At its big product showcase last fall, Microsoft introduced the first Surface Laptop powered by an AMD CPU. But now, based on some leaked benchmarks, it appears Microsoft might double down on its use of AMD chips in the upcoming Surface Laptop 4.
Based on new 3DMark numbers discovered by WindowsLatest, it appears Microsoft is testing AMD’s new Ryzen 4000 CPUs in the Surface Laptop 4, with benchmarks showing that Microsoft is considering both the six-core Ryzen 5 4500u and the eight-core Ryzen 7 4800u processors.
If true, this could present a significant boost in performance, with Ryzen 5 4500u sporting two more cores and four more threads compared to the current top-end Ryzen 7 3780u chip in the Surface Laptop 3, with the Ryzen 7 4800u offering double the cores and threads (8/16) while also maintaining the same 15-watt TDP. And when you consider that the new Ryzen 4000 chips are based on AMD’s more efficient 7nm process instead of the 12nm architecture used in last year’s chips, new Ryzen 4000-powered Surface Laptop 4s could offer more speed and battery life than before.
While it isn’t official, it’s encouraging to see Microsoft continuing to work with AMD to source chips on next mainstream laptop, and with an extra year of collaboration under their belts and rumours claiming that the two companies are working together closely to tweak and refine performance, the Surface Laptop 4 could be a real star in Microsoft’s ever-growing device portfolio.
However, one of the big questions that remains if is AMD’s Ryzen 4000 chips will be available on both 13 and 15-inch versions of the Surface Laptop 4. Last years, AMD chips were only used on the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3, while the 13-inch model was powered exclusively by Core i5 and i7 chips from Intel.
But seeing as how the Ryzen 5 4500u has already found its way into a number of 14-inch laptops from companies like Lenovo, Acer, and others, it’s not out of the question that Microsoft and AMD could figure out a way to shoehorn that CPU into a 13-inch chassis.
Unfortunately, because a lot of other details including its design, ports, GPU, and price remain unknown, this is sort of all we know about the Surface Laptop 4 for now. And with Microsoft having recently launched the new Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3 in May, we probably won’t see the Surface Laptop 4 make its official debut until sometime later this fall.