AMD’s Ryzen series of CPUs seem to be getting better with every iteration, and the Ryzen 5000 series launched in the fall of 2020 was perhaps the most impressive series yet. And now it’s coming to laptops.
At the very weird all-digital CES, AMD CEO Lisa Su announced a new portfolio of Ryzen 5000 mobile processors. Lenovo, HP, and Asus are all committed to releasing laptops early this year featuring the chips.
Like the previous generation of AMD’s mobile 4000-series processors, the Ryzen 5000 series includes high-performance H and ultra-mobile U-Series processors, tweaked to best fit their form factor. If AMD’s previous-gen of laptop processors were any indication, we can probably expect the same quality and performance this time around — in a greater variety of laptops, too.
AMD was unusually quiet about the specifics of its new mobile CPUs during its keynote, but it did reveal some information about two of its HX and one of its U processor:
- Ryzen 9 5980HX: 8-cores/16-threads, 4.8 GHz boost clock, 45W TDP
- Ryzen 9 5900HX: 8-cores/16-threads, 4.6 GHz boost clock, 45W TDP
- Ryzen 7 5800U: 8-cores/16-threads
Like their desktop siblings, the 5000-series mobile CPUs are also based on AMD’s new Zen 3 architecture, leveraging a few key changes that give the desktop variants their impressive performance boost over the previous generation. And if all goes to plan, consumers should see that same boost on laptops, too, as each HX processor is getting 200-400 Hz of more frequency over its predecessors with the same or slightly more TDP.
Additionally, AMD said its new mobile processors, like the Ryzen 9 5900HX, are capable of running games smoothly on high settings up to a 4K resolution. And the Ryzen 7 5800U, for instance, offers up to 17.5 hours of general use and up to 21 hours with video playback, according to AMD. That’s an incredibly long battery life that not a lot of laptops can get, but when we looked at the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U processor in Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7, that battery lasted an amazing 17 hours with video playback. That’s a good indication that AMD’s new mobile processors could very well last that long.
AMD is also creating lower TDP versions of its desktop Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X, which will be available in OEM systems only. The Ryzen 9 5900 and Ryzen 7 will have a TDP of 65W compared to 105W on the stand-alone desktop versions.
Not to leave graphics out, AMD’s first notebooks with its RDNA 2 graphics architecture is also coming to laptops in the first half of 2021. We’ll know more closer to launch. AMD is also going to offer, for the first time, its Threadripper Pro to consumers, which will be available through 3rd-party retailers.