.
For the specs of the particular version of the Vivobook S 16 that we’re testing here has this list of specs:
- AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
- AMD Radeon 890M
- 32GB of 7500MT/s RAM
- 1TB of storage
I have also updated the BIOS to version 302, and the AMD GPU driver got two updates – and the version that I have tested is as shown on the screen. This is important because that second GPU driver update fixed some bugs and also improved the performance by quite a lot.
The laptop itself is pretty standard. It’s using the same chassis like other Vivobook S 16 laptops with other chips – and it also has the same magnificent OLED screen with a high resolution of 3200×2000 pixels that also goes up to 120Hz refresh rate.
The color accuracy is as expected – around 100% coverage for both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, and it can also go up to 400 nits of brightness.
And just like any other Vivobook S series of laptops, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and we can only swap out the M.2 2280 SSD if we want to. Even the WiFi card is soldered onto the motherboard, by the way.
But I’m not here to talk about the laptop since we’ve already done that before – click here if you want to know more about it.
What I’m here for is to test how the AMD Strix Point chips – a.k.a. the AMD Ryzen AI chips perform in varying workloads.
So, going through AMD’s website, we can see that the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 – a very long name by the way, is the middle child in the family. It has 4x Zen5 cores and 8x Zen5c cores, making it a 12-core CPU. The TDP ranges from 15-54W and this laptop has the option to go to the highest fan speed possible to extract the most performance out of this chip.
It does sound like a plane taking off, but that’s not the point of today’s review. The GPU has 16-cores and yada yada yada, not going to talk about them because I think the gaming test matters the most.
Let’s just hop into the first game – and I’m just going to use Genshin Impact. I’m going to play at the lowest graphical settings at 1080p resolution – and it can actually maintain 60fps and I’m impressed.
Then, I tried again with the medium graphical preset and it once again, managed to maintain 60fps. Seriously, this Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 packs a strong punch.
So I then changed the render resolution from 0.9 to 1.0, and that’s when the frame rate couldn’t be maintained at 60fps consistently but drops to around 50-ish fps sometimes. Still, very good performance so far.
Next up is Zenless Zone Zero. This game has the option to play it with unlocked frame rates and at the lowest graphical preset at 1080p, the frame rate does fluctuate from about 60-ish to 80-ish fps. If we just cap the frame rate to 60fps, it’ll be maintained throughout the entire gameplay.
Now let’s try Wuthering Waves. This game has FSR – so I’m going to enable that, change it to the lowest graphical preset, and then change it to 60fps. The frame rate hovers around 40fps and there are no stutters, so that’s fine.
Of course, we have to try GTA V as well. At the lowest graphical settings, we can drive around and get about 100fps. Yes, 100fps. That’s impressive coming from an integrated GPU on a mobile chip.
However, there are a lot of tiny stutters when I started driving a bit quicker in the game. I’m not sure why this is happening – maybe it’s because the VRAM and GPU are at its limits.
I also tried Counter-Strike and the experience here at the lowest graphical preset – it works so well. It’s averages with a triple-digit frame rate but it does dip sometimes. Overall, I had a great time playing Counter-Strike on this laptop – especially with that super bright and vivid OLED screen.
Some of you may say that Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is an old game that shouldn’t be used for testing in the year 2024 – but hey, it’s the last good Assassin’s Creed game and I think it’s still a great game to test out the raster performance of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
At the lowest graphical settings, it does fluctuate quite a lot. Sometimes it can be around 50fps but at other times, it can dip all the way down to 40fps. It’s definitely playable, just that the GPU is constantly pegged at 100% usage.
Finally – we downloaded the free benchmark tool for Black Myth: Wukong with the recommended settings at the lowest graphical settings at 1080p. Surprisingly, the recommended settings did enable FSR with frame generation and set the super resolution to 54% only.
I mean, the frame rate is okay and the scenery does look decent too.
I also tried DaVinci Resolve since many people who buy these types of more powerful laptops tend would probably want to do some simple video editing too. I downloaded the Airplane Catchup 1 from DaVinci’s website – and it rendered the 32-second video using the YouTube preset in just 3 seconds.
AMD Ryzen AI 9 or Snapdragon X Elite?
Now, you might ask – why should we choose the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 laptop instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop that we have reviewed earlier?
Coincidentally, I was testing both these laptops side-by-side – video at the top right corner there if you want to know more about the Snapdragon X Elite laptop – and I can say for certain that x86 is indeed less efficient than Arm architecture by quite a lot. I’ve tested GTA V on both laptops and this laptop powered by the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 consumes about 20W more than the Snapdragon X Elite laptop.
Battery life of the the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 laptop is only at around 6.5 hours with my usual workloads. There is an improvement in terms of efficiency, but it’s not as drastic as switching over to Arm architecture.
However, those Snapdragon laptops still don’t support many applications. For example, gaming on the Snapdragon X Elite laptops is quite a disaster as of now because the translation layer is just not that good. Sure, we can get an extremely long battery life – but the laptop only performs the best when we are running native Arm apps. Otherwise, it’s quite a bad experience.
Despite all of the advantages that the Snapdragon X Elite laptops bring, I still choose the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
With so many improvements, I believe this is where the AMD Ryzen AI chip shines the brightest in this category of laptops. Both its CPU and integrated GPU performance are magnificent for 1080p gaming. It far surpassed my expectations, honestly.
What about the NPU performance?
But let’s address the elephant in the room – AI performance. That’s one of the main reasons why this generation of chips has the word “AI” in the name. Unfortunately though, the lack of on-device AI makes it difficult for us actually to test out the NPU performance in a tangible way. We’ll have to leave that for another time.
Price and availability
As of now, we do not have the price for this particular configuration of the Vivobook S 16 M5606WA. The availability of configurations are subject to change according to region as well.
For the Malaysian market, there is going to be an ASUS Vivobook S 16 with the Ryzen AI 9 365, 23GB of RAM and 512GB of storage at RM5,499. This is actually way cheaper than the Snapdragon X Elite laptop that we’ve tested previously.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
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