I don’t think in this case it matters even for spiky workloads. The relative difference is too small. The difference in CPU base frequency is 3.8 versus 4.0 GH

I don’t think in this case it matters even for spiky workloads. The relative difference is too small. The difference in CPU base frequency is 3.8 versus 4.0 GHz, which is 5% slower. However, for spiky workloads boost frequency is IMO more relevant than base frequency. With boost, the clock speed difference diminishes to the laughable 2%. Specifically, they are 5.2GHz for the R9, and 5.1GHz for the R7. AMD doesn’t publish boost clock for GPU, but relative difference in base GPU frequency is 3.6%. I’m aware marketing generally works, making people willing to pay more just for the feeling they have the best hardware money can buy. But personally, I believe saving these $285 and getting 95-98% of the performance is a good deal. P.S. Ryzen 5 from the same line up, the 7640HS, is substantially slower. It has fewer CPU cores, and fewer GPU compute units.