AMD is finally stepping up its laptop game. During a CES 2020 keynote last night, CEO Lisa Su announced its Ryzen 4000 line, its 3rd generation chips designed to compete against Intel's high-end.
They'll feature a U-series for ultrathin laptops, an H series for gaming and creations, and a Pro-series for ultra-thin professionals. In that U series is the flagship Ryzen 7 4800U, a 9 core 16 thread chip with a 1.8 GHz base clock and up to 4.2 GHz boost. It also holds 8 Radeon cores, which have been upgraded for 59% more performance.
In real-world benchmarks, AMD claims this led to a 90% increase in multi-thread Cinebench R20 performance vs Intel's i7-1065G7 and 4% in single-thread. In terms of graphics, its testing saw a 28% performance increase in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme.
Of course, these kind of benchmarks are usually the best-case scenario and can be weighted to favor Ryzen. Power draw is a little more black and white, though, and AMD is promising that its 3rd Gen mobile processors have double the performance per watt in Cinebench.
The 45W H-Series
The 4800U is available announced for Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7, and AMD is promising dozens of OEM laptops with it in Q1. On the H-series side, AMD announced the flagship Ryzen 7 4800H, with 8C/12T at a base of 2.9 GHz and a boost of up to 4.2. This and the others in the H lineup will be 45W chips, rather than the 15W of the U-series. It'll also be offering slower variants of both lines:
| Model | Cores/ Threads | Watts | Boost / Base Frequency (GHz) | GPU Cores | L2 / L3 Cache (MB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Ryzen 7 4800H | 8C/16T | 45W | Up to 4.2 / 2.9 GHz | 7 | 12 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 4600H | 6C/12T | 45W | Up to 4.0 / 3.0 GHz | 6 | 11 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 4800U | 8C/16T | 15W | Up to 4.2 / 1.8 GHz | 8 | 12 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 4700U | 8C/8T | 15W | Up to 4.1 / 2.0 GHz | 7 | 12 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 4600U | 6C/12T | 15W | Up to 4.0 / 2.1 GHz | 6 | 11 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 4500U | 6C/6T | 15W | Up to 4.0 / 2.3 GHz | 6 | 11 |
| AMD Ryzen 3 4300U | 4C/4T | 15W | Up to 3.7 / 2.7 GHz | 5 | 6 |
| AMD Athlon Gold 3150U | 2C/4T | 15W | Up to 3.3 / 2.4 GHz | 3 | 5 |
| AMD Athlon Silver 3050U | 2C/2T | 15W | Up to 3.2 / 2.3 GHz | 2 | 5 |
Meanwhile, the company appears to be making progress on its integrated graphics offerings vs Intel. Though its U line has fewer compute cores than last-gen, it claims the 4800U will still beat Intel in many games. Rocket League it says runs at 110fps at low settings vs Intel's 80, while GTA V jumps from a barely playable 29 to a solid 53.
If AMD's marketing is to be believed, things are looking very positive for the company. It's gone from being trounced by Intel processors 5 years ago to having a highly competitive product stack across desktop, laptop, and consoles. Let's just hope that battery life holds up on the go.
